Village Gamer

Following the publication of the Indice entrepreneurial québécois 2011 this past spring, the Fondation de l’entrepreneurship announced earlier today the release of the English version of the 2011 Quebec Entrepreneurship Index, entitled Quebec Entrepreneurship Culture: Are Our Entrepreneurs Taking Root?. This year marks the third year in a row that this comprehensive survey of Quebec’s entrepreneurs has been carried out by the Fondation de l’entrepreneurship in association with the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and Leger Marketing. Given the recent release of the Quebec government’s entrepreneurship strategy, this gauge of our entrepreneurial health is timelier than ever. Read the rest of this entry »

New Media Manitoba and Nordicity have announced a groundbreaking New Media Census for the province of Manitoba. Whether your company is one or one hundred people strong, you are an important part of the industry in Manitoba — and NMM wants to make sure that you’re counted! Read the rest of this entry »

OpenText™ has been named a Leader in the latest Gartner, Inc. “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management,” based on the company’s ability to execute and its completeness of vision and that Forrester Research, Inc. has positioned it as a Leader in its November 2011 report, “The Forrester Wave^TM: Enterprise Content Management, Q4 2011.” Read the rest of this entry »

When it comes to seeking out and securing great staff, 69 per cent of Canadian small business owners are confident in their ability to attract and keep good employees. However, when hiring, one in ten (11%) of small business owners (SBOs) reported never finding the right person and 28% had the job open for up to three months before finding the appropriate candidate. Read the rest of this entry »

New research from a joint TVO and OISE literacy pilot program, Literacy Fun for Families (PDF), showed that a test group of children who used TVOKids.com resources made “significantly greater gains” in key areas of early reading, writing and phonological awareness when compared to a control group who did not use the TVOKids materials. Read the rest of this entry »

While pressured to adopt new mobile technologies and implement access to social media, 83% of Canadian companies are concerned with heightened tech risks, says a new report from Ernst & Young. Conversely, 63% reported that they don’t have sufficient budget to appropriately secure their IT infrastructure. Clearly, this trend cannot continue indefinitely without negative consequences appearing somewhere down the road. Read the rest of this entry »

What the Trend – a HootSuite Media company – analyzed 207,518 Twitter trends from 2011 to determine the top trending topics of the year. The resultant lists offer a unique view of social media’s impact on all aspects of culture and can be viewed and downloaded from HootSuite’s company blog. Read the rest of this entry »

Robust business investment in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador continues to outstrip the poor performances of other provinces, according to a report released today by the C.D. Howe Institute. In “The Retooling Challenge: Canada’s Struggle to Close the Capital Investment Gap (PDF),” authors Colin Busby and William B.P. Robson find that new capital spending on tools for Canadian workers, in the form of machinery, equipment or buildings, still lags that in the United States and other major developed countries. While Canada narrowed the gap in the late 2000s, preliminary figures for 2010 and 2011 suggest that Canada is slipping again. Considering the outsized contributions of the three resource-based provinces to the national performance, other provinces clearly need to raise their game. Read the rest of this entry »

A new study from Softchoice Corporation indicates that the adoption of Microsoft Windows 7 has reached a tipping point – with installations of the operating system (OS) in corporate environments nearly tripling since the start of 2011. Read the rest of this entry »

Consumers are savvy. Provided with countless sources when seeking product, brand or location information, they know what to search and where. These customers are ready to visit your site and ready to buy your products. Multi-channel, integrated marketing is a necessity for successful marketers. How are current marketers responding to such a knowledgeable North American consumer base? With this question at the top of mind, DAC Group performed its annual directional media study. Released this week, the study is one of the largest of its kind in directional media; it was conducted by Kantar, with a polling sample of 5,000 adults. Read the rest of this entry »