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PARTA Dialogue Inc., an expert in Social Media and Social Learning for businesses, has announced its intention to completely acquire the GreenPod WEB platform in the coming weeks – subject to regulatory approval including that of the TSX Venture Exchange.

Parta Dialogue Inc. will complete acquisition of GreenPod Web platform in exchange for 810,000 Common Shares of Parta. In addition, Parta will pay 2000 € HT for expenses related to the platform remaining due. The Vendor, Robin Placet, is the director of Parta Dialogue SAS, a subsidiary owned at 90% by Parta Dialogue Inc, and as such is also an insider of Parta. The Vendor also agrees that its 10% stake in the share capital of Parta Dialogue SAS will be acquired by Parta for 500 € HT.

GreenPod.fr was conceived and developed by Web Me Up, a company specialized in producing web videos for brands. GreenPod.fr is a precursor in its field for two reasons. Its treatment of sustainability related news for the general public and its ultra-portable formats including a custom player for the Web, iPod and Smartphones. The core concept of the service is to deliver “green news” to subscribers wherever they are at. Reception of the service by mainstream media and brands marketing to green audiences has been positive from the start. After a year and a half of existence, GreenPod has become a hit with the blogging community in France. The acquisition of GreenPod will permit Parta to gain traction with social media communities based around sustainability discussions and multiply the delivery formats for its social media contents to reflect the new mobile nature of information browsing and sharing.

Absolute^® Software Corporation, provider of firmware-embedded endpoint security and management solutions has announced that the company has signed a million dollar deal to provide a leading K-12 school district with the Company’s Computrace^® and Absolute Manage offerings, validating the requirement for organizations to apply both security and management best practices to all of their endpoints.

“The endpoint security and management markets are converging,” said John Livingston, Chairman and CEO of Absolute. “Customers have long told us they need to be able to securely manage their PCs, laptops and now tablets and smartphones in a more simplified, reliable and cost effective manner. With the addition of Absolute Manage to complement Computrace’s leading device tracking and data protection capabilities, we are evolving our offerings to meet this need. This contract win demonstrates that the expansion of our product base is delivering results.”

The customer had identified a need for lifecycle management for their entire estate of PC notebooks. In a competitive marketplace, the customer selected Absolute Manage due to its unique persistent PC capability, and its ability to securely manage their PC population with the addition of Computrace. By combining Absolute Manage with Computrace, the customer is able to rely on valuable cloud-persistent tracking and emergency response services to ensure their PCs can be reliably and securely tracked, managed, and protected.

Mr. Livingston continued: “It was the synergies the customer could realize by combining our security and lifecycle management solutions that tipped the scales in our favor.  This illustrates how Absolute Manage is creating new customer acquisition opportunities for Computrace. We believe our unique ability to provide organizations with both endpoint security and management tools for their computing assets and other mobile devices has us well positioned to emerge as a leader in the broad endpoint security and management market.”

The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) is pleased to announce that enterprise cloud computing company salesforce.com has completed the acquisition of BDC investee company Radian6. Salesforce.com purchased Radian6 for approximately US$276 million in cash and US$50 million in stock, net of cash acquired.

BDC Interim Executive Vice President, Investments, Jérôme Nycz says, “We are extremely pleased with this transaction and our return on investment, which is among the most profitable BDC Venture Capital has recorded. This successful exit is an excellent outcome for both Radian6 and salesforce.com, as well as for BDC Venture Capital and Canada’s venture capital industry. It is also good news for Atlantic Canada where Radian6 is based. The company has grown its employee base to several hundred and continues to serve its 2,400 customers from offices in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. We expect its growth will continue and the organization will become a sustaining pillar in the business community in these provinces.”

BDC was a syndicate partner that invested in Radian6 in a first institutional round of financing in 2008. Co-investors included Summerhill Venture Partners and BrightSpark Ventures.

Jérôme Nycz adds, “BDC is grateful to have invested in the serial entrepreneurs that founded Radian6 and to have co-invested with local angel investors and savvy institutional investors focused on early stage opportunities.”

Radian6 was founded in 2006 and is the industry-leading social media monitoring platform. The company has more than 350 employees and is based in Fredericton, NB. Salesforce.com has more than 5,000 employees (including those at Radian6), was founded in 1999 and is based in San Francisco, CA.

DHX Media has announced that its hit preschool series Rastamouse has been licensed to EMI Music for a new album to be released on July 4, 2011.

In the four months since its launch, Rastamouse has quickly developed into one of the most popular children’s shows in the UK where it airs on CBeebies and BBC2. Based on the successful range of books by Michael De Souza and Genevieve Webster, the critically acclaimed TV series follows the adventures of cool, music-making, skateboarding, crime-fighting Rastamouse & Da Easy Crew as they share their philosophy of ‘Makin’ a Bad Ting Good’. The official YouTube channel for Rastamouse has received over 750,000 views.

Music is a crucial element of the TV series, with Reggae, rap and hip-hop featured prominently, and most of the stories have strong musical themes. The brilliant new album features extended versions of super cool reggae tunes from the smash hit TV children’s animation series.  Rastamouse is voiced by actor / presenter / DJ Reggie Yates, who appears on the first single ‘Ice Popp’ and other tracks.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3HWsVe_Mrs]

The album release will be preceded by the fantastic, fun, summer reggae sound of Rastamouse single ‘Hot Hot Hot’, to be released on 26^th June, following Rastamouse & Crew’s live appearances at the 2011 Glastonbury Festival. The single comes with accompanying promo video and features hot new vocals from Scratchy. Rastamouse is also on the bill for the Lollibop Festival, Regent’s Park (5^th-7^th August) with other appearances to be announced shortly.

Ontario’s RuggedCom Inc., a designer and manufacturer of rugged communications networking solutions for mission-critical applications in harsh environments has been selected as the supplier for Texas A&M’s Educational Broadband Services (EBS) network on the College Station campus. Through a unique partnering approach Texas A&M has also aligned with the Bryan Independent School District (ISD), College Station ISD and Blinn College in making use of the EBS frequencies owned by each partner to build out a scalable and contiguous 2.5 GHz network using RuggedMAX™.

RuggedCom will supply RuggedMAX™ standards based, 802.16e WiMAX base stations and subscriber units to Texas A&M making broadband available for fixed, nomadic and fully mobile applications. The wireless network will be used initially to interconnect monitoring devices for the campus utilities department and physical plant locations while enabling campus-wide faculty, administrative and student network access. Texas A&M plans to add security systems such as IP video camera surveillance and building access control to the network. The system is capable of supporting full mobility for those applications that require it, opening up the number of potential applications and user types. Read the rest of this entry »

The Canadian Centre for Child Protection wants families of missing children to know that they don’t have to search alone. On the eve of International Missing Children’s Day, the Canadian Centre is launching MissingKids.ca – Canada’s national missing children resource centre.

MissingKids.ca complements the important work of law enforcement by offering families additional resources to help find their missing children. The service provides a central place for families to register their missing child to request support from a trained caseworker, as well as critical educational information to help prevent children from going missing.

“Today’s launch of MissingKids.ca signals an important step forward in the effort to find children who have tragically gone missing,” said the Hon. Rob Nicholson, M.P. for Niagara Falls, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. “Our Government is committed to doing our part and will continue to work with our partners to keep our nation’s children – our most valuable treasures – safe and free from harm.”

Using new technologies, MissingKids.ca uses innovative online search tools that bring a modern approach to the traditional way of searching for lost or missing children. From the online registration process to the use of social media and wireless technologies, the service helps parents understand and leverage these helpful tools to locate their missing children. The Canadian public can also sign up to receive missing child alerts so individuals may become a part of the search for the nation’s missing children.

“We live in a different world today than the one we lived in just five short years ago. New technology and social media tools have not only profoundly changed the way we live and interact with one another, but they have created new opportunities in the search for missing children,” said Lianna McDonald, Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. “MissingKids.ca will provide a national voice on missing children issues and a coordinated approach in the search for missing children. It will capitalize on new technology and coordinate prompt, efficient dissemination of public alerts.”

This past March marked the 20^th anniversary of the disappearance of Michael Dunahee, who was four years old when he disappeared from a Victoria, BC sports field on March 24, 1991. His mom Crystal said the MissingKids.ca program will bring new hope to searching families.

“Twenty years is a long time to be searching, but with MissingKids.ca – we have renewed hope of receiving new information to help us find Michael,” said Crystal Dunahee. “Any time families can access new resources to assist them in locating their child gives them reason to be hopeful and optimistic.” Read the rest of this entry »

CounterPath Corporation, a provider of desktop and mobile Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) software solutions, has launched an online certification program for Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSPs). The CounterPath ITSP Partner Program enables ITSPs to certify their service with CounterPath’s mobile softphone, Bria iPhone Edition, and provide a pre-provisioned service option within the softphone client.

By participating in the ITSP Partner Program, ITSPs can provide their customers with a premier softphone option that is easy to activate and use. The program also helps ITSPs expand their market reach by leveraging the CounterPath softphone user base.

“Joining CounterPath’s ITSP Partner Program and certifying our OnSIP Hosted PBX service with Bria iPhone Edition was an obvious choice for us,” said Robert Wolpov, President and Founder of Junction Networks. “OnSIP was specifically designed to provide small and medium-size businesses with access to enterprise-grade PBX systems. Partnering with CounterPath has now given us the ability to offer these services within a first-class, enterprise-grade mobile softphone.”

Registration for the CounterPath ITSP program is free via the CounterPath website. ITSPs receive an Acceptance Test Procedure (ATP) to complete and, once approved, the ITSP Partner will appear in a list of pre-provisioned VoIP providers within the mobile softphone application. CounterPath Certified ITSP Partners also gain exposure on CounterPath’s website and receive a CounterPath Certified logo for use in their customer collateral. Read the rest of this entry »

When Blockbuster in the USA announced its insolvency last year, I knew that the future would not bode well for its Canadian counterpart. As the video and game rentals market continues to take hits from the expansion of the digital market, Blockbuster Canada Co.‘s Receiver, Grant Thornton Limited, has been authourized to initiate a process to identify parties interested in purchasing Blockbuster Canada’s assets and operations.

On May 3, 2011, Grant Thornton Limited was appointed as Receiver of Blockbuster Canada Co. pursuant to a Court Order made by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice which made a further Order on May 20, 2011 approving a sale process recommended by the Receiver. While Blockbuster Canada will be consolidating certain stores in the next few weeks, the majority of its stores are continuing to operate in the ordinary course during the process.

“We appreciate the ongoing support of Blockbuster Canada’s customers, employees, suppliers and other stakeholders during this period” said Michael Creber on behalf of Grant Thornton Limited. “We are hopeful that the process approved last Friday will result in resolution of the issues currently facing Blockbuster Canada Co.”

We have a Blockbuster here in Aldergrove, but we’ve watched as rental store after rental store has closed. The local Movie Gallery outlet closed about two years ago, leaving behind a storefront that has been vacant ever since. Prior to that, two other smaller, privately owned stores closed up shop. If our local Blockbuster outlet also closes, that will leave one privately owned rental service in town, and it recently decreased its floorspace.

PowerSearch Software, a developer of affordable and accessible search technologies based in Toronto, has launched its eponymous application that enables users to cull their data prior to collection and to quickly find all files while reducing collection time and costs by 80 percent or more.

With PowerSearch, users simply point the software to their local drive or network repository to quickly generate a snapshot of all available files. PowerSearch is the only product on the market today that allows users to extract, process, search and cull documents before collecting them at no cost. PowerSearch has:

• Built in pre-processing – PowerSearch identifies files that require pre-processing, including .pst and .nsf email formats, as well as zipped and image files.
• Ability to index and analyze files – PowerSearch indexes files for searching and generates exception reports.
• Fast and powerful search capabilities – PowerSearch gives almost instantaneous search results, even on massive amounts of data. Complex searches are easy to construct using drill down technology and the onboard dictionary that shows all the words that exist in the identified files.
• Informative dashboards – PowerSearch includes charts and graphs to show status of the data and project.

“PowerSearch is a great addition to my e-discovery tool set,” stated Marty Musters, director of forensics at Computer Forensics, Inc. and a PowerSearch beta-tester. “It has an easy-to-navigate user interface making it simple to get search results. In addition, the company’s many technical support options ensure there is someone available if I need help.”

“As a records manager, attorney or service provider, knowing what data you have is the foundation of delivering value to your organization or client,” stated Girts Jansons, founder and CEO of PowerSearch. “We wanted to give the legal and records management industries an easy way to access data without large costs involved. We are proud to bring the capabilities of PowerSearch to the market at-large and have received very positive responses from beta testers.”

PowerSearch uses proprietary technology to locate and search files on local drives and network repositories. PowerSearch extracts email repositories and zipped files, indexing the content of emails and electronic documents making them fully searchable. Search results can be saved in folders and if necessary, exported into current tools for further processing.

Unlike other collection and culling products, with PowerSearch there is no charge for deploying the software or for searching or culling. Users only pay for final results, files they ultimately deem relevant and decide to save, by using a system of tokens purchased via PayPal at a fraction of a cent per token. PowerSearch ships with 1,500 tokens.

ConceptWave Software Inc., provider of Customer, Product, and Order Lifecycle Management solutions for the global communications service provider market, announced today that it has contracted with TM Forum to undergo further assessment of its products through the TM Forum Frameworx Product Conformance Certification program.

ConceptWave is continuing its efforts to increase Frameworx conformance for its communications service provider products. The current multi-phase ConceptWave product conformance assessment covers Information Framework (SID) and Business Process Framework (eTOM) for ConceptWave Order Care® and Rapid CRM products. ConceptWave has already submitted the phase 1 self-assessment for TM Forum review.

“ConceptWave is fully committed to TM Forum Frameworx as a way for service providers to constantly reduce costs through operational efficiency, to accelerate delivery of new services, and to reduce risk, while having the agility to meet market and technology changes,” said Dr. Ivan Chochlekov, ConceptWave’s CTO. “Frameworx conformance has enabled ConceptWave to reduce its R&D costs, speed its development effort, and provide faster time-to-market while reducing ongoing support costs.”

ConceptWave led the industry by being one of the first companies to obtain TM Forum Frameworx Product Conformance Certification, granted in May 2010 for its Catalog Management version 5.0 product offering.

“Service providers are following standards-based processes themselves and also expecting their suppliers to provide standards-based products by default,” said George Greenlee, TM Forum Senior VP Product Management. “ConceptWave’s pioneering and continuing involvement in the Frameworx Conformance Certification program continuously raises the bar in the market.”

Frameworx, the communications industry’s only integrated business and IT architecture, provides end-to-end service management by integrating common business processes, enterprise information, and applications into one unified solution.