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Hatch Inc., a North Carolina provider of classroom technology innovations for early learning and SMART Technologies Inc. have announced the creation of CoreFocus by Hatch^TM. The content solution, designed to work within SMART Notebook™ collaborative learning software, includes more than 2,500 research-based math and literacy activities for kindergarten and first grade and is aligned with the new U.S. national Common Core State Standards.

The robust set of activities will assist teachers in integrating SMART Board interactive whiteboards into their daily lesson plans and curriculum and also provide a content management system for all of their existing interactive whiteboard content. Early learning experts designed CoreFocus by Hatch to provide critical math and literacy skill development for young learners.

“Hatch is excited to work alongside SMART Technologies to develop a comprehensive content solution that supports teachers in accessing research-based math and literacy activities, with a focus on Common Core State Standards for kindergarten and first grade. The team who developed the TeachSmart® Learning System, the first interactive whiteboard solution proven to impact math and literacy outcomes for early education, led the development of CoreFocus. This product will have a definite impact on the development of children and provide teachers with proven strategies for success,” said Hatch President Ginny Norton.

“We are pleased to enter into a new phase of our relationship with Hatch, collaborating with their research and development experts in the creation of standards-based activities for SMART Board interactive whiteboards that educators can easily integrate into their curriculum,” said SMART Products Vice President Linda Thomas. “CoreFocus by Hatch supports our commitment to meet the needs of educators with innovative products and services to further engage their students with high quality content made in SMART Notebook software and fully aligned to Common Core State Standards.”

Ontario document management company MES Hybrid Document Systems has received a Controlled Goods Certification allowing them to handle and convert documentation relating to controlled goods and ensures the highest level of security while handling this information.

Controlled Goods Certification also ensures that MES Hybrid Document Systems complies with the Controlled Goods Program, a Canadian industrial security program that helps strengthen national defense trade controls and prevents the proliferation of strategic and tactical assets including military equipment, weapons, communications equipment and global positioning systems and related intellectual property.

“MES Hybrid Document Systems’ Controlled Goods Certification ensures the highest level of security of controlled goods and related technology by regulating possession, examination and transfer within Canada,” said Kevin D’Arcy, Vice President of Sales and Marketing of MES Hybrid Document Systems. “In addition to ensuring a high level of security, this certification allows controlled goods organizations to consolidate all their document management services with us as opposed to outsourcing a portion of their document management services and managing controlled goods information internally.”

MES Hybrid Document Systems Inc. has been successfully supplying and supporting document scanning solutions in public and private organizations across Canada since 1971. MES provides document management solutions to improve business processes, reduce paper-based tasks and focus key knowledge workers.

Security and compliance solutions for email and documents provider TITUS has been selected as a finalist for the Microsoft Public Sector – Public Safety and National Security Partner of the Year Award.

“Together, Microsoft and TITUS provide joint solutions that enable public sector and national security customers worldwide to classify, protect and securely share their data,” said Tim Upton, President and CEO of TITUS. “To be recognized among the top finalists of Microsoft’s Public Safety and National Security Partners validates the need for classification and data loss prevention solutions in this sector and the importance of our ongoing relationship with Microsoft.”

Awards were presented in multiple categories, with winners chosen from a set of more than 3,000 entrants worldwide. The Public Sector – Public Safety and National Security Partner of the Year Award honors partners who have exhibited excellence in providing innovative and unique services or solutions based on Microsoft technologies to public safety and national security customers. This award recognizes TITUS for demonstrating industry knowledge and expertise, as well as consistent, high-quality, predictable service or solutions to public safety and national security customers. This partner also has shown business leadership and success through strong growth in new customer additions and revenue. Read the rest of this entry »

In May 2008, the Greenland Group announced that important funding had been allocated by Canada’s National Research Council – IRAP to assist with further developing the CANWET (or CAnadian Nutrient and Water Evaluation Tool) modelling software. This week, CANWET-4 was launched in Newmarket, ON at the offices of the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority and also with representatives from the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and local Municipalities.

Three years ago, GREENLAND^® developed an earlier model version that was later used for source water protection, assimilative capacity, nutrient management and water allocation projects. CANWET was also used last year by the Government of Ontario to prepare the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan. The total public (research) and private sectors investment to complete CANWET-4 was over $600,000 and included one of the largest grants from the National Research Council – IRAP initiative.

CANWET-4 is a continuous, GIS-based software suite to inform decision making around river basin and watershed management; water supply and waste water treatment infrastructure; food security; and, climate change adaptation. Its ability to quickly and accurately estimate daily water balance, nutrient, erosion sediment, and bacteria loadings from GIS input data allows CANWET-4 to serve as a powerful decision support system. This latest release of CANWET is VB.Net database-driven and web-aware, and features an integrated open source GIS environment. Its relative ease of use and ability to take advantage of commonly available spatial data makes it a solid choice over other water quantity and quality computer models. In addition to the integration of current watershed and climate change science from renowned researchers at the University of Guelph and Penn State University, CANWET-4 also incorporates a large suite of Beneficial Management Practices (BMPs) for assessing proposed reductions in phosphorous, nitrogen, sediment, and animal coliforms from rural and urban lands. Multiple practices can be added in parallel or in series. CANWET-4 also calculates costs for typical BMP applications based on unit-costing. The completion of CANWET-4 was important for GREENLAND^® to support other Canadian and U.S. collaborations now underway about the Lake Winnipeg, Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay Basins.

“I am extremely pleased with the completion of CANWET-4 and sincerely thank Canada’s NRC-IRAP for its funding assistance over the past few years,” says R. Mark Palmer, the President of GREENLAND^{®. “}Our P3 completion announcement, affirms the commitment of the Canadian Government for environmental research, as well as lake and river basin management programs. The development of CANWET-4 also highlights our niche Mission Statement that recognizes the environment first while complying with best available science and proven technologies.”

Toon Boom Animation Inc. has announced that Flip Boom Classic for K-6 students and its respective curricula, are now compatible with the SMART Board™ 600 series interactive whiteboard. Compatibility with the SMART Board 800 series will be completed in time for the International Society for Technology in Education Conference, to be held in Philadelphia from June 26-29, 2011. Demonstrations will be given at Booth 1403 during the conference.

Porting Toon Boom’s entry-level educational product to SMART Board interactive whiteboards is a natural step towards offering engaging creative applications on collaborative and interactive learning devices. Students will be able to create and export finished files for easy inclusion in the teaching resources of SMART Notebook collaborative learning software.

“Having Toon Boom products integrate with SMART Board interactive whiteboards raises the creative learning and visual communication potential,” says Linda Thomas, Vice-President, Products, SMART Technologies. “The combination of these products will create a more dynamic and stimulating classroom environment by getting students truly involved in lesson activities.”

“All our award-winning software applications and curricula targeted for K-12 are a perfect fit for SMART Board interactive whiteboards, which will surely make cross-curricular learning a whole new experience,” states Joan Vogelesang, President and Chief Executive Officer at Toon Boom Animation Inc.

In conjunction with this announcement, Toon Boom is launching the Flip Boom Classic Teacher Kit for SMART Boards, which includes a license of Flip Boom Classic as well as its respective curricula for $149.99. A Classroom lab license is also available for $499.99. Flip Boom Classic runs on MAC and PC.

Annex Pro will be hosting a free seminar session along with Atempo titled Managing Digital Content Throughout Your Workflow with Backup and Archive. This July 7th evening session will be held at the Annex Pro office on Dunlevy in Vancouver, and will teach attendees how to:

• Preserve and protect your digital content throughout the workflow
• Optimize your SAN or NAS storage by rolling out a low cost disk or tape archive
• Create a content archive that’s easily accessible to all your users
• Reduce clutter in shared work areas through automatic archiving
• Manage your content’s metadata for more effective search and retrieval

This event is recommended for:

• Creative or IT professionals who manage digital content and/or the storage systems supporting creative workflows
• Anyone looking for a better way to control storage growth, especially HD, 3D and stereoscopic
• Anyone wanting to simplify content reuse and monetize their existing content

The doors will open for registration, refreshments and networking at 5:30pm, with the speaker session running from 6pm to 7pm.

ComplyWorks is pleased to announce the release of ComplyWorks Management System 3.9. The new release includes multilingual capabilities, with English and French user interfaces available initially.

With the release of ComplyWorks Management System (CMS) 3.9, ComplyWorks improves its ability to provide contractor and supplier management to global industries. CMS is currently used on three continents in a wide variety of industries to conduct due diligence, improve risk mitigation and increase performance of employees, contractors and suppliers in relation to productivity, safety, health, environmental, financial and other indicators.

The multilingual capabilities of CMS 3.9 will allow user interfaces to be added in an unlimited number of languages as ComplyWorks and its customers enter new regions and countries. Currently, end-users can choose between English and French user interfaces.

“Contractor and supplier management is a global issue, and we’re providing global solutions,” says Cal Fairbanks, President and CEO of ComplyWorks Ltd. “The multilingual features of CMS 3.9 are a direct result of consulting with our customers, listening to what they need to manage contractors and suppliers around the globe, and meeting those needs. This release is an example of how ComplyWorks provides solutions that are relevant to our customers, their compliance requirements, the language they do business in, and the countries in which they operate. ”

The previous version of the CMS, 3.8.2, was released in January 2011 and included new Multiple-Level Compliance capabilities that are in use by 100% of CMS customers. CMS 3.8.2 also included significant enhancements to the TrackWorks tool that have resulted in its rapid adoption by ComplyWorks customers.

McAfee has extended its mobile device portfolio for consumers with McAfee Mobile Security and McAfee WaveSecure Tablet Edition.  These mobile device offerings change the mobile security landscape by offering security safeguards that help consumers secure their mobile devices for personal use, commerce and work.

A recent Leger Marketing survey of 1,500 Canadians, 18 years of age or older, was completed over the period May 24-26, 2011 for McAfee Canada. A probability sample of the same size would yield a margin of error of +/- 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20. The report results showed that Canadians overwhelmingly want security technologies to protect their mobile devices. Eighty three per cent (83%) of Canadians who use a mobile device want some (36%) or full (47%) protections (e.g. ability to remotely lock the device from unauthorized access; ability to remotely wipe the device’s memory; ability to locate the device using GPS technology; and ability to back up the device) to secure their mobile devices. Only 17 per cent of respondents do not feel the security of mobile devices is important.

According to a mobile security report released last week by McAfee and Carnegie Mellon University, titled, “Mobility and Security: Dazzling Opportunities, Profound Challenges,” respondents named their top three security concerns to be the loss of personal or work data through the accidental loss of a device, physical theft of the device, or loss of their data due to their device “crashing.” In addition, close to half of all respondents said they were using their smartphones both for personal use and work, demonstrating that consumers want more than just personal device security.

McAfee Mobile Security software, available for both smartphones and tablets, provides a comprehensive mobile security solution by combining three leading McAfee mobile security products:  WaveSecure, VirusScan Mobile and SiteAdvisor® for Android. It is ideal for users who want protection for their data and privacy in the event of loss or theft, protection against the growing threats of viruses and spyware targeting mobile devices and protection from Web- based threats, such as phishing sites that probe for personal and sensitive information. Read the rest of this entry »

Two Toronto companies will have greater opportunities to develop new technologies thanks to a Government of Canada investment of nearly $2 million announced today by the Honourable Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario).

“The Government of Canada is investing in the people, businesses and communities of southern Ontario to create jobs and encourage economic growth,” said Minister Goodyear. “New businesses face many challenges getting access to capital. Today’s investment will help these companies develop new ideas and bring them to market.”

Nulogy Corporation will receive a contribution of up to $954,687, which will allow it to be first-to-market with its ‘PackShop’ software that is used to customize packaging design for marketers and retailers. The company has also received support from the growth equity investment company Klass Capital Corporation.

“Nulogy will use this financing to expand as we secure new customers and enter new markets around the world,” Jason Tham, Chief Executive Officer of Nulogy Corporation. “Living and investing locally, while competing globally, has always been important to us, and we are very grateful to be able to continue our journey with great partners like FedDev Ontario and Klass Capital.”

Maintenance Assistant Inc. will receive a contribution of up to $975,000 to enhance its Collaborative Computerized Maintenance Management software to help businesses better maintain equipment and machinery, as well as procure parts and services through a web-based format. The company has also received support from accredited angel investors.

“I am extremely pleased to receive this federal funding through Investing in Business Innovation,” said Marc Castel, Chief Executive Officer of Maintenance Assistant Inc. “In combination with our angel investment through the Golden Triangle Angel Network and the Niagara Angel Network, the government support will allow us to focus on our growth objectives and build a world-class enterprise software company for equipment maintenance.”

Investing in Business Innovation is a direct result of feedback from business leaders, academics and community leaders from across southern Ontario, who suggested FedDev Ontario take a leadership role in encouraging entrepreneurs and investors to take the risks necessary to put southern Ontario businesses on the map.

FedDev Ontario was created as part of Canada’s Economic Action Plan to support businesses and communities in southern Ontario. Now in its second year of operation, the Agency has launched a number of initiatives to create a Southern Ontario Advantage and place the region in a strong position to compete in the global economy. These initiatives are designed to support businesses and other organizations through partnerships and investments in skills and training; innovation; research and development; and increased productivity. 

Ontario’s ARCAD, Inc. has introduced the new DC Arc Flash Analytic (DCAFA V1.0) software program for arc flash and shock hazard analysis in DC power systems including but not limited to photovoltaics, battery banks, rectifiers and telecommunications equipment.

The program takes system voltage, available short circuit current, gap between electrodes, circuit time constant, electrode material, protective device type and rating or a preset arc duration value, and determines incident energy released by arc flash, hazard risk category at working distance and flash protection boundary.

For systems with variable gap between electrodes, for example when gap is not fixed and distance between electrodes is anticipated to increase by separation of contacts, the program will examine power and energy released by an arc as a function of arcing voltage and current, arc duration, electrode materials and calculate maximum incident energy that could be released by the arc within two seconds time interval. A person exposed to an arc flash will move away quickly if it is physically possible and two seconds is generally accepted as a reasonable maximum time for arc flash calculations.

Among various key capabilities, the DCAFA V1.0 performs analysis using metric or imperial units, saves input configurations and calculation results for future reference or printing, and generates customized arc flash warning labels in electronic formats.