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What I Learned This Week: I'd Rather Be a Star Than a Leader

Andy Nulman | Posted 05.27.2013 | Canada Business
Andy Nulman

Used as an adjective to describe a company's stature, the word "Leader" has degenerated into an ineffective cliché, one that is not only a weak, second-rate aspiration, but a hard-to-measure milestone that shines as bright as a plastic neon glowstick...and lasts about as long as one, too.

The Problem With Allowing Consumers to Opt Out

Mitch Joel | Posted 06.15.2013 | Canada Business
Mitch Joel

As a marketing professional, there is nothing I hate more than receiving any form of communication (email, Web experience, social media, mobile, whatever) and not see an obvious place where I can either opt out of the communication or protect how much information is being captured. As a consumer, I probably hate it more.

The Next Media Gamechanger

Diane Francis | Posted 06.01.2013 | Canada Business
Diane Francis

The biggest heist in history was when newspapers and magazines allowed Google to "crawl" their content to readers, to pay nothing and to sell ads around their stories. Google became, in other words, the ubiquitous newspaper right under the noses of proprietors who should have charged.

Awesome Amazon Feature Finally Arrives In Canada

CP | Linda Nguyen, The Canadian Press | Posted 03.10.2013 | Canada Business

TORONTO - Amazon is bringing its unlimited, two-day shipping service to Canada.The world's largest online retailer says starting today, Amazon Prime w...

What Comes After Smartphones?

Mitch Joel | Posted 02.09.2013 | Canada Business
Mitch Joel

What will Apple do next? What is the technology that will disrupt the iPhone and iPad business? If you have read Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs biography (and I strongly recommend that you do), there was a very telling (and compelling) line from Jobs: "If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will."

Rather Than Buy Products, We Buy in to Services

Paul Barter | Posted 11.28.2012 | Canada Business
Paul Barter

It used to be that you bought a product, took it home, and used it until it ran out or broke. If you needed to, you bought another. Today, we don't just buy things, we buy into them. Two big trends have been reshaping the consumer marketplace: something-as-a-service and the experience economy.

Watching the Watchdog: 50 Years of Journalism & It's all the Same

Tim Knight | Posted 11.14.2012 | Canada
Tim Knight

Once upon a time I wrote a book about being a journalist in the 21st century. I was leafing through its pages last evening, when I stopped at the chapter The Less Things Change... It's about my time, 50 years ago, working as reporter/anchor at a startup TV station in Zambia. The chapter starts by describing how we got our foreign news film back there in the 60s. Even after all these years, much is still the same.

How E-Books Are Ruining the Next Generation of Writers

Marko Sijan | Posted 10.08.2012 | Canada Living
Marko Sijan

Literary writing is a worthless profession. Few who write novels, stories and poems make a living from them. This has been true for millennia. Lately the Internet has regressed into a society of feudal manors lorded over by tech giants like Amazon, Apple and Yahoo, who sell e-books for 99 cents or give them away for free. Their "competitive pricing" is threatening traditional publishers and physical books with extinction.

Jobs That Can Be Done By Anyone Will Be Done By No One

Paul Barter | Posted 09.26.2012 | Canada Business
Paul Barter

Even though their prices have dropped, we still need commodities, products and services. And because these parts of the economy are so deeply entrenched, decades worth of innovation have focused on reducing cost - -this means automation. If it's cheaper to have systems or robots extract, refine, make, or deliver, it will be done -- no matter the industry.

The Social Web is a Golden Cage of Information

Randall Craig | Posted 08.20.2012 | Canada Business
Randall Craig

Do you actively seek out different opinions than your own, or unwittingly reinforce your personal conventional wisdom by only consuming "agreeable" content? While we may think it is the former, too often we live in a bubble. Here are some reasons why we're not as open-minded or as free as we may think, and how the internet is really preventing us from experiencing new things.

E-Books -- Welcome to iCensorship

Randall Craig | Posted 06.13.2012 | Canada
Randall Craig

This app problem is just one skirmish in a long-brewing war between the ebook distributors. Consumers may not realize that ebook distributors have another weapon -- a dirty little secret actually -- to use in their fight: censorship. Yes, censorship.

The E-commerce Tipping Point

Mitch Joel | Posted 06.03.2012 | Canada Business
Mitch Joel

Recently, a very senior marketing professional who works at one of the world's largest corporations was recounting a story of how they saw a postal truck outside of their corporate head offices in Silicon Valley, and every single parcel that was being offloaded from this truck was from Amazon. He thought to himself: "This is the what retail looks like in 2012."

Kobo Bought

The Huffington Post Canada | Ron Nurwisah | Posted 01.08.2012 | Canada

Canadian e-book and e-reader company Kobo has been sold to Japan's Rakuten for $315-million. Kobo, a Toronto technology company which was a one-ti...

Kobo Releases Full-Colour Tablet

CP | The Canadian Press | Posted 12.19.2011 | Canada Business

TORONTO - The Canadian ebook company Kobo is getting into the crowded tablet market and beating a major competitor to the punch.Orders are now being t...

The Evolution of Apps

Mitch Joel | Posted 11.06.2011 | Canada
Mitch Joel

Having the power to create an app that a brand or media entity can control, update and change on the fly (that isn't beholden to another media entity) not only makes sense, but points us to a new day and age where brands can develop their own media.

Massive Underground River Found Beneath Amazon

AP | Posted 10.26.2011 | Canada

SAO PAULO -- (AP) A huge underground river appears to be flowing thousands of feet beneath the Amazon River, Brazilian scientists said Thursday. Va...