Interrupting your customers is a pretty dumb business model.

Nevertheless, broadcast media has been using interruption to rake in profits for more than 70 years. Now, as Facebook -- a poster child of the digital age -- unveils its plan to place itself at the heart of its users'...

Last time, we talked about how being tech savvy can save you lots of money.

This time, let's look at the growing requirement to be tech savvy simply to earn a living.

Since you're reading this, you're in the majority of Canadians who use the Internet, likely...

Simply by reading this, there could be a cheque with your name on it in the amount of $8,870 or more -- this year, next year and every year thereafter.

To cash these cheques all you need to do is know how to use the Internet with an eye to...

Remember a company called Blockbuster? What about Sam the Record Man?

Think of those companies and what became of them and their industries in the digital world.

Now turn your thoughts to learning.

While teachers, students, parents, taxpayers and politicians discuss the current state of education...

On the heels of big data grabbing headlines the world over for its role in President Obama's re-election, could 2013 be the year big data makes the big leap into the mainstream, especially business?

Every second of every day technology captures and stores an unimaginable amount of data....

We tend to identify hot, new technologies with the young, but it is the not-so-young who will reap many of the greatest benefits of technology, not only today, but tomorrow. With 5.2 million Canadians -- or 15 per cent of the population -- over the age of 65...

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...

Long before facebook's IPO in May, I was one of the harshest critics of the social network; warning of its structural problems that tick off users and threaten privacy and profits.

But now that the stock price has plummeted to below $20 from its $45 IPO, even I...

It's summer and the livin' is easy with some well-deserved R & R.

But in this high-tech, always connected, 24/7 world, R & R just ain't what it used to be.

No longer Rest and Relaxation, today's R & R should stand for Rest and Reflection.

With...

Winston Churchill once said: "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity and an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
The fact is, regardless what field you're in, technology that can kill your job exists today in some form in a research lab somewhere....

On the eve of Facebook's IPO announcement in May, I argued that Facebook has some serious structural problems that will limit how profitable it can be. The argument works like this:

Before going public, Facebook had two core groups they tried to make happy: users and advertisers....

On the eve of the IPO, Facebook couldn't look more different from what we hoped it might someday be. The problem is that no one's happy: Customers are subjected to more and more ads, and the companies who created those ads aren't seeing much of a

As Facebook executives embark on a road show to pitch the stock to investors for an expected Initial Public Offer later this month, it makes me think of cigarettes, booze, gambling, even guns.

Those types of companies produce toxic consumables that have made many an investor filthy rich by betting...

There's an old Hollywood saying: No matter how many special effects you load up with you still need a well-written script for your movie to be a hit.

The same can be said in today's business world where techies are constantly creating disruptive new digital technologies that are transforming...

Katharine Graham must be spinning in her grave as her once-illustrious Washington Post pushes the boundaries of seediness with its Social Reader application on Facebook.

Graham, the one-time housewife who took over the Post in 1963 after her husband's suicide, became one of the great newspaper publishers, especially...

Once upon a time, geeks were the butt of jokes.

They were the kids in high school with the plastic pen holders in their vest pockets carrying brief cases. Their marks were always straight A's even if the strange language they spoke was C++. The closest these guys every...

To use the Twitter vernacular, female-driven technology is "trending." The IT sector is no longer dominated by men, and companies that ignore this trend are doing so at their own peril.

About a decade ago, 80 to 90 per cent of total IT spending was in the enterprise...

Education is the next part of the economy that's going to be disrupted in massive ways. Lots of young people have made their way through university only to wonder whether their education was completely disconnected from the way the world actually works.

Online education is making the same transformation that...

There's only one thing Research in Motion has to do to stay in business: change the world. Again.
It's been tough being a Canadian in the tech industry these last few years. RIM morphed (or dwarfed) from poster child to whipping boy. It's unfortunate that RIM spent the past...

Over the past five years, something subtle but important happened. In business speak, Facebook's primary stakeholders went from being users to being advertisers. Bluntly, Facebook transformed from a service that makes you happier into a service that makes advertisers happier -- often at your expense. While there may be an...