Tony Wanless | Image:
LadyGagaVEVO |
Published: July 29, 2010
"Stop calling, stop calling. I don't wanna think
anymore," cry Tony Wanless and Lady Gaga.
The telephone police say they're doing a good job at stopping telemarketers from calling. We beg to differ.
At our house, we long ago learned not to answer the phone between 5 and 7 p.m. Or Saturday mornings. Or 2 p.m., which seems to be another common time for the telemarketers to harangue us about how we should sign up for more phone services, television services, shopping services, charitable donations, supposed market surveys, and membership clubs that will bring us huge savings on vacations or furniture we probably don't really want and certainly don't need.
It's a common ritual in Canada these days for anyone with a phone.
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Tony Wanless | |
Published: July 22, 2010
The money-hungry feds have tightened the screws on B.C. technology companies.
Young B.C. tech companies may face a funding drought in future. The federal government is curtailing R&D tax credits.
It looks like a money-hungry federal government has tightened the screws on an important funding mechanism for new B.C. technology companies.
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Tony Wanless | |
Published: July 19, 2010
Most businesses are built on business plans that try to measure the market acceptance of their product ahead of time. But sometimes, passion and self knowledge are all that's needed.
It's not exactly news in the software industry, but it should be noted for the general business community that one of B.C.'s pioneer SaaS companies was quietly acquired by Twitter last month for an undisclosed amount (both companies are private so don't have to disclose financial details).
Smallthought Systems, founded by Avi Bryant, Andrew Catton, Ben Matasar, and Luke Andrews, offered the Software as a Service (SaaS or cloud computing) application DabbleDB.
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Tony Wanless | |
Published: July 13, 2010
Apparently all those big film deals aren't so big after all. The industry is making Leo Award winners pay for their own trophies.
Here in BC, we like to think of ourselves as a big time film and television production centre. After all, doesn't it bring in a billion dollars to the province annually? Aren't we absolutely used to finding Vancouver and BC landmarks in all those Hollywood movies and TV shows that always purport to be in Seattle or some other U.S. city?
We feign boredom and nonchalance when we spot movie stars on the street. You can't shake a stick at somebody in a club or restaurant who isn't a budding actor or producer. And of course we all like to share in that delicious gossip about who recently said, or did, what to whom (and consequently may never work in this town again because of it).
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Tony Wanless | |
Published: July 09, 2010
Interest rates are going to start climbing any day. Can you handle it?
Despite a current halt, it’s all but certain now that interest rates are going up over the next couple of years.
Superlative job numbers will pretty well guarantee that. The most recent survey of the jobs market shows that unemployment dropped to 7.9% in June. Canada apparently created more jobs than the entire United States, which is ten times its size.
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