Skyway West Recommended August 5th to 11th

Each Monday we’ll pass on links to articles we thought were well worth reading from the previous week, for those who live where we do (British Columbia, Canada), work like we do (high speed business internet), and think about things we do (internet trends, internet privacy, internet censorship, cutting-edge technology, etc.). If you don’t want to wait ’til Monday, we usually tweet and link to these as we come across them

Computer Dealer News | Old world IBM and new world Google partner for open server development

Today the old world of computing met the new world as IBM announced an open development alliance with Google around Power server chip. This alliance marks the first time IBM is making its key server hardware and firmware available under license to other companies. Read More…

Small Business BC | How Smartphones Have Changed Consumer Habits and What Businesses Can Do to Respond

Consumers’ lives are changing as a result of smartphones, and BC small business aren’t immune to the effects of this trend. Along with the Vancouver-based mobile agency iamota, Insights West recently released the Smartphone Insights Report, a comprehensive research project investigating the growing role that smartphones are playing in the lives of British Columbians – and the findings are shocking. Read More…

Business in Vancouver | B.C. Business Council urges Ottawa to change telecom policy

The Business Council of British Columbia (BCBC) has written a letter to Industry Minister James Moore to urge him to change federal telecommunications policy. The August 6 letter specifically asks Moore to put Canadian companies on an even playing field with foreign competition when it comes to pursuing acquisitions of smaller telecommunications companies in Canada. Read More…

IT World Canada | Halifax’s LeadSift turns Tweets into Leads

LeadSift uses a proprietary algorithm that sifts through and analyzes Twitter posts to identify people likely to be in the market for a particular product or service. Marketers see social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook as giant marketplaces filled with potential clients waiting to be contacted. However, much of their approach still hinges on decades-old online banner ads and email advertising. Read More…

Dark Reading | Fortinet’s FortiGuard Labs Reports a 30 Percent Increase in Mobile Malware in the Last Six Months

Team Reveals that Attackers are Taking Advantage of Old Vulnerabilities, Despite Being Patched, in Ruby on Rails, Java, Acrobat and Apache

Fortinet − a world leader in high-performance network security – announced last week  the findings of its FortiGuard threat landscape research for the period of January 1 − July 31, 2013. Fortinet’s complete report can be downloaded here. Read More…