Vancouver, B.C. looking to spend $30M in digital push

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Cities throughout the world are trying to capture more tech talent, and our neighbors to the north are no different. Vancouver B.C. is planning a big push to bolster online government services, boost free Wi-Fi and strengthen its entire technology ecosystem, using efforts from Chicago, New York and other cities as a model. According to… Read More…

Amazon.com expanding in Canada, plans to open new development center in March

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Amazon.com is expanding aggressively in Canada, with plans to open a new development center next month in Vancouver, B.C. We discovered the new office via a Facebook post from Amazon.com engineering director Mai-lan Tomsen Bukovec. “I am opening a new dev center in Vancouver in March if you know any devs or managers who would be… Read More…

App of the Week: TED app gets us ready for BC in 2014

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We were excited to see the news last week that the main TED conference is moving to Vancouver, B.C., in 2014 — practically our backyard.  As it happens, the TED app for iPhone and iPad was recently updated with a slate of improvements, so we thought it only appropriate to give our new neighbors a friendly nod… Read More…

Nerd Notes: Big Macs and the economy, a dress that responds to sexual arousal, moth pilots and more

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Editor’s Note: Nerd Notes is GeekWire’s roundup of random geekiness from around the globe. Moths that can drive — You’ve seen a dog skateboard, a cockatoo dance, and a monkey ride a pig, but have you ever seen a moth drive a robot car? That’s what I thought. Three Japanese researchers in Tokyo built a trackball-guided robotic vehicle that… Read More…

Vancouver beats out Seattle, Portland as most walkable city

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Portland has the donuts, Seattle has the coffee and Vancouver, B.C. has the … sidewalks. Walk Score, a Seattle-based company that promotes walkable neighborhoods, just ranked the most walkable cities in Canada and Vancouver, B.C. took the top spot with a “Walk Score” of 78. That beats out Seattle (74) and Portland (66) as the most… Read More…

New Microsoft game studio in Vancouver wants to build the next Halo

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Microsoft is officially opening a new game studio in Canada and expectations are off the charts. Located in downtown Vancouver, B.C., Black Tusk Studios has some serious goals to meet in the coming years. Studio manager Mike Crump told the Vancouver Sun that the new first-party studio, which has already been working for the past year, was asked to come up with Microsoft’s… Read More…

Farewell, coffee cards: Madrona bankrolls mobile loyalty rewards startup RewardLoop

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Madrona Venture Group is heading north for its latest investment, leading a $1 million funding round in Vancouver, B.C.-based RewardLoop. This marks the second investment by Madrona in Vancouver in recent months, following its backing of online fashion startup Indochino. The RewardLoop system could replace the paper-based stamp cards that you often see at coffee… Read More…

Ex-Microsoft interns sell Summify to Twitter: Popular news service will shut down

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Mircea Paşoi and Cristian Strat, the two Romanian Web developers who founded Summify instead of taking jobs at Facebook and Google, have now decided they’d prefer to work at Twitter. The developers announced today in a blog post that they have sold the company to the social networking powerhouse, a move that comes just 10… Read More…