From the monthly archives: September 2011
Knowledge. Awareness. Empowerment. Those are the core components of realtor safety according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). As part of NAR’s ongoing efforts to keep their members safe, they’ve dedicated September as realtor safety month.
To help their members understand the risks they face, NAR has assembled a realtor safety resources kit. The kit is designed to educate realtors on the dangers of their profession by making them aware of their surroundings, and to empower them to take precautions and make preparations to avoid placing themselves in risky situations. The kit, which will be updated throughout the year, includes:
- New webinars on realtor safety, presented by industry experts.
- Quarterly safety messages focusing on seasonal tips for on the job and at home, sent to Associations and brokers to share with members.
- Expansion of client safety materials and resources.
NAR recently reported that over 25% of realtors said they had encountered a threatening or harassing situation at work. Guardly can also play an important role in keeping realtors safe. Guardly’s personal safety app and service transforms a realtor’s smartphone into a next-generation security service that can instantly alert friends, family, co-workers and the authorities that they need help.
Any time a realtor feels that their safety may be at risk, 1-tap to their smartphone will launch Guardly and instantly connect them using a phone call, email and text messages along with real-time location tracking to their own personal safety network. The alert can be sent to up to 15 different contacts and each responder will be able to work with the realtor to ensure that their situation is resolved quickly and safely. Guardly hopes that realtors across North America will take advantage of this important new safety service.
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CTRL+ALT+COMPETE is a feature-length documentary that takes a revealing look at the startup and emerging business scene through the eyes of five founders and their teams. You can learn more about the film and watch other clips on Microsoft’s Channel 9 blog.
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TORONTO, ONTARIO–(Marketwire – Sept. 13, 2011) - Toronto start-up businesses Wave Accounting and Guardly will have greater opportunities to develop and bring their innovative products to market thanks to new Government of Canada investments of nearly $1 million. The announcement was made today by Mark Adler, Member of Parliament for York-Centre, on behalf of the Honourable Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario).
“Our government is providing the tools businesses need to succeed and expand into promising new areas,” said MP Adler. “The investments in Guardly and Wave Accounting will help the companies to develop new technologies so they can grow their businesses and create jobs.”
Wave Accounting Inc. will receive a contribution of up to $755,039, through FedDev Ontario’s Investing in Business Innovation initiative, which will help the company to further commercialize its online accounting and financial management tool for the growing small business market. With the expansion of several new features, Wave Accounting’s clients will be able to manage their financial information from any device with a browser, such as collaborating with business partners and accountants, logging, generating and sending invoices or categorizing expenses. With increase in product demand, the company plans to double its size by the end of 2012.
“This support from FedDev Ontario allows us to make the best strategic decisions for the long-term viability and success of Wave,” said Kirk Simpson, CEO and co-founder of Wave Accounting. “By helping Wave Accounting at this early stage, FedDev Ontario puts us in a position to build a truly global enterprise, with impactful innovation and significant future growth here in the Toronto area.”
Guardly’s platform for emergency communication facilitates rapid social, mobile and location-aware responses to calls for assistance. With a contribution of up to $237,500 through FedDev Ontario’s Investing in Business Innovation initiative, Guardly will focus on developing the functionality of its personal safety platform for commercial users, enabling businesses in health monitoring, seniors care, residential homes and security industries to extend their alerting and collaboration capabilities.
“I am extremely pleased to receive this federal funding through Investing in Business Innovation,” said Josh Sookman, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Guardly. “This FedDev Ontario program has provided Guardly with an opportunity to accelerate the development and deployment of its emergency alerting, communication and resolution platform to partners looking to add similar functionality to other products or devices.”
Investing in Business Innovation is a direct result of feedback from business leaders, academics and community leaders from across southern Ontario, who suggested FedDev Ontario take a leadership role in encouraging entrepreneurs and investors to take the risks necessary to put southern Ontario businesses on the map.
For more information, please refer to the backgrounder.
FedDev Ontario was created as part of Canada’s Economic Action Plan to support businesses and communities in southern Ontario. Now in its third year of operation, the Agency has launched a number of initiatives to create a Southern Ontario Advantage and place the region in a strong position to compete in the global economy. These initiatives are designed to support businesses and other organizations through partnerships and investments in skills and training; innovation; research and development; and increased productivity. To learn more, please visit www.feddevontario.gc.ca or call 1-866-593-5505.
BACKGROUNDER
Contribution to Wave Accounting Inc.
WaveAccounting.com is a free online accounting application for small businesses. Part of the new generation of software-as-a-service (SaaS) or cloud-computing applications, Wave aims to make bookkeeping and accounting a quick, painless process for its customers, thereby freeing them to focus on the success of their own small businesses. While offering a 100% free product, Wave plans to drive revenue through an innovative, privacy-protected method that connects business owners to the suppliers of products and services they need, as well as other revenue streams. This approach enables Wave to build on a large scale around the globe, and provides a significant competitive advantage over the other international market leaders.
FedDev Ontario is providing Toronto’s Wave Accounting Inc. with a repayable contribution of up to $755,039. The company has already grown from 6 to 21 staff in less than a year and this investment will enable Wave to create new highly-skilled positions that it projects will double its workforce by the end of 2012. Wave’s innovative approach to small business accounting has already garnered international attention and more than 55,000 small business signups. More information is available at: www.waveaccounting.com.
Contribution to Guardly
Guardly empowers its users by providing one-touch access to their safety networks. Simply launching Guardly on a smartphone will instantly identify a user’s location and alert family, friends, campus security (at schools that have joined its Safe Campus Program) and 9-1-1 that they are having an emergency. Beyond simple notifications, Guardly instantly connects users to their contacts through conference call, instant messaging and real-time location tracking. Guardly has been widely adopted by students, real estate agents, social workers, and travelers. Privacy is extremely important to Guardly and its mobile application will only track location data during an emergency incident. Guardly’s service is available on iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows Phone devices and in connection with certain university campuses across the country.
Guardly is a venture-backed company based in Toronto and with the help of FedDev Ontario’s repayable contribution of up to $237,500 Guardly will focus on developing a Partner Application Programming Interface (API) and reporting tools through research and development efforts, product testing, and commercialization of intellectual property. Guardly is committed to dramatically decreasing the amount of time it takes responders to arrive at an emergency. The company is a member of the National Emergency Number Association (NENA). More information is available at www.guardly.com.
Investing in Business Innovation
FedDev Ontario’s Investing in Business Innovation is designed to boost private sector investment in start-up businesses to accelerate the development of new products, processes and practices and help bring them to market. Funding under the initiative is also available for angel investor networks and their associations to attract new investment and support the growth of angel investment funds.
Applications for funding are being accepted and assessed on an ongoing basis. For more information and to apply, please refer to the program guidelines available on the FedDev Ontario web site at www.feddevontario.gc.ca.
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Guardly works with many non-profit organizations that seek to increase the awareness of domestic violence. Washington D.C. based Becky’s Fund is a Guardly partner that understand the potential of technology to aid in the fight against violence and abuse. The Fund’s founder Becky Lee, recently blogged for The Huffington Post on “The Role of Mobile Apps in the Fight Against Intimate Partner Violence.” It’s an excellent piece and we’ve reprinted it in its entirety.
Becky Lee
As new technologies transform and revolutionize how we process and retrieve information, experts in the field of intimate partner violence (IPV) explore the use of technology as a means for improving survivor protection and for the advancement of IPV education. Becky’s Fund is a national non-profit organization, based in D.C., seeking to increase public awareness about IPV. Because one out of every four women will experience violence from an intimate partner in her lifetime, Becky’s Fund understands the importance of developing safe and effective methods for using various forms of technology in the fight against IPV. For instance, new smartphone apps like Guardly use the latest technologies and offer premium safety to users. Although technologies certainly come with dangers and limitations, they can also be used to empower survivors of IPV and to educate students vulnerable to dating violence about this prevalent and critical issue.
Dating violence on college campuses continues to reach staggering levels. One in three college students admits to either experiencing or perpetrating dating violence in their relationship, and at least one fifth of undergraduates in the United States report being physically abused by their partner. This statistic does not include incidences of psychological abuse between college dating partners which, according to several studies, accounts for the majority of IPV cases involving young people. Most post-secondary institutions fail to address dating violence and for those that do, research done on the effectiveness of college IPV prevention programs found that existing approaches have a limited impact on youth.
Information about IPV must be made available to young people in forms they can easily access. With books becoming antiquated relics of the past, many of today’s youth rely on their smartphones and new forms of media such as infographics, twitter streams and blogs to acquire new sources of information to meet their everyday needs. For this reason, we need to use technological resources to educate young people about IPV, especially as dating violence continues to be a big problem among college students.
It’s rare for today’s youth not to have access to an iPhone, Android or Blackberry device. Becky’s Fund, along with several other organizations, sees the benefits of making use of expanding technologies to reach young people today. The Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence has already developed a phone app meant to educate teens about healthy relationships, and organizations like SAFE Ireland, a group protecting women and children in the UK, have developed apps offering information for survivors and for their support networks.
Becky’s Fund understands and recognizes the dangers associated with using technology when trying to leave an abuser. There have been a number of privacy concerns raised about certain online websites and applications. For example, cookies and images from certain websites will remain on computers for extended periods of time, which can make traces of your internet browsing history available to hackers. Mobile phones can be used by abusers to harass their partners and can allow them to easily monitor the location of a partner. While there can be potential dangers associated with technology, there are also a number of benefits. Making use of these tools is vital in order to reach large audiences, particularly technology-savvy college students and other young people in desperate need of IPV education and resources. Still, it is important to know how to make use of these quickly expanding technologies in safe ways. For this reason, organizations like the Safety Net Project of the National Network to End Domestic Violence offer a number of technology safety tips for survivors and for organizations providing IPV related services. It is vital to remember that IPV smart phone apps are not life-saving tools, but rather educational resources for individuals facing dangerous and potentially life-threatening situations.
Guardly is a mobile app for smartphones that can help students and others faced with dating violence, abusive relationships or a simple desire to feel safe when walking alone at night. Guardly empowers its users by providing one-touch access to their safety network. Simply launching Guardly on a smartphone will instantly identify a user’s location and alert family, friends, campus security (at schools that have joined its Safe Campus Program) and 9-1-1 that they are having an emergency. Beyond simple notifications, Guardly instantly connects users to their contacts through conference call, instant messaging and real-time location tracking. Built-in security features include the ability to snap and share pictures of an assailant and sounding a loud whistle. Privacy is extremely important to Guardly and its mobile app will only track location data during an emergency incident. Because of the widespread reach of dating violence at post-secondary institutions, students should have tools at their disposal to easily access security services on their campus. Guardly’s service is available on iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows Phone devices (coming soon to Android) and provides students with the necessary tools to more adequately protect themselves.
In a study conducted in collaboration with the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence (WSCADV), researchers identified technological resources as possibly vital additions to domestic violence services and recommended further research in this area. Researchers evaluated the WSCADV’s “Technology Safety Project” with favorable results, and suggested that when accompanied with education about technology safety, technology services for IPV can be both safe and valuable.
Today’s youth depend on technology for information. Reaching them requires using tools like smartphones and social media sites. However, because of the dangers associated with using certain technologies, students and other users, need to understand how to use these resources safely. Becky’s Fund understands the importance of having easily accessible resources for all and hopes that with the safe use of these new technologies, we can prevent future incidents of intimate partner violence from occurring.
Authored by Becky Lee, Executive Director of Becky’s Fund and Valerie Martin, Research and Development Intern for Becky’s Fund.
Follow her on twitter at www.twitter.com/enddv and on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/BeckysFund#!/BeckysFund
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