San Francisco-based Helium launched a new wireless communication standard today that it is calling “LongFi.” It has 200x the range of WiFi and operates at 1/1000th the cost of a cellar modem. It is perfectly suited to IoT (Internet of Things) devices, such as the… Read More
Last week I went for a tour of Sidewalk Labs’ “307” workshop here in Toronto. In it they have a generative urban design tool that allows you to toggle things like density, building shape, building height, the amount of green space, the distribution of green… Read More
I am on my third Fitbit device. The first one I got was their very first release. I wanted to try it out and so I put in a pre-order. It was pretty cool, but it wasn’t yet great. So I eventually stopped using it.… Read More
A couple of months ago I wrote about the relationship between IPOs and home prices. It was in response to the current wave of tech companies — most of which are headquartered in San Francisco — that have gone public or are expected to go… Read More
Today, Drone Delivery Canada (TSXV: FLT) — a company that I have written about before on the blog — announced that it has entered into an exclusive 10-year agreement with Air Canada. Press release, here. Globe and Mail article, here. BNN Bloomberg article, here. As… Read More
Back in 2016, the United States Postal Service published a report on the public perception of drone delivery in the US. This was nearly 3 years after Jeff Bezos announced on 60 Minutes that Amazon was working on a drone delivery service and that it… Read More
“Cities have become the basic platforms for global innovation and economic growth, supplanting the corporation as the fundamental organizing unit of the contemporary economy.” -Richard Florida Richard Florida and Patrick Adler of the Martin Prosperity Institute here in Toronto have been doing some research on… Read More
Earlier this week, Union Square Ventures announced that it was leading a Series A investment in an online education marketplace targeted at K-12 students. The platform is called Outschool, and you can think of it as a form of homeschooling. Today, there about 55 million… Read More
Since we’re on the topic of large-scale data collection, I thought some of you may be interested in Uber Movement‘s new “Speeds” product. First launched in 2017, Uber Movement aggregates anonymized data from their ride-sharing business to create data sets and tools that can help… Read More
San Francisco recently became the first city in the US to ban the use of facial recognition software by city agencies. (There’s a second vote next week, but it is considered just a formality.) A similar ban is also making its way through the system… Read More
