City company watches what you say <b>online</b>

Who knew that the largest company in the world doing online content moderation is based right here in Winnipeg?

The multimillion-dollar company is called ICUC Moderation Services, and its CEO, Keith Bilous, is up for an a global entrepreneur of the year award from Mashable.com, a web source for news in social and digital media, technology and web culture.

ICUC has 150 employees -- 50 in southern Manitoba and the rest of them scattered across all seven continents -- all hunched over keyboards making sure the more hateful and rude online comments don't make it onto your website.

Bilous got the idea for ICUC in 2002 when he was doing some early mobile text-to-screen events with his previous company called Captive Interactive at a Canad Inns nightclub. He realized there had to be monitoring of the texts before they went on the screen because some of it was clearly not good.

Soon after he got a call from MuchMusic to do the same thing for them for a contest they were running.

"I fell into the business really by necessity," he said.

A decade ago he was travelling around rural Manitoba and Saskatchewan marketing a pre-Twitter mobile texting service.

"Now I'm travelling to global headquarter of companies like Chevron and Starbucks," he said, mentioning some of his clients which also include the CBC, the Globe and Mail, Calvin Klein and Intel.

It's a 24/7 business completely operated online around the world. Any site that has user-generated content will have some level of moderation. Many companies do it themselves but increasingly it is being outsourced and ICUC is becoming the go-to service provider.

"We are a true virtual company," he said from his world headquarters at his home in Headingley. "Last week I did a virtual town hall with all 150 of our people on Skype."

And now he's among the top five in the running for a global entrepreneur of the year award with online voting at http://mashable.com/awards/votes.

"This summer I woke up and realized I have more than a 100 employees," he said. "I had to pinch myself."

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Next to ICUC Complex Games may seem tiny, but the 10-person Winnipeg computer-games development studio is a bona fide local success story.

Noah Decter-Jackson, the founder and president, built his Winnipeg gaming studio from scratch over the course of the last decade and now has 10 employees.

Last week it won a Canada New Media Award for best web game for an interactive game that accompanied a CBC documentary mini-series starring David Suzuki and produced by Winnipeg's Merit Motion Pictures called One Ocean.

Decter-Jackson said they were "overjoyed" with the award.

Not that it is necessarily the biggest or even best thing his company has ever done, but it's testimony to the diligence and business savvy he and his team had to keep working at their dream.

"When we first started we had a huge game we were trying to do and after a year we realized there was no way we were going to be able to finish it and we had to refocus our business model," he said.

Now the company does interactive online projects for clients in various sectors using the specialized skills that his team has They include things like virtual tours for real estate companies, property developers and architectural firms and third-party serious games, simulations and interactive training demonstrations.

Those jobs help pay the development costs its own projects like a karaoke iPhone app for Sony called Music World and an action game for the iPhone that is about to be released as well as some Facebook apps.

-- -- --

Speaking of big computer game projects, Winnipeg's CubeForce Media, the brainchild of teenagers Sean Oosterveen and Graeme Borland and Sean's dad, Neil, have released to the world their online fantasy role-playing game called Aerrevan.

CubeForce is Winnipeg's only other computer-game company with at least 10 employees. They raised more than $1 million to put the project together and now hope to attract online players who pay a monthly fee.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 9, 2010 B6

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Walla! Chooses Adtoma&#39;s Fusion <b>Online</b> Advertising Solution

 

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN--(Marketwire - December 9, 2010) -  Adtoma, an online advertising and media management company, today announced that Walla!, the premier online destination of Israel, has chosen Adtoma's Fusion advertising solution for online publishers. Fusion is a complete business solution that streamlines the entire media supply chain, thereby simplifying its advertising workflow. Fusion integrates many traditional media tools into one streamlined process -- optimizing the publisher's online advertising business and increasing ROI.

With Fusion and its unique targeting and automation tools, Publisher can combine workflow, ad serving and business intelligence, which results in a dramatic increase in efficiency and reliability. Within the system, ads can be targeted to match individual requests and automatically selected with the highest revenue potential based on criteria factors. Moreover, Fusion offers visibility that enables the publisher to traffic purchasing, sales and reporting and make intelligent decisions that increase revenue and overall ROI.

"Adtoma offers a product that streamlines the business process, ensuring efficiency and centralizing data for online advertising," said Sharon Weiss, CTO of Walla! "Fusion offers revolutionary management visibility into sales and operations."

Adtoma offers the first all-in-one system to streamline revenue optimized delivery of online ads. The technology behind Adtoma's Fusion product offers the simplest, smartest and most efficient business system for online media publishers to manage all aspects of their revenue streams, giving both management and front-line staff the tools to do their jobs efficiently. Accommodating various business needs, Fusion is also the only system offered in two forms: Software as a Service and individual licensed software built into the company's hardware.

"Online advertising is a $50 billion dollar industry and growing," said Ingemar Johnsson, CEO of Adtoma. "Fusion is the first software solution to offer an all-in-one engine to drive advertising from end-to-end in the most targeted and efficient way. We are pleased to help Walla! increase its ROI and internal collaboration on multiple levels."

About Adtoma

Adtoma is an online advertising and media management company based in Sweden founded by alumnus of DoubleClick. It has a global reach with a strong foundation in Europe and is currently expanding into North America and Asia. The company's flagship product offering is Fusion -- a powerful software solution that integrates and streamlines the entire media supply chain process, including CRM, proposals, inventory and sales management, advertising operations, and business intelligence, resulting in a dramatic increase in efficiency and visibility. Fusion combines the essential business functions of multiple systems in the most comprehensive and intuitive application on the market, tailored exclusively for online ad-sales organizations. Adtoma's clients are some of the world's leading media companies, including Bonnier Publications and eBay/Tradera.

About Walla! Communications

Walla is Israel's leading portal, managing a wide range of online services including news, video, mail, e-commerce and online classifieds. Walla! serves a diverse community of more than 6 Million monthly unique users mostly from Israel. Walla! is a public company, traded in the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TLV: WALA.TA).

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Google says it was cut off from USDA project bid

Google is claiming that it was not given a chance to bid on a cloud-computing project for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, for which the contract was awarded to rival Microsoft.

Announced yesterday, Microsoft's winning bid will kick off a project to move 120,000 USDA employees to the company's cloud-based Business Productivity Online Suite, a collection of applications that includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Office Communications Online.

Though Microsoft already counts more than 500 state and local agencies among its cloud-computing customers, the new project marks its first with a cabinet-level federal agency.

But the news wasn't well-received at Google headquarters, which said it never had a chance to compete for the business despite its contention that its solution is the more cost-effective one.

"We were not given the opportunity to bid for USDA's business," a Google spokesman said in a statement e-mailed to CNET. "When there has been a full and open competition - as with the General Services Administration, Wyoming, Colorado, and Los Angeles - customers have chosen Google Apps, and taxpayers are saving millions of dollars."

The USDA said that over the past six months it had been working closely with Microsoft and Dell on a plan to move its 120,000 workers to a cloud-based environment. Security, always of paramount important to government agencies, was a key consideration. Microsoft's cloud infrastructure has been given Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) Authority to Operate (ATO), which certifies a secure and trustworthy environment for the government. Google Apps for Government is also FISMA-certified.

"Migrating an enterprise of USDA's size and complexity from multiple environments, across multiple agencies, requires not only a trusted enterprise-ready solution, but also a partner who is able to work with us and navigate everything from archiving to authentication to mobile phone support," USDA CIO Chris Smith said in a statement.

Microsoft does tend to win most government cloud-computing contracts, according to Reuters. And though Google has increasingly been fighting for its slice of the public sector piece, the company has maintained that it's cut off from the bidding process by agencies failing to look beyond Microsoft. In early November, the search giant filed a lawsuit against the federal government claiming that the U.S. Department of the Interior did not properly consider Google Apps when it was searching for a new Web-based document system.

Still, Google has managed to pick up more government business recently. Last year, the company won a $7.2 million contract from the city of Los Angeles to move its staffers to Google Apps for Government. And in the last few weeks, the search giant was part of a team that captured a $6.7 million contract to migrate the U.S. General Services Administration to its Google Apps suite.

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Web strategy series

Published Thursday, Dec. 09, 2010 2:27PM ESTLast updated Thursday, Dec. 09, 2010 2:42PM EST

Looking to boost your company's Web presence a notch or two? The following series, which cover a range of topics from building a site to crafting a social media plan to making your site mobile-friendly, will help your business get started.

You’ve decided to build a website for your business. It’s a smart move: All companies, big and small, benefit from an Internet presence, but a significant number of small businesses across Canada either lack a website, or they have no strategy for their online properties. In this four-part series, Your Business takes you through the initial planning and setup phase, to launch and maintenance.

1. You need a website. This is where to start. The planning process is the first stage, and it’s also the most important.

2. Domain name crucial when launching a website. You want it to be similar to your business name, but there are a lot of factors to consider before you choose a host.

3. New tools ease pain of website design. There are three basic categories: software for your computer, ‘hosted services,’ and content management systems.

4. What to do before launching your website. After months of hard work, you’re ready to unveil your site to the world. Here are a few things to consider before going live.

Blogging can be a useful way to update customers, keep staff informed and to differentiate yourself from competitors. But is it right for your business? In this four-part series from Your Business, we'll examine the businesses that are doing it right, provide you with a checklist of goals to achieve and outline the tools you'll need to get started.

1. Does your company need a blog? A company blog can be an invaluable way to communicate with customers and employees, but does it make sense for your business?

2. Should you go big with your blog? It depends. But the first thing you should do, is focus on making the content relevant and interesting.

3. Electrify your blog with simple tools and plug-ins. Tips and tricks to effortlessly create a dynamic blog

4. Keep your blog out of the bunker. When setting up a blog for your company, always remember: what happens on the Web, stays on the Web

While 'the cloud' seems to be the latest buzzword in the computing world, it's actually been around for quite a while. In this four-part series, Your Business explores developments in cloud computing and whether it's right for your business.

1. Outsource IT headaches to the cloud. From e-mail systems to digital storage space, cloud computing lets small businesses focus on the tasks that really matter

2. Is cloud computing safer in Canada? Because of the Patriot Act, the American government can go into any data stored in the U.S. and look into it

3. Choosing the right cloud provider. Navigating the vast sea of cloud services can be daunting, especially for the firm just starting out

4. Issues still hold cloud's future back. The dilemma of whether to jump into a still-evolving technology or risk missing the boat has given rise to new ways of thinking about the cloud

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