Archive for the Technology Category


Propertize.ca – Search New Brunswick Property Tax Assessments

To prepare for upcoming 2011 Property Tax Assessment letters in New Brunswick (and the eventual flood of people who can’t believe their eyes), I’ve re-written Propertize.ca from the ground up to be faster at searching and compiling results, and more stable then ever.

I’m continually updating Propertize.ca based on YOUR feedback!

So contact me today and let me know what you like, what you hate, and what you want to see added.

To see what all the fuss is about, check out http://propertize.ca, and start comparing NB Property Tax Assessments on your street!


First Saint John Tweetup!

Join us, this Thursday evening, from 5:30pm to 7:30pm at the Ale House for the first ever Saint John Tweetup!

You can find all of the details on this event (and RSVP) here:  http://twtvite.com/sjnbtweetup

Come one, come all to the first Saint John Tweetup! The tweetup will be held at the Saint John Ale House on June 24 from 5:30pm to 7:30pm.

Door prizes from T4G, Bell Aliant, PLEIS-NB. See you there!

I am hoping to use this first event as a learning experience and to gather ideas/feedback from everyone so that we can grow it into a larger event!

Stay up-to-date on the event on Twitter using the #SJtweetup tag!

Update: A sneak peek at some of the door prizes from T4G:


Generation Y’s real attitude toward working

Shawn PetersonI was included in an article in today’s Telegraph-Journal, check it out below, and let me know what you think!

Canada’s workplaces should be prepared to provide meaningful work to its next generation of leaders, who could be eyeing high-level positions within a few years, generation Y researcher Carolin Rekar Munro says.

More so than previous generations, Canadians born between 1981 and 2000 are generally ambitious to take on leadership roles in organizations, the management professor at Victoria-based Royal Roads University says.

The cohort wants to be engaged in their work and won’t wait around for employers that can’t give them meaningful things to do, says Rekar Munro, who spent the last two years conducting a country-wide study of Gen Y’s attitude toward work.

“This is going to be a group that is very values driven,” she says. “We’re going to see a very strong focus on work learning and work balance.”

Where gen X – which she defines as born between 1965 and 1980 – put a strong emphasis on having free time to have a life, gen Y wants to add continued learning, but not necessarily to the benefit of their current employers, Rekar Munro says.

“It’s for their own personal development so that they have a strong sense of their skills so they’ve got mobility from job to job and career to career,” she says.

Rekar Munro says The Conference Board of Canada’s 2006 prediction of an accelerated retirement rate in 2012 would only be slightly affected by ailing retirement funds.

“We’re going to see 30 per cent of baby boomers reach 65, that’s 6.6 million Canadians,” she says. “By 2016 we’re going to be looking at a shortage of about one million workers.”

This means organizations are going to need the new younger workers, she says.

Research has generally shown gen Y to spend two to five years in one workplace, but Rekar Munro says they now consider one year a long-term commitment.

“There’s research that shows they can size up an organization within two to three weeks and have a pretty good idea if they want to stay any longer,” she says.

Shawn Peterson, 25, agrees his generation doesn’t want to waste much time in a job they don’t like.

“I’m really expecting to be at a company that gives out a lot of opportunities and will really go the extra mile to conform to the way I want to work and the things I want to do,” the Saint John resident says. “If they don’t do that I’m not too likely to wait around for that to happen.”

Though Peterson has been fortunate his employer, T4G Ltd., has continued to provide him with new experiences and challenges for the last five years, he has seen friends and other peers bounce around from job to job.

“I don’t think my generation would have as much loyalty as my parents’ generation would have,” he says.

“My parents would have been fine doing the same thing for say five years before moving up the chain. But we want more variety and we want to take things on early on.”

When engaged, Peterson says gen-Yers will want to stick around and work hard.

“If you are working on something that you personally can get behind or believe in you will go the extra mile regardless,” he says.

Rekar Munro says gen-Yers really want a boundary-less work environment and don’t want to be micromanaged, and most importantly they want an answer to the big question: Why is this important work to be done for the organization?

“We’re not doing a good job in organizations answering the ‘But why?’ question,” she says. “This is a group that really needs a high degree of feedback and immediate feedback.”

Gen-Yers are attracted to fast-track promotions and to some degree the money, but also perks such as flexible work hours and having fun, Rekar Munro says.

“Organizations need to create training and succession programs that attract gen Y,” she says. “If they can do that I think we’re going to be ahead of the game.”


T4G launches energy monitoring service

My company, T4G Limited, had a great article in today’s Telegarph-Journal, check it out below:

In the wake of the green shift and on the cusp of the birth of smart grids, a national software-for-businesses firm has launched an energy-efficiency practice headed out of its Saint John office.

T4G Ltd. announced Thursday it has hired energy-efficiency consultant Mike Carr to run the new line of business he said could exceed the firm’s current operations.

“Our whole economy is in a whole new paradigm,” said Carr. “From all sides everyone’s energy conscious.

“What we’re planning on doing is getting the user better information about how they’re using their energy so they can conserve,” he said. “The economic benefit of energy management is about 20 to 30 per cent of the energy bill.”

T4G offers customizable software and consulting in more than eight different areas of expertise to at least six different industries and employs more than 230 people in Saint John, Moncton, Halifax, Toronto and Vancouver.

With the new line of business the firm has about a dozen consultants spread across the country and in a new office in Maine.

“I’m building a team in every location because there are markets in every location,” said Carr, adding the line of business could expand to be larger than the rest of T4G.

Though there are plenty of other businesses and services emerging to target the energy-monitoring market, Carr said it’s so early stage the competition isn’t a concern.

“The market opportunity is bigger than the delivery capability of the market,” said Carr, who resides in Fredericton and works from the Port City office.

T4G has a customizable web-based service that allows non-residential customers to monitor and analyze their energy use based on existing monitoring tools attached to energy intensive equipment such as boilers and heating systems.

The firm will also consider custom software for large firms and provide energy management consulting and training to help its clients reduce their carbon footprint and energy bills.

“We’re a full-services business. We give them the complete package,” Carr said, who work as an energy-efficiency consulting before joining T4G in February, and has 10 years experience in the oil and gas industry. “We’re not interested in the hardware. The hardware is pretty standardized.”

As jurisdictions across the continent are either considering or implementing smart grids – which add a layer of information and communications technologies to the existing power distribution grid with the goal of making the whole system more efficient – Carr said T4G’s new business will play an important role in the new grid.

The firm’s software will become the user interface for communicating on the grid, he said.

“Right now they’re looking at their own use,” Carr said referring to his customers. “But in the future if (businesses are) going to produce energy and (they are) going to want to know when to buy and when to sell.”

The company also wants to help people make their homes more energy-efficient, which Carr said would be through the utilities.

“I expect in five years most jurisdictions are going to be on smart metering,” he said, adding many communities in California already use the real-time meters.

T4G plans to sell its software to utilities, which can provide the real-time energy use numbers and analysis from the software back to residents through their websites.

“Everybody’s panicking to reduce their footprint on fossil fuels to protect themselves from the volatility and the threats of high prices,” he said. “We hit peak oil in the 90s so it can only go up.

“Everybody’s facing rising energy costs and we have to be more energy efficient if we’re going to survive.”


Peel Plaza issue goes into the Twittersphere

Today’s Telegraph-Journal had a great article about people using Twitter to let everyone know what was happening during the recent Peel Plaza meeting at City Hall.

I was following along that evening, and I found these tweets to be very informative.

I really like how it allows everyone reading to be connected to what was happening in the room.

Below is a blurb from the article:

Anne McShane knows not everyone wants to sit through a council meeting to find out what’s going on.

But that doesn’t mean they’re not interested.

And when it came to common council’s vote on Peel Plaza on Monday night, she knew it would be no different.

So as council members debated whether to issue tenders for the multimillion-dollar project, McShane used her iTouch to post comments – called “tweets-” on Twitter, a popular social-networking website.

“I just tweet so some of those people can know what’s going on,” said McShane, who owns the Feel Good Store on Germain Street.

“It’s just another way to get the information out.”

McShane was one of several people lighting up Twitter with a Peel Plaza play-by-play Monday night.

Twitter allows users to post short bits of information, in 140 characters or less.

“Chase trying to slow the train down. Mayor throwing more coal on,” McShane wrote at one point, referring to Deputy Mayor Stephen Chase and Mayor Ivan Court, who were engaged in a heated debate.

Nathalie Godbout, a lawyer and the former chairwoman of the Saint John Board of Trade, was also posting live tweets right from the council chambers, using her BlackBerry.

She said politicians need to realize this debate is happening on the Internet.

“There’s a whole other demographic that’s having that discussion online – so you can’t be afraid of it, you’ve got to get in there and at least follow it, and if you feel so inclined, participate,” she said in an interview Tuesday.

“It’s a discussion that’s just being immortalized in a whole different way.”

Godbout said she’s tweeted from other events. She knew a lot of people would be interested in council’s Peel Plaza decision, so she wanted to get the information out there.

“Sounds like Pat Woods leaving door open for council backing out after tender process if #s that come back are not favorable,” she wrote at one point in reference to city manager Patrick Woods.

Thanks again to Anne and Nathalie!

Be sure to check out the tweets from that night, and beyond, using the hashtag #peelplaza!


Propertize – Compare New Brunswick Property Assessments at a street level

Well, it’s almost been a year since I created Propertize, an application that screen-scrapes the existing government website to make is easier to compare your property assessment to the rest of the street, and it seems that a lot of people have been asking about it lately!  If you are wondering why I did this, then just try using the existing government application – the user interface is terrible!

Just click the image below to check it out:

As always, send along any feedback!


Unleashing the Inner Geek @ T4G

The Saint John Board of Trade’s latest Currents magazine featured a great article on T4G Limited and our GeekFest event (including some details on our team’s idea):

Read the entire article here!


Saint John 225 Website Launches!


Saint John 225 is the official anniversary celebrations of the City of Saint John and its incorporation as Canada’s original city.

Saint John was incorporated on May 18, 1785 and in 2010 we’re heading into our neighbourhoods to celebrate our city.

This is the year Saint John tells its story: the stories of the people, events and places that have shaped Saint John.

We are proud of our cultural, architectural and artistic heritage. Saint John 225 will showcase the talents of Saint John area artists and performers in all genres including music, dance, theatre, visual arts, film and writing.

Saint John is a 2010 Cultural Capitals of Canada, a designation awarded by the federal Department of Canadian Heritage that provides significant funding for the promotion of the city’s arts, culture and heritage.

Visit the website today!


I’m on Google Street View!

Not only did Google Street View become available in Saint John, NB today; but, I actually found myself and my Jeep!

Cool eh?


Mixing business with technology

Today’s Telegraph-Journal had a great article (and picture) on Dave Baxter, a great co-worker at T4G Limited:

It seems almost everywhere you look there is some sort of computer technology.

The ICT sector is an enabling sector that allows you to do interesting things to solve business problems,’ say David Baxter, vice-president of innovation for T4G Ltd., a national firm specializing in technology solutions for business problems.

A much larger percentage of people work from a desktop or laptop every day than in decades past, and more and more people are carrying around handheld computers in their pockets they call smartphones.

Though using email, word processors and web browsers are more or less common knowledge, actually understanding how a computer works – or how to fix it – is a rarity.

But that doesn’t necessarily matter for someone looking for a job in the technology sector says David Baxter, vice-president of innovation for T4G Ltd., a national firm specializing in technology solutions for business problems.

Baxter, who comes from a business background, says there are plenty of opportunities for people with a broad range of specialties to work in technology in New Brunswick.

“The ICT sector is an enabling sector that allows you to do interesting things to solve business problems,” he says. “There is a certain amount of knowledge equity that you build up as you progress through your career.”

This can be an asset for tech firms.

E-Health companies value insight from health-care professionals, energy tech firms want to hear from power sector veterans and technology workers often needs business people to help monetize ideas, he says.

Although there is a continent-wide shortage of technology-trained workers, Baxter says people with other complementary experience are needed as well.

“I believe collaboration is necessary anywhere,” he says. “It’s one of the conduits to making innovation happen.”

Todd Murphy, co-founder of Saint John-based tech startup MedRunner Health Solutions Inc., knows first hand how this can help a new business.

The University of New Brunswick MBA student looked to his school’s computer science faculty to find people with the technical skills needed to make his idea for a paperless prescription service a reality.

But this wouldn’t have happen if Murphy hadn’t taken the initiative to walk down the hall, something he says not enough people do.

He says there should be more communication and collaboration between business, computer science and engineering students as well as their related counterparts at the community colleges.

“They may not come up with anything, but it gets them talking,” he says. “There are lots of business people out there that want to start a business but they can’t find the right people.”

But startups aren’t the only place where technology-interested non-techies can find a job, Baxter says. Plenty of the province’s ICT firms have a need for them as well.

“The other opportunities have more to do with utilizing your creative, or your problem solving abilities,” he says, adding big-picture thinkers and the ability to forecast future trends are often valued. “There are lots of opportunities for people to come in with that kind of perspective and apply a technology solution to what really is a business challenge.”

After the necessary collaboration between technology and business people and other specialists has happened, Baxter says all parties will be better prepared for possible future endeavors.

“It is a two-way street,” he says. “Whether you’re coming in with a technology orientation or coming in with a business orientation, you learn enough about the other and what it takes to apply that type of creativity.”