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Canada’s logging and trapping industries once made it the economic envy of the world, but in recent centuries its luster has faded. Now known primarily for its exports of comedians, weak beer, and a sport white people are good at, Canada’s economy has been in a slump of late. This would typically be a bad sign for the nation’s startups. But these are not typical times. Canada’s sluggish economy, dragged down in large part by slumping global oil prices (the Canucks export a lot of that, too), has triggered several other large-scale changes that have actually benefited many newer companies in the tech sector. Several coinciding events and economic evolutions have also contributed to the boom, making this a great time to be un Canadien with a billion dollar idea, the tech savvy to pull it off, and that certain je ne sais quoi that makes startup founders successful. Why…

Looking for work is hard.  The job market is pretty crummy right now, and looking for a career in any field is almost impossible.  However, to make things slightly easier for every one of us millennials looking for paid work, Google has released a new feature in its everyday search engine.  An AI-powered job search.     If you’re unemployed, you know fully well that there are hundreds of online job boards that post up job postings from employers.  Sites like LinkedIn, Indeed, and Monster post thousands of job postings each day to try and help those looking for employment.  The idea behind Google’s new AI job search feature is to go through all of the job listings for the user without having to search each page individually.  It’s even supposed to find and sort through duplicate postings, give the user the original postings, and make it so that the…

There’s nothing more sacred for anyone than a good night’s rest at the end of a long day. Unfortunately for many, it’s difficult to sleep due to their room not having just the right temperature. Aside from temperature being an annoyance, stuffy bed temperatures can create a perfect environment for germs and dust mites to thrive – the biggest contributor to this is the fact that humans can give off one liter of sweat each night. The makers of Smartduvet are hoping to make these issues a thing of the past with their smart duvet device which is designed to keep users comfortable at a perfect temperature regardless of the current climate. It also makes the users’ bed once they’re done sleeping.     The core of the device is a control box which stows under the bed. It uses silent air blowers to make the bed in the morning…

The world is quickly embracing STEM Learning for children’s toys and numerous startups are constantly appearing to fill that need. Tech Will Save Us is on a mission to spark creativity and imaginative play using technology. Dough Universe aims to help kids learn about the fundamentals of electricity through light, movement, and sound, with a Kickstarter campaign supporting three new make-it-yourself kits – creatures, instruments, and machines – that use conductive play dough and basic circuits.     Understanding Tech Through Play “My inspiration for creating Tech Will Save Us was two-fold,” Bethany Koby, CEO, and co-founder told SnapMunk. “The birth of my child and the realization that he’s part of a generation that doesn’t know what a pre-internet world looked like. Secondly, seeing a laptop dumped in a trash can. As weird as that might sound, it was a moment of disgust and inspiration. I asked, why is it that…

Cancel that appointment at the tanning salon. Forget about keeping your mouth shut in the spray tan booth. Thanks to science, we may soon have a much safer way to induce the perfect suntan. A study published recently in the Cell journal has shown that a chemical applied to the skin can result in darker pigmentation, without having to go out in the sun or artificial exposure to UV rays. You may be inclined to call that a fake tan, but at the epidermal level, it’s exactly the same as the real thing.   So here’s how it works. The treatment relies on the behavior of the MC1R gene, which is what determines how your body reacts to sun exposure. Whether your skin turns dark or lobster pink, it’s because of MC1R and its variants. As part of the study, a team from the Massachusetts General Hospital found that an SIK…

Oh Amazon, you won’t hit that one trillion dollar mark if you keep buying up all of these companies. Then again, maybe you will, you’re the enterprise putting the old big box retailers out of business so who are we to tell you to throttle it back when you’re having one of your most financially successful years ever? As some of you may know, last week was a big one for anyone who believed in Amazon or just anyone who didn’t work the packing floor of a warehouse, as the information went public that it wished to acquire Slack before outright buying Whole Foods. So we thought we’d take a look at these recent developments, take them apart and see the what and why of how this all shook down. Whole Foods If you think about this long enough, there isn’t much mystery to it. Sure it’s a major buy…

Sleep is an essential component of life for everyone. However, insomnia and other sleep disorders often make it difficult for users to live a healthy lifestyle. While there’s no shortage of sleep trackers on the market which claim to assist with sleep, their biggest limitations are that they require users to wear them while in bed. The makers of Circadia are looking to change that with their contactless sleep tracker inspired by NASA to re-sync the user’s body clock throughout the day. The system takes a three-pronged approach to improving user sleep with the sleep tracker, a therapy lamp, and sleep app.     In order to work without any contact with the user, the device uses radar technology which Is fully certified by the FCC, guaranteeing the safety of the sleep tracker. In terms of accuracy, there’s up to 91.5% sleep staging accuracy in subjects with no sleep disorders, and…

Building a better supercomputer is something many tech companies, research outfits, and government agencies have been trying to do over the decades. There’s one physical constraint they’ve been unable to avoid, though: conducting electricity for supercomputing is expensive. Not in an economic sense—although, yes, in an economic sense, too—but in terms of energy. The more electricity you conduct, the more resistance you create (electricians and physics majors, forgive me), which means more wasted energy in the form of heat and vibration. And you can’t let things get too hot, so you have to expend more energy to cool down your circuits. Any gamer or regular laptop user is familiar with overheating problems. Supercomputing deals with the same issues on an exponential scale, with energy use similarly enlarged and thus a significant cost concern (there’s the economic bit). That’s why consumer supercomputers that try to control these issues will run you…

It seems like Apple just couldn’t stay out of the news this week.  Last week was Apple’s 2017 Developers Conference, and they announced a ton of updates and products of varying interest. However, it seemed like this little tidbit got left out.  Apparently making a home system isn’t the only thing that Apple has jumped into late as the company’s newest focus is now on developing an autonomous system for cars.     Companies wanting to develop an AI for a car isn’t something new.  In fact two years ago Google announced their development for their autonomous car prototype.  Other companies such as Lyft are also on the rise for developing self-driving cars.  Even Elon Musk has a hand in developing autonomous vehicles, and he’s busy trying to get into mother flipping space!  However, Apple, while initially began seeking to build their car, have recently changed to prioritize the underlying technology…

IFPI reports that digital music currently accounts for half of all revenue being generated by the music industry. The biggest driver of digital’s growth over the past few years? Streaming music. Of the $7.8 billion in digital revenue, streaming is responsible for 59% of it. As with the digitization of everything else in our world, there now comes a need to work better, faster, and smarter. The music industry is experiencing a massive change in the delivery of their product; namely, through streaming audio channels around the web. But as artists’ music get distributed by sites like YouTube, Spotify, Pandora, and Apple, how do they properly manage the financial piece of going digital? A FinTech Solution for the Music Industry “In a world where Venmo exists, why isn’t there a Venmo for Apple and Spotify?” Stem co-founder Milana Rabkin asked. It’s an interesting question and one that her company Stem has sought…

On the 31st May this year, Swiss startup Climeworks made carbon capture history when it launched the world’s first commercial-scale Direct Air Capture (DAC) plant, featuring its patented technology that filters carbon dioxide from ambient air. Circular Economy Vision When engineers Christoph Gebald and Jan Wurzbacher met on their very first day at the prestigious Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland, they made a pact to found a company together. Their first business plan for the company that would become Climeworks was for a venture challenge course at the University. Fast forward nine years to today and their first carbon capture plant is up and running, in Hinwil, Switzerland. “We are breaking down the circular economy approach to an atomic level,” Valentin Gutknecht, Climeworks Director of Marketing and Communications told SnapMunk. “Carbon is a central building block of the economy, and with our CO2 capture plants, we…

After an extended stint working from home, I had the opportunity to work out of a coworking office space at a Fintech accelerator earlier this year. I can confidently report from my time there that coworking spaces are totally rad (we’re still saying ‘rad,’ right?). Research seems to agree; the Harvard Business Review found that shared workspaces are catching on because they’re more flexible, community focused, and make work feel more meaningful. In general, startups have a whole range of options when it comes to finding an office or community space. Here’s a look at a few services that could come in handy during that process. WeWork WeWork is one of the OG’s of the coworking movement. The company was already valued at $16 billion last year, with some high-profile investments in the pipeline. All that money has helped WeWork make its coworking and standalone office spaces available across North America,…