Research in Motion makers of the ever popular Blackberry has announced that it has purchased QNX Software Systems from Harman international.

QNX which is based in Ottawa, Ontario was formed in 1980 and is a leading provider of embedded systems. QNX has a very strong real-time operating system (RTOS) and has especially been a strong player in the in-car entertainment sector.

There is speculation that RIM will attempt to create a more seamless integration between it flagship Blackberries and in car systems. This integration could lead superior user experience which could help differentiate RIM from Apple iPhone or Google’s Andoid platform.

Then again perhaps it is just a cheap source of patent protection.

The Trinity Development Group has a map of planned development of the Corbett Centre.  According to the map it appears that the electronics big box store Best Buy is planning to set up in Fredericton.  Other stores that appear to be slated for the Corbett Centre include home fashion store Bouclair and a new Tim Hortons. The long rumoured Tim Hortons store would fill in the gap (according to some Tim’s addicts) created by the closing of the Regent Mall location last year.

The Trinity site claims that these new stores will open in the spring of 2010 while Costco’s planned warehouse store is marked as a highly unlikely Fall 2009.  Perhaps these are construction start dates as opposed to store opening dates.

New Competition in Town?

A new Best Buy store would likely be the second store in Atlantic Canada after a recently opened store in Dartmouth, NS. A new Best Buy which sells laptops, big screen televisions, digital cameras and other electronics and opening would not only bring some needed competition to the current electronics giant in town Future Shop but it would also be a win for Fredericton in the ongoing battle with Moncton and Saint John to attract retailers to their cities.  Is Fredericton gaining an upper hand in attracting retailers to its city?

Are there any other retailers that you’d like to see open up in Fredericton?

Fredericton, New Brunswick based PQA – Professional Quality Assurance has announced its intention to grow its workforce from the current 91 to almost 400 over the next three years.  The province of New Brunswick has announced an assistance program for PQA which will see an average of $7544 per full time permanent employee that PQA hires over the next three years.  This assistance is for training and equipment for these new hires.

Who are PQA?

Founded in 1997, PQA is a software quality assurance vendor which provides services such as software testing, QA consultants, content quality assurance and e-learning or training development services. They currently have three offices with their headquarters in Fredericton and satellite offices in Moncton, New Brunswick and Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.  With this latest expansion there are hints that PQA will open additional offices in other New Brunswick locations, likely in Saint John but possibly in smaller and economically hard hit cities in northern NB such as Miramichi or Cambellton.

Software Testing is a dirty job

As many software developers know, software testing is very difficult as you become accustomed to the warts and consciously or sub-consciously avoid trouble areas or scenarios in your application when testing.  In addition, software testing, developing training materials and documentation are often pushed back to the end of the development cycle are are often the first tasks to get short changed when the pressure to ship starts to build. By farming out these tasks to a third party, your developers are free to concentrate on developing quality and compelling software.

A fresh, experienced and independent point of view

Just as a third party audit of financial records is a good idea (and often necessary), a third party software quality assurance can give your code a professional and independent critique before it ships to customers. An outsiders’ fresh view of your software may reveal omissions in your documentation or bring to light implicit or explicit assumptions that were made in the software design and development cycle. Identifying and addressing these issues prior to shipping can save a lot of money in fixing software as well as in support costs. Even more valuable than saving on support costs, by fixing problems you can ship a higher quality product and enhance the customer experience. Creating a quality experience for your customer can raise your reputation and brand. Remember: “Every Touch Counts“.

Third party QA can identify software bugs, performance and scalability problems, user experience issues, user interface inconsistencies and documentation issues.  Although some of these problems can be identified and addressed in house, a more thorough assessment by a third party quality assurance vendor can make your product that much more stable and bulletproof as well as give your product that extra usability edge over the competition.

Money well spent I’d say.

It appears that the effects of the recession are starting to show in the habits of computer buyers.

• HP has missed its revenue targets by $3 billion (but hits profit targets).
• Apple sales have gone from 50% year over year increases to – 6%

I guess after laying off a lot of staff, companies have a bunch of spare hardware laying around so that they don’t need to buy any more desktops and laptops.  Meanwhile the unemployed Joe Six Pack no longer has the money to buy Jobs’ latest flashy MacBook or a cheap new Windows desktop.

I have a feeling that this recession won’t be as short as they were previously predicting.

Silicon Alley Insider has a interesting post entitled “Does New York City Need More VCs?.”  In it they compared the venture capital situation in New York and in Silicon Valley.  New York appears to have much fewer and less visible VC investors in the technology markets.  In addition the article laments that the venture capital funds in New York are much more closed and less active in building a community and technology cluster.  For example in Silicon Valley, investment groups, angel investors and venture capitalists are present at start-up events and seem to have a more open door policy.  The resulting technology community draws in companies, investors and business founders and other technical staff from elsewhere around the world thanks to the ease with which start-ups can get access to investors.

Does Atlantic Canada need more VCs?

Broadening the argument of the need for more and more active VCs in New York, I would argue that Atlantic Canada could also use a good dose of investment companies.  Now I would not be able to argue that Atlantic Canada and especially New Brunswick as a province with a relatively small population and number of companies can support a large number of investment firms.  Certain government programs such as AIF and NBIF do have avenues for funding start-ups but in most cases, I think that any additional business support will be relatively generic and not be tuned in to a company’s particular business and their field.

There are a few funds with operations in Atlantic Canada but I don’t see any IT specific funds.  Could they really give me insight on bringing a dot.com or technology company and product to market?  Could they do much more than give cash?  I have no doubt that some of the funding companies could be a great resource to have onside but I would think that great Silicon Valley firms could also provide valuable industry advice based on previous experience with technology markets.

Not all IT is done in Silicon Valley

It is worth making the case though that venture capitalists and fund managers should not simply stick to their comfort areas in the big cities and known hotspots.  As many IT professionals can tell you, not all IT activities happen in Silicon Valley.  There are many great ideas and entrepreneurs out there across North America but some won’t be able to reach their potential due to lack of funding.

Maybe if you want to succeed in IT, you really do need to move to Silicon Valley.

I Hope not….

Two Fredericton IT firms have recently merged to create a powerful Atlantic Canadian provider of information technology and management services.  Accreon which has 65 employees is acquiring ISOMNI and its 25 employees for an undisclosed sum.  With this acquisition, Accreon becomes of the largest independent IT services companies in Atlantic Canada.

Accreon, itself created out of a merger of three small companies, Evention Technologies Inc., AdvansysTMC and Redcliffe Group has also recently been named placed in the respectable position of 229 in the prestigious Branham 300 which is a listing of the top 250 Canadian IT companies (along with 25 multinationals and 25 “up and commers”).  Accreon joins other New Brunswick IT companies CARIS at 143, Mariner Partners at 206 in the listing.

I am hoping to see some good growth out of Accreon.  Hopefully the acquisition of ISOMNI will give them the expertise and the size to land some larger clients and contract in the near future.

See also : Accreon grows with acquisition of ISOMNI from the Daily Gleaner

Last week Statistics Canada released its Labour Force Survey for the month of November.  As I have done in previous months, I will look at some of the numbers and try to spot some trends especially when it comes to the province of New Brunswick and the Fredericton region in particular.

The headline numbers in this release certainly look good:

• Employment up by 43000 or 2.3%
• Labour force up by over 67000 workers
• Unemployment rate edged up by 0.1% to 5.9%
• Employment rate up to 63.8% which is higher than the United States and most European countries
• Most employment gains were in the private sector

Again manufacturing employment was hit hard as the slowing US economy and the high Canadian dollar continue to create difficult conditions for manufacturers who export mainly to the United States.

In New Brunswick, there are several good items contained in the report:

• Population is up by 500 over October
• Labour force is up by 4100 workers
• Employment is up by 5300 jobs
• Employment rate edges up to 60%
• Unemployment rate drops to 7.2% from 7.6%

If we look at the regional three month averages things get a little murky as the number don’t reflect the strength seen for the one month provincial average.  Most regions appear to have lost jobs including Fredericton (600 jobs) but there appears to be a shrinking of the labour force which offset the job loses and left Fredericton with an unemployment rate of 6.2%.

I imagine that with the recent announcements of the mill closure in Dalhousie and the closure of Shermag in Edmundston the next few release may not be quite so rosy, especially for the northern part of the province.

meshEAST is a new blog about Atlantic Canadian startup companies in the IT and the interactive media sector by Lisa Rousseau.

It really is great to hear stories of local companies and their ups and downs. It is much more relevant reading than TechCrunch and all of the other Silicon Valley/US centric IT media sites. I look forward to hearing more about the challenges and sucesses of startups in Canada and especially New Brunswick. Since the industry is quite dispersed and composed of a lot of smaller players, we don’t often hear much about what is going on around us.

Through meshEAST I also discovered StartupNorth which is billed as covering “The life and death of Canadian startups”. Again, a much needed resource in this web that is so heavily focused on the US and Silicon Valley.

RSS feeds have been added to my reader and links added to my Links page.

On Monday, IBM announced the acquisition of Cognos for $4.9 billion dollars.  Although it is great news for Cognos shareholders, I can’t help but think that the result is one less independent Canadian technology company.

With the recent acquisitions of ATI by AMD, Sierra Systems by Golden Gate Capital and DataMirror by IBM, the list of independent Canadian companies seems to be dwindling down.  Granted, there are still some exceptional tech companies such as Research in Motion OpenText and Celestica remaining but with two out of the top ten Canadian companies (according to The Branham Group)  no longer being Canadian, there seems to be some major changes in the technology landscape.

Last Friday, Statistics Canada released their latest Labour Force Information update. The headline results appear quite rosy.

Nationally, 63000 jobs were created and the unemployment rate fell to a 33 year low of 5.8%. One highlighted detail is that most of the employment gains were in the health care and social assistance fields – taxpayer funded jobs. In addition manufacturing jobs are in decline probably caused somewhat by the strong Canadian dollar which impacts the export sector.

Provincially, New Brunswick had an increase in approximately 700 jobs with an increase of 1600 full time and a decrease of 800 part time jobs; encouraging numbers. Although the population being reported jumped by 500 people, the workforce declined by 2100 workers which is troubling to see. Perhaps this is an indication of the aging demographics of the province or even more troubling is a continued leaking of workers to the western provinces. The increase in jobs combined with the decrease in workers dropped the unemployment rate from 8.2% to 7.6% which is quite a respectable number for a province that had grown accustomed to double digit unemployment.

If we examine the number for the regions within New Brunswick we see a continued decline in population and employment for the northern regions of Edmunston-Woodstock and Campbellton-Miramichi while the southern regions and the major cities appear to be growing in terms of population and employment. This trend does not appear to be reversing in the near future as almost all of the major development projects over the next few years are in the southern half of the province. One of the few economic good stories in Northern NB has been the reopening of the Caribou mine by Blue Note Mining. Hopefully other positive developments will occur in the near future.

The Fredericton region had a bit of a tough month with the three month average showing a loss of 1000 jobs from last month. This pushes the unemployment rate for the region from 6.9% up to the provincial average of 7.3% (again three month average). There have been a few recent large events such as the closure of Connect North America which had a loss of 250 jobs and the shutdown of the M.L. Wilkens mill carried a loss of 70 jobs. Hopefully we will see these numbers turn around for November.

The Verdict

For a bit of history of this case see my previous posts on the subject.

Last Friday, Justice Peter Glennie delivered his verdict on the injunction request by Brunswick News against its former Woodstock Bugle-Observer publisher William Kenneth Langdon and the Carleton Free Press.

The most controversial portion of the requested injunction which asked for a prohibition against soliciting 15 selected advertisers (presumably the most profitable 15) was struck down. However another portion of the injunction which prohibits Langdon from using confidential information in his running of the weekly Carleton Free Press. In addition Langdon is prohibited from trying to hire Brunswick News employees until June or until the lawsuit against him is settled, whichever comes first.

All of the turmoil hasn’t prevented the Carleton Free Press from releasing its inaugural issue which was published Tuesday October the 30th and indeed I would argue that the press of the trial has given the upstart paper huge exposure. The story of the trial and the Carleton Free Press has made national news in the Toronto Star and international news a story on October 29th and November 5th in the New York Times.

I also noticed that the newspaper’s website has been updated but is still only showing a “Coming Soon” message.

This is the third part of the Irving owned Brunswick News versus the upstart Carleton Free Press headed by William Kenneth Langdon.  Part 1 and Part 2 are available as background on the soap opera / court case.

At the continuation of the injunction hearing against Ken Langdon, Brunswick News has decided to scale back its injunction request from a complete ban preventing Mr. Langdon from contacting advertisers, suppliers and contractors of the Bugle-Observer to a ban preventing solicitation of 15 key advertisers and certain contractors including correspondents and paper delivery workers.

Mr. Langdon and his lawyer dismissed the changes and claimed that they are effectively the same and they argue that the concession is not a real concession when the volume of business from the unnamed 15 clients are taken into consideration.

Unfortunately after two days of arguments, the judge has reserved his decision on the requested injunction until Friday November 2nd.  The date for a complete trial against Mr. Langdon hasn’t been set yet.

Another fact in the case that was brought up at the now deleted Gypsy-blog (http://gypsy-blog.blogspot.com/2007/10/carleton-free-press.html) is that the new Carleton Free Press is not owned by Ken Langdon but by a (some?) prominent businessman in the Woodstock area.  I have also read conflicting evidence as to when the first edition of the Carleton Free Press is to be released.  Both Tuesday October 30th and Thursday November 1st have been put forward by various internet sources.  I would think that the latter is more likely being that Thursday is the beginning of the new month.

After waxing about Canadian apple juice not really being Canadian, I was quite pleased to see CBC’s Marketplace tonight discussing the same issue on a larger scale. The program examined some food products which are labeled as “Product of Canada” and attempts to trace where the main ingredients actually come from. The host Wendy Mesley, examines No Name ice cream, prepared (jarred) garlic and frozen fish which are all labeled as “Product of Canada” and traces their main ingredients to China, Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico, the United States, New Zealand and/or the UK. As can be evidence by this show, even though consumers might not be aware of it, imported foods have infiltrated the Canadian marketplace. It comes as little surprise then that it is estimated the 40% of our food is imported.

Marketplace covered some of my previous questions about some of the details of the labeling laws. Apparently, overhead, Labour and shipping does count as part of the costs in calculating the 51% of costs required for designating a product as “Product of Canada”. The costs of shipping from foreign countries which I imagine can get quite high, combined with an overhead figure that can easily be manipulated can push almost any product into Product of Canada territory. Simply by paying your Canadian CEO and executive high enough, you can import products and label them as Canadian since with the overhead of the executive, 51% of the company’s costs are Canadian.

According to Marketplace, the 51% cost threshold isn’t even required for certain food product categories. Fish for example only have to have the “last substantive transformation” take place in Canada. Due to this lax regulation, it appears that almost all of the frozen fish that is sold by High Liner is actually caught or farmed in countries such as China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Russia and simply repackaged in Canada at their Lunenburg plant in Nova Scotia. No wonder the Canadian fisheries are having issues!

Apparently there is a push to have the law changed so that 51% of the ingredients would be required to label a product as “Product of Canada” instead of 51% of the cost that is currently required. While this would be a step forward, more complete and accurate country of origin food labeling is required. Perhaps a law stating that any ingredient which makes up more than a certain percentage (say 20%) of a product must have the associated country of origin on the label.

I love the fact that people are starting to think and question where their food and products are truly coming from but these labelling laws have to change.

My previous post on the case of Irving / Brunwick News vs. the former Bugle-Observer publisher WilliamKenneth Langdon stated that the case would be brought to court on October 19th.

According to the CBC, at the course case the judge ruled that affidavits entered into evidence by Mr. Langdon were inadmissible the case. Brunswick News is asking for an injunction which prevents Kenneth Langdon from approaching Bugle-Observer customers, employees or advertisers on behalf of his newspaper. Now I’m not exactly clear what an injunction specifies but would it also prevent Langdon’s co-workers from approaching customers and advertisers? If so, considering the limited amount of advertisers and customers in the Woodstock and Upper Saint John valley, it would severely limit and ability of the Carleton Free Press to compete. On the other hand, could it not backfire and encourage customers to stop being customers or advertisers in the Brunswick owned Bugle-Observer in order to advertise or become customers of the new Carleton Free Press?

The soap opera takes another twist as Brunswick News threatens to sue the CBC over publishing details of the affidavits which discuss some shady anti-competitive business practices. Brunswick News claims that the statement are untrue and thus defamatory.

The injunction which Brunswick News is seeking is still pending a continuation of the trial on Friday the 26th of October.

Whatever way this turns out, if Ken Langdon’s Carleton Free Press does ever get published it will have had a lot of free upfront publicity!

Where is your apple juice from?

Following on from my earlier post about Open Farm Day, I did a bit more digging about the apple market and in particular importation of Chinese apple juice concentrate. I found an article ‘Made in Canada’ – via China on the Globe and Mail which discusses the issue (along with other food imports from China). It turns out that Canada imports over 21 million litres of apple juice (and concentrate) per year. It appears that most of it is either watered down to make juice (in the case of concentrate) or blended with fresh local apple juice and then sold under the label “Made in Canada”.  Canada’s labeling laws only require that 51% of the cost of producing the goods is Canadian in order to label it as “Product of Canada”. It is unclear what expenses can be used in the percentage calculation. If transportation of concentrate from China to Canada can be used in the calculation, it would be quite easy for a juice manufacturer to market Chinese concentrate as Canadian juice. Valuation of water used to dilute the concentrate is also unknown.

Canadian Apple Juice?

I also found an article in the Chronicle Herald entitled- ‘Made in Canada?’  (now expired) which specifically mentions that although Graves brand apple juice in Nova Scotia is made with Maritime grown apples, Graves in Quebec and other markets may contain apple juice concentrate from China. I guess that the only thing to do is unless there is evidence otherwise, assume that your juice is made from imported concentrate. What is a consumer to do when they can’t even tell where their food comes from?

I did recently notice that Graves apple juice specifically states “Made with apples from Atlantic Canada”.  Now that still does not guarantee that the juice is made from Atlantic Canadian apples exclusively but that is the implication.  It does state that the juice is made from “fresh apples” which means that is not made from concentrate.

At least I know that Coburn (and Gagetown) apple cider is made from local apples…

Others also appear to be concerned with the amount of imported concentrate being used in juice: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/120807dnbusjuice.28107a0.html

A little soap opera is being played out in western New Brunswick; Woodstock, NB to be precise.

A little background to start:

Brunswick News which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the J.D. Irving Ltd. the privately conglomorate. Irving, mainly through Brunswick News has a virtual monopoly on publishing in the province of New Brunswick by the fact that it owns every English language daily newspaper and with the exception of two small weeklies, every English language weekly as well. Every attempt at competition has been bought out by Brunswick News or has been squeezed out of the market. Their stranglehold on the New Brunswick media has been noted in several articles.

Back to the soap opera…. In Woodstock the publisher of the Brunswick News owned Bugle-Observer recently resigned with the intention of starting up his own newspaper: the Carleton Free Press. None too pleased with this turn of events and a possible competitor, according to the CBC, Brunswick News is suing the former publisher William Kenneth Langdon alleging that he is using confidential information from the Bugle-Observer in order to start his own newspaper. In addition, Brunswick News is requesting an order preventing Langdon from contacting Bugle customers, employees or advertisers. Talk about stiffling the competition!

Even more bizarre, Irving managed to get a rarely used civil search warrant to enter Langdon’s premises and seize documents related to his employment at the Bugle including flyer routes, advertising rate and income statements.

A court date is set for October 19th.

Doing a bit more digging, I found that web based news site justFRED will be creating the online version of the Carleton Free Press according to a blog posting on their site.

Judging from their push to online blogs, a new French new website and this recent drama, I’d say that Brunswick News is a little scared of web based reporting (in addition to old school newspapers) taking over their turf and more importantly some of their advertising revenues.

Statistics Canada released the latest employment figures for the month of September 2007 last Friday.

As I suggested last month, this month’s report would include numbers from a few large layoffs such as the UPM mill in Miramichi.\  Despite this, the provincial economy only lost 100 jobs in the month.  This number does mask the fact that 600 full time jobs were lost while 500 part-time jobs were created.  Unfortunately part-time jobs are typically lower paying jobs and they are certainly lower paying than unionized paper mill jobs.

There is some good news in that the reported New Brunswick population has increased by 500 (rounded, of course) in the last month and the labour force increased by 2200 as well.  One question that comes up is the reason for this large labour force increase relative to the population growth.  Is it as some suggest that the job market is rosy so that people who had given up and stopped actively looking for work, and hence left the labour force are coming back to the job market?  The increase in labour force might also come out of necessity as a single earners lose their high wage job and now dual incomes are needed in order to maintain the lifestyle and provide the necessities.  Hopefully it is more of the former.

With the increase in the labour force and the decrease in jobs, the unemployment rate increased from 7.7% to 8.2%.  The local number in the Fredericton-Oromocto region don’t look as rosy either.  The sample sizes are small and hence the need for three month moving averages as opposed to the monthly provincial number.  The three month moving average for employment dropped 70.9 to 69 thousand.  Ouch.  The year over year numbers still look very good but September’s numbers are worrisome.

Statistics Canada focused on New Brunswick’s year to date numbers – “New Brunswick had the second-strongest employment growth (+2.5%) in the country so far this year. However, the unemployment rate rose by percentage points to 8.2% in September, the result of more people looking for work.  Unfortunately this statement is what was picked up by the media and thus spinned the job numbers as a positive.  The truth is a little dimmer….

In Atlantic Canada, there is only one federally inspected beef plant Atlantic Beef Products which is located in Albany, PEI. Unfortunately, the processing plant has lost over $10 million over the last three years since it was opened and is in danger of closing after the PEI government announced that it will no longer cover the plant’s losses.

There does appear to be hope for the beef plant as detailed an article by the CBC.

The thing that frustrates me about this story is that it is very difficult to find products from the plant here in the Maritimes in order to support them.  As far as I know, the only place in Fredericton which carried their products is the Atlantic Co-op store.  Unfortunately you need to be a member of the Co-op to shop there and it is at the complete other end of the city from where I live.  Why do the major chains such as the Atlantic Superstore and Sobey’s support their local producers and carry their products?  Is it simply because it is easier to deal with Maple Leaf and other large companies and have them ship their products half way across the country instead of having to manage relationships with regional players?

I have already shifted some of my buying over to a store called “Pete’s Meat Market” which carries a much larger selection of local produce than the major chains (and usually at better prices!).  My hope is that the major supermarkets will wake up and support local producers but I certainly won’t hold my breath.

Yesterday, for the third year in a row, the family and I went out to enjoy New Brunswick Open Farm Day. This annual event allows members of the public to tour farms throughout New Brunswick and hopefully get a better appreciation for the agricultural sector. Farms range from dairy operations to fruit orchards to an oyster farm to a mushroom farm. Most of the farms have a display and a presentation or tour of their operations.

We started out by going to Coburn Farms which is a farm in Keswick Ridge which produces apple cider and is a 25000 hen egg producer. Although the kids got bored since we weren’t allowed to see the hens due to the bio-security measures. I quite enjoyed the tour by David Coburn and learned quite a bit about his farm and farming in general.

We proceeded to go to Double Oort dairy farm in Springfield, NB which is a Holstein dairy farm. Eric just had a blast here checking out all of the cows and even getting to feed one of the little calf. He thought that that was the best. The fact that they had chocolate chip cookies and chocolate milk on hand didn’t hurt either.

A couple of facts that I learned on my day included:

• Chinese apple juice concentrate has really depressed apple juice prices making it very difficult for Canadian apple growers to make a living
• It is about $25000 for a cow’s milk quota – this quota might also be revoked in the coming years with WTO farm subsidy negotiations taking place
• Loblaw’s / Superstore supermarkets are starting to require all suppliers use EDI which can effectively lock out local or even regional suppliers of products
• Elimination of grain shipping subsidies (Atlantic Region Freight Assistance) has risen grain prices but as a side effect it has also spurred local production of grain to supply local farmers with feed. This allows local producers to feed their animals with local wheat or corn instead of feed shipped half way across Canada.
• All of the eggs from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia (perhaps PEI as well) are shipped from their point of production to Amherst, NS to be graded and then shipped back to the market. I guess we like our eggs well traveled out here in the east. Seems to me that Amherst its surroundings is the only place to be for egg production.

If you are interested in more food related posts, check out my new blog Farms, Farming and Food.

Update: New Brunswick Open Farm Day 2008 is scheduled for September 21.

I came across this posting from Sun’s Director of Web Technologies Tim Bray announcing the new site http://wikis.sun.com. This site is a wiki “ranch” and allows employees and groups at Sun to collaboratively work with external partners and the public at large.

This site might appear to have some similarities with http://blogs.sun.com but wikis are a much more collaborative and potentially more promising development. As opposed to sharing ideas with the world via a blog and having some feedback via comments, a wiki can allow multiple users to create documents, plans, ideas or data. If we look at wikipedia, it is easy to see the power of the wiki.

For now, employees from Sun must go through a request process to create their own wiki space but once created, they can assign specific users with editing access while anonymous users will automatically have read access and the ability to comment.

It will be quite interesting to see what comes out of this development and corporate wiki ranches in general. Obviously many corporate managers will be scared of inappropriate disclosure of confidential information but in reality there is currently nothing preventing leaks of information via private blogs and wikis. By having the wiki infrastructure available to employees, it is more likely to be used and it can be monitored much more closely for ideas and inappropriate disclosures.

It looks like the markets are definitely in correction territory now.  At one point today, the TSX was down over 500 points!  Luckily for people still invested, it recovered to close “only” 200 points down on record volume of over 700 million shares.  Financials and resource stocks seem to be the hardest hit as the credit crunch moves investors to less risky investments.  The TSX is now down 12% from its July highs.

Now the question becomes, will the global economy slow down and drag commodities down with it?  If so, the TSX has a way to fall but if not, all the fundamentals of the economy seem strong enough for the market to drift back up to 14500 territory.

What a ride for the stock markets. The TSX composite have dropped more than 1000 points over the last month. It has dropped almost 200 points today alone.

Is this a simple correction? If so what percentage correction are we looking at? 15% perhaps? Perhaps this is the precursor to a recession. The subprime mortgage brouhaha in US might be a larger factor than economists and analysts have been predicting. After all if some people are foreclosing on their mortgages, that puts more supply into a buyers market which exerts additional downward pressure on housing prices. As real estate prices continue to fall, other home owners might become concerned enough to cut back spending which might put the US economy into a recession. After all if Joe from work just lost his house because “interest rates are rising” there is no reason why it can’t happen to you.

Also other sectors and countries are already being affected by the subprime crisis. For example Potash Corp. which is a mining company dropped almost 6% as investors seem to be fleeing any kind of risk and taking profits where possible. Mortgage funds are also dropping drastically I would imagine.

So the final question is how long will the bear market continue? Is this a simple correction or a start of a longer term downward trend? I’m not too certain but I’m more inclined to think the latter. We have had a very strong market for a few years now and I think that we are due for some downward and sideways trading for a while yet.

Of course I would love to be proved wrong….

Update: Apparently we have entered a correction according to some with a 10% drop from the highs.