Fonolo - More Good News From Canada

I've been following Fonolo for some time, and have been posting recently about a few good news stories coming out of Canada's tech/telecom sector. You may recall a recent post where I highlighted the news that Fonolo made Time Magazine's list of Top 50 Websites for 2009.

That's a hard act to follow, but I wanted to continue the thread regarding subsequent accolades and developments for Fonolo. It seems that one thing leads to another, and I finally had the time to pull these all together.

First, if you haven't tried Fonolo, it's now easier than ever before. They've posted a widget now to their website where you can get a hands-on sample of the deep dialing concept. If you don't know what deep dialing is, you'll get it pretty quickly after trying any of the demos there. Have a look at the Fonolo Airlines widget and see for yourself.

From there, Fonolo has been getting some good media attention lately, and all of these are worth checking out.

- interview with Fonolo CEO Shai Berger on BNN TV. Shai does a great job outlining the problem set that Fonolo addresses and explains how it works in plain English. Here's the link.

- Fonolo goes viral, with this clip from KXLY TV in Spokane, Washington, that made its way to YouTube. We're not sure how this happened, but they picked up on Fonolo's buzz and did their own feature about the company and how deep dialing works. Gotta love that.

- Finally, our main national daily - the Globe & Mail - included Fonolo in a small business feature last week about some promising local Web 2.0 startups.

The media sometimes works in strange ways, and it's great to see Fonolo getting this breadth of attention and helping Canadian companies shine a little brighter. If more of our tech companies got coverage like this, I'll bet some of them just might get funding, and then we can really show the world what Canada can do in this space. Flag waving aside, I'd love to hear your thoughts on Fonolo and where else you think deep dialing would make your life easier.

Fonolo Makes Time Magazine List

Making Time Magazine should be a big deal for anyone in our space, and it was so great to hear that hometown startup Fonolo just made their list of Top 50 Websites for 2009! How cool is that?

I haven't had time this week to blog about anything other than Smart Grid, but this was too good to pass up. Now, sure, I'm an Advisor to Fonolo, and am a bit partial to Canadian startups - and guess what - Fonolo CEO Shai Berger will be on one of my panels at next week's IT Expo. What a happy confluence of events! Let's just put those things aside for a sec - c'mon, this is great recognition for a company that happens to be on a pretty good roll these days. Just have a quick visit to their website and you'll see what I mean.

To provide some context, after looking over all 50 sites in the list, Fonolo is the only startup in our space that I recognize. However, they sure are in good company with other Top 50 sites, including household names like Skype, Flickr, YouTube, Google, Hulu, Twitter, Amazon, Wikipedia and Facebook. Pretty nice crowd to be running in, so hats off to Shai and his team for making this list! Needless to say, I'll be making sure the audience knows about this at our session, and I'm looking forward to buying Shai a drink - care to join us?

Cellwand Wins Big at Silicon Valley Launch Showcase

I've got a nice shout-out here for a Canadian company that just got some great recognition down in Silicon Valley. The company is Ottawa-based Cellwand, and I've been following them for ages. For sake of transparency I am a shareholder, but they really do have a proven business model and I write about them when there's a good news story to tell.

As I often say, Canada has some really strong tech/telecom companies, but they typically struggle to raise money and get attention from the right kind of people in the U.S., which is the market they are ultimately targeting.

Last week, Cellwand participated in Launch, a showcase event for VCs run by SVASE - Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs. Overall, 30 companies made the final cut across 6 categories, and a winner was picked for each one. Cellwand was in the Nextgen Internet/Mobile category, and they came out on top as the "company most likely to succeed" in that space. It's always nice to win, but especially so for a Canadian company pitching Silicon Valley VC's. How can you not want to wave the flag about that?

You can read more about Cellwand's news here, and while you're at it, check out their flagship offering #TAXI. It's been quite successful here in Canada, and they're making inroads for the U.S., and hopefully this award will help move things along.

Regarding the Launch awards, I'd also like to extend an honorable mention to Toronto-based Fonolo. They made the grade for the 30 finalists, but did not top out in their category. It's still good news for them, and continues a nice run they've been having in terms of industry recognition.