Jennifer Yesbeck
other

You spend time carefully crafting content for your readers and customers. But you must do the same for search engines. Meta tag SEO is one way to help search engine crawlers absorb, understand, and index your content .

What Is Meta Tag SEO?

Meta tag SEO is the process of adding hidden information – or meta tags – to the code of a webpage to help search engines better recognize what the page is about. If search engines clearly recognize what a page is about, and determine it to be highly valuable to readers it is more likely to rank well in search..

A meta tag is a snippet of code that describes a page’s content. Each meta tag description explains a different element on the page and helps crawlers learn about the content.

Most meta tag information is invisible to users and only readable by search engine crawlers, as it is added to the code of the page and not the visible content. Although, some meta information is visible on search engine results pages such as title tags and meta descriptions.

What Are the Most Useful Meta Tags?

Because meta tags provide information about page content, they have a significant impact on SEO. However, not all meta tags are created equal. Some tags that were popular a few years ago are nearly irrelevant today .

For example, at one time, meta tag keywords, a series of top keywords that described a page and were placed in the code of the page, were closely tied with SEO and ranking. But meta keywords have lost most of their relevance compared to other elements of meta tag SEO.

The authorship meta tag is another example of an outdated element. Back in 2013, authorship was a hot topic in the SEO world, as bloggers scrambled to make sure their icons topped the list of search results. A few years later, the authorship program was discontinued, meaning author tags no longer hold the same significance they had five years ago.

The rest of this article will focus on meta tag examples that have staying power, so you can improve your SEO without chasing the latest and greatest trends.

Title Tag

Title tags are one of the most important meta tags to include in SEO content. The title tag tells search engines the title of the page, which may be different from the headline that appears on the page. You can change the title to simplify the phrase and make it easier for search engine crawlers to read and understand.

The title tag is included in the code of your page.

It is also visible to audiences on search engine results pages.

As you create a title tag, keep these content writing tips in mind:

• Limit your title to 60 characters.
• Place your keywords close to the front of the title.
• Create unique titles for each page.
• Don’t write just for search engines; make sure humans find value in the title.

While you can use long and colorful headlines at the top of your page, your title tag should have an SEO focus and get to the point, helping both readers and search engines understand the body of the article. A relevant, descriptive, but succinct title is more likely to convert.

A relevant, descriptive, but succinct title is more likely to convert. #SEO #tips Click To Tweet

Meta Description

A meta description is a summary of what a page is about. It’s code that consists of two to three sentences describing what the content is about. While it doesn’t have a direct impact on a page’s rankings, that doesn’t mean it lacks SEO value.

Like the title tag, SEO meta descriptions are forward-facing for your customers. The meta description is what readers see in the SERPs, so marketers should use this blurb as an opportunity to drive clicks and traffic to their page.

As you write your meta description, consider these factors.

• Limit your meta description to less than 320 characters.
• Provide a value proposition to the readers.
• Include keywords, but avoid keyword stuffing.
• Add a soft call to action and sell readers on your brand.

The best meta descriptions concisely summarize content to help people see the value in clicking on the search result .

Viewport

Meta tag SEO best practices also include a viewport tag. The viewport tag has become increasingly valuable with the rise of mobile phone usage.

A viewport is the area of the window where web content can be viewed. This area is often different from what the user sees, leaving audiences to pinch or scroll to read the content. The viewport tag gives developers the power to address the content’s size and scale, making websites more mobile-friendly.

Site speed and mobile friendliness are important white hat SEO best practices that make up a good website experience.

If your site loads slowly or your audience bounce because of a poor rendering, then Google notices and flags your website as being a bad experience . A bad mobile experience hurts your SEO while driving away your users. Taking time to add a viewport tag can improve your mobile view and results.

Robots Selection

A robots meta tag tells search engine crawlers how they should (or shouldn’t) crawl and index your page. It tells crawlers what items you want them to notice or ignore.

You don’t necessarily need this tag on your page if you simply want search engine crawlers to approach all of your content normally. But you may want to use limiting tags to prevent negative SEO problems if you use borrowed images or syndicated content.

Like meta tags, there are multiple robots meta tags you can use. However, there are a few common ones you are likely to turn to over others:

• Noindex: tells search engines not to index the page
• Noimageindex: tells search engines not to index the images
• None: tells search engines not to do anything with the page at all
• Nofollow: tells search engines not to follow any links on the page
• Noarchive: tells search engines not to archive the content

These commands can boost your meta tag SEO by preventing duplicate content penalties or making your page look like it links to spammy websites. It serves as a housekeeping tool for how you want to present your brand.

Quickly Check Your Meta Tag SEO

While it may seem complicated to keep up with meta tag SEO best practices, there is a simple way to ensure you are properly tagging your page .

Use Alexa’s On-Page SEO Checker to enter a URL from a page on your website along with the page’s assigned target keyword. The tool will provide a report on meta tag errors and available optimization tactics you can implement to improve the page.

For other meta tag considerations, use Alexa’s SEO Audit Tool. The tool runs a full report on dozens of SEO factors for your site, including the status of meta tags. Enter your site to receive a report and list of tips on how to fix issues and better optimize your website.

With tools by Alexa, you can update your meta tag SEO and create an optimization plan that boosts your rankings. Sign up for a free trial of Alexa’s Advanced Plan and see what you can learn about your SEO status, audience, competitors, and content opportunities.

Mike Smyth
The Province

Bad drivers of B.C., beware.

The government — and the cops — are coming to get you. And they’re loading up with more traffic-ticketing technology than British Columbia has ever seen before.

Attorney General David Eby has promised to get tough with rule-breaking road warriors as he attempts to cut down on soaring accident rates and extinguish the “financial dumpster fire” at ICBC.

How will he do it? With new high-tech equipment and gadgets designed to catch highway lawbreakers.

Let’s say you’re one of those drivers who occasionally takes a peek at your cellphone while behind the wheel.

That’s called distracted driving, it’s against the law, and it carries a heavy fine — even if your car is stopped at a traffic light. But why worry if you don’t see any cops around to catch you, right?

Well, say hello to Eby’s newest little friend: The Laser Technology TruSpeed Sxb Scope, with Bluetooth compatibility.

British Columbia just took delivery of two of these American-made gizmos, which cost ICBC a total of $17,000.

In the last few days, the two scopes were given to a B.C. police department (that ICBC declined to identify). Now those cops are testing their ability to catch distracted drivers in the act.

“The units will be tested by police in varying weather and traffic conditions for usability and effectiveness,” said ICBC spokeswoman Joanna Linsangan.

According to its manufacturer, the beauty of the TruSpeed Sxb is its ability to capture high-resolution photographs of a law-breaking driver from a distance of 610 metres.

The Bluetooth connection then allows a police officer to instantly beam the photograph to another cop up the road, who then stops and tickets the driver.

 “That officer will then have the ability to show the image to the distracted driver,” Linsangan said.

The advantage of confronting the driver with incriminating evidence? It greatly reduces the chance of the driver fighting the ticket in court because the jig is clearly up.

But if the driver does dispute the ticket, the TrueSpeed Sxb will deliver the goods in court.

“Unmatched technology, superior performance, courtroom credibility, pinpoint targeting and unbeatable value are what the TruSpeed series bring to your department,” the company boasts on its website.

The B.C. government, meanwhile, just cranked up the fines and penalties for distracted-driving tickets.

Starting in March, anyone caught distracted driving twice within three years could face punitive ICBC premiums and fines of up to $2,000 — a 58 per cent increase over the previous penalty.

Is it any wonder the government now wants a bigger cut of the action?

Last week, the B.C. government officially notified local municipal governments of its intention to renegotiate the sharing of traffic-fine revenue.

Municipalities currently receive 100 per cent of net ticket revenue. But not for long.

“There are some fundamental changes underway related to automated traffic enforcement that may require updates to the agreement,” Eby said, adding it’s “critical” for the B.C. government to access new revenue streams to fix the mess at ICBC, set to lose $1.3 billion this year.

Municipalities are not happy with the move.

“It’s a shock to us,” said Surrey city councillor Bruce Hayne. “Municipalities put that money toward public safety.”

But the B.C. government seems determined to increase traffic-fine revenue, keep more of the money for itself, and use high-tech hardware to get it done.

In addition to the distracted-driving scopes, the government is also rolling out:

• RED-LIGHT CAMERAS: Currently deployed at 140 dangerous intersections, these automated cameras catch drivers running red lights. The government says the cameras are currently being programmed to run 24 hours a day and may be expanded to other locations.
• INTERSECTION SPEED CAMERAS: Red-light cameras will be repurposed to catch speeders, too, though the camera locations have still not been decided.

“Further analysis of crash and speed data will inform these decisions,” said government spokesman Colin Hynes, adding the “speeding threshold” for issuing a ticket is also under discussion.

“We know thousands of vehicles do go through these dangerous sites at more than 30 kilometres an hour over the speed limit each year.”

• SPEED-INTERVAL CAMERAS: The government is currently reviewing a request to install speed-interval cameras on the accident-prone Malahat highway near Victoria. Also know as “point-to-point technology,” the cameras would photograph cars at various locations on the highway, calculate their speed, and issue tickets as required.
• ELECTRONIC TICKETING: The new “e-Ticket” system allows police to quickly scan a driver’s licence, automatically uploading their personal information onto a digitally printed traffic ticket while beaming the details directly to ICBC, who will make darn sure the fine gets paid.

“It’s moving the ticketing of speeders into the 21st century,” said Solicitor General Mike Farnworth.

All of which should produce a windfall of money for the B.C. government, something Liberal justice critic Mike Morris calls “a cash grab” by the ruling NDP.

“They should leave that money with municipalities,” Morris said. “We should make sure this isn’t a cash cow for the provincial government.”

The bottom line for drivers? Don’t speed. Don’t run red lights. And don’t even think of touching that cellphone.

With the cops going high-tech, your wallet will feel the pain if you do.

© 2018 Postmedia Network Inc.

Province ramping up efforts to crack down on bad drivers by issuing more fines

Mike Smyth
The Province

Bad drivers of B.C., beware.

The government — and the cops — are coming to get you. And they’re loading up with more traffic-ticketing technology than British Columbia has ever seen before.

Attorney General David Eby has promised to get tough with rule-breaking road warriors as he attempts to cut down on soaring accident rates and extinguish the “financial dumpster fire” at ICBC.

How will he do it? With new high-tech equipment and gadgets designed to catch highway lawbreakers.

Let’s say you’re one of those drivers who occasionally takes a peek at your cellphone while behind the wheel.

That’s called distracted driving, it’s against the law, and it carries a heavy fine — even if your car is stopped at a traffic light. But why worry if you don’t see any cops around to catch you, right?

Well, say hello to Eby’s newest little friend: The Laser Technology TruSpeed Sxb Scope, with Bluetooth compatibility.

British Columbia just took delivery of two of these American-made gizmos, which cost ICBC a total of $17,000.

In the last few days, the two scopes were given to a B.C. police department (that ICBC declined to identify). Now those cops are testing their ability to catch distracted drivers in the act.

“The units will be tested by police in varying weather and traffic conditions for usability and effectiveness,” said ICBC spokeswoman Joanna Linsangan.

According to its manufacturer, the beauty of the TruSpeed Sxb is its ability to capture high-resolution photographs of a law-breaking driver from a distance of 610 metres.

The Bluetooth connection then allows a police officer to instantly beam the photograph to another cop up the road, who then stops and tickets the driver.

 “That officer will then have the ability to show the image to the distracted driver,” Linsangan said.

The advantage of confronting the driver with incriminating evidence? It greatly reduces the chance of the driver fighting the ticket in court because the jig is clearly up.

But if the driver does dispute the ticket, the TrueSpeed Sxb will deliver the goods in court.

“Unmatched technology, superior performance, courtroom credibility, pinpoint targeting and unbeatable value are what the TruSpeed series bring to your department,” the company boasts on its website.

The B.C. government, meanwhile, just cranked up the fines and penalties for distracted-driving tickets.

Starting in March, anyone caught distracted driving twice within three years could face punitive ICBC premiums and fines of up to $2,000 — a 58 per cent increase over the previous penalty.

Is it any wonder the government now wants a bigger cut of the action?

Last week, the B.C. government officially notified local municipal governments of its intention to renegotiate the sharing of traffic-fine revenue.

Municipalities currently receive 100 per cent of net ticket revenue. But not for long.

“There are some fundamental changes underway related to automated traffic enforcement that may require updates to the agreement,” Eby said, adding it’s “critical” for the B.C. government to access new revenue streams to fix the mess at ICBC, set to lose $1.3 billion this year.

Municipalities are not happy with the move.

“It’s a shock to us,” said Surrey city councillor Bruce Hayne. “Municipalities put that money toward public safety.”

But the B.C. government seems determined to increase traffic-fine revenue, keep more of the money for itself, and use high-tech hardware to get it done.

In addition to the distracted-driving scopes, the government is also rolling out:

• RED-LIGHT CAMERAS: Currently deployed at 140 dangerous intersections, these automated cameras catch drivers running red lights. The government says the cameras are currently being programmed to run 24 hours a day and may be expanded to other locations.
• INTERSECTION SPEED CAMERAS: Red-light cameras will be repurposed to catch speeders, too, though the camera locations have still not been decided.

“Further analysis of crash and speed data will inform these decisions,” said government spokesman Colin Hynes, adding the “speeding threshold” for issuing a ticket is also under discussion.

“We know thousands of vehicles do go through these dangerous sites at more than 30 kilometres an hour over the speed limit each year.”

• SPEED-INTERVAL CAMERAS: The government is currently reviewing a request to install speed-interval cameras on the accident-prone Malahat highway near Victoria. Also know as “point-to-point technology,” the cameras would photograph cars at various locations on the highway, calculate their speed, and issue tickets as required.
• ELECTRONIC TICKETING: The new “e-Ticket” system allows police to quickly scan a driver’s licence, automatically uploading their personal information onto a digitally printed traffic ticket while beaming the details directly to ICBC, who will make darn sure the fine gets paid.

“It’s moving the ticketing of speeders into the 21st century,” said Solicitor General Mike Farnworth.

All of which should produce a windfall of money for the B.C. government, something Liberal justice critic Mike Morris calls “a cash grab” by the ruling NDP.

“They should leave that money with municipalities,” Morris said. “We should make sure this isn’t a cash cow for the provincial government.”

The bottom line for drivers? Don’t speed. Don’t run red lights. And don’t even think of touching that cellphone.

With the cops going high-tech, your wallet will feel the pain if you do.

© 2018 Postmedia Network Inc.

Vancouver lawyer Michael Stephens is working on cryptocurrency regulation

Ian Mulgrew
The Vancouver Sun

Vancouver lawyer Michael Stephens was at a recent convention in the Bahamas socializing in a crowded room when he couldn’t help watching and eavesdropping on two men.

“Their eyes just locked,” he recalled. “One said, ‘I have 10,000 bitcoin I want to sell you,’ and the other guy said, ‘I have X-amount of dollars I can pay you for them.’ They sat down with their laptops and transmitted the bitcoin and cash went the other way.” 

Two years ago, you wouldn’t have found a major bank, big accounting firm or top lawyers like Stephens, a partner at Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP, anywhere near cryptocurrencies.

The reason for the sea change is that digital money has become too profitable and beneficial to leave to the crooked and brazen.

What has until now been the grease of the Dark Net, a black-market barter system, cryptocurrencies are moving into the light, from the Back Street to Wall Street.

Bitcoin, Ethereum, Zcah, Monero, Ripple, there are thousands of them — putatively worth nearly $300 billion in capitalization and generating $500 billion a day in daily volume of unregulated trading.

In Jan 2017, bitcoins were pegged at about $1,000 a token, by December they were reputedly worth more than $25,000 and this week they were going for about $12,000.

Still how do you get them and where do you spend them?

“You can buy them from individuals personally — like I saw — or on unregulated crypto exchanges,” Stephens explained.  “But there are relatively few commercially viable ways you can spend your bitcoin.”

In the eyes of the law, bitcoin transactions are simply bartering. 

“You can’t buy a Big Mac with 10 bitcoin, but maybe that day will come. Though 10 bitcoin is a lot of money right now (about $120,000), that would be an expensive Big Mac.”

Some cryptocurrencies are the equivalent of the trade beads, the coloured glass once used as money within the West African slave trade, others are like Canadian Tire money that you can use it to buy items from that particular retailer.

“Most transactions using Bitcoin or Ether are transactions to acquire other cryptos, other tokens within a crowd sale or an ICO (initial coin offering),” he pointed out. “I’m not a banker, but I’ve heard on the street that these crypto-millionaires are keeping the ICO market afloat because they need to keep rolling their gains into new crypto offerings.”

Most of his clients are creating one of two types of tokens: The first is designed to be used and consumed solely on their platform, to reward certain interfaces with users, grow their user base and increase engagement with their software program. The other is a form of fund-raising like a security or share offering.

 “A simple equity fund-raising, like a junior mining company — send me the money and I’ll send you securities in the form of tokens. That’s really the direction that things are going.”

Regardless of their purpose, cryptocurrencies are all children of the 2008 global financial crisis.

“People lost their jobs, people jumped off tall buildings,” Stephens remembered. “This was a sort of visceral reaction by crypto-enthusiasts to find a better way to transact that essentially did away with the middleman. This is the fundamental principle of a cryptographic token — you have essentially a trustless system that doesn’t require brokers, middlemen, bankers to facilitate transactions for goods and services.”

Bitcoin was the first, created in 2009 according to lore by an apocryphal figure named Satoshi Nakamoto. There had been attempts to produce digital cash before but ultimately success required advances in encryption methods and digital distributed ledger technology, better known as blockchain.

“You literally have a token that has a storage value that is recognized across the user base and every transaction using that token can be tracked for time immemorial and is immutable and is not capable of being re-written, or collateralized or kind of played with,” Stephens explained.

That’s why regulators are paying attention and want to bring the market out of the shadows.

“What we are going to move to in the future is treasury-backed, cryptocurrency that essentially replaces the currency of a jurisdiction,” Stephens insisted. “The Canadian dollar will become a crypto-coin that people will hold in their (electronic) wallet and that will result in instantaneous, trustless transactions without the requirements of Interac, without the requirement for bank fees, without the requirement for banks to hold deposit reserves.”

That’s going to fundamentally change banking, he added.

“There’s nobody who needs to manually do anything. So there is no human error. If one system breaks down, you have 27 other systems still running (the “distributed” ledger in operation) and other nodes that can update that one node when it comes back on line. I think adoption is going to be massive.”

Europe already is experimenting with eliminating notes and coins; China is considering it.

Cryptocurrency technology can enhance transparency (transactions are pseudonymous not anonymous — each is attached to a specific computer address) which aids regulators and taxation authorities.

But the big boon is eliminating the lag time that physical recording and implementation require — a huge saving.

For example, Stephens said settlements on stock exchange trades take two days to process.

“It’s two days of risk they would no longer have to deal with, which means they don’t have to post capital, which means their overhead on trades is lower, they’re saving a ton of money and sadly it means that a lot of admin people will be redundant in these banks and institutions because there is no need for anyone to manually update a silo-ed ledger.”

With such a spectacular upside, Canadian regulators are mulling a proposal to allow cryptocurrencies to legally trade.

“That doesn’t exist anywhere in the world,” Stephens said. “If we were to create a regulated marketplace to clear and settle trades in a cryptographic security — not necessarily an equity — that would bring a ton of new issuers to B.C. and the crypto-marketplace would exponentially grow here. The last chat I had with the (Canadian Securities Exchange) was that they are about nine months away. Detractors, including the TSX Venture Exchange, would have you believe it’s a longer runway. I think it’s probably somewhere between that and 15 months. Which is very cool.” 

© 2018 Postmedia Network Inc.

Derrick Penner
The Vancouver Sun

Biological teleportation sounds like something futuristic, but it’s something bio-engineer Dan Gibson has already done and continues to refine, which he laid out in a presentation Friday for the TED Talks conference in Vancouver.

Teleportation is the term Gibson’s team came up with to distil 15 years’ worth of science that has gone into decoding genomes — the DNA instructions in living organisms — then taking the code to write out fully functioning synthetic versions of those organisms.

It isn’t exactly teleportation, but with it, Gibson said scientists can email the decoded DNA instructions for vaccines or other materials around the globe to be downloaded and printed using biological printers that the company he works for, Synthetic Genomics, makes. Synthetic Genomics is the firm created by human-genome pioneer Craig Ventner.

“Synthetic-cell technologies will power the next Industrial Revolution and transform industries and economies in ways that address sustainability challenges,” Gibson said.

One early and important task the firm has used it for in 2013 was to receive, download and print the DNA instructions for the H7N9 bird-flu virus from a team of scientists in China. That, he said, was used to start manufacturing a vaccine in a matter of days versus the months it would take using traditional methods, and the technology has vast potential to quickly send vaccines to the front lines of a pandemic zone or deliver customized therapeutics to patients almost at their bedside.

Because the technology can print any biological material, it can be used to produce bad things too, so Gibson said his company worked with government on protocols to prevent that before embarking on experiments.

Eventually, Gibson envisions possibilities to use biological printing to manufacture clothes from renewable materials, biofuel produced from bio-engineered microbes, and plastics and biodegradable plastics.

The current version of Synthetic Genomics’ printer is called the Digital to Biological Converter, Gibson said, and their objective is to keep improving and shrinking the devices and making the DNA printing more accurate to the point where they could be used in homes to print out prescriptions.

“The applications go as far as the imagination goes,” Gibson said, but for the moment he is happy with its capabilities to send medicines or customized therapies around the world.

Gibson was one of 25 speakers Friday, the fourth day of TED, who talked about developing new technologies that solve the world’s problems, and he wasn’t the only speaker working on harnessing genetics.

Chemist and synthetic biologist Floyd Romesberg, from the Scripps Research Institute in California, talked about his lab’s work in synthesizing new building blocks of artificial DNA to engineer specific proteins to solve specific human problems.

“Proteins are being used today for an increasingly broad range of different applications from materials to protect soldiers from injury to devices that detect dangerous compounds,” Romesberg said.

However, what excites him the most is the potential to devise protein-based drugs that are difficult to devise now.

TED considers itself a media platform that operates on the sub-theme, “ideas worth spreading.” The TED Talks conference is presented to a live audience of some 1,500 well-heeled patrons, but videos from the conference are eventually made freely available to the public.

© 2018 Postmedia Network Inc.

The case for Canada

other

Amazon has made the unprecedented move to announce its intention to build a second headquarters in North America.  More than 100 cities are lining up for the chance to attract Amazon, and the potential 50,000 jobs and over $5 billion in investment that comes with it.  To be eligible, a city must have a population of more than one million, and be able to offer development sites within 30 miles of the city that are served by mass transit.

A key question that comes up is whether or not Amazon would locate outside of the United States.  Certainly, its growth needs are significant and a large proportion of its staff are technology workers.  As of September 19, 46% of the 16,719 jobs posted on Amazon’s global job board are in technology .  These jobs tend to be more challenging to fill and many technology firms recruit from a worldwide pool of candidates.  For this reason, Canada may offer a more appealing growth market due to a potentially more accommodating immigration regime at present.

As well, Canada offers many key benefits to employees in terms of quality of life and attitudes that may mirror Amazon’s corporate philosophy.  Furthermore, Amazon already has significant operations in Canada and is already familiar with the country from an operational perspective.

Canada can offer six cities that meet the minimum population count dictating candidacy for the HQ2 development.  These are Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa, in descending order of size.

Factors that may be of importance to long-term employee retention and satisfaction are related to quality of life and cost of living.  All the contender cities in Canada rank well above Seattle in terms of quality of life, with Vancouver holding down the top spot with a 5th place global ranking according to Mercer.  In the same survey, Seattle ranked 45th.  The Economist’s cost of living rankings show Toronto and Montreal to be less costly than Seattle, but that Vancouver is more costly, giving Amazon employees less bang for their buck.  

All Canadian cities boast at least one significant research university and a strong high-tech environment, and all can accommodate the growth in jobs anticipated from Amazon, particularly since this growth will be metered out over time.

From a campus location perspective, each city can offer distinct alternatives, some with a number of different choices.  The question really is, “Will Amazon look past sovereign issues and tax breaks to find an alternative where they can grow long-term employees, taking into consideration the many less tangible benefits that a Canadian location can bring?” If Amazon is looking to a new location because it has outgrown Seattle, then Vancouver is an easy move north, with the same time zone and a quick flight or drive city to city.  If the desire is to find a different place where new ideas challenging conventional standards will germinate, then the other cities in Canada can offer an environment where such ideas may develop.

Copyright © 2017 Colliers International Canada

Company tailored a framework specific to the province?s own insurance system

ANDREW McCREDIE
The Vancouver Sun

The simplest way to describe peer-to-peer car sharing company Turo is Airbnb for your car. Just like with your condo or house, the concept is connecting a private vehicle owner with a customer — in Turo-speak, a traveller — using the company’s website or app.

For a price set by the vehicle owner, the traveller rents the vehicle for a pre-determined amount of time.

Founded in San Francisco — where else? — Turo operates in all U.S. states except New York, and in 2016 rolled into three Canadian provinces — Alberta, Ontario and Quebec. There are about 220,000 Canadian Turo members.

In those three provinces, Turo created an insurance model using third-party insurers, allowing private owners a simple solution to renting their vehicle out with coverage. But B.C.’s public insurance system proved problematic, so it took the company a little longer to launch here.

“Seven per cent of our (Canadian) members are residents of B.C., so people here do know the Turo brand, and for the past year and a half they have been asking us when are we coming to B.C.,” said Cedric Mathieu, Turo’s director for Canada.

“We want to make sure that everyone feels safe, and work within the province’s regulatory framework. That’s why we’ve decided to partner with (vehicle owners) who are able to provide their own insurance that covers commercial rental use, so that they can protect the travellers on the road and the cars on the road.”

According to ICBC’s Lindsay Olsen, that is the only way private owners can have coverage renting their vehicles out through Turo.

“If the vehicle is being rented out, it would need to be rated for U-drive (rental use) and this would command a higher premium than other uses such as pleasure, to (and) from work or business use,” she said, adding that the premium would take into account such factors as the territory the vehicle is rated for, the year, make and model of vehicle, and the coverage the owner carries on the policy.

So, in what Mathieu describes as the car-sharing company’s first step into B.C.’s regulatory waters, Turo acts merely as a platform that connects what in essence are small rental car companies — the company refers to them as car rental entrepreneurs — with individuals.

He reports such entrepreneurs are already signed up to rent out vehicles in B.C., including a Victoria-based hotel.

“That’s a first anywhere in the world for Turo, having a hotel participate on the platform,” he said.

“This is a hotel company that saw an opportunity, bought a few cars, got the right insurance coverage and are making the cars available — an interesting model.”

A quick scan of the Turo website Tuesday for vehicles available in Vancouver turned up plenty, ranging from a 2016 Mercedes-Benz CLA ($170 per day) to a 2015 Fiat 500L ($98) and a 2017 Mazda 3 ($42).

So what are Turo’s expectations in B.C.?

“We think B.C. is a very exciting market,” Mathieu said. “It’s one of the top travel destinations in Canada, if not the world. There’s a great outdoor culture, which resonates with us as Turo is about adventure and putting fun back into the car rental business.”

In addition, he cited the high penetration of car sharing, particularly in Metro Vancouver.

“So we have high expectations,” he said.

“The first thing we need to do is grow the supplier base.”

The next step, Mathieu said, is in the next few months to “find a way for individual private car owners in B.C. to be able to list a car on Turo at no extra (insurance) cost.”

© 2017 Postmedia Network Inc.

Burnaby?s Fortinet bulking up in face of cyber threats

Derrick Penner
The Province

International cybersecurity firm Fortinet is on the hunt to hire as many as 1,000 tech experts to fill its newly expanded data hub in Burnaby and help it keep on top of a rapidly expanding “threat landscape,” as security strategist Derek Manky puts it.

From ordinary “phishing” to sophisticated malware and ransomware attacks such as WannaCry, Manky estimates Fortinet deals with “north of one million” new cyber threats every day.

And the number of Internet-connected devices in need of protection — from intelligent appliances and cars to smartphones — is always growing.

“(Ransomware) is a threat that has been on our radar for some time, but it’s getting nastier as time moves on,” Manky said. “They’re becoming more persistent and more damaging.”

To keep up with combating them, Fortinet announced this week the completion of a major expansion at its Burnaby campus, the now California-headquartered firm’s key research and development facility, taking over a second building in its suburban office park off Still Creek Drive.

That increases its footprint to about 282,000 square feet from the 87,000 square feet that Fortinet’s existing workforce of about 700 operates from now.

Manky said the company will now be looking to recruit up to 1,000 people “sooner rather than later” to fill the space, although he acknowledged that the effort might take up to five years considering the firm hires about 50 to 60 new grads per year to fill its growing needs.

“We would like to get more, as you can see with the expansion,” Manky said. “One thousand is a big number.”

Fortinet isn’t the only local tech firm on a hiring binge. Its announcement follows news that online retail giant and data-services firm Amazon is advertising for more than 350 tech positions in Vancouver, with other companies looking to recruit new talent as well.

Besides threat-intelligence experts and threat analysts, Manky said the company needs web developers, user-interface designers and a plethora of other positions to make its system work.

For some positions, such as the developers and programmers, it is very difficult to recruit locally because these are the same jobs everyone is looking to fill, Manky said.

There is less competition locally for the specific security experts, but Manky said for more experienced personnel, the competition is getting tighter at the global level considering the growing need.

Fortinet, which has about 5,000 employees around the world, is working to help close its skills gaps by setting up Fortinet Acadamies in 65 countries to collaborate with universities and cultivate the talent they need.

Manky said in Canada, the company is working with four universities, and cultivating relationships with 19 more, and he himself sits on a program advisory committee at the B.C. Institute of Technology, his alma mater.

“There is a huge gap in cybersecurity skills right now,” Manky said. “If you look at (the industry) it’s expected to grow (by) two million positions worldwide by 2019 that are unfilled. There is simply a lot of demand.”

© 2017 Postmedia Network Inc.

Derrick Penner
The Province

International cybersecurity firm Fortinet is on the hunt to hire as many as 1,000 tech experts to fill its newly expanded data hub in Burnaby and help it keep on top of a rapidly expanding “threat landscape,” as security strategist Derek Manky puts it.

From ordinary “phishing” to sophisticated malware and ransomware attacks such as WannaCry, Manky estimates Fortinet deals with “north of one million” new cyber threats every day.

And the number of internet-connected devices in need of protection — from intelligent appliances and cars to smartphones — is always growing.

“(Ransomware) is a threat that has been on our radar for some time, but it’s getting nastier as time moves on,” Manky said. “They’re becoming more persistent and more damaging.”

To keep up with combating them, Fortinet announced last week the completion of a major expansion at its Burnaby campus, the now California-headquartered firm’s key research and development facility, taking over a second building in its suburban office park off Still Creek Drive.

That increases its footprint to about 282,000 square feet from the 87,000 square feet that Fortinet’s existing workforce of about 700 employees operates from now.

Manky said the company will now be looking to recruit up to 1,000 people “sooner rather than later” to fill the space, although he acknowledged the effort might take up to five years considering the firm hires about 50 to 60 new grads per year to fill its growing needs.

“We would like to get more, as you can see with the expansion,” Manky said. “One thousand is a big number.”

Fortinet isn’t the only local tech firm on a hiring binge. Its announcement follows news that online retail giant and data-services firm Amazon is advertising for more than 350 tech positions in Vancouver with other companies looking to recruit new talent as well.

Besides threat-intelligence experts and threat analysts, Manky said the company needs web developers, user-interface designers and a plethora of other positions to make its system work.

For some positions, such as developers and programmers, it is difficult to recruit locally because these are the same jobs everyone is looking to fill, Manky said.

There is less competition locally for the specific security experts, but Manky said for more experienced personnel, the competition is getting tighter at the global level considering the growing need.

Fortinet, which has about 5,000 employees around the world, is working to help close its skills gaps by setting up Fortinet Acadamies in 65 countries to collaborate with universities and cultivate the talent they need.

Manky said in Canada, the company is working with four universities and cultivating relationships with 19 more and he himself sits on a program advisory committee at the B.C. Institute of Technology, his alma mater.

“There is a huge gap in cybersecurity skills right now,” Manky said. “If you look at (the industry), it’s expected to grow (by) two million positions worldwide by 2019 that are unfilled. There is simply a lot of demand.”

© 2017 Postmedia Network Inc

The giants of technology keep inventing ways to control our lives. Franklin Foer fears we?ll hit a point where we won?t be able to recover the individuality that?s been taken away.

The Vancouver Sun

Until recently, it was easy to define our most widely known corporations. Any third-grader could describe their essence. Exxon sells oil; McDonald’s makes hamburgers; Walmart is a place to buy stuff. This is no longer so.

Today’s ascendant monopolies aspire to encompass all of existence. Google derives from googol, a number (1 followed by 100 zeros) that mathematicians use as shorthand for unimaginably large quantities. Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google with the mission of organizing all knowledge, but that proved too narrow. They now aim to build driverless cars, manufacture phones and conquer death. Amazon, which once called itself “the everything store,” now produces television shows, owns Whole Foods and powers the cloud. The architect of this firm, Jeff Bezos, even owns the Washington Post.

Along with Facebook, Microsoft and Apple, these companies are in a race to become our “personal assistant.” They want to wake us in the morning, have their artificial intelligence software guide us through our days and never quite leave our sides. They aspire to become the repository for precious and private items, our calendars and contacts, our photos and documents. They intend for us to turn unthinkingly to them for information and entertainment while they catalogue our intentions and aversions. Google Glass and the Apple Watch prefigure the day when these companies implant their artificial intelligence in our bodies. Brin has mused, “Perhaps in the future, we can attach a little version of Google that you just plug into your brain.”

More than any previous coterie of corporations, the tech monopolies aspire to mould humanity into their desired image of it. They think they have the opportunity to complete the long merger between man and machine — to redirect the trajectory of human evolution. How do I know this? In annual addresses and town hall meetings, the Founding Fathers of these companies often make big, bold pronouncements about human nature — a view that they intend for the rest of us to adhere to. Page thinks the human body amounts to a basic piece of code. “Your program algorithms aren’t that complicated,” he says. And if humans function like computers, why not hasten the day we become fully cyborg? To take another grand theory, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has exclaimed his desire to liberate humanity from phoniness, to end the dishonesty of secrets.

“The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly,” he has said. “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”

Of course, that’s both an expression of idealism and an elaborate justification for Facebook’s business model.

There’s an oft-used shorthand for the technologist’s view of the world. It is assumed that libertarianism dominates Silicon Valley, and that isn’t wholly wrong. High-profile devotees of Ayn Rand can be found there. But if you listen hard to the titans of tech, it’s clear that their world view is something much closer to the opposite of a libertarian’s veneration of the heroic, solitary individual. The big tech companies think we’re fundamentally social beings, born to collective existence. They invest their faith in the network, the wisdom of crowds, collaboration. They harbour a deep desire for the atomistic world to be made whole. (“Facebook stands for bringing us closer together and building a global community,” Zuckerberg wrote in one of his many manifestos.) By stitching the world together, they can cure its ills.

Rhetorically, the tech companies gesture toward individuality — to the empowerment of the “user” — but their world view rolls over it. Even the ubiquitous invocation of users is telling, a passive, bureaucratic description of us.

The big tech companies (the Europeans have lumped them together as GAFA: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) are shredding the principles that protect individuality. Their devices and sites have collapsed privacy; they disrespect the value of authorship, with their hostility toward intellectual property.

In the realm of economics, they justify monopoly by suggesting that competition merely distracts from the important problems like erasing language barriers and building artificial brains. Companies should “transcend the daily brute struggle for survival,” as Facebook investor Peter Theil has put it.

When it comes to the most central tenet of individualism — free will — the tech companies have a different way. They hope to automate the choices, both large and small, we make as we float through the day. It’s their algorithms that suggest the news we read, the goods we buy, the paths we travel, the friends we invite into our circles.

It’s hard not to marvel at these companies and their inventions, which often make life infinitely easier. But we’ve spent too long marvelling. The time has arrived to consider the consequences of these monopolies, to reassert our role in determining the human path. Once we cross certain thresholds — once we remake institutions such as media and publishing, once we abandon privacy — there’s no turning back, no restoring our lost individuality.

Over the generations, we’ve been through revolutions like this before. Many years ago, we delighted in the wonders of TV dinners and the other newfangled foods that suddenly filled our kitchens: slices of cheese encased in plastic, oozing pizzas that emerged from a crust of ice, bags of crunchy tater tots. In the history of man, these seemed like breakthrough innovations. Timeconsuming tasks — shopping for ingredients, tediously preparing a recipe and tackling a trail of pots and pans — were suddenly and miraculously consigned to history.

The revolution in cuisine wasn’t just enthralling. It was transformational. New products embedded themselves deeply in everyday life, so much so that it took decades for us to understand the price we paid for their convenience, efficiency and abundance. Processed foods were feats of engineering, all right — but they were engineered to make us fat. Their delectable taste required massive quantities of sodium and sizable stockpiles of sugar, which happened to reset our palates and made it harder to sate hunger. It took vast quantities of meat and corn to fabricate these dishes, and a spike in demand remade American agriculture at a terrible environmental cost. A whole new system of industrial farming emerged, with penny-conscious conglomerates cramming chickens into feces-covered pens and stuffing them full of antibiotics. By the time we came to understand the consequences of our revised patterns of consumption, the damage had been done to our waistlines, longevity, souls and planet.

Something like the midcentury food revolution is now reordering the production and consumption of knowledge. Our intellectual habits are being scrambled by the dominant firms. Giant tech companies have become the most powerful gatekeepers the world has ever known. Google helps us sort the internet, by providing a sense of hierarchy to information; Facebook uses its algorithms and its intricate understanding of our social circles to filter the news we encounter; Amazon bestrides book publishing with its overwhelming hold on that market.

Such dominance endows these companies with the ability to remake the markets they control. As with the food giants, the big tech companies have given rise to a new science that aims to construct products that pander to their consumers. Unlike the market research and television ratings of the past, the tech companies have a bottomless collection of data, acquired as they track our travels across the Web, storing every shard about our habits in the hope that they may prove useful. They have compiled an intimate portrait of the psyche of each user — a portrait that they hope to exploit to seduce us into a compulsive spree of binge clicking and watching. And it works: On average, each Facebook user spends one-sixteenth of their day on the site.

In the realm of knowledge, monopoly and conformism are inseparable perils. The danger is that these firms will inadvertently use their dominance to squash diversity of opinion and taste. Concentration is followed by homogenization. As news media outlets have come to depend heavily on Facebook and Google for traffic — and therefore revenue — they have rushed to produce editorials that will flourish on those platforms. This leads to a duplication of the news like never before, with scores of sites across the internet piling onto the same daily outrage. It’s why a picture of a mysteriously coloured dress generated endless articles, why seemingly every site recaps “Game of Thrones.” Each contribution to the genre adds little, except clicks. Old media had a pack mentality, too, but the internet promised something much different. And the prevalence of so much data makes the temptation to pander even greater.

This is true of politics. Our era is defined by polarization, warring ideological gangs that yield no ground. Division, however, isn’t the root cause of our unworkable system. There are many causes, but a primary problem is conformism. Facebook has nurtured two hive minds, each residing in an informational ecosystem that yields head-nodding agreement and penalizes dissenting views. This is the phenomenon that the entrepreneur and author Eli Pariser famously termed the “Filter Bubble” — how Facebook mines our data to keep giving us the news and information we crave, creating a feedback loop that pushes us deeper and deeper into our own amen corners.

As the 2016 presidential election so graphically illustrated, a hive mind is an intellectually incapacitated one, with diminishing ability to tell fact from fiction, with an unshakable bias toward party line. The Russians understood this, which is why they invested so successfully in spreading dubious agitprop via Facebook. And it’s why a raft of companies sprouted — Occupy Democrats, the Angry Patriot, Being Liberal — to get rich off the Filter Bubble and to exploit our susceptibility to the lowest-quality news, if you can call it that.

Facebook represents a dangerous deviation in media history. Once upon a time, elites proudly viewed themselves as gatekeepers. They could be sycophantic to power and snobbish, but they also felt duty-bound to elevate the standards of society and readers. Executives of Silicon Valley regard gatekeeping as the stodgy enemy of innovation — they see themselves as more neutral, scientific and responsive to the market than the elites they replaced — a perspective that obscures their own power and responsibilities. So instead of shaping public opinion, they exploit the public’s worst tendencies, its tribalism and paranoia.

During this century, we largely have treated Silicon Valley as a force beyond our control. A broad consensus held that lead-footed government could never keep pace with the dynamism of technology. By the time government acted against a tech monopoly, a kid in a garage would have already concocted some innovation to upend the market. Or, as Google’s Eric Schmidt, put it, “Competition is one click away.” A nostrum that suggested that the very structure of the internet defied our historic concern for monopoly.

As individuals, we have similarly accepted the omnipresence of the big tech companies as a fait accompli. We’ve enjoyed their free products and next-day delivery with only a nagging sense that we may be surrendering something important. Such blitheness can no longer be sustained. Privacy won’t survive the present trajectory of technology — and with the sense of being perpetually watched, humans will behave more cautiously, less subversively. Our ideas about the competitive marketplace are at risk. With a decreasing prospect of toppling the giants, entrepreneurs won’t bother to risk starting new firms, a primary source of jobs and innovation. And the proliferation of falsehoods and conspiracies through social media, the dissipation of our common basis for fact, is creating conditions ripe for authoritarianism. Over time, the long merger of man and machine has worked out pretty well for man. But we’re drifting into a new era, when that merger threatens the individual. We’re drifting toward monopoly, conformism, their machines. Perhaps it’s time we steer our course.

© 2017 Postmedia Network Inc.