Intel acquires Vancouver-born Basis, BlackBerry’s new advertising model

This week we welcome Intel to the wearable tech space. The chip-maker has acquired Vancouver-born Basis (recently relocated to San Francisco) for upwards of $100 million according to unnamed sources. Basis is the creator of a wristband health monitor that works with an online dashboard to track your daily routine.

Meanwhile, in Calgary, Slyce acquired $10.5 million of its own in VC funding for its visual product search application, which places retailers’ offerings in front of mobile consumers. And BlackBerry is back in the news this week with tests of a targeted social ad offering. The smartphone maker is testing an advertising model in its BBM Channels that would allow advertisers to select specific market segments to get eyes on their digital ads.

Back in Toronto, Vantage Analytics is announcing it’s now monitoring 600 different Shopify stores with its easy-on-the-eyes analytics dashboards. In numbers, they’ve analyzed over 800,000 transactions worth more than $65 million.

In Canadian digital signage news, Buffalo Wild Wings will be rolling out digital tablets and displays to a BBQ-sauced tabletop near you. The digital screens will not only take food and drink orders, but let us play games, listen to our incessant requests for a better playlist, and allow us to pay our bills. The interactive  displays will be in all North American Wild Wings locations by the end of 2015.

If you’re looking for UX inspiration, this article is here to remind you to keep it clean and clear. If that sounds too complex, check out this 17-year-old Indian student’s Chrome plugin that aims to improve UX for Color Blind Internet users. The program, called ReColor, adjusts image output for the best experience by the user and has already passed its fundraising goal on Indiegogo.

And, finally, in rapid-fire startup news, Toronto’s Extreme Startups accelerator is announcing its fifth cohort this week. Startups include Dub, a professional networking app; Fora, a marketplace for accredited courses for young professionals in Africa; Hurrier, an on-demand delivery app; Preo, an app for ordering at bars and restaurants; and Innohub Uplette, which delivers context-aware mobile landing pages to devices that can be tailored and optimized in real-time.