Three Maritime tech startups worth watching and a first in Canadian startup history

Every Monday, CommerceLab brings you a roundup of all the gamification, user experience and interactive display news that’s fit to print. (Or the stuff we liked best, anyway.)

First, in case you missed it, the tech news that made headlines all last week: Ottawa-based startup Shopify reached a billion-dollar valuation, the first Internet startup in Canada to achieve that since the dot-com crash almost 15 years ago.

And it’s not the only good startup news out of Canada this week, either. The Business Development Bank of Canada announced an investment of $150,000 in convertible notes to three tech startups based in Fredericton and Halifax, all of which were started at Atlantic Canadian universities and accelerators.

In other Canadian tech news, Twitter Canada head Kirstine Stewart has signed a deal with Random House to publish her first book in 2015. Tentatively titled Our Turn, the book will deal with women in leadership roles—especially in new media and technology companies.

For all those who salivated over the release of Occulus Rift a year ago, there’s about to be a new player in the world of 3D goggles. Apple just won a patent this week to make some wearable technology that, at first glance, seems similar to Google’s glass with some extra features like corrective vision (so glasses wearers can wear them more comfortably) and the ability to potentially be hooked up to an iOS device.

And finally, an interesting story over on Medium about what Lego can teach us about innovation. Yeah, you read that right.