TORONTO — An Alphabet company's vision for a "smart city" project in Toronto includes buildings made of timber that are five times the current limit, potentially steering the company into the challenges of timber innovation in Canada.

Sidewalk Labs' proposal includes developing 30-plus story buildings made of timber, close to Toronto's central business district, as part of their commitment to sustainability.

MELBOURNE: India's IT major Wipro (NSE -0.94 %) Ltd is all set to expand its presence in Australia's Victoria state by establishing a 1.5 million dollar state-of-the-art Cyber Defence Centre.

The new centre in South Melbourne will offer protection from cyber-attacks to the organisations and will generate 100 new tech jobs for locals.

DUBLIN, Ohio (WCMH) — The city of Dublin is working with the Daimler Group on a proposed 9.3-acre mixed-use development at Frantz and Rings.

Plans call for The Corners to include 47,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space, 24,000 square feet of build-to-suit office space and a 4-acre park.

Two software programs designed and written by Chung Yuan Christian University students to combat the spread of fake news have won InnoServe Awards.

Students in the department of information management developed the program as a senior project, professor Chin Chih-yu (金志聿) said.

One project titled “Keyboard Moderator” was a collaboration between students and renowned big data companies, and implemented on Professional Technology Temple (PTT), the largest electronic bulletin board system in Taiwan, Chin said.

Tony Elzayat remembers when he, his spouse and friends tried to get a cab one evening in downtown Fredericton last November but all their phone calls went unanswered.

This frustration led Elzayat to start a new ride-sharing service, Easy Services, that launches today in the Fredericton and Oromocto areas.

“We had to walk home in minus 20 degrees, and that was the fire that started this,” Elzayat said.

Estonian entrepreneur Mari Martin, founder of Tallinn Dolls, a playful designer brand, wants to speed up the fashion industry, bringing clothes from concept to shelves in the shortest time ever – her new startup, FashLab, has plans to disrupt the way global fashion works; she sat down with Estonian World to talk about her experience and how she sees the future of fashion.

The term “depeche mode” or “fast fashion” has been around for years – long before the British band of the same name popularised it, but there is a growing number of people who believe the fashion industry does not act fast enough. Mari Martin, an Estonian entrepreneur and experienced fashion designer, sees this as a problem, and has created a new startup, FashLab, to push the business of making and selling clothing into the 21st century. Fashion tech is also one of the focuses of Enterprise Estonia, the Estonian government’s enterprise agency, as it is an example of an industry that could benefit from increased digitalisation.

TALLINN - According to fresh statistics available from the Tax and Customs Board, 65 percent of the foreign students of the School of Information Technologies of the Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) have found work in their field in Estonia.

"It is pleasing to acknowledge that the graduates of all study programs of TalTech's School of Information Technologies, regardless of their origin, are finding work easily in Estonia. This gives us assurance that our programs meet the requirements of the labor market," Gert Jervan, dean of TalTech's School of Information Technologies, said.

EXPERT OBSERVER (TERRY RYDER)

I believe real estate markets are driven more by local factors than national ones. While many commentators are placing great significance on interest rate reductions as a prime driver of real estate markets, I’m much more interested in what’s going on the coalface of local economies. 

And, in those terms, I put a high rating on the Sunshine Coast as a market that investors of all kinds should be considering. I regard the Sunshine Coast as the strongest market in Queensland at the moment and indeed one of the strongest in Australia.

When someone mentions Hamilton, one of their first thoughts is the Steel City. There's no question that the success of companies like Stelco and Dofasco helped define Hamilton as a steel town for more than a century. Jobs in manufacturing were abundant, and in many cases generational, as the city heavily relied on steel and manufacturing as its main source of employment.

Over the past 20 years however, we've seen a tremendous shift in Hamilton's economy. In fact, the Conference Board of Canada now ranks Hamilton's economy as the most diversified economy in the nation. This means that as a city, Hamilton's economic growth is coming from a broad spectrum of key industry sectors. Steve Jobs once said, "try to do a very few things well," so in addition to the advanced manufacturing we continue to be known for, the City of Hamilton concentrates on a few key sectors to leverage the resources we have to grow Hamilton's economy.

Finnish company Uros and Thundercomm Technology, a provider of smart device hardware and software, have announced that they will open a joint innovation centre at Uros headquarters in Oulu. It will use products and services from Qualcomm Technologies to develop IoT and 5G systems for smart cities, wearables, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, drones, industrial IoT, financial technology and automotive applications.