Akoha – $1.9million for gaming that does good

Akoha is going public today with details on their financing to date. The $1.9million in investment, which has come in over two rounds, will go towards expanding the development of their game which is targeted for a Fall 2008 release.

The investment comes from a slew of angel investors, including David Chamandy, John Bromley, Jean-Sebastien Cournoyer, Ron Dembo, Jake Eberts, Alan Gershenfeld, John Meeks, Reg Weiser, Jonathan Wener, Robert Montgomery, Chris Emergui and Montreal Start Up.

Details on what Akoha is are sparse, but here is what we have been able to pick up: Akoha is producing a game which is focused on creating positive spin off from the game play.

Akoha is developing a new type of social game inspired by elements of social entrepreneurship, massively multiplayer and reality-based games.

CEO Austin Hill recently posted a video to the Akoha blog that paints a broad picture of their goals.

communitynorth.ca – Welcome to the family

Our CEO and mascot, David Crow, is going live today with CommunityNorth.ca, the latest addition to our little family of blogs alongside Wirelessnorth. David will be profiling what is working, and what isn’t, in Canada’s communities both online and off.

CommunityNorth is a project to profile Canadian communities and the best examples of community marketing, social capital, building meaningful relationships and evangelism practices.

File PhotoFor all of the people out there who call themselves “Community Marketers”, “Social Media Consultants” and everything else, David is the one guy who has really done it in Canada. There simply aren’t any other people who have built sustainable online/offline hybrid communities the way he has managed to do.

So, here is your chance to learn from the best. I know I took notes from David for years and I owe him credit for equipping me to get StartupNorth off the ground.

Oh, and apologies for how ugly all these blogs are. We are working on that.

Weekend Reading – April 26, 2008

We have an exciting week ahead! LoyaltyMatch, Brainpark, Natural Semantic Modules, SocialDeck, and AskKinjo will be pitching at StartupCamp Toronto. And the amazing whip-cracking Leila Boujnane, CEO of Idee, will be kicking off the night. If that wasn’t enough, another 20 startups will be pitching at CIX. We look forward to catching up with everyone at the events. If you couldn’t get a ticket, don’t despair, join us at the SummerCamp Afterparty Tuesday night from 10pm – 3am at Circa (126 John Street).

How to avoid the pitfalls that are happening to the .coms right now… just ask Ali Asaria of Well.ca.

Check out this nifty Brainpark video.

More than AAA Beef coming out of Alberta… iNovia Capital has set up shop in Edmonton with local partners.

How did we miss this one right in our own backyard? Toronto based Adcentricity raised $3M from Propulsion Ventures.

Idee’s image search engine TinEye, in private beta, is now officially searching 487,000,000 images. It is scary cool.

Gigpark Founder Pema Hegan’s notes from the Rick Segal Roadshow.

Open (Irish) Coffee 2.0… StartupDrinks Montreal next Wednesday, April 30.

Many thanks to the StartupCamp Toronto Sponsors:

Arshad Merali | Daniel Shapiro, Microsoft | Mike Middleton & Frances Fast, Q1 Capital Partners | John MacRitchie, OCE | Jacob Senderski, Benefact Consulting