It’s a job seekers market in Greater Victoria for technology workers. Take a quick stroll around 15 of the city’s top tech firms and you will find 54 openings.

Priologic – Eight vacancies

Contech – One vacancy

Seeker Solutions – Three vacancies

Terapeak – Four vacancies

Starfish Medical – Two vacancies

AbeBooks – Eight vacancies

Neverblue – Four vacancies

Atomic Crayon – One vacancy

ShipConstructor – One vacancy

Revenue Wire – Three vacancies

GameHouse Canada – Nine vacancies

Yupiq – Two vacancies

SendtoNews – Two vacancies

Tutela Technologies – One vacancy

Kano / Apps – Five vacancies

And there’s more at the University of Victoria.

It was great to hear Victoria’s tech community being acclaimed on CBC radio this morning. On The Island interviewed VIATeC’s Dan Gunn about how the association’s members raised more than $80,000 for the Mustard Seed Food Bank.

Since its creation 10 years ago, the ‘Food Bank Challenge’ has raised $1.5 million for  Mustard Seed and more than 35 companies were involved this year.

The most chilling fundraising venture had to be the ‘Harbour Hop’ – the simple but brave act of jumping into the harbour downtown in late November – which was led by the folks from Contech.

During the SuperComputing 2012 (SC12) conference earlier this month, an international team of physicists, computer scientists, and network engineers from the University of Victoria, the California Institute for Technology, the University of Michigan and Vanderbilt’s Brookhaven National Lab broke their own record for data transfer using the latest generation of wide area network circuits. Apparently, this is just the start, according to this report, 1,000 Mbps speeds will be possible in the next 12 months.

Overall, the transfer rate achieved by the team hit 339 Mbps. For the sake of comparison, a 3G cellphone can usually achieve data transfer rates of around 18 Mbps while brand new super-exciting 4G cellphones can hit 30-35 Mbps in real-world scenarios.

Two of Victoria’s web development firms have announced they will merge. Caorda Web Solutions is getting together with Sage Internet Solutions to create an organisation of more than 800 clients and 17 staff members.

The services offered now include web design and strategy, software development for web, mobile and Windows platforms, and hosting.

In the new organization, services for small business web design, ecommerce, online marketing and social media will be delivered under the division, Sage Web Strategy + Design, while Caorda Web Solutions will focus on application development and hosting solutions.

The good news is zero job losses and the combined team will be located at Suite 100-3550 Saanich Road.

It’s so simple – why didn’t someone do this before. Saanich’s council and committee meetings are to be streamed live online and archived as podcasts, according to this report.

What a simple way of making local politics more accessible. “This will give residents more opportunity to have contact with the people they elect,” said Councillor Vic Derman.

I find the webcam displaying the line-ups at the Saanich garden waste dump on McKenzie Avenue very useful in my decision on whether I make the trip or not.

The first annual general meeting of the Vancouver Island Atlassian User Group is taking place on Monday 5 November at The Moon under Water pub on Bay Street. The meeting runs from 6pm to 8pm.

The Group offers a platform for folks who use Atlassian software. Come along and network, exchange ideas and share some knowledge (and have a beer too).

Atlassian is best known for its Confluence and Jira products. There must be many Atlassian users on this Island.

Kixeye, a San Francisco-based gaming company, is opening a 50-person development centre in Victoria’s downtown core, according to this news story.

According to Clayton Stark, the firm has already received “many, many CVs” and aims to open shop in January. Stark is best known as the creator of Flock, a web browser that integrates social media. Flock was bought by gaming giant Zynga, famous for making Farmville, in 2011.

Microsoft already has a gaming studio in Victoria.

I’m going to be speaking at a VIATEC event next week called ‘The Story of You.’ It’s a PR workshop designed for technology start-ups looking to win positive media coverage.

I will be presenting along with Robyn Quinn, from Big Bang Communications and Priologic Software, and outlining what is needed for a basic PR tool kit and sharing strategies to win positive media coverage in the technology sector.  Essentially, we’ll be teaching people how to tell stories about their business.

The event takes place on October 25 between 2pm and 3:30pm in the VIATEC boardroom. It’s free for VIATEC members and you can email Robyn, for more details or to reserve a spot, on robynquinn@shaw.ca.

Find VIATeC on the 2nd floor, 2659 Douglas St. Victoria, BC V8T 5M2.

So I’m the PR person at AbeBooks.com and have been either a PR person or journalist since 1990. Aside from my work at AbeBooks.com, my technology PR experience includes promoting British Telecom and BT Cellnet in the UK. I have also worked in PR for the National Football League and been at AbeBooks since 2005. I hope to see you there.

Marine researchers in Victoria received a financial boost earlier this month as federal and provincial governments put $41.7 million in funding towards Ocean Networks Canada.

Ocean Networks Canada is a University of Victoria project that uses sensor technologies to gather data and images from the sea floor and then streams it around the world.

The program includes a tsunami early-warning system, instruments to improve marine safety, and the first underwater instrument platform in the Arctic.

The Canada Foundation for Innovation’s major science initiatives provided $32.8 million and the Ministry of Advanced Education added $8.9 million.

There’s an interesting post on the Techvibes blog about Jesse Learmonth, founder of Bet Smart Media, who runs a group on Meetup.com targeting Victoria’s small technology entrepreneurs and tech businesses with ambitions to expand.

“I wanted to create something that gives us a chance to get together without any agenda or membership fees,” explains Learmonth. “A way to meet people like myself.”

A meeting last month was attended by around 85 people. The group has been going for 12 months and is going from strength to strength. Victoria is a town full of tech startups so this makes sense. The group can be found on Meetup.com under Technology Startups in Victoria. They meet once a month.