Look Ma! No Wires!

Tops on our list this week is Sierra Wireless (TSE - SW) which jumped an incredible 72.3%. This is not simply a little penny stock that jumped from 60 cents to a dollar. This is an established company that moved up from $16.25 to $28.00. What's driving the price? The company announced Wednesday that it had signed a $30 million contract to build modems for California-based Metricom Inc., a company controlled by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

Microsoft may be getting bad press in the wake of the ruling in its anti-trust case, and its stock may be suffering a bit as a result, but Microsoft is still pure gold to companies that it and its principals do business with.

Metricom provides wireless Internet access to portable computer users and is launching a 128 kilobit per second wireless data transfer system in 46 U.S. cities. Sierra Wireless, as a supplier, will reap tremendous benefits.

Wireless is so hot, in fact, that two of the five stocks we added to our Canadian Internet Stock Average this week are involved in wireless communications. They are Toronto's Diversinet (CDN - DVNT, NASDAQ - DVNT) and Calgary's Wi-LAN (TSE - WIN, ASE - WIN).

Second on our list of big gainers is Alberta's Net Shepherd (ASE - WEB). Their slogan is, "Making the Net work for business" and that's what they do. They help businesses implement Internet solutions to enhance their businesses through such proprietary software as their Internet Community Management System.

Much of their work is connected with corporate research and they've enhanced that effort with the addition of former Dun & Bradstreet partner David Herman as head of their business intelligence division. Herman developed D&B's eccelerate.com website. Some analysts have estimated the online business intelligence market to be worth a potential $11 billion.

The company also announced this week that it has been invited to participate in the international Baanworld 99 Exposition in Vienna, Austria later this month. The combination of a prominent executive joining the firm and international exposure for its products moved the stock up 44.1% for the week.

Four other companies on our list made gains of over 30% this week. USA Video (ASE - US, OTCBB - USVO), a supplier of video on demand services using its Wavelet compression technology as well as the MPEG format, is based in Mystic, Connecticut with offices in Vancouver. It will webcast the L.A. Music Awards on Nov. 25th and recently signed a contract to webcast international polo matches. It's recovered from double digit losses the week before.

MedEra Life Science (VSE - MER), after two consecutive weeks of double digit drops, gained back some of its losses this week. The developer of the medbroadcast.com website, which has been favorably compared to the popular Dr. Koop website, has recently been promoted by stock analyst Bill Ridley of the Inner Circle newsletter.

Corel Corporation (TSE - COR) took off on the Microsoft anti-trust verdict as investors saw a rosy future for Corel's Linux efforts.

And Nettron Inc. (ASE - NTT), the recently renamed AdventurX.com which operates as Bikestar, gained 30% this week after gaining 29% the week before. Frankly, I'm mystified. The company has issued no news recently other than its announcement of name change. Its website is completely out of date with the most recent news release dating back to February. And while the company claims to be the "Hertz" of bicycle rentals (and it may well be), its naming of itself as a dot-com is rather dubious, as it does not really seem to be an Internet company at all.

Travelbyus.com (TSE - TBU) and Infowave (TSE - IW, VSE - IW) are into their second consecutive week of major gains and on the negative side, Dion Entertainment (TSE - DIO) is in its second week of a serious slump that has pushed its share price below a dollar.