Montreal Tech Watch

StandoutJobs has raised 1.5 million $ of venture capital from Garage Canada.

Congrats then to Benjamin Yoskovitz, Fred Ngo, and Austin Hill.

Note: Standoutjobs shows video for job classifieds. The startup’s CEO is Benjamin Yoskovitz.

TechnoMontreal points out a study made by TechnoCompetences about the video games industry, showing that jobs rose +26% between 2005 and 2007. (PDF report here – in french) The study reports that the Quebec video games industry has 4500 jobs in 2007, if you also count companies specialized in quality assurance and service software companies.

TechnoCompétences also predicts a 28% raise for 2007, with a 44% raise for Quebec city.

I have made a quick (read: google) study of the state of the video games companies and found out these figures:

Note: x is for undisclosed/unknown.

Those numbers need to be completed, but they do show us that the Quebec province is now a technopole for video games. I have read previous articles where representatives said they loved the creativity and the artistic profiles they can find in Montreal and in Québec.

For me, this also shows that this industry is now mature. A company like Ubisoft Montreal with a head count of 2700 can’t be counted anymore as one new media company that needs support for growth, and it may be time to reconsider the 37.5% funding of wages in the multimedia industry by the provincial government. And instead give some of it to startups.

TagTélé launched yesterday. I don’t know if anybody knew about it – for me, it came out of nowhere. Little is known about tagtélé; I am not even sure if it is based in Montreal.

I have named it yet another video portal because it is presented as the place to find specific Quebec videos – just like tontuyau.com, tonclip.com, or radioactif.tv want to be. Except that you can’t really find Quebec videos on the website. The video resolution and the player is so-so, and you can’t embed videos to an external website either.

Oh well. It looks like that the barrier of entry for making video hubs is near 0. Does someone know if there is now an open source framework to get a video portal running?

A networking event will be held by Réseau Interlogiq this Wednesday between entrepreneurs and investors (via Daniel Drouet, from montrealstartu)

Reminder: you can see upcoming events with the calendar (you can use google calendar or standalone apps like iCal or Sunbird to view it)

The alarm clock has made a list of top web startups in Canada. Weblo, a virtual real estate website and OZ, a mobile messanging company makes the top list.

It also mentions Airborne Entertainement, NuVu.tv, Tungle, and Inpowr as runner-ups. This makes a list of 6 “startups” to watch in Montreal, while Toronto and Vancouver gets 7 each.

Suprisingly, Ottawa, often nicknamed as Canada’s Silicon Valley, only have 1 in the list.

This isn’t a post about a new startup, because monavis.ca opened more than one month ago, but about how they are currently doing.

My initial reaction was that it was a complete rip-off of yelp. They have exactly the same navigation bar. (Welcome = Bienvenue, About = A propos, Write a Review = Écrire un Avis, Find Reviews = Rechercher un avis, Invite Friends = Inviter mes amis, Messaging = Messagerie, Talk= Discuter, Member Search = Rechercher un membre). Same for features (Reviews of the day, Best, Featured members…) and profile pages for members. Of course, they have setup different categories, the color palette is slightly different, they don’t have all the features, but overall I’d say monavis is a total copycat of yelp, just like tontuyau was for youtube.

However, I thought that it was actually a service that is needed in Quebec, and that user-generated reviews are the best way to get fresh and relevant content. They have currently about 500 users and 1000 reviews (approximations), and they already have users who posted 10+ reviews. This is very good after one month, for a province the size of Quebec.

Of course, there is the issue with Yelp. I imagine the co-founders asking why they would change a recipe that works. Yelp was designed to be viral, relevant and community-oriented and that’s what monavis tries to be. And they actually manage to do so well.

As you can see, I have mixed feelings with monavis. I can’t criticize them for providing a service that noone has provided so far in Quebec. I just wish they added their own personal touch to the service.

So now, after youtube, yelp, when will we see a quebec copycat of facebook? of craigslist? of flickr?

The Forum jeunesse de l’île de Montréal, the Conseil régional des élus de l’Île de Montréal, the Conseil des arts de Montréal and Ville de Montréal have launched artere, a portal and reference website for la relève, a fancy way to name young artists.

They have a blog, a small ads section, an events calendar, and a directory of Montreal artists. I wish they added a video section too.

I registered because I thought there was some sort of social networking but then discovered it added me to the list of Montreal artists. oh my.

via TechnoMontreal

AbsoluteSky, a Montreal company specializing in RFID, will provide item-level tagging to a Staples Store (location yet unknown). They will partner with Fujitsu for the initial installation.

Many stores already use RFID to track cases and pallets to provide real-time information on their inventory, but this is possibly the first time that a Canadian store will be equipped with RFID tags, up to item-level.

In practice, they will know in real-time when a customer or a clerk picks up any product, and then they can track where the customer is going. AbsoluteSky says the solution will provide better customer service (PDF of their announcement), but i’d say it is mostly an answer to their Big Brother Needs.

I have nothing against store-wide RFID tagging because it’s their private space, but you have to be honest, name it “RFID surveillance” instead of “extensive control over loss prevention” or other fancy words.

Sylvain Carle has setup a wiki about startupping in Montréal.

Now, I am not sure if it is public but since he wrote about it on twitter, I invite everyone to contribute to the guide and make it grow.

I took 5 minutes to create a list of possible funders in Montreal and a quick list of startups in Montreal. I don’t pretend to know everything so you are free to add you own knowledge too.

Read/WriteWeb has a great article on the OpenCoffee Club Movement.

I am thinking there should be something like this in Montreal. And with entrepeneur students, to make Ben happy.