Montreal Tech Watch

There is a new service in town, and it’s called tangler. You can consider it as the next-generation forum or chat. It is also buzzword compliant :-)

More seriously, I was looking to create a forum or an IRC channel for developers, marketers, or designers in Montréal who are developing a service or a product and wanted to solve an issue, and look for help in the local community. Of course, you can go to bigger forums but it’s hard to get attention and get a helping hand. Tangler is the ideal solution and I hope every Montreal Tech Watch reader would go there.

There are 4 sections:

• Tech Events in Montreal
• Web Marketing
• Web Development and Design
• Startups

So go there, get a user name or just go in and ask questions

Watchmojo videos are now avalaible at clipsyndicate. This new video portal makes its videos avalaible afterwards to “vertical” blogs, ad revenues are then shared with content creators. I wrote previously about watchmojo having a deal with Azureus Vuze, and it seems the company’s focus is to distribute its content to as many video portals as possible, and then add up advertising revenues. I don’t know if it’s a viable business model, but I guess that’s the most solid if you are a web video producer.

Watchmojo will also be relaunching with a new design this week, it’s not avalaible yet but I got access to a screenshot:

The new design is less cluttered and more professionnal

Matrox, based in Montreal’s West Island, was known in the 90′s for their Millenium graphics cards, and are now serving niche markets for entreprise, industrial, military and governments applications. They are also known by professional videographers for their X2 graphic cards, which allow real-time editing of videos.

Now, they have launched yesterday a new version of the Matrox RT.X2, which now handles Panasonic 720p format, Sony HDV 1080p support, and Canon 24p, along with other new neat features and special effects. And more importantly, it now works with Adobe CS3 ie Adobe Premiere. Of course, the price tag cares for professionals only (starting from $1500), and it only works with Windows XP Pro boxes with a PCI express slot. But videographers spend already 10 times that amount for their material, so this should be a hit for those who want to save a couple of hours in their workflow.

The financial post has a story how video games companies based in Canada are blurring the line between video games and “traditional entertainement”. At the last E3 expo, Ubisoft Montréal led the charge with Assassin’s Creed, and how they will release a series of books based on the Universe. I also wrote previously about short animated movies based upon the game, made by Ubisoft’new Digital Arts division. The video game itself inspires itself heavily on cinematographical cues and uses music to create rhythm in the sequences. From the article:

her (Jade Raymond) game is easily the biggest and most expensive project the publicly-traded Ubisoft has ever undertaken.

As a result, its makers are thinking that if the game does well, movies and other spinoffs won’t be out of the question.

According to Raymond, she and her team aren’t simply trying to create a game anymore. “We’re creating a brand,” she said. “We’re creating a universe.”

Daniel Desilets and Jade Raymond from Ubisoft Montreal present Assassin’s Creed at the last Entertainement Electronic Expo

The video games industry topped the movies industry in 2005. With a market estimated at $37.5 billion in 2007, it will also surpass the music industry this year.

And it’s great to see a company from Montréal leading the pack.

With his company’s founders going happily to San Francisco, Marc-André Cournoyer has found the time to make yet another rails application, which is a to-do list manager.

Of course, anyone can create a task manager, I did one recently and took 5 days to create it. What I found impressive is that he finished everything, from design to deployement in 2 days, a feat that I believe can be only done with the Rails framework. I am now wondering if it’s possible to launch a very simple website (say à la digg.com) in a couple of hours, if you already have all the specs and can just code right away.

This also shows me that Ruby gurus go on holidays by coding a rails application. I think you can’t go hardcore beyond that. :-)

For those who read books in web design, web development and other related areas, you are invited to Laika on Monday, July 30th at 7.30pm.

You can read a report about the previous version here.

I was also asked if you have to read a book to attend the event, and the answer is no, although you should expected to discuss and give your thoughts on current topics. Finally, there is a page at the yulstart wiki about the event, where you can see who is coming and what are the books.

Apparently, many found the original startupweekend at Boulder, Colorado was a hit, as many attendees though it was a great learning experience, although the delivery and development failed brutally. Hosted by David Crow, Toronto will now be staging a startupweekend this mid-september, with over 100 people working intensily during the weekend to create a startup from scratch.

I have met some people here in Montréal who said the current event lineup was more than enough, but I think the question has to be asked and discussed. Do you think a Montreal StartupWeekend would be useful for Montréal?

The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC, has deregulated local markets in Fort Murray, Alberta; and in main New Brunswick and Nova Scotia cities. This means in practice that Bell or Telus can offer new prices without asking approval from CRTC first.  The deregulation covers landlines, internet, voip and digital TV. There is no word though about mobile phone services, and no news either when exactly this will happen in Québec.

The deregulation will in theory provide more competition and more affordable services for consumers. It also makes the market even, with Bell and Telus having now the same rights and obligations as Rogers and Videotron.

There was a poll 4 days ago, asking montréal tech readers what was Montréal’s best advantage as an innovation center and a permanent place for development. It gathered 58 votes, and here are the results:

• 23% Diversity in Montréal and Montréal’s culture (14 votes)
• 20% The Universities, student population, and R&D (12 votes)
• 20% Cost of Living (12 votes)
• 8% entrepreneurship spirit in Quebec (5 votes)
• 7% The design community (4 votes)
• 7% Avalaibility of tech developers (4 votes)
• 5% government assistance and programs (3 votes)
• 3% avalaibility of angel funding (2 votes)
• 2% avalaiblity of venture capital funding  (1 vote)
• 2% presence of successful tech entrepreneurs (1 vote)
• 2% the technological infrastructure (1 vote)

Someone wrote “cheap labour” as an advantage but this was added to cost of living. Other answers include “The fact that Silicon Valley is being decentralized” and “availability of workers fluent in French and English”.

I voted too for the first 2 options. I think Montreal’s multiculturalism is one its biggest advantage. The city is vibrant, not only as a frontier between Anglos and Québecois, but also because it’s one of the main destinations for Europeans, Africans or Latin Americans who want to go to North America. Some of them stay, some go back to their home country, some continue to other places in Québec or in Canada, but they all contribute to Montréal’s multiculturalism. In this case, we get more dynamism and more creativity, which I believe is (still) mostly untapped for technology entrepreneurship.

Montreal also have 4 universities, which are Université de Montréal (with HEC Montréal and Polytechnique), UQAM, McGill University, and Concordia University, and also ÉTS. Montréal has the biggest student population in North America, and has one of the most educated workforces around. Of course, gross number of students doesn’t mean anything if there are no results, so there should be more initiatives in student entrepreneurship and links between higher education and the industry. UQAM can for instance get the so-needed funds from high-tech companies and work together on key reasearch and development, which is how it’s done in MIT and other well-known universities in North America.

Cost of Living received a lot of votes, but I don’t think it can be an advantage for entrepreneurship. In an essay, Paul Graham says that low rent discourages entrepreneurship, as college students and young entrepreneurs will want to purchase an apartment, settle, and get a steady 9 to 5 job instead. A high cost of living forces you to find relentlessly ways to make a better living, aka entrepreneurship.

If you want my personal opinion, I am confident in Montreal. The other options who received a few votes can be improved, and there are also alternative solutions, although one big problem is the mobile access in Canada, which slows and even makes impossible entrepreneurship in some key tech fields (think about developing applications for mobile phones, which is unheard of in Canada)

Evan Prodromou, Nicolas Ritoux

Nicolas Ritoux and Evan Prodromou presented vinismo.com, a new wiki guide for wines, which are classified by country and by varietals. Evan Prodromou started previously with Michele Ann Jenkins wikitravel.org, which had had great success, and he brings with him years of experience on how to start and grow a wiki community. Using a wiki for wine is a great idea, as there are many passionnate wine consumers and collectors, who are ready to invest a lot of their personal time contributing to the wiki. I also found it’s a great business idea, in the sense that this should get commercial interests soon. There are some contendors though, such as the trendy corkd.com, which is now part of the thunder show Wine Library TV. Finally, vinismo’s design, which was done by Marie-Claude Doyon is one of the best designs I saw for a wiki. It’s clear, the layout is great, and the logo has this trendy look withough going overboard.

Audience

Next, there was workcruncher, a small web application for managing to-do lists, by Heri :-) I can’t say much about it, because it’s still in alpha stage. Workcruncher is a new way to manage your tasks, as you are forced to make a new to-do list each day. It also doesn’t store more than 10 tasks at any given time. One big difference from backpack, basecamp or remember the milk is that there is a big focus on collaboration, as you can track what other coworkers are doing, much alike twitter, but for productivity reasons this time. Much more to come in upcoming weeks.

Heri

Carl Mercier and Mat Balez presented Defensio next. They made first bulletpoints on how the blogsphere is broken, much alike when Ben Yoskovitz wrote a post on why the online job market is broken, to introduce later standoutjobs. Defensio’s direct competitor is Akismet, and they are confident they can do better. The team says spam and valid comments are better presented, as there are different sections and you can see more easily what are legit comments. I don’t buy that, because Akismet could change their user interface any time. The most interesting part for me is if Defensio works, if there are no false positives and no false negatives. Early testing on Ben’s blog showed that it had a 99.5% success rate, which is great. So I guess it proves the point. It doesn’t seem that Defensio works with social engineering but rather with learning. And this is the most obscure part. I am thinking about neural networks but the backend is done with ruby on rails so I guess they must be using some other secret sauce.

A great product that can get (very) big

Mat Balez, Carl Mercier

The ever surprising Simon Law showed next how to make a clock go backwards. It looked like a crash course on Chineese manufacturing processes and electronics 101. Using a moleskine for drawing and a Canon digital camera to show the clock disassembly is quite original too. Simon Law presented in previous democamps on how to take photos with cheap digital cameras and also how to make an omelette. I think now he should make a videocast. I am sure it would be a hit.

Simon Law organizes democamp and barcamps too.

Next, Jerome Paradis presented an application done by his company. He uses .NET and google maps to show flight routes. I think it’s great on a technical point of view, first because the data is parsed from emails (!), not from some standard API as you would imagine, and also because the maps mashups is very advanced too: they have gone beyond the standard markers you are accustomed to, and you can manipulate the flight routes.

Jerome Paradis

More on democamp 3

• Marc-André Cournoyer
• more pictures