Montreal Tech Watch

The book Pourquoi Bloguer dans un contexte d’affaires - or “Why blog in a business context”, has been launched today. It’s the first of its kind and is written by an “A-list” of Québec-based bloggers, namely Claude Malaison, Martin Lessard, Michel Leblanc, Tristan Peloquin, Marie-Chantale Turgeon, Mario Asselin, Sylvain Carle, Philippe Martin, Marc Snyder and Martin Ouellette. Most of them are consultants in new media, and the chapters covers how blogs influence, sell, inform as well as other subjects like networking and videoblogs.

First, as Claude Malaison writes in an insightful post, it’s funny to see actors of “new media” mingle with the old-timers. For him, it looks as though bloggers still need old media, which is somehow true, as it still provides raw information on events where bloggers can’t go (say in parliamants) and, also to reach the general public. However, I would say that is changing quickly, if you think of techcrunch, engadget, or huffingtonpost.

I also had another reaction, which is: there should be a book on “why blogging” first. I am not sure most people in Québec or in Canada get “blogs”. If you convince the general public, if there is a large audience of bloggers who interact, converse, and write about what matters to them, then business people will follow, regardless of their opinion on blogs. I especially like what Marie-Chantale Turgeon is doing with stars-of-the-web, which is a blogging platform launched last year, and her continual advocacy of blogging through her consulting projects.

I haven’t read the book though and those are my first reactions. Hope someone will come up with it at the next web dev book club.

ICP Solar, a Montreal-based company which produces a whole range of innovative solar panels and chargers, has bought this week WES Power Technology Inc, a small newfoundland company.

WES Power Technology started as a small DIY project, where the original team asked themselves how to manage a combination of hybrid energy, i.e. solar panels and wind turbines. As you might know, renewable sources of energy are not regular throughout time, unlike a classical electrical plant where you can control the power throughput. WES’s idea was then to connect the solar arrays and wind turbines to a set of batteries, and control both of them via a hardware and software setup, so as to enable a constant power output. It’s very similar in principle to the system you can find nowadays in hybrid cars.

WES Power’s acquisition will add a much-needed product to ICP Solar’s range of product. It will enable them for instance to sell solutions for industries and businesses that requires reliable and constant power.

More on the story

JF Couture, Fred Brunel, Chris Lamothe, Mehdi

Monday 27th August was the 3rd Edition of Montreal Web Dev Book Club, a monthly gathering where web designers, entrepreneurs and web developers talk about recent books they have read and also current issues of the web. Here’s is my report:

• The first book was Building Scalable Web Sites, by Cal Henderson, lead developer of flickr.com. He shares with the reader how to design, develop, deploy and monitor a rapidly-growing website. It’s noteworthy that flickr uses Linux boxes, php, apache, mysql and memcached. Cal advises to get and use standard solutions, and never try to get exotic configurations in order to get that extra 10% speed for instance. It’s much wiser to get a standard linux distribution, standard hardware, and accept the fact that some of them will fail in the near future. You have just to make with it, ie design backup and rollback plans that provide transparent service to the user. It’s a useful read, if you don’t know yet how to manage a high-traffic website, but I found the first chapters were out of focus. The “tasty” content is on chapter 9, filled with tips and recipes from the “battlefield”.
• Fred Brunel talked afterwards about a e-book, Scrum and XP from the trenches, by Henrik Kinberg. He already has a post on his blog about it. For me, it’s the first time I heard about Scrum. It’s actually an agile development method, born from Nokia’s R&D product centers, with the author talking about what works and what doesn’t in “real” projects (as opposed to books exposing theories on project management), much alike the book by Cal Henderson. From what I understood, development “cycles” are first discussed closely with the product owner and the developers, on what can be done in 3 weeks. Because the development team are involved in this planning phase, the development is much more likely to hit its goals in the 3 weeks timespan. The process is then repeated for another “cycle”.
• Chris Lamothe, a Java developer for Desjardins, read afterwards Textmate, Power Editing for Mac, by James Edward Gray II. What I found interesting is that he compared his experiences with Intellij Idea and Eclipse. For Chris, Textmate was a rather puzzling experience at first, mainly because of the keyboard mapping, but the book was helpful, with simple, straight-to-the point tips and advice on the different Textmate features. It lacks though a keyboard map as a reference. Jean-Francois Couture also read the book, and has given his thoughts on his blog. Note: for rails developers, you may want to have a look at NetBeans, which seems to raise the bar quite high recently.
• Mehdi, a new comer to the event like Chris Lamothe, talked about Agile Web Development for the Web, by Dave Thomas and DHH, a book that was already introduced at the last edition. He is eager to learn Rails and I think this was the right book for him.

As usual, there were many discussions on current issues on the web, also about the current technology scene in Montreal, which I found as (if not more) interesting that talking about the books. Expect a follow up about this on mtw.

For the next issue, please leave a comment here. If you have a book, you should also leave the title. The yulstart wiki was used previously, but I found that some didn’t like having to register to be able to modify the page.

Next event is planned 7pm 24th of September, at Laika, 4040 bvd St-Laurent.

Quick recall:

• everyone is invited, regardless of the language you speak,
• it’s not a requirement to read a book, although you are expected to discuss and give your feedback on current subjects and issues,
• it turns out that most of the time programming and web development books are presented here, but every topic is welcomed. So for the next event, I will read Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte.

NetWorldMedia and Gorilla Nation has agreed earlier this week to combine forces. Their customers, both french and english-speaking, can now advertise into their respective web networks.

Gorilla Nation is the biggest online ad sales rep in the world. Based in Los Angeles, it manages ad sales for 500 “high-quality” websites, and can both offer their customers to reach niche markets or major destinations. On the other hand, NetWorldMedia is also in itself a heavyweight, the biggest (french) canadian online ad network, with an audience estimated at 450+ million page views per month. It’s based in Montreal and is the sole company that does behaviour targeting, i.e. that tracks your surfing pattern and then will “suggest” offers and products that should interest you.

If you manage a website, this might be an opportunity to reach americans directly through NetWorldMedia — although I am writing about this without having no direct experience in advertising and having ad-blindness. Who really clicks on internet ads and banners anyway?

La Presse Affaires has a story about a Montréaler, “Marc-André”, who had an iPhone working with Rogers’ mobile network. He had everything working, from the EDGE internet access, SMS, to the google maps. Visual Voice Mail, a proprietary feature by AT&T, is not avalaible.

“Marc-André”, whose job is in real estate, used a special SIM card and apparently just took 3 hours to get everything working. The reporter mentions at the end the phone’s official avalaibility in Canada — something that you should take with a grain of salt.

Chezola Systems, an IT company based in Laval, has announced that it has developed a mobile payment system called Chezola Pay for GSM phones. They plan to make it avalaible in Nigeria later this year. Users load an account with a prepaid card, and can then pay small amounts directly to merchants with a SMS message.

The service in itself is not revolutionary as Chezola Systems described it. It’s common in Northern Europe and in some east-asian countries like Singapore or Japan, but it’s actually the first time that such a service is launched in Africa.

Nigeria is Africa’s biggest potential market, with a 133 million population. As you might know (… or not) , mobile phones adoption have outpaced fixed telephony, with urban africans getting a GSM phone in the same manner that getting a car is a “reflex” in North America. It tells a lot though that Chezola is choosing Nigeria as their testbed, instead of trying to launch the service in North America. Growth rates in mobile telecommunications are higher in Africa, with much more competition between providers and plans that are actually cheaper than what is avalaible in Canada.

Update: Erik Hersma, a specialist about the usage of technology in Africa, gives his thoughts about the service in White African.

With the upcoming conference next week in Montreal, Red Herring has a special edition on Canada for its 27th issue. On a first article, Mira Schwirtz has 6 pages on the venture capitals and investors in Canada, and goes on current deals and opportunities in each province. She outlines Vancouver’s strength in cleantech, Toronto’s advance in software and new media, and telecommunications, video games, and biotech in Québec.

Read the magazine

Later, Red Herring also makes a top 10 list of Canadian startups. Highlighted startups from Montreal include Milestone Pharmaceuticals, Pyrophotonics Laser, OZ communications, a startup creating new services for mobile phones, and Artificial Mind and Movement, a video-game company on the rise.

MTW’s relaunch is stopped today — other developments will follow next week. As you can see, Montreal Tech Watch’s design is centered upon the content — ie text and posts and nothing else.

Some new features:

• There is a forum section, open to everybody
• Montreal Tech Events are shown directly in the right side.
• “Featured comment” and “Featured posts” in order to highlight content that readers should read.
• Online Identities. MTW is also in del.icio.us, in tumblr and a couple of other sites. Have a look at the footer.
• Direct inclusion of the tumblr feed

A more detailed on the how (on baselines for instance) should be avalaible at heri.madmedia.ca soon.

I am currently preparing a relaunch of Montreal Tech Watch, so there will be no posts for a couple of days. Meanwhile, you can watch this short video.

Bureau en gros, aka Staples shops will accept from 12th of September used eletronics, ie old laptops, desktops, printers computer accessories, digital cameras and cell phones as well. They will then send them to recycling. La vie en vert, a Télé-Québec show, is at the core of the initiative, and will promote the recycling program from September. (source)

According to Environment Canada, an average CRT computer monitor contains 1.8 kilograms of lead and other heavy metals like mercury and cadmium. Lead affects the human central nervous system and kidneys, while mercury can lead to brain damage, birth defects, kidney failure, respiratory harm and liver damage. It has also been linked to autism in children. Electronic equipment also contains chemicals such as hexavalent chromium, brominated flame-retardants and polyvinyl chlorides, which can pollute groundwater.

Recycling used electronics, instead of sending them to the dump, is an welcomed initiative, although there was no information on where exactly are the recylcing centers. The program would be stupid if they send the parts to china.