Montreal Tech Watch

Here is a recap of Technology news in Montréal for the last month:

• Teachers Capital acquires BCE, in Canada’s biggest corporate takeover history, at $51.7 billion (July 1st)
• The Montreal public library network has a city-wide website (July 2nd)
• Poll about innovation in media, with a detailed response from fagstein (July 3rd)
• Air Canada is testing barcodes for quick and mobile checking at Dorval (July 3rd)
• Unlimited music subscriptions by Bell, in association with MSN (July 4th)
• Canadian Foundation for Innovation announces funds for universities, although it focuses only in life sciences. (July 4th)
• Map of the web in Montreal using the STM network, the local transit system (July 5th)
• VC-TV, by Kristina Tomaz Young, (re)launches, with a strong focus on video and interviews (July 7th)
• Quarterly news from COGECO (July 8th)
• a new project, Yulnews, by Denis Canuel is unveiled (July 9th)
• Montreal Gazette features Montreal Tech Watch, with a look at how various local media outlets view the Internet. (July 9th)
• 6th Montreal Tech Entrepreneur Breakfast, with new heads and new projects (July 10th)
• Guest Article by Dominique Boucher, about Scheme/Lisp, and how Montreal is one of the most active group in the world. (July 11th)
• A list of business bloggers in the province of Québec, by Claude LaMaison (July 12th)
• Compusmart has closed its latest store in Montreal (July 12th)
• An interesting poll on Montreal Tech Watch Readers, (July 13th) with a majority of developers, entrepreneurs, and bloggers
• CWTA says Canadians enjoy the lowest prices in North America, while every other “neutral” observer says that it’s quite the opposite. Note: they draw their conclusions from the same report, which comes from the OCDE. (July 13th)
• Fred Brunel releases TwitterCal. The app is now used by more than 1000 users (July 14th)
• Radio-Energie relaunches, and it looks very good (July 15th)
• Mobile versions of business news now avalaible in Montreal. (July 16th)
• Weblo gest $3.3 million of VC funding. Most readers agree though that weblo is a waste of time and money. (July 1th)
• Daniel Haran joins Standoutjobs (July 16th)
• Why everyone involved the telecommunications industry in Canada should be more active and aim for the future. (July 18th)
• A guest post by Scott Lake, a list of who’s who in Ottawa. (July 18th)
• Poll of the week, asking what makes Montreal a great innovation city(July 21st)
• DemocampMontreal, 3rd edition report. Some pictures, some screenshots and lots of “geeks” (July 25th)
• Montreal as an innovation hub, my personal conclusions, followed by Carl Mercier’s, who says Québec is the worst place for technology entrepreneurship. This is a very interesting post, with thoughts and insight from many entrepreneurs, although someone wrote it’s mostly an echo chamber. (july 27th)
• First deregulated telecom markets in Canada (July28th)
• A discussion on startupweekends in Montreal (July 28th)
• WatchMojo videos to be delivered on Azureus Vuze, and also on clipsyndicate (July 30th)
• new HD card, for videographers, from Matrox (July 31st)
• Ubisoft is now a global entertainement house, and has gone beyond the video games industry (July 31st)
• Marc-André Cournoyer creates an app in 2 days (July 31st)
• Tangler live forum is launched for MTW (July 31st)

I also learned that Montréalers and Montreal companies go on holidays in July, mostly at the second half. There are no product launches for instance, and it’s quite a difference from what you can see in previous months.