Montreal Tech Watch

image courtesy from fagstein

The Sureté du Québec admitted early yesterday that they actually used undercover cops, disguised as protesters at the Montebello summit. Patrick Lagacé, reporter at La presse, also a blogger, hailed it as the first mainstream victory for blogs in Quebec and a proof at the new media’s power, at an article published today at La Presse. Major press outlets didn’t broadcast the youtube video, while local blogs continued to buzz continuously about the incident. The SQ was then forced to admit the evidence.

Beyond SQ’s obvious amateurism and abuse of their mission, I agree with Patrick Lagacé’s analysis, and I think it’s a sign that blogs, and other new media initiatives, are now going to be take off in Québec.

SFR, a french telecom operator, has started using the tetes a claques to promote its offers and promotions this fall. Surprisingly, the Montreal-born series are very popular in France, because of the stereotypical Québec accent and also because of the frequent “anglicisms”.

Michel Beaudet, who is behind tetes a claques, created specifically 5 new “young” characters for the new SFR videos. The background shows a typical french town, but all of them has the same dumbnesswit and way of speaking as in the original website. Here is one of the video you can find at ca va ouatcher

This shows once again the power of video. If you travel outside of Québec, you should also take into account that the province is now mostly known for its puppets. SFR even went as far as pushing the stereotypes about Québec. Johnny mobile, one of the main characters, is said to be born in a hut in Canada, his father was a hockey coach and his mother a logger (!). SFR is also distributing french/Québec “dictionnaries”.

It’s slightly off-topic, but I noticed the most basic plan for SFR costs now $35 CAN, with unlimited phone calls during the day, which is an order of magnitude of what’s offered here in Canada.

This is a reminder: if you are in web design, web development or in other related areas, there is a web development book club next monday, at Laika, 4040 bvd St-Laurent, beginning at 7pm.

2nd edition report

1st edition report

As usual, you are not required to read a book, but you are expect to discuss, interact and share your knowledge and point of view

If you want to come, there is a wiki page at yulstart. (although it seems more difficult now to edit the pages, so there might be an announcement in upcoming and facebook as well)

Tourisme Montréal has just launched 2 new websites to attract english-speaking tourists to Montréal.

The first one is play-montreal, which is a podcast about Montreal culture and events.

The second one is a blog, I found my montreal. You can submit there a post, with your story and pictures, and write what you think of Montréal (check the NEW POST button)

I really like those website’s overall designs - not only the graphical design, but how they present their topics and features. Knowing too well communication agencies in Montréal, I would have expected flash websites and fancy graphics void of content. Now, it’s the first time I see the governement of Canada and Québec sponsoring a blog, which spoils it a bit, because when visitors will notice that, there is no way they will think that it is an authentic blog by an authentic Montréaler who do it for the love of the city and not for the love of $$$. I don’t expect either visitors to subscribe to these blogs and podcasts — unless they manage to get exclusives and first-class content.

Footer of the new websites

Still, I like their initiative. I hope more public and parapublic organizations will follow the path.

According to TechnoMontreal and TECHNO Compétences’ website, Techno Compétences is actually developing a new portal which will feature tech jobs in Québec. It will be located at www.macarriereenTI.com, although there is yet nothing to see at that address.

TechnoCompetences tracks the workforce working in information technology in Québec, one of the fastest growing sectors. It is estimated that at least 18.000 additionnal people will be needed by 2010 in information technology, although many young Québecers actually shy away from this field. TechnoCompetences showed recently that since 2001, students in engineering and IT has shrunk by 50% in CEGEPs and by 25% in universities.

One of the main features of the future website will be short web videos, much alike standoutjobs is doing. Each of these videos will tell the story of an individual company and what prospecting candidates will experience when getting the job. They will also have a database of companies that are actually hiring. Who knows, maybe they will become a local competitor to standoutjobs…

Hugh McGuire has just started a new project called poetic spam, which I found hilarious.

Poetic Spam is a literary journal that celebrates the poetry of spam.

Submission guidelines:

1. poetic spam submissions must be legitimate spam (email or comment), whose poetic quality glows through its spamminess
2. you may submit spam snippets, rather than the enitre spam message
3. you may reformat the linebreaks etc.
4. you may NOT add or remove or rearrange words
5. all poetic forms (sonnets, haiku, free verse, etc) are accepted
6. if you wish to be credited, please include your name and URL

Here is a “haiku spam”:

Have you ever hoped
to have a expensive Watch?
We have the soulition

another short poem:

The cells
in the
Corpora Cavernosa
are filled with blood
Until an erection
is a-
chieved.

A great idea, that I believe will soon become viral — I expect it to be on digg or reddit very soon.

Roberto Rocha reports about TD Canada Trust and RBC’s efforts to lure attract young consumers in facebook.

The group has already 3415 members, and supposedly let users to share money tips and learn about their finance options. In essence, it’s great marketing, as fall session is starting next week for college students. But see this screenshot to judge by yourself

Apparently, designers were told to put the green color and TD’s logo in every space avalaible. I couldn’t resist the tempation to show you this video

Make the logo bigger!

In other related news, Sylvain Carle is setting up FaceBookCampMontreal this week, thursday or friday. There is already a facebook group setup for the event.

Skooiz, a Montreal internet company which provides search engine optimization / search engine marketing (SEO / SEM) services, has just acquired Mastodonte.

Mastodonte is also a consulting company, in email marketing and related services. It also owns toutacoup and wannawin , which gets 9 millions page views monthly.

I am using this opportunity to ask readers a question. Who thinks here that SEO is a big deal when launching a website? It always seems to me as the black area of Internet Entrepreneurship, where you meet of lot of con artists. (like SEOMoz, the current superstar, charging $1000 per hour to their clients. yes, you read it right, one thousand dollars per hour)

Astronaut Ron Garin wearing the FlexComp during the NEMO undersea mission

If you follow the news, it’s noteworhty that Thought Technology, a Montreal company specializing in biofeedback and hightech instruments, was the main supplier of NASA when they trained astronauts. For instance, they produce the Flexcomp suit which tracks heart rate, electrocardiogram, respiration, skin conductance, temperature and finger pulse volumes. It allows the NASA to study the effects of isolation, fatigue and workload on astronauts.

Previously, physiological encoders would require a 1000+ pounds equipment, whereas the device manufactured by Thought Technology weighs less than a pound, thanks to ultra-miniaturized components and flash memory cards.

Gesca Digital, which operates cybepresse, lapresseaffaires, technaute among others, will be switching to Nstein’s Content Management System. Nstein Technologies is a Montréal company which specializes in solutions for online publishers. Officially, its solution has been choosen because of its “web2.0 tools”, and because it supposedly increases page views, which will make Gesca ad revenues rise.

Online media in Québec, and in Canada in general, is the subject of many discussions. They pale compared to their print edition, and always seem a copy&paste of the print article, without leveraging at all what might be done with the Internet. None of the online newspapers allow users to comment or interact with an article, and none of them publish pictures or multimedia shows that allow a better understanding of a story. Of course, CBC and RadioCanada publish extras along an article, such as video and audio clips, but given their mission in radio and television, it’s the least they could do.

Now, I went throught Nstein’s website. They state that their CMS is already used by 12 other online newspapers, and it automatically tag content, which will allow the software to show automatically related articles to users. I guess that what they referred to with “increased page views”. The CMS also allows visitors to create their profile, and can also manage wikis, RSS and blogs. So that would be the “web2.0 tools”. Although I don’t expect none of those online newspapers to allow their users to start their own blog any day.