Montreal Tech Watch

I went yesterday to the Montreal Tech Entrepreneur Breakfast. I will make this report very brief because I came in late and didn’t get to meet everybody. I talked first with Francois Lane, from the code chicken, which is developing CakeMail (preview). We talked about how his company was started and also about his next planned product, a localization application.

Afterwards, I was involved into lenghty jokes discussions about social networks with Marc Chriqui. I also had some news from Sylvain Carle who is working on Praized, planned to be launched soon.

At the end, time seemed to fly by, and everybody was leaving. But that’s ok because we have democampMontreal4 next. Hope I will meet more people there.

preview of CakeMail

The Code Kitchen has entered in beta this week for CakeMail, and from what I’ve seen, it’s a solid product. They previously demo’ed Cake in BarCamp2Montreal, where the team said they were targeting agencies, who would then resell it to their customers, making it the first white-label email platform.

I went through the beta. First, the registration email was ironically flagged as spam, which should be the last thing to happen to a newsletter platform. It also lacked any info about the pricing, and I haven’t been able to customize the interface as it was advertised, or get to an option to white-label it. Now, a comparison with Campaign Monitor is due, which is actually the standard for newsletters. I found Cake was much easier to use, the process of creating and sending a mailing is much more logical than Campaign Monitor’s crowded interface and options. And I would say I will be using for current projects instead of CampaignMonitor, if it’s priced right. You can also go try CakeMail.

As an aside, I met yesterday Francois Lane, who founded the company, and he said there was also a lot of work done in internationalization, and they are looking to spin off the localization application for CakeMail as a separate product as well.

RFID Tribe, a “global organization with local chapters” is starting a local group in Montreal, with 60 registered members so far. It aims at connecting its members on business and technical matters.

Seems to me a good initiative, although I have no idea where they come from, and what is exactly RFID Tribe’s objectives. The announcement seems to be a plain copy&paste, and there isn’t even a name on who will be organizing this in Montreal. I mean, I can also setup a portal in a few hours, find a fancy “global” name for instance “Wimax Developers” and throw another couple of fancy words, and announce on the Internet the creation of a “chapter” in Bangkok, Thailand, even though I am in Montreal.

This is a guest post from François Lamontagne, a Ruby web developer, or shall I say, a Ruby guru from Trois-Rivieres. There are some personal info about him in the first part, but the real deal is in the second part where he writes what are Ruby’s strengths

Hello Montreal Tech Watch readers!

Heri got in touch with me a few days ago and asked me if I would be interested to write an article on Montreal Tech Watch. I accepted right away!

Now I guess you wonder : Who’s that guy?

My name is François Lamontagne and I’m a 26 years old web developer living in Trois-Rivières. About 1 year ago, I came across a programming language that litteraly changed the way I look at programming in general : this language is ruby. If you’re a programmer, chances are you already heared about this language since it is the one behind the increasingly popular web framework : Ruby On Rails. I then realized something funny concerning ruby and ruby on rails : everyone seem to talk about it… but only a small percentage of people seem to use it… for real. In this article, my goal is to talk about the main advantages of ruby and why you should seriously consider using this language if you are a programmer. I will “try” not being too technical since I am aware that not every readers here are developers.

Ruby is not Rails

The first mistake people are doing is to confuse Ruby with Rails. Ruby is a high-level, general purpose programming language written in C (well, at least the official interpreter is written in C). It is a language interpreted, meaning that the instructions are parsed and executed at runtime. Most of the time, interpreted languages are slower but more flexible than compiled languages.

Rails is a web framework that was created to help developers build web applications easily and rapidly. To achieve this, a software architecture called MVC that existed long ago was crafted and inserted inside the framework to become its fondations. MVC stands for Model – View – Controller. It is a pattern (a way to develop an application) that force the developer to put his code into some predefined areas. The folks who created Rails decided to write the code of their framework in ruby… that’s why the framework is called Ruby On Rails. Someone could very well decide to rewrite the entire framework in PHP and call it PHP On Rails.

My blog : Ruby Fleebie

Ruby is one of these “new genre” programming languages that has a lot less constraints than other more traditional languages. I was so amazed by the beauty of the ruby syntax and by all of its possibilities that I decided to start my own blog (named Ruby Fleebie) in March 2007. Inside the blog, readers can expect informative and tutorial-like articles concerning the language concepts. I am learning Ruby everyday and the more I learn about it, the more I like it. I also learn a lot from the comments left by some very knowledgeable readers. Heck, I may be the one who write the articles, but it doesn’t mean I know more than everyone :)

I am pretty satisfied with the people reaction so far. There are about 650 readers subscribed to the RSS feed… not bad at all! Ruby Fleebie was also the main subject of an interview I gave to Peter Cooper, the maintainer of the reknown ruby blog : Ruby Inside. You can read the Interview here if you want. I hope I will enjoy maintaining Ruby Fleebie for a long time to come!

Why ruby rocks

Here is my personal reasons explaining why Ruby should not be missed by anyone :

#1 : Very expressive and readable syntax


3.times {puts "Ho! "} if person_speaking == :santa_claus


If you have some really basic experience in programming, chances are you understood the above instruction the first time you read it. Look how short this instruction is and how readable it remains. Note how there is no “looping construct” to write “Ho! ” 3 times. Instead, you just have to use a Ruby key concept called “code blocks” (have a look at this post if you want to know more about code blocks). Secondly, do you see where is the conditional operation? Yep! at the end of the instruction… and on the same line! Now read the instruction aloud and realize how readable it is. With some aesthetic changes, what you read is in fact : 3 times, puts ” Ho!” on the screen if the person speaking is Santa Claus. In another language, the above code could have look like this :


if (person_speaking == "santa claus") {
for (i=0; i<3;i++) {
print ("Ho! ");
}
}


Hmm… That certainly does the job, but I still prefer the Ruby way… not you?

#2 : Object oriented to the extreme

Unlike many other languages, we cannot just say that Ruby “is composed of” object oriented components. In Ruby, almost every single thing is an object. If you want to know more about that feature, I suggest that you read the following posts : 3 steps to understand how classes and objects work in ruby, Diving into ruby object model : Part 1, Diving into ruby object model : Part 2

#3 : Dynamic and open

In Ruby, a class is never “closed”. The developer can always reopen an already defined class to add a new method or a new attribute. Some “hardcore” developers don’t like that facet of Ruby because they feel it isn’t safe enough. What? That developer I don’t really trust can decide to reopen my class and remove/change my methods at runtime? That’s totally unacceptable! Well, that’s the price to pay for all the flexibility you have with Ruby. Ruby never tries to protect you from yourself nor does it tries to protect your code from other developers.

#4 : The “Ruby way”

Whatever the problem you are trying to solve, it seems that you can always do it “the ruby way”. You will know you did something “the ruby way” when you do it… it will smell ruby and feel ruby. Don’t worry however, doing something “the ruby way” absolutely doesn’t mean that there is only one single way to achieve something! You always have tons of possibilities… it’s just that some feel more ruby than others. I have started a new collection of posts on my blog that I called ” Rubyize this”. Readers have to change a (poorly written) code snippet into short and readable ruby. That is kind of fun actually.

There are tons of other reasons to try Ruby, but these 4 are the most important to me.

TimmyOnTime

I also want to talk about a project that I developed with Dan Simard, a web developer from Trois-Rivieres as well as a good friend of mine. The project is called TimmyOnTime. It is a time tracking tool based on instant messaging (Jabber, MSN or AIM). You write commands like “create project new website”, “start task build mockups”, etc and Timmy (the bot) will do the rest! We are extremely proud of what we’ve done. We have that amazing feeling of being the first to have done this kind of application. If you are curious and want to try it out, go here to get you started! I must warn you however that we are currently working on some stability issues with our robot… everything will return to the normal in the near future.

90% of TimmyOnTime has been developed with Ruby On Rails, the other 10% (the bot) was written in plain Ruby. TimmyOnTime is another proof that Ruby and Rails are not only buzz words, these are efficient technologies that work for real.

Thanks for your time and I hope to see you on Ruby Fleebie!

if you are interested in programming languages, you might also check out the article about Scheme/Lisp, featured one month ago on Montreal Tech Watch

I usually don’t post about upcoming events, unless I think you should consider going there if you read this blog. And this is the case this week. There are a lot of *hot* events planned in Montreal:

• Montreal Tech Entrepreneurs Breakfast is Tuesday morning, at Etc Bistro, 1291 Av. Mont-Royal, at 9.00 am (Previous report)
• TechnoMontreal is launching their first monthy 5 à 7 on Wednesday, at Restaurant Le Quartier, 1001 Square Victoria. They call it the meetup for the tech industry builders.
• Pecha Kucha second edition is planned Wednesday evening, at the Société des Arts Technologiques, 1195 bvd St-Laurent. It’s a “series of show and tell for designers”, with the first edition having presenters in architecture (experiment with New York smog and buildings), a gel-based soft light switch, tools and ustensils for disabled people, video game design (experiments with music based on the character’s movement), designing a web service (dopplr developer), offline social networking by hacking “good night lights“, a environmentalist who wanted to make weather data avalaible to all… I missed the first half last time, but what I saw were profesionnal designers, in its broader sense, who were presenting projects they have worked on during their free time. Photos of the first edition
• Alistair Boyle will be presenting the OpenStreeMap project Tursday evening at 7pm, at the Centre de recherche informatique de Montréal (CRIM, 550 Sherbrooke W, office 100, near metro Mc Gill). The project aims to create a free editable map of the whole Earth, and allows you to view, edit and use geographical data in a collaborative way. For instance, someone can walk around Montreal and record paths with GPS, to contribute to Montreal’s map. The presentation is a FACIL event.
• DemocampMontreal4 is Friday, at the SAT, starting from 6.30pm. (Report of the previous edition) List of demoers and registration.

Update: Pecha Kucha is moved to 2nd week of September. Boris just changed the date. doh.

Montreal.tv, a Montreal video portal, is now accepting video uploads from its users. M. Irois Léger, who heads the video portal, says he is also planning to distribute the videos on TV this fall. They will be also distributing videos on mobile phone, as they have signed partnerships with Telus, and also Bell, Rogers (and the now defunct Amp’d Mobile).

I like to view Montreal.tv as the french equivalent of watchmojo. They both cover Montreal’s upbeat culture and both produce profesionnal videos, although Montreal.tv focuses more on Montreal nightlife and bars and watchmojo has a bigger range of topics. They are also different in their business models, as I suspect Montreal.tv’s videos are in fact paid by the restaurants and bars they are covering to get some buzz, and watchmojo focus on internet ads, and thus on re-distribution. Here’s a video by Montreal.TV about events this weekend in Montreal:

Fagstein reports that Free WiFi is now avalaible at the Old Port of Montréal, courtesy of Quaysofoldport and Telus.

This is puzzling for me, because it’s free whereas every other telecom provider, especially Rogers, are charging like crazy every other hotspot in Montreal. Second, Telus is not even an official Internet provider in Montreal. They do have a subsidiary, GlobeTrotter, providing internet access in Eastern Québec and in Gaspésie, but I have never seen a Telus Internet service in Montreal (except with their EDGE service for mobile phones) . Is this a clue that Telus is planning to be an ISP in Montreal?

I went yesterday to the first edition of Montreal On Rails, hosted at McGill university. This was a meetup for web developers using the Ruby on Rails framework, and was organized by Karabunga. Bilingualism was taken for granted, room was packed, lots of chit chat, lots of new heads and many entreprising souls.

Contrary to other reports you can find in other montreal rails blogs, I won’t go into technical details. I would only say that the speakers, Marc-André Cournoyer and Carl Mercier have setup the bar pretty high, and it would be difficult to make a better presentation, unless you present a newly developed gem or plugin.

As for me, I think Montreal On Rails is going to raise the profile of the framework in Montréal - and also create some friendly competitionemulation.

more pictures

One final note: I also noticed that there was there more guys than you can find at a university computer science class. By seeing the audience yesterday, I thought the proportion of women working in the web is not going to change anytime soon. And it struck me that every other girl I have been with in university is now working either in pure science or either in business-related areas, such as in Information Systems or as technology consultants, but never as a java/.net/sql developer. Why is that so? Do you think it should change?

ZipLocal, a Toronto-based company but with the development team in Montreal, has raised $6.08 m from private placements. ZipLocal’s earlier investor is JLA ventures.

ZipLocal is a local business directory, and is the 2nd biggest player in Canada, just after the Yellow pages group. Ziplocal maintains a database of more than 1 million Canadian businesses, with about 1 million visitors per month.

As an aside, the Montreal web dev team is currently developing a new version of ZipLocal. I don’t have exact information on what the new planned features but I know it will be better than what Yellow Pages is offering.

Public announcement: if you work for Ziplocal, I am asking for an API so that third-party services could reuse and enrich the data.

From Gary Haran

Gary Haran, currently a Rails developer for ziplocal, has sold wowdetox, and says he managed to get $3600 out of the website.

The story is interesting, because he went through the World Of Warcraft “addiction”, then created the website in 2 hours, to build a website to help those who spend way too much time in the role-playing video game for their own good. Blizzard has surpassed themselves in this game, with users playing as much as 12 hours per day in the game. Excerpts from the testimonials:

I recently quit playing wow after my wife threatened to leave me. I was playing at all hours of the day and night. I work full-time and would play as soon as I got home, my wife would go to bed alone and I would play until early morning. I would put on the TV to babysit my 4yo daughter so I could play. I havent played WOW for a little over a month, it feels good to have that monkey off my back, but I still feel the pull of the game. My wife and I are in counseling, trying to repair the disconnect and resentment created by my addiction to this game. I hope we can make it, she tells me its ok to keep playing, just limit it… I know I cant do it yet. It is truely an addiction, get your loved one help, just as you would for booze or drugs.

I’ve played World of Warcraft for a while now, and let me tell you guys, I regret buying that game. It has destroyed most of my Mental, Social, and Physical being. To those thinking about starting to play this game, let me just say that be prepared for the consequences ahead of you because this game is like a drug, once you start, you can’t stop. I, myself can’t stop playing constantly, its just too addicting. Should this game take ahold of you, you’ll regret it later.

If you ask me, $3600 is nice for 2 hours of work, but I guess the most valuable for him is the help and support the website gave to all players who wanted to get out of the game. I also think this is just the start of future help services for gamers. Blizzard, Ubisoft, EA, Microsoft, Sony Entertainement are all pushing the boundaries to get more people playing during more time. It’s easy to dismiss it if you never played a game like Battefield2 or World Of Warcraft, but I am sure future generations will need (and pay) for those services. Compute that with sales of virtual in-game objects, and you will get an entire section of the economy dedicated to video games.