Montreal Tech Watch

If you missed earlier news and posts in MontrealTechWatch, here is a summary of what happenned this month:

• Discussions about venture capital investment in Canada. (August 2nd)
• Victoria Revay writes a passionnaite piece about Vancouver’s startup scene. (August 7th)
• Gary Haran sells wowdetox, an interesting story about video games and support for addicted gamers. (August 8th)
• Montreal On Rails first edition is a success, with Mat Balez organizing, Marc-André Cournoyer and Carl Mercier presenting their hacking skills. (August 8th)
• Francois Lamontagne, programmer and blogger, writes about the Ruby language (August 13th)
• CakeMail has launched!!! (August 15th)
• A light Tech Entrepreneur Breakfast this month, with a less exhaustive report (August 15th)
• MontrealInternational names Montreal as the most innovative and creative city in North America. again. (August 17th)
• DemocampMontreal4, with Categorical Design Solutions, Podbean, ClixConnect, Josh Nursing, and url_pipe (August 17th)
• The CBC airs a video report on Chris Zeke Hand, a Montréaler who experienced massive legal problems with his blog. The report raises the issue of what you can write on the Internet in Canada. (August 18th)
• Very interesting stats on audience seasonality, with data collected from 2002 to 2006. (August 19th)
• Follow-up on Defensio, with early testing from wordpress blogs and lighthouseapp. (August 20th)
• The Entertainement Software Alliance of Canada agrees with the Québec governement to make video games in Québec in French. It’s noteworthy that it was “loi 101″ birthday in the same week. (August 20th)
• Montréalers are angry with Videotron, who put a 100Gb cap on its “unlimited” plan. Videotron now faces a mass trial, with customers asking for reimbursements. (August 20th)
• Marc Gingras writes about P2P technology issues, following heated criticism from the blogosphere about skype’s outage. His startup, tungle.com, relies on P2P to sync managers’ meeting schedules. (August 21st)
• Thought Technology deserves a mention for supplying key components for NASA astronauts’ training (August 22nd)
• 2 local SEO companies merges. One has more than 1 million email addresses of Québecers. (August 22nd)
• RBC, Wall-Mart and TD Canada Trust launches facebook groups and applications with fall session beginning. (August 22nd)
• The serial entrepreneur Hugh McGuire launches PoeticSpam
• Tourisme Montréal tries web2.0 promotion tools, ie blogs and podcasts. (august 23rd)
• Blogs in Québec relay the youtube video and pictures about the “agent provocateurs)”, forcing the SQ to make a public statement. It’s seen as a victory for blogging in general. (august 24th)
• Staples organizes a program to collect electronics for recycling. (August 24th)
• Montreal Tech Watch relaunches with more features. More like a gazette, less like a blog as readers commented. (August 30th)
• Red Herring releases a special Canadian edition highliting innovations and startups in Canada, with articles aimed at investors. The edition is avalaible one week before the much-publicized conference in Montreal. (August 30th)
• Chezola Systems prepares to launch a mobile payment system for Nigeria (August 30th)
• Marc-André is the first Montréaler, and possibly the first Canadian to get the iPhone working, with Rogers’ network. (August 30th)
• Gorilla Nation and NetWorldMedia team up to allow their customers pick audiences from any of their network. (august 30th)
• 3rd edition of Montreal Web Development Book Club sees new heads and new discussions. (August 30th)
• ICP Solar buys a NewFoundLand company which produces a solution for regular throughput of energy (August 31st)
• High-profile bloggers launch a book to convince business types to blog (August 31st)

On related news, a new blog about canadian startups launched this month, it’s called catech and is written by Tris Hussey. Very interesting insight so far, that should make catech a reference soon.