Montreal Tech Watch

In user interface visual aids, I love tag clouds in blogs. See this for example for Montreal Tech Watch:



You can then conclude that Montreal Tech Watch covers entrepreneurship, startups, mobile and to a certain extent, minor topics like web2.0, blogging, media and telecommunications. If you are a blogger, you may write for instance an official “contact” or “about” page that tells you will be blogging about advertising, entreprise tools and the like, but if your tag cloud shows that the most covered topics in your blog is instead video games and web2.0, it tells more to your readers.

I have thought this morning about using the same “visual map” to understand what is covered by local blogs, regardless about what they proclaim. The following sums up mentions of the keywords in all Montreal blogs for the last month:

advertising (492) akoha (28) amazon (124) angel (74) apple (775) austin hill (43) barcamp (129) bell (223) benjamin yoskovitz (430) blog (+1000) canada (+1000) carl mercier (51) clixconnect (6) CMS (41) css (66) defensio (27) dell (121) democamp (67) digg (156) entrepreneur (775) entreprise (775) facebook (319) flickr (299) fred ngo (44) google (+1000) gmail (237) hugh mc guire (240)ilovetoplay (7) innovation (286) iphone (248) ipod (319) kakiloc (13) librivox (45) linux (204) marketing (752) marc andre cournoyer (126) michel leblanc (153) microsoft (+1000) media (+1000) mobile (453) montreal (+1000) msn (113) mycarpoolstation (7) myspace (367) open source (203) patrick tanguay (396) philippe martin (396)python (52) podcast(274) praized (36) quebec (506) quebecor (83) rogers (136) ruby on rails (174) SEO (52) standoutjobs (66) social network (101) startup (405) sylvain carle (50) telus (105) tungle (35) ubisoft (121) VC (124) video (831) viral (107) vista (249) wiki (174) web2.0 (123) yahoo (462) youtube (681) yulbiz (121) yulblog (130)

A few comments:

• everybody has facebook on their minds right now but google, microsoft, apple, and yahoo gets much more mentions. Even myspace is more “popular” than facebook.
• Benjamin Yoskovitz gets a whopping 430 mentions in Montréal blogs. Philippe Martin and Patrick Tanguay also gets each 396 mentions. If you care to explain how they got to “dominate” the montreal blogosphere, leave a comment :-)
• Standoutjobs is the most talked about startup, followed by librivox. It’s surprising to see that the people behind each company is more quoted than the company itself. Even Marc-Andre Cournoyer is mentionned 3 times more than his company (standoutjobs).
• the iPhone is mentionned 248 times even though it’s not even avalaible in Canada
• iPod is the most popular topic in technology, followed by Vista, linux and then ruby on rails. Meanwhile, specific keywords like CSS, SEO, CMS are very rare.

Fagstein reports that the cyberpresse staff has stopped writing blog posts and articles, as asked by their union (Syndicat des travailleurs de l’information de La Presse) until a convention is signed with the company.

I will make it short: I think you can ask for more benefits only when you proved you did a very good job. And I have to say I have never seen an outstanding article from cyberpresse. It’s true they get the news (and more) but the analysis and insight leaves much to be desired. Like the Journal de Montréal, it seems nothing exists outside Montréal, there is no perspective for the future, and I always have the impression most of the content is second-hand information. You can post examples if you disagree, but that’s my final opinion for now.

Unyk, an online address book, has announced they have reached this month 6 millions users.

Launched 2 years ago, Unyk is produced by the same team behind the successful Netclub, the dating website sold to the american giant match.com. Unyk is very similar in essence to Plaxo by managing your different contact information. While Plaxo introduced itself as a way to always have updated information about your connections, Unyk markets itself as a way to have a unique life-lasting identity, with an ID like 619 NSK. For me however, beyond “marketing speak”, both services are the same. Their viral growth is both based on getting your contacts from your email accounts and updating them after your registration. Like Plaxo, Unyk also provides premium services to its users to monetize its service.

2 years ago, services like Unyk were innovative. For instance, it provided a way to back up and re-sync your address book whenever you get a new computer. Many were also switching their email accounts to new providers like GMail. But from what I see, managing email and contact information is not anymore an area of pain growth on the Internet. Younger generations are using instead MSN and are facebooking each other. Another problem currently is the diversity of web services people are invited to join: youtube, facebook, flickr, del.icio.us, twitter, livejournal, myspace, digg etc. and managing these online identies is now the current problem. Services like Plaxo and Unyk are in the ideal position to take over this central role, by providing for instance OpenID services, managing the user’s social network and making it portable over third-party websites, and meta-coordinating their web activity and content. Unfortunately, Plaxo has taken the wrong path and turned itself into a social network, which is crazy considering all the various market leaders already in place. I guess it’s now Unyk’s turn to proove they can innovate, in the right way.

Praized Media who just went beyond their stealth phase is looking for a lead engineer, and a front-end web developer who can work with the Ruby on Rails framework. On the other hand, Standoutjobs is also charming hunting opening a position for another Ruby programmer in their team, which I don’t understand by the way because they don’t even have a designer in the team.

A couple of weeks ago, Akoha also posted 2 positions to get a junior python programmer and a senior graphic designer. This left me wondering seriously if I should open a job board on Montreal Tech Watch for this kind of jobs (and more), although I am not sure if it should be done from scratch or just pick a standard service from the web like simplyhired. Does anyone have experience in job boards? What’s your best solution?

There was previously a small “controversy” on an earlier post if whether Google had offices in Montréal or not. I just had confirmation from Denis Canuel who went downtown and their address is 24th floor, suite 2449, 1000 de la Gauchetiere.

Now, it seems I wasn’t wrong either. The 24th floor of the building is in fact a virtual office area, in which multinational corporations can rent blocks of space and time, or for early stage companies who want an address to impressreceive their business partners.

In this case, Denis Canuel saw they were shared with Yahoo! and other companies, who worked in the same space with Google developers.

Thanks Denis!

Scott Lake, of JadePixel and Shopify fame, has started startupottawa, a blog which covers, you guessed it, the Ottawa startup scene. It seems Samuel Bouchard has also taken the same role for Quebec City. I am not sure what was Montreal Tech Watch’s influence in this, but I find it a great idea. Local blogs are more focused and can cover local events and startups more in depth than “international” blogs; it’s also easier to connect with your readers.

Scott Lake previously wrote the post here on startups from Ottawa, and I am sure he will do a great job with startupottawa.

The 2nd edition of Pecha Kucha Montreal is scheduled tonight at Société des Arts Technologiques, 1195 bvd St-Laurent.

A Pecha Kucha is very similar in essence to a DemoCamp but from a design point of view. Also, you get a overwhelming majority of girls when it’s the inverse in DemoCamps :-)

Now, there isn’t much technology behind the event, but there is innovation for sure. I am especially interested in what Karl Dubost, who works for the W3C and sets web standards, has to say.

Transcontinental Media is launching the 20th of September a local advertising network, allowing announcers to advertise on Québec-based blogs. The initiative will focus initially on a small subset of bloggers, presented as the 20 most influental blogs in Québec, and will show ads from high-end announcers and from its subsidiary Les Affaires.

The initiative is organized by Guillaume Brunet, although Michel Leblanc presents himself as the father of the idea.

This is a direct result from Yulbiz, a local event started by Michel Leblanc and Philippe Martin, where business bloggers meetup and discuss about their web projects and business issues. Since attendees were also heading communication agencies and media groups, I see this as a natural outcome of Yulbiz, and a proof of the group’s dynamism and success. It is noteworthy that they have also published a book lately on the topic of blogging.

Here is the list of the blogs participating:

• Michel Leblanc, who is specialized in marketing and blogging
• Philippe MArtin, social media, blogs and video blogs
• AMM-PCM, a group blog on interactive marketing
• Guillaume Brunet,
• Christian Guy,
• Benoit Descary, focused on new technology and tips
• Stephane Guerin, who blogs about marketing and technology
• Martin Lessard, a blog about Internet culture and society
• ipub.ca.cx, a blog about advertising
• Michael Carpentier, an entrepreneur fron Quebec city
• Vlancom, a blog about advertising and communication
• Yanick Manuri, on online advertising
• Groupe Vectis, on management and marketing
• Alain Theriault, a startup “coach”
• Stephane Hamel, a web analytics blog
• Benjamin Yoskovitz, web entrepreneur
• Geoffroi Garon, Stratégie d’affaires et communauté Web
• Marc Snyder, a blogger in PR and communication
• Yves Williams, a web entrepreneur
• Eric Baillargeon,
• Claude Malaison, on social media
• VC TV, a video blog on startups and entrepreneurship
• and Montreal Tech Watch

I like the fact that it’s local, which means ads are highly relevant to any Montreal Tech Watch reader. Products like Google AdSense are inadequate for bloggers as they were designed mostly for high-trafficked websites. Blogs on the other hand don’t have as much readership, but they are highly focused and influential, which calls for specialized ad networks like this. Transcontinetal Media also want to increase overall readership of the blog network, which left me wondering what they are preparing for the future.

Image by Dave Sideway, The Gazette

Vinismo, the newly launched wiki for wines, has been covered by the Montréal Gazette, where Roberto Rocha introduces it as the wikipedia for wines.

Evan Prodromou and Nicolas Ritoux introduced vinismo first at DemocampMontreal 3, I found it great and promised to a great future. However, Roberto Rocha brought some thoughtful comments about vinismo, echoed later by fagstein. In the article, a wine critic downplayed vinismo as it lacks authority, one argument I dismiss completely (cf wikipedia). Another critic was about subjectivity, as each wine lover would be most likely to have his own opinion about a wine. This might be a problem, and websites like corkd might be more useful to readers as it doesn’t try to synthetize information given by users. But wikitravel, another reference website started by Evan Prodromou, was successful even though travel destinations are also highly subjective.

I would say that in essence, I find Vinismo great, and they aren’t really any design flaws. What I am worried more is about the marketing, or the lack of thereof. For instance, if you search in Technorati, most people blogging about vinismo are the web people from Montréal, and this is just not enough. This is a sharp contrast from standoutjobs, where Benjamin Yoskovitz reaches almost every day to influential bloggers in human ressources, recruiting and startups, which is a great way to be recognized as an innovative startup in recruiting. I hope the Vinismo team is going to ramp up their promotion efforts in the next few months.

La Semaine Québecoise de l’Informatique Libre, which I freely translate to “Québec Week of Free Software”, has begun today. You can see a list of activities on their website, such as Ubuntu install parties or the local celebration of the Software Freedom Day.

Free Software and Open Source Software is at the basis of most of the new craze we see today in the Internet:

1. First, by the use of open source frameworks, librairies and software that most developers use to build a website. Apache, MySQL, Linux, php, Ruby on Rails, Django are all popular open sourced software that are commonly used. Without these tools, it is undeniable that we would not have as much innovation as we see today, as engineers and entrepreneurs would have had to buy some kind of proprietary and closed technology, possibly reinventing the wheel each time. Even if you do not deal with technology, you might still use Open Source Software like Firefox or Wordpress that are proven to be highly superior to their “commercial” equivalents.
2. Second, the Open Source philosophy has gone beyond software, and is more or less the basis of the “web2.0″ movement. Wikipedia, youtube, blogging, citizen journalism, they all give the power back to the individual, who can contribute and make the overall product better.

Even though both movements were and are criticized for lacking “business models”, they are here to stay and individuals, developers, marketers, designers, etc. have to integrate it in their plans. For SQIL, what I found most interesting is the 2-day conference on “Free Culture, innovation by networking” where the Open Source movement’s impact is discusses on the technological and social side. But there are many other happennings in Montréal, so if you have time (and speak french), go to one of panels or activities.