Montreal Tech Watch

The canadian edition of PC World has a very interesting article about Nortel Networks and its story. According to the article, Nortel transformed Ottawa into the nation’s tech capital.

More than 60 high tech manufacturers and telecom service providers can trace their roots to Nortel, according to a 1999 report on the country’s capital region, and the high tech industry that fuels Ottawa’s growth.

Today, Nortel’s digital equipment is the beating heart of almost every single one of the top 25 service provider networks in the world. Statistics Canada says the company accounts for more than 15% of all private sector R&D and 85% of telecom R&D in Canada.

“Le CRTC pourrait réguler l’Internet” is cyberpresse’s headline today. Michel Arpin, VP of CRTC, said that they didn’t see the need to regulate the Internet in 1999, but it’s different now. He added:

On s’aligne donc pour intervenir, et ce avant trois ans.

This is after the ADISQ, the APFTQ, and the ACTRA made a public appeal last sunday to the Quebec and Canadian government. I am not sure if Michel Arpin said that to calm down these associations, which represent the music and cinema industry, or if the CRTC was really serious about it.

In case you didn’t get it, there is only one way of regulating the Internet and making sure that there is a majority of Canadian content on the Internet; and that is by blocking foreign websites, which is what Saudi Arabia and China is doing. And there is one thing for sure, this will impoverish instead of enriching Québec and Canadian culture.

Instead, I suggest that the José Verner pays a course on digital matters 101 to the ADISQ and everyone involved in this matter. It will show them that, because of its technical nature, there can’t be any artificial barrier on the Internet. The RIAA and the MPAA have been laughed at for years because they too don’t understand the organic nature of the Internet; instead of helping the artists and their members to adapt and cross the digital divide, they invested their efforts into controlling each user.

Wake up, ADISQ, you are disconnected from today’s reality!!!

Branchez-vous, the “first independent” web media company in Quebec, launched today a new section called mon branchez-vous, which is very similar in principle to Netvibes or Pageflakes. Users can add, remove or change each of the page’s section. There are 35000 pre-selected “news sources”, but you can also put in your own RSS feed(s). There are also other widgets avalaible like upcoming weather.

I have to say I was pleasently surprised. Media companies in Quebec usually have a policy of not to allowing their visitors to go to another rival web destination. Also, you don’t even have to register and give them your email address to use the service, which is again a surprising open move from Branchez-vous. Finally, you can drag and drop the widgets, change the colors, change the presentation, add tabs, etc. To top it, users can also rate a RSS feed, and then this rating will be shown publicly, allowing others to see what’s popular, adding a “web2.0″ mix in the application, even if it’s anonymous.

Of course, this is not exactly world-classs innovation, as it is inspired heavily from Netvibes and Pageflakes. The page also crashed the browser when I tried to open new tabs and load all the others at the same time. But again: this comes from a media company, not from a startup, and they should be congratulated for this.

I watched the gala de l’ADISQ yesterday, which is an annual award ceremony rewarding musicians and singers from Québec. I haven’t watched Radio-Canada for months, but it was a family gathering and, well, I convinced myself that it was an opportunity to know what people are really listening to these days in Quebec.

What I saw was a community which was completely disconnected from reality. The presenter, Louis-José Houde, mentionned Youtube and made fun of the whole blogging, podcasting and videoblogging phenomenon in Quebec, saying people who upload their content on the Internet for no monetary reward are stupid and waisting their time, a joke obviously made to comfort an audience which would have liked to live forever in the old model (i.e. I produce a song or a content, I set a price for it, and I market it to a passive audience)

Later, the president of ADISQ, Paul Dupont-Hébert, along with Raymond Legault, the head of UDA (Union des Artistes), and 16 others associations of artists and entertainement companies from all over Quebec and Canada, made a public ambush appeal to the different government representatives in the audience. They asked for more money, but more importantly, they asked for content regulation on the Internet by the CRTC. Their point was that the Canadian government couldn’t let the market free, and that there must be a proeminent representation of content specifically from Québec and Canada on the Internet.

Ok, in which year do you live exactly? In 2007, the public is not anymore passive. We just don’t sit, wait, and consume what you are producing. We like to interact, create podcasts, discuss topics, engage with sometimes stupid but often brilliant home-made videos. We can make a band like Arcade Fire a worldwide success, we get to hear music from all over the world, and nobody is freaking telling us what to do.

I felt that ADISQ was living in an ideal world where they were breast-feeding consumers. The Internet is popular mainly because of its diversity and freedom, unlike the regulated radio and television industry. Besides, it’s not technically feasible to enforce a “proeminent representation of Quebec content on the Internet”. Ms. Solange Drouin, head of ADISQ, said they want the CRTC to force Internet service providers like Bell or Rogers to implement that, and that they are opening a conference today about this problem.

Fools…

The next Barcamp is due in Montreal, in exactly one week. Sylvain Carle, Simon Law and Evan Prodromou are behind the event, although in the true spirit of a BarCamp, everyone is invited to participate, contribute and help organizing.

You can:

• volunteer as a MC or help in logistics
• invite developers, designers, engineers, entrepreneurs from Montreal and also contact companies, like video games companies or universities
• find various sponsors for the event.

The last edition of BarCamp in Montreal was a success, with demonstrations and discussions, mostly about technology, but also in design, travel, conferences.

Read my post about Barcamp2, and another closing post. If you read Montreal Tech Watch, then you should seriously consider attending the upcoming barcamp.

The canadian edition of Intruders.tv was announced late last night, with the objective of covering conferences and events, interview entrepreneurs and also visit startups. The team is made of Laurent Maisonnave, Christian Aubry, Vincent Abry, and Benoit Descary. The first two are known for their video blogs projects, like yulbuzz, while the other two blog about recent web2.0 products. This makes an exciting agenda, one that could give great visibility to Canadian startups and technology.

IntrudersTV was launched first in France in France in 2005 and is now in 6 countries. I had a look at the US edition and they had video coverage of the Web 2.0 Expo, of Techcrunch 40, and dozens of interviews of CEOs and founders. I hope the Canadian version will have the same dynamic and diverse topics; although having the crew members all based in Montreal makes me wonder how they are going to cover other provinces in the west. Tris Hussey welcomes them and asks the same question.

Apart from KTI’s VC-TV, they enter a landscape which is mostly void of competition; and I will be watching what they will be doing at next week’s democampMontreal5 and barcampCanada1.

Company: activeMedia

Position: Flash Programmer

Responsibilites and Tasks:
activeMedia is looking for a talented Flash programmer (ActionScript 2 and 3) to join his Canada’s most certified Flash team. activeMedia is developping, since 2001, pure SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions in Flash actually used by more than 185,000 users in 21 different verticals. Our full range of solutions are actually recognized as one of the world’s most advanced online business solutions. You will take place in a small team of hardcore Flash enthousiasts.

You will be asked to:

• Take place in the business processes analysis
• Develop features, functions, modules and projects
• Work on the user interface thru the server’s business logic
• Perfectly integrate yourself in the team, the business vision, the way we develop and in our pixel-perfect standard of quality
• Get certified during your first year (we pay for it !)
• And finally, you will be asked to play hockey and other freakin’ games we invent, eat candies and other important stuff

Required Knoweledge:

• Mainly ActionScript 2, somewhere in time ActionScript 3
• Very strong OOP concept
• Active Server Page
• SQL Server 2000 and/or 2005
• Delphi an asset
• Global understanding of “web applications”

Compensation:
Depends on experience

Additional info:
http://www.activemedia.ca

How to apply:
Email Francois at francois@activemedia.ca

View the complete list of job listings
Submit a job ad

Congratulations to Mitch Cohen, who is nominated by Business Week in their third annual “Best U.S. Entrepreneurs 25 and Under”.

Mitch Cohen is an undergraduate student at McGill university, but has already started his 2nd company, which is by all means impressive. He demoed recently ClixConnect at DemoCampMontreal4. Readers are invited to vote, and the winner will be announced on Nov. 12 on the small Biz Channel. Because I doubt you know the other 24 entrepreneurs, a good idea is then to vote for Mitch.

I like to think that I contributed by taking this picture.

I am giving a quick shout out to CakeMail which has now an additionnal language (Russian) for the email marketing software. I really like their efforts in localization. Montreal may not have Silicon Valley’s hot weather and certainly not the same level of activity of technology entrepreneurship but one of its true strengths lies in its diversity and its bilingual (if not trilingual or more) population. Bravo then to the CakeMail team!

Capazoo.com, which was under development since late 2006, has been officially launched publicly monday in New York City, and tuesday in Montreal.

It’s presented a social network, with a focus on monetization through a virtual currency named zoops. Registered members can tip another profile page, video, music or a photo; if you reach a minimum of zoops in your account, you can then cash out, although you need to to upgrade to a VIP account, which costs $35 a year. 1 zoop is actually worth a cent, which should encourage members to give away more zoops. Capazoo also extended the monetization system to referrals, shared advertising revenues and savings.

I have to say though I find Capazoo’s presentation a bit akward, when I read “make money from” and “friends” in the same sentence. I think that at some point, you have to be honest and present it as a just a place where you earn money from your media. In the “real world”, this would be the equivalent of a shop owner using the words “friends” and “social network” to name his/her customers. Capazoo doesn’t cross the line as weblo did; they indeed have an innovative idea with the zoops system, but I think they need to clear things out.

The website in itself has a very myspace-like feeling to it. Capazoo also follows myspace’s marketing path by focusing on music, celebrities and a young demographic. Is capazoo going to be the next myspace? you tell me…

Mashable has another review of capazoo. They also report that capazoo has raised $25 millions in private capital, with no VCs involved. Capazoo’s offices are in Notre-Dame street, and they were reported to have the largest ASP.NET development team in Montreal.