Montreal Tech Watch

The next edition of MTEB, a bi-monthly breakfast for tech entrepreneurs, instigated by Ben Yoskovitz from Standoutjobs, is due June 9th at Boccaccinos, 1251 McGill College.

The event is sponsored by Nestor System and Sun Microsystems. It’s a great opportunity to chat and connect with another entrepreneur, angel, or a tech professionnal. Compared to StartupDrinks for instance, you will get time to know more someone and talk longer. Plus it’s a free breakfast, which is something you cannot refuse.

RSVP on Facebook. This is needed to plan for capacity.

Come all to StartupDrinks today. It’s FREE and very simple: register here, come at Brutopia today, get a beer, meet people launching startups, share experiences (lessons, technology, hacking, or marketing, whatever you fancy) all in good, informal company.

Led by our dear friends Arach Tchoupani and Yannick Gingras, MontrealPython is today at La Banque, 175 Roy Est.

MontrealPython7:

Here is our schedule for the evening:

• 18h00: Opening
• 18h20: Announcements
• 18h30: Flash presentations
• 19h00: Break
• 19h20: Main presentation

Our main presenter Olivier Bélanger on “Ounk, un environnement de scripting musical”.

Ça venait de @jeanlucs lundi.

Oui encore une fois, un article qui n’a rien à avoir avec la technologie, et qui n’a rien à avoir avec Montréal, mais comme je suis en plein dans le marketing ces jours-ci, on a l’impression de se regarder dans un miroir, surtout la séquence dans la salle de contrôle.

Probablement une vidéo qui va être encore plus vrai dans 6 mois, comme je sais que le buzz et le marketing viral peut maintenant être contrôlé et généré.

Buzzwords in a newly released product this morning:

• cloud
• twitter
• iphone
• mobility, location-based service
• app store
• apocalypse

Yes, it’s reportage!

(I’m sad there’s no mention of Facebook, that’s also a buzzword these days)

Now available on the App Store

This is not exactly tech. Nevertheless, I’ll have to bow to George Favvas for pulling of this story: SmartHippo advises family on refinancing rates, and then congratulates them after getting the service with a home-delivered cake.

Sounds one of the exceptional stories you used to read on Kathy Sierra’s blog (Creating Passionnate Users) or one of the stunts done by the Zappos team.

Smarthippo, or making the world a better place, one rate at a time

:-)

What: The de-facto monthly meetup for Montreal Entrepreneurs, Technologists. Meet hackers, venture capitalists, angel investors, startup experts. It’s an informal, get-together, free, fun event where you can discover new projects, maybe find co-founders, maybe find resources for your next startup.

It’s also the last StartupDrinks at Brutopia, folks!

Who More than 70 people are expected, from the greater montreal area. Organizers are Flow Ventures and TechEntreprise, in the person of Raymond Luk and Robin Ahn and heri

When: Last wednesday of May, from 5.30pm

Where: Brutopia, 1219 Crescent Street, Montreal. We do have the terracce + the basement. Corner Ste-Catherine, Metro station Guy Concordia

How:

1. Register on TechEntreprise.
2. Show up and get a drink
3. Talk about your tech projects and startups

Felipe Coimbra released last monday twtBizCard, an add-on service which allows twitter users to exchange business contacts with replies, a virtual handshake if you like.

The story is not so much about twtBizCard. Of course, the idea is interesting, since after all, LinkedIn does 15 million uniques a month. But for me, your twitter profile is already your business card in itself, with its quick bio, website, and also features for sending replies and messages. Meet someone, add to twitter, keep in touch, exchange tweets, and you’ve done already so much more than what a simple business card can do.

So why did I write this entry on MontrealTechWatch? Well if you go through twtapps’s history and if you know Felipe Coimbra, you realize that twtBizCard is actually the 10th Twitter application in 5 months, which makes it about 2 new twitter applications every month. And you know that with that speed of development, twtapps is bound to get the jackpot, at one point of another. twtpolls, twtvite, all of those are already well trafficked, but I’m sure there will be one which will get massive traffic.

In comparison, a heavyweight app like TechEntreprise, or any other web app managed by n-person teams, seem to be developed in slow motion. One could argue that those “traditional” apps have more stickiness, user data history, and rich interfaces, etc. but developing twitter applications undeniably has a big advantage in release cycles and as a result, in overall products risks. Felipe Coimbra might not even be optimizing for stickiness: just view the quick description, and click a button to interact with the app, and voilà, you’re back to twitter. Those quick, short burts of interactions might be the future of web applications.

Interestingly, Felipe also makes I-stats, a real-time web analytics software. I’m assuming Felipe relies on those detailed data to do optimization and maximize metrics such as user interactions through split tests for instance.

For those on WordPress, there’s an upcoming camp this summer, here in Montreal. This follows the successful WordCamp Toronto.

WordPress has had a few interesting developments lately, namely the P2 theme, which turns it into a live-blogging/micro-blogging platform (see this for instance), as well as more elaborate products such as Buddypress, which gives it social networking features.

Of note, wordcampmontreal is looking for speakers, sponsors, venues etc. (hey at least there’s a website, I’m crossing fingers that this goes through, unlike BarCamps)

A documentary film by Jack Oatmon.

A look into the hardware hacking community in Montreal, including the Foulab collective. Why are more and more hobbyists experimenting with hacks and circuit bends? What relationship does this imply about consumer society and technological advancement? Is this a real-world analog of ‘user generated content’?