As told by netfirms sponsor, WordPress is the #1 installed blogging and cms software. It has been embraced by corporations, consultants, SMBes, but also big publishing companies such as Wall Street Journal or LeMonde.fr. I know it’s my #1 recommended software for anyone wanting a web presence, with a website and a template up up in less than a couple of hours. As a matter of fact, its ubiquitous presence made competitors focus instead on niche markets, and made entrepreneurs go to other areas, such as mobile development or facebook/social applications development.

That’s why WordCampMontreal was in my top conferences to go this summer. It’s great to see again the early adopters who I already met 5 years ago (although not all of them), when WordPress was still up against blogspot (or even movabletype and livejournal). But the majority of the audience were not early adopters: php developers, web designers, bloggers who just got started this year, etc. It’s a diverse crowd, and it was reflected in the unconference’s schedule: theming wordpress, integration with forums, making it bilingual, SEO for wordpress, multimedia and wordpress, deploying wordpress on windows etc. I was sort of hoping for talks about federated/distributed buddypress, or maybe wp realtime and mobile blogging talks, but that’s a little bit too advanced probably. We got great food though, and the little extra-touch which surprised me.

Thanks to the organizers (Jeremy Clarke, digibomb, Shannon Smith) who did a wonderful job. Thanks also to the wordcampmontreal sponsors (Netfirms, Make Web Not War, also Philippe Martin’s N’ayez pas Peur)

More pictures (alexa clark)

Tungle, which offers a collaborating calendaring software, launched today a website questioning the state of current calendars. A series of videos and texts tells us how existing calendars are just software representations of paper calendars and how they do not help us in our daily online life.

The videos stars Marc Gingras, founder of Tungle, the Tungle team, as well as Tungle’s new board members: Robert Scoble, Ellen Levy, Don Dodge, etc. It also features key people from IBM, yahoo, Plancast and Facebook.

The interviewees tells us about the current information overload, from emails, social networks and news websites. Then they allude that a brand new calendaring software could be in fact help us manage this busy digital life: this calendar would connect with the different platforms, would interact well with data, in a transparent way.

In my opinion, this would mean tungle will have access and manage to our Facebook, plancast, tripit data, our emails, as well as our twitter stream, giving us a 3000 feet view of what’s happening for us and what’s also upcoming, much alike a digital dashboard. I see tungle making strategic alliances with the main platforms on the web, and the fact that they participate in the videos (yahoo mail, plancast, facebook etc.) alludes in that direction. Those are just suppositions though. It’s too early to tell, since apart from the interview soundbites, there isn’t any new features announced for Tungle, and maybe it’s a test for Tungle to see how we react to their ideas. Could this be a website crafted to get customer feedback? or a website to get a movement started? It’s all very mysterious, and the calendering space just got a lot more exciting.

MontrealOuvert, announced a couple of weeks ago, is a new promising initiative promoting open access to public data. In an ideal world, data produced or monitored by different municipal or government bodies in Montréal would all be made available freely to citizens and businesses.

This would lead to data re-use, data mashups, new applications used by citizens and taxpayers, possibly in ways never imagined or never seen before. In a way, open data apps will be then a democracy tool, empowering citizens with new visions of their city. Open data thus promises better governance through better understanding of what’s happening in Montréal, and at the same time, it can also be seen as a business opportunity for entrepreneurs and businesses.

Potential applications could be for instance maps of real-time availability of bixis, crime maps in Montreal, productivity graphs of city employees and contractors … or even an interface like simcity‘s if we push the concept far enough… and if MontrealOuvert is successful, since there isn’t actually any open data policy or awareness in Montréal. The 4 instigators behind MontrealOuvert, namely Jonathan Brun, Jean-Noé Landry, Michael Lenczner, Sébastien Pierre, decided to do something, when they saw all what’s being done in other cities and in Montréal.

I met Jonathan, Jean-Noé and Sébastien a couple of times, and recorded them last friday so that they could explain in their own words what they wanted to do with MontréalOuvert.

Jean-Noé Landry is inviting all interested Montréalers to their 1st open meeting, aug 26th. If the concept of re-using data interests you, either you’re a data mashup and data visualization specialist, or someone keen on connecting the web and democracy, head over to Station C this upcoming thursday

PodCampMontréal, Montréal’s biggest social media conference is in one month ahead, sept 11th and 12th.

The event is organized as a camp, meaning everyone is invited to present, all in informal settings. The format has been proven successful, with sessions ranging from blog marketing, social media monetization to discussions on the future of media, or social media 101 sessions. This year’s edition will probably have interesting sessions on Twitter, new services like Foursquare, and I expect also sessions on social media for mobile.

But Sylvain Grand’Maison (QuebecBalado Fono), one of the original instigators of the event, presents it better than me:

(view in HD on vimeo)

I like especially when he talks about Montréal in the latest 30 sec. of the video.

If you are in Montréal Sept 11th and 12th, don’t miss PodCampMontréal. I have been to the last edition, with insightful tips and also a way to learn about the latest trends, but as everyone knows, it’s a great way to meet in the corridors all the bloggers, journalists, new media citizens and influences from Montréal and other cities.

StatusNet has announced early this week $1.27 Series A funding from FirstMark Capital, BOLDStart Ventures, plus also existing investors iNovia Capital and MontrealStartup. This brings StatusNet’s total funding to $2.3 million

The 2 new venture groups, FirstMark Capital and BOLDStart Ventures are from New York City. Scott Switzer, from FirstMark, joins also StatusNet as new board member. He previously founded OpenX, an open source advertising platform, well-known amongst fellow bloggers and media companies. The US investors, as well as StatusNet’s growing team in San Fran, shows ever-increasing operations and also sales in the US, similar to CoRadiant’s path. StatusNet announced recently a successful implementation of their software at Motorola, presented as a typical customer who’d get substantial advantages from running internally StatusNet.

Congratulations to Evan Prodromou (@evan, @evanpro on twitter), StatusNet’s founder. Evan is a strong citizen and actor of the open source movement, but at the same time has a rare flair on creating successful businesses by leveraging open source dynamics, as demonstrated for instance by one his previously venture wikitravel. For those who didn’t follow StatusNet, here’s a quick recall:

• July 2008: Identica releases open source microblogging service
• July 2008: Identi.ca’s perfect launch
• January 2009: MontrealStartup announces funding in identi.ca
• April 2009: Status.net to offer paid hosted micro-blogging applications to companies
• July 2009: StatusNet wins open source award

What’s next? 2010 is a ripe year for social media, probably the year where many big companies are comfortable on getting company-wide social software to their employees. StatusNet can break in by selling its usability and popularity on identi.ca, as well as the fact that the source can be installed in a company’s server for more security. Its most obvious competitor Jive Software, which doesn’t have StatusNet’s usability, popularity nor does it have any open source code. BUT Jive Software sells installs of its “social enteprise 2.0″ software by millions though, and as a matter of fact, just got $30m funding from Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins. Jive is going for the home run and unless StatusNet hires an army of salesmen as well as bringing *major* enhancements to its product, it’s hard to see StatusNet’s edge… unless it is for single departments / groups in a company, or small businesses who can’t get Jive’s ticket entry price. We’ll wait and see I guess for news from StatusNet on how they plan to win the social enterprise market.

One week ago, a survey was posted on MTW, with the goal of assessing the state of Montreal technology landscape. The survey was setup to find first the strengths, second the problems and finally, the opportunities for Montréal as a technology and entrepreneurship center.

As a few noted, it’s not a scientific survey, with sometimes a few opinionated or incomplete choices. A more methodical survey is possible, but it would have required weeks of planning, analysis and then lengthy execution. I prefer quick results, and then refining and correcting from there. It’s a more spontaneous approach, and as seen from the feedback, most liked it.

Before presenting the results, I would like to thank each one of you who contributed on promoting the survey. More than 50 people posted the survey on Twitter, links were shared on Facebook, and I also saw it on emails. It’s with the help of your unique networks that we can get the word known and get the voice of Montréal out there. I’m thinking now that we could use something similar to help promote new projects launched by local Montréalers and help each other.

Now, the results.

Strengths of Montréal as a tech entrepreneurship center.

For those who forgot it, it’s the ranked results for the first question of the survey. Choices listed on top are the best strengths as seen by the 110 people who took the time to answer the survey.

1 – Montréal’s diversity, creativity, and coolness. Score: 3.4/4  I posted the link on a previous post, but you all know Montréal is a hotbed of innovation. Its music and arts scene, its multicultural diversity, its global success such as the Cirque du Soleil, its openness makes it an ideal place for innovation and creativity. All major video game companies have now recognized its potential and have all developers teams here.

2 – Low costs plus tax credits. Score: 3.2/4 Most people who’ve been to major US and European cities are surprised how cheap Montréal. You don’t have to dedicated half of your pay to live right in downtown Montréal. For companies, salaries are low, both for skilled and unskilled workers, and there are diverse tax credits for innovative technology companies, allowing them to go past the dreaded 1st year launch. This is a crucial element for developers and entrepreneurs wanting to dedicate a few months on a technology projects, without worrying too much about rent

3 – Friendly Community with regular events, making it possible to talk. Score: 3.1/4 We’ve come far from the early days of 2005 and 2006. Ben Yoskovitz started it with the Montréal tech entrepreneur breakfast, then we had all of a sudden democamps, barcamps, startupdrinks, montreal.rb, mtlnewtech, etc. Thanks to all the past and current event organizers @sfllaw, @fredngo, @sylvaincarle, @marclaporte, @ylarrivee, yannick gingras, @arach, @heri, @quebecvalley, @jeremyclarke, @bolidea, @twtfelipe, @ptelio, @rayluk, @robin_ahn, @jefftala, @startupifier, @uxmtl and I am surely missing many others.

4 – Its universities and higher education system. Score: 3.0/4 MontrealInternational states it better than me:

Montréal’s universities are focal points for research, discovery and innovation activities. With its international calibre of researchers, its 11 universities − four of which are major universities and seven are affiliated schools − and its partnerships with governments and the private sector, Greater Montréal is a leader in innovation. Moreover, the Montréal region is Canada’s university capital, as it ranks first place for the number of university diplomas awarded at the ubdergraduate and graduate levels. In 2007, more than 170,000 students were enrolled in universities in Greater Montréal, of whom nearly 42,000 students graduated, with more than 6,500 graduates in  the high technology sectors. In the future, innovative companies will be able to count on a large pool of university graduates to meet their needs for a qualified workforce.

5 – The city is a bridge between North America and Europe, and attracts new talents. Score: 3.0/4 Quebec is unique in North America, due its French roots. Montréal is the 2nd French-speaking metropolis in the world, is located in North America, in one of the continent’s densest region, the St-Laurent valley, and as such, has attracted for dozens of years immigrants, from Quebec of course, Europe, Latin America and Asia, but especially is dear for all french-speaking countries in the world. It’s the equivalent of NYC or San Francisco from all West Africans, Belgians or Swiss. Paris is the de-facto capital of course, but it has heavy and historical structures and traditions weighing on innovation. Most youths and entrepreneurising individuals thus prefer to settle in Montréal, french but definitevely rooted in North America.

6 – Support from the Government, such as the launch of the Teralys fund. Score: 2.6/4 Support from the québec government is more visible than in any other province. Read previous article with Jacques Bernier

7 – No Facebook or Google Headquarters who would capture top talent. Score: 2.3/4 Compared to the Valley or Seattle, there is no huge technology company who would draft all the top developers. Any startup with a decent team can hope working with bright developers, designers and marketers without worrying (too much) about other companies snatching them up in a few weeks.

8 – Dynamism of investors and VCs. Score: 2.2/4 VCs like Chris Arsenault, or investors like @msu are going to local events, talking to entrepreneurs and even doing more than their roles by launching local initiatives such as the Notman House. But most importantly, they believe in local companies, announcing regularly new funding rounds.

What can we get from these results? If there is any marketing planned for Montréal, then we’ve need to highight first #1, which is Montréal’s innovation, creativity, diversity and openness. That makes a difference when settlers choose the city over other Canadian, American or European cities. I’ve mentioned it in a previous post, but it might be worthwile to talk about the music, design, fashion, or video games creative forces in Montréal, even on technology blog like MTW, because after all, that’s why most people are attracted to the city.

Also, #2 and #3 are obvious too, and even easier to demonstrate than #1 .

More results are coming in the next days. There are very interesting results about Montréal’s problem and opportunities. Stay tuned, folks!

Christmas is early for some of us apparently. While many are working hard on getting benevolent investors fund their projects, and trying to get their product online with minimal resources and time, Duncan Moore (@duncano) “just” applied to an innovation award started by U.K. based web development agency Deep Blue Sky Digital. The award’s homepage lists 5 criteria for winning projects: innovation, value, engagement, realism and originality, and Duncan Moore’s proposal apparently won over the judges, with £10000 worth of web design, development and consultancy to bring life to the idea in a couple of months.

For a web entrepreneur, this is equivalent to discovering in a evening walk a genie in a bottle, granting his wishes. Of course, you would also wish about having DHH as a lead developer and Caterina Fake the app designer, but that wouldn’t be possible, even with a powerful genie, so we have to consider Duncan Moore as the luckiest and perhaps also the most creative person of the month, having won the web award for innovation.

I did an email interview with Duncan Moore and Jim Morrisson, Deep Blue Sky’s rep.

Can you present yourself?

I’m a Montreal-based independent consultant. Together with a network of experienced freelancers, I provide services related to online strategy, naming, and content strategy & creation (copywriting & translation). Previously, I helped to brand and launch both CakeMail and Bloom Digital Platforms, the makers of AdGear. In addition to client work, I have been building another Web application, currently in private alpha, which will take some of the pain out of the naming process by making it easier to verify the availability of names online.

Duncan Moore (left), a while ago at BarCampMontreal3

Can you tell us succinctly about the idea? Such as the problem it is going to tackle and the general approach you’ve chosen?

The idea has to do with link-sharing on Twitter, which has become the way most of us get and share our links these days, although it was never designed for that purpose. We think we can add some functionality that will improve the link-sharing experience on Twitter.

Any other people behind the “idea”? Or you are the only person so far committed to the idea?

I discussed it at length with at least one trusted collaborator who is an experienced programmer, in order to validate feasibility before submitting it, but at this stage it’s just me. Once it’s launched, we’ll see. If it really takes off, it will likely need additional resources.

Aren’t you both afraid of working with a partner thousands of miles away?

Duncan Moore: Not in the least. When I was at CakeMail, we had team members in Easter Europe with whom we collaborated daily. More recently, while orchestrating the rebranding of Nexalogy, there was a critical point in the process when I was in Hawaii, the Nexalogy guys were in Montreal and designer Daniel Mireault (@dmireault) was in Thailand. Despite the distance, the end result is solid.

Jim Morrison, Deep Blue Sky Digital: Not from our perspective, no. From our correspondence thus far Duncan strikes me as just the kind of forward thinking person we enjoy working with. We have quite a few local clients but we also enjoy really great relationships with clients further afield for years sometimes before finally meeting face to face.

The prize is listed as “£10,000 of free Design, Development and Hosting for someone to bring their groundbreaking idea to life on the web.” Is it something you do frequently or is it the first time? Can you provide us of examples of websites or applications you did with less than £10,000 ?

Jim Morrison, Deep Blue Sky Digital: This is the first time we’ve done this. In September I instituted “Fridays” at Deep Blue Sky. All our Fridays (that’s 20% of our time) is spent on internal projects; learning, experimenting, blogging and having a bit more fun. First we got our own little site redone (deepbluesky.com), then we built findmebyip.com which has had a bit of an impact in the HTML5/CSS3 space, we designed an interactive QR-Coded lion sculpture which lives in the centre of Bath (spotthelion.com) and then finally we launched the Web Innovation Awards. Building the winning idea was the team’s choice of how to spend some of their Fridays.

Most of our standard CMS websites come in under £10,000 to be honest. dickiesworkwear.com is an example, at 8 European languages. The most fun and interesting have been iStylista.com – an intriguing personal shopper service – and of course cheddarvision.tv which was just an insane idea that caught people’s imagination… taught me a think or two about building lots of servers in a hurry too!

Can you present Deep Blue Sky? Especially, what are your technologies or methodologies you wish to highlight with this AwardingIdeas project?

Deep Blue Sky (@deepbluetweets) is a digital agency specialising in joining three disciplines together; design, development and consultancy. We believe pretty strongly that the three disciplines need each other to be effective. We’re just about to enter our third year as an agency and we’re really enjoying the projects that our clients are trusting us with.

One thing that’s lovely about working at an agency with a client base like ours is that we get to split our time pretty evenly between going out an learning about a client’s business and then implementing some innovative ideas to move that business forward. Sometimes the conversation happens in a boardroom and sometimes it happens in a cowshed – quite literally.

We a very creative, ideas driven little team and so projects like Awarding Ideas, Spot the Lion and FindMeByIP.com give us an avenue to express ideas that client work sometimes doesn’t quite provide.

Congrats again to @duncano! I’m looking forward to see his idea online.

BitNorth, an annual informal conference for technology communities but open for anyone, is scheduled at the end of the month. The event has a unique formula, with settings far away from Montreal, is similar to BarCamp in the sense that everyone has to participate, AND it’s the only tech event in the year without any Internet access. As seen in last year’s edition, it’s an eclectic and fun crowd with creative ideas.

For anyone who haven’t been yet at BitNorth, here’s an email interview with Alistair Croll (@acroll), the event’s original instigator

Can you present yourself? Can you also present the other team members organizing BitNorth?

The original idea:

I spend a lot of time running conferences with Techweb, O’Reilly, and others. Often, that’s one person talking, and others listening. And as everyone says, the best part of the conference is the networking in the lobby. So back in 2008, I decided I’d like to have a different kind of conference — one where everyone who attends is a participant. It seemed like Montreal was missing this kind of event. Through Ian Rae (@ianrae), we found an amazing facility up North called CAMMAC, which is the Canadian Amateur Music Association’s summer camp. And then word got out to around 50 people.

The tone of the event:

It’s very informal — this is a camp, after all. I’d describe it as one third TED, one third Foocamp, and one third Ignite. The only rule is that there are no spectators. While many of the attendees are in the tech community, the topics people present vary widely: from the carbon footprint of beer to carbon dating to dating in Mexico; from quantum theory to kite repair to the history of Ultimate Frisbee; from how root cellars work to Dubai’s building boom to the importance of personas in UI.

It can get a bit vulgar at times, and by Sunday we’re all feeling pretty scruffy. But that’s by design: some local companies have offered to sponsor it, but so far, we’ve declined. We don’t want to compromise on the event or have to regulate things too much. If you want formal, polite conferences, there are plenty of those.

The CAMMAC facility is amazing, too. There’s a lake, with canoes and a boathouse; hiking; and a campfire area for night-time.

Who runs it:

Since we run it at a loss, it’s mostly volunteers. The first year, it was just me, with a bunch of locals helping; the second year, Alex Bowyer (@alexbfree) and I ran it, with help from others; this year, since I’ve just had a daughter, my sister is helping out. The folks at Syntenic (Ian Rae @ianrae and others) and IDG (Kim Fuller) all lend a hand, too. And everyone who attends is contributing, of course.

Attendees:

We try very hard to find a male/female balance. Christine (@_hristine) wrote about this and I firmly believe that having a balance there makes a huge difference to the conference vibe and tone. We also have about 10 people coming in from California, and 5 from Boston, this year — so it’s become a fairly distributed group.

We don’t really market the event much — CAMMAC can only handle 60 people or so if everyone wants a decent room, and we fill up pretty fast. It’s hard to strike the right balance between an open event anyone can attend, and picking people who will be a good fit. So we open registration to returning attendees first, then their friends, and finally the general public.

What’s that human2.0 idea? Future androids you want to engineer? or does that represent the typical 2010 Montréaler using Foursquare in his iPhone and at the same working remotely with a global team on his laptop?

This year’s theme:

Human 2.0 is a blog Alex Bowyer, Angela Case (@acase) and I launched earlier this year, that looks at the convergence of computers and humans. IMHO this is the biggest ethical and technical question of the twenty-first century, and we write and share links on the subject there. So this year, we figured we’d suggest that as the theme.

The themes are just a suggestion: in 2008 it was “the other 99%”, talking about how the rest of the world uses technology; and in 2009 it was “disguise”, since it was Hallowe’en.

If BitNorth is Ignite, TED and FooCamp together, surely there were great ideas presented at the last edition. Do you know of any projects launched or startups influenced by previous Bitnorth edition?

Projects and startups:

It’s not really focused on tech startups, although there’s a fair amount of tech. Will Stevens showed us how to fix a kite, and that’s part of his new venture, Kiteaid. James Duncan and Bryan Bogensberg sold their cloud startup, Reasonablysmart, to Joyent, shortly after the first conference, in part with the assistance of other attendees. Several other attendees have gone on to work together on projects.

There have been some couples who met at Bitnorth, too, which is always nice.

In the end, when you spend a weekend with someone in a summer camp — someone described it as “a sleepover for smart people” — you definitely get to know them better.

by katrientje

In an interesting note, why isn’t there no Internet at BitNorth? That’s like a basic need for us techies. Add that to the fact that you actually have to go away from Montréal. No coffee shops with Ile-sans-fil. Perhaps there is no 3G coverage. Perhaps you have also arranged that there won’t be any power plugs. And outdoors. Gosh… Will you scan for iPhones and blackberries at the entrance to prevent ad-hoc wifi networks?

The “disconnect to reconnect” part:

When we first found the place, we didn’t know it had no net (and nearly no phone signal.) When we found out, we quickly scrambled to brand the event (“disconnect to reconnect.”) And you know what? It worked. Instead of tweeting, liveblogging, and checking in, people interacted.

In 2008, one of the attendees — who runs engineering for Conviva in the Valley — had to get online Sunday morning because they were launching their service. So he huddled over the only connected workstation, in the basement, while everyone else got chair massages and participated in the Birds of a Feather sessions upstairs.

Last year, the place had actually added a Wifi router and satellite, and some people were able to get online. But at the end of the weekend, everyone voted to not turn it on this year. There’s something awesome about disconnecting for a weekend and just being with people. And if those people have all spent time researching something they’re passionate about, and are participatory and outgoing, you won’t want to get online anyway: there’s more than enough interesting in the room with you.

Can you give us a taste of the topics presented at this year’s BitNorth? Surely, you got hints from friends registering?

This year’s topics:

I don’t want to give too much away, because finding out what the topics are is part of the fun. But here are a few of them:

• Understanding and teaching scale
• Food, love, and sex
• Democratizing healthcare with microfinance
• A better way to mug: how to improve assault through effective communication
• Toys to improve collaboration
• Why classical music sucks
• How to make tamales (mexican dish)
• Lessons learned from my MIRA guide dog
• Tablets versus unions: the future of education

Also, while everyone chooses the topic of their Short Bit — usually 5 minutes in length — that (and the open bar on Saturday) are the only parts that are certain. We add other stuff: in 2008, we had a panel of 4 kids aged 9 to 14 telling us how they use the Web, as well as guided hangover meditation and professional chair massages. Last year, we played Werewolf until the wee hours, ran a gameshow, and did Powerpoint Karaoke as an icebreaker. In fact, some of those Karaoke decks were used at Chirp by Anil Dash and @ev from Twitter.

Incidentally, we also plan way ahead of time — next year, it’ll be on September 15; no topic yet, though!

Matt Mullenweg (wordpress creator, @PHOTOMATT) and Jeremy Clarke (@jeremyclarke) at WordcampMontreal 2009, Photograph by EvaBlue

WordCampMontreal (@wordcampmtl) is scheduled in exactly one month. As most of you already knows, it’s a camp for WordPress, the most used blogging and CMS software, the one that your uncle uses to post his travels, or the one that a huge media company such as LeMonde.fr uses for their millions of users. WordPress, known for its versatility, extensibility, developer and design-friendly code, “plug & play” install, open source code, was and still is at the forefront of the social web and is a model for many publishing software. And as such, it’s one of the unmissable technology events in Montréal this year.

There are already 15 presentations planned, spanning from SEO, buddypress, plugin development, etc. Spots are still available. I hope to see more about plugin development and platform integration (using it with Facebook or a Rails app for instance).

Register on EventBrite. ($40 fee)

Organizers are also actively looking for sponsors. WordCampMontréal gathers all the city’s digerati, influential bloggers and video-bloggers, php developers, top web designers, which makes it an excellent opportunity for any company looking to reach this kind of audience. Talk to the team or pick directly a micro-sponsor spot on EventBrite

Ostrich, launched just a week ago, got one of the largest and comprehensive media coverage … well for a Montreal-based product that is. It has been covered on most Apple-focused and tech blogs, got noticed by John Gruber, and is now today featured on extensions.apple.com

This page is brand-new and has just been published this morning, featuring the diversity of available Safari extensions, and getting Safari in the same game as Firefox in terms of extensibility and as a browser for everyday and work use. Mac, Windows and also potentially new iPad and iPhone4 users are going to get those new extensions to enhance their browsing experience.

In less than a week, Jérôme Gravel-Niquet went from 1 user to more than 5000 users, an achievement few other Montreal startups achieved, perhaps just to the exception of statusnet. The exposure wasn’t painless though, as he has been working around the clock optimizing the server hosting the application, and also improving performance of Ostrich. Heroku, an Amazon EC2-based cloud service wasn’t fast and powerful enough to host the application, and he had to move to an iWeb dedicated server, and just upgraded again to a Xeon 12GB server, to serve all the additional users.

What next? Hopefully, Jerome can focus more on product design and development instead of sys-admin stuff. He tells he’d probably need funding to dedicate himself to Ostrich, and try to make a full product.

Can’t wait to see what’s next for OstrichApp. Go try it out if you haven’t yet!