Montreal Tech Watch

Company: CloudRaker

Position: Web developper

Responsibilites and Tasks:
Participate in the development & integration of websites, applications & digital initiatives

Required Knoweledge:
If you…
· have worked as a PHP Developer for 3 to 5 years,
· Possess excellent comprehension of Web standards, including XHTML/CSS and DOM Scripting,
· have extended knowledge of SQL, mySQL, Postgres, CakePHP or other MCV framework database,
· have worked with languages such as C, C++, Python, Perl or Ruby,
· know code optimization,
· are familiar with online social applications,
· can work on your own, but like to contribute to a team.

Compensation:
Variable depending on experience

Additional info:
CloudRaker is a digital branding agency.
We ask lots of questions. We unlock problems. We hunt for ideas. We breathe branding. We eat interactive. In our wilderness, we believe in the power of ideas. Not just any idea. Unique ones. Useful ones. And now, we\’re looking for a Web Developer willing to step out of his slippers. Someone motivated who is looking for new challenges.

How to apply:
talent@cloudraker.com
www.cloudraker.com

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This might be too early to rewrite about identi.ca and give a judgement on the webiste’s success; however, there are already new interesting facts about the new service:

• most of the bloggers who covered the event started to mention Twitter and its fail whale, which is now legendary. Evan Prodroumou’s Identi.ca was then seen as the saver of the day. Now the question is, can this be pulled of by any other company? Could you arrange to launch a service when the market leader is experiencing growth problems? This is extremely difficult in my opinion, but nevertheless, Evan managed to do it, and this should be something that should be thought about.
• Most of the reviews of identi.ca mentionned that it was a clone of twitter, and that it lacked features here and there. However, most of those reviews were also enthusiastic, and the vast majority said it was good enough. Actually, identi.ca was beta-tested amongst a small close group during two months, with Evan busy resolving bugs and dealing with rough edges. We saw the introduction of remote subscriptions, OpenId login, replies, the bridging to im and gtalk, etc. If you are developing a website, the lesson here is: release and get feedback early, as it tells you right away what works and what doesn’t.
• Reaching out to communities and opinion leaders. There is a tendency amongst startups to reach directly to big websites like TechCrunch & associates, and also do a parallel push on social media aggregators like digg or reddit. Granted, there was a link submitted to digg; I believe though that what worked was pinging the FLOSS people, people working on the Semantic Web, on Wikis, on Creative Commons, and the tech community in Montreal/Canada. When those communities published a post about identi.ca, such as Dave Winer, big media websites like ReadWrite/Web or The Inquisitr came naturally to the service. I’m sure there is something here that we all can learn from.
• just introduce one simple feature, which was federation of statuses. There are many ways to replicate twitter; Plurk is doing for instance easier conversations, you could also imagine a vast array of new social features that Twitter can’t; but Evan focused on one approach and his take was the most elegant.

So far, identi.ca has already more than 10.000 users, and the laconi.ca sofware is already used by a handful of servers. It’s also the most viral web service I’ve seen in Montreal, and I don’t expect the attention to stop soon.

I know Evan is also considering this as a business, which should be Identi.ca’s next step. With Open Source software though, there are many paths to choose from (see SugarCRM, Zimbra, Magento, or giants like Red Hat and mysql) so I’m not worried about.

Photo: plane taking-off, AtomicShark

If you are feeling benevolent today or have 5 minutes to kill, Marc-Antoine Lacroix, Msc student from HEC Montréal, is conducting a survey of needs of website owners for his final research project.

I have created a very short online survey that requires less than 5 minutes to complete. The survey is confidential and contains no personal questions.

To take the survey, follow the link below:

http://www.hec-questionnaire.com/index.php?sid=12

Thank you very much for your collaboration!
Marc-Antoine Lacroix

If you have any questions:
lacroix.marcantoine@gmail.com
phone number : 514-393-3955

The survey is bilingual and the HEC system does not make it possible to identify who answered what.

There is a lot of local activity currently on a Facebook application soft-launched by startup Praized late last friday.

The application allows you to vote up (dubbed “praize”) and vote down (”raze”) local shops and places. Since the vast majority of the application’s users are in Montréal, we’ve got then on the homepage the most popular places in the city, such as la S.A.T (home to barcamps, unconferences, and other community events such as Pecha Kucha Montreal) or Station-C, a coworking place favorited by the local digerati. The application has also data from all north American cities, if you want to try it out.

The application in itself is very sticky since the landing page lists the activity streams of users, creating a network effect; pushing you to also praize, comment or favorite those places. This makes praizing more interesting, compared to previous tries. Another new social feature is a points-based reputation system, with a view used as a leaderboard.

So far, I like the application, although I’m still not sure on its objective, whether it’s meant for entertainment or as a useful application. Successful Facebook applications I’ve seen so far are the one that have a strong playing component. Take the example of Movies by Flixster, which could have taken the usefulness path (what are the most praized movies), but have chosen instead to do viral quizzes.

In this case, I’m still left wondering after a while what I should do next — continue praizing around or if there was something special I ought to do.

There was a “aha!” moment though. Try searching for a generic place (such as pizzeria, greek restaurant, bakery etc.) and it will list for you the most praized places.

Which is great because it solves the never-ending question of where to hang out with your friend(s). Try thinking about all the times where you want to invite someone to a special place; and most of the times, you’re left browsing pages after pages of various local directories. Websites like yelp already does social recommendations, but this is even more powerful since the people praizing the places are your actual friends. Thinking about it, it would be even more interesting if it sorts places according to my Facebook friends tastes, or if we can see directly friends who praized it, without having to go the place’s page.

In a poll which run here for the past 3 months, Amazon AWS and Google App Engine were choosen by MTW readers as the most promising technologies, well ahead of other new technologies with 34% of votes. I’ve grabbed then the opportunity to delve into virtualized and on-demand web hosting, aka cloud computing.

We sat down with Alistair Croll from Bitcurrent, MC of GigaOm’s cloud-focused Structure08 event and track chair for Interop’s Cloud Computing track, to find out about the cloud.

mtw: Back from last week’s cloudcamp, would you say that cloud computing is hype or it’s here to stay?

Alistair Croll: Cloud is here to stay. The economics are too good to pass up. But there’s a ton of hype surrounding it, because everyone is jumping on the cloud bandwagon. Duncan Hill said it best: Cloud computing is self-service IT outsourcing. That’s a good definition, because it recognizes that what’s new is the ability to self-provision.

I just finished a joint Bitcurrent/GigaOm report on clouds ($250 at http://briefings.gigaom.com), and I was surprised at just how much innovation there is within the field.

Amazon web services and also Google App Engine are the most known providers, with mostly similar features and pricing. But do you see a space somewhere that can by occupied by another startup, by offering for instance different service level agreements, prices, technology, or custom services? Or would are we going towards a market driven by scale, and dominated by Amazon and Google?

It’s still open territory. There are two dimensions of cloud: Operational clouds are about letting someone else run things, and here, Amazon is king (though there are lots of others — Joyent, XCalibre, Gigaspaces, Rackspace.com’s Mosso, for example. On the other hand, Development clouds are about making it easier to build things. The extreme example is Ning, which lets you build a social network.

Generally speaking, development clouds lock you in; operational clouds are “open” and portable, but you have to do a lot of the heavy lifting. Because of that, there are companies like Rightscale and Platespin and enomalism that try to make it easier to manage a cloud.

There’s also a class of companies and open source projects that let you build your own clouds. 3Tera is commonly mentioned here, but there’s also the Eucalyptus project and others.

There are still popular web hosting providers such as dreamhost who offer commoditized web hosting plans. Do they still have a place here? How unique exactly is the cloud computing technology? Would it be possible for web hosters to transform their data centers and offer competing services?

Shared hosting means you’re on the same machine. If someone else kills the machine, you die too. Admittedly, it’s a blurry world — I would say, at a minimum, that a cloud has to have virtualization (to put the customer in a “sandbox”) and self-provisioning. Generally, the virtualization runs atop a grid of commodity hardware so it can expand and shrink as needed.

Many companies (Enki is one) have taken 3Tera’s software and made a cloud. But simply offering a Plesk server and a virtual IP on a load-balancer does not make someone a cloud provider.

How wise is it for a company to host their software to a company like Google or Amazon? Isn’t there a problem if those web giants rolls out a competing product?

Some have claimed that Google Apps is a “farm team” for Google, since you can’t really run your app somewhere else if you want to.  There’s always a tension between the OS and the apps — think about Microsoft introducing disc compression (which competed with Stac) or remote desktop (which competed with Citrix Winframe.) Heck, once upon a time someone competed with MS Paint!

In general, the market will sort out which things belong to virtualization companies like Citrix Xen, VMWare, and Microsoft; which belong to clouds like Amazon, Mosso, and Joyent; and which belong to the apps on top of them.

But consider this: If you build something and run it yourself, you’ll spend a ton of time running it instead of innovating. If you let someone else run it, at least you get to keep developing new features to stay ahead of them. I’d say for many startups, not using the cloud is a huge mistake.

Are cloud computing meant for temporary computing needs? such as handling traffic spikes or temporary data analytics? or are we going towards complete transfer of server infrastructure?

“Bare metal” clouds like Amazon can spin up a server quickly. Enterprises are using them tentatively, for just the kinds of tasks you mention. Internet companies are building their entire businesses on them (think Smugmug.) Some clouds are even built on clouds (like Rails cloud Heroku, which runs on AWS.)

Eventually, cloud computing will be taken for granted. When you come right down to it, you’re not going to build a data center next to a dam, or construce a nuclear power plant. But Google or Amazon might.

There’s seldom any differentiation from running your own hardware. And many services coders normally need to build — like authentication, or storage, or a friend feed, or a mailing system, or a message queue — are already built, and connected to millions of users. So why would you build your own?

To finish, do you have any data on cloud computing adoption? or pointers to best practices for web startups?

The number of developers on Amazon is approaching 400,000. The data from Amazon Web Services already outstrips Amazon.com. This is a fundamental transformation. Companies are building new applications in weeks, and refusing VC money because they don’t have to buy servers in advance.

Some clouds (Joyent is a good example) offer “accelerators” specifically aimed for development of a type of application, such as Facebook. So if you’re a new startup, you’d better have a good reason to not use the cloud. And even if you have one, the cloud should still be factored in for things like testing, bursty capacity, and backups.

For companies wanting to be a cloud, the answer is to specialize. “Vertical” clouds like Salesforce.com’s focus on a specific industry or application. Salesforce is for CRM; Webex is for communications; and so on. I think we’ll see cloud platforms for video (Nirvanix is doing some of this), or for HIPPA compliance, or for travel, and so on. There are big advantages to tailoring your cloud to a specific industry.

Thanks to Alistair Croll for the opportunity!

I would also like to take the opportunity to invite readers to share what their web Infrastructure is. Going around events and blogs, I know this is one of the least talked about subjects, even though it’s a crucial point for a technology company. So, don’t hesitate to leave a comment on how and where you host your software, and your experience with web hosting providers, be it aws or other services. 

Thanks!

Datalicious is a relatively new company in Montreal started by Sébastien Pierre. As stated in the company’s homepage, it focuses on creating optimized interfaces for data visualization.

Sébastien Pierre is a newcomer from Belgium and France, having started there a small software R&D company named ivy.fr. He is known for the revealicious project (demo also avalaible on datalicious), which grabbed a lot of buzz a few years ago.

Now, MontrealTechWatch don’t usually cover service providers; however since MTW’s main focus is “Technology and Innovation”, I think the company fits here. Datalicious uses a wide range of open source technologies, as well as public APIs to create new user interfaces, and seems to excel on both fields. It’s an approach I haven’t yet seen in Montréal, and brings fresh ideas that I hope will initiate and inspire local great projects.

I especially like the craftsmanship & attention to detail that can be seen in the website and projects like revealicious.

PS: ok, I just re-read the post, and it seems like blatant advertising. No, I was not paid for this post :-)  But still, I like datalicious’ approach.

Control Yourself, Inc. has launched officially today Identi.ca, an open microbloggling service that takes a radical approach on how new social web services should be built and used.

Identi.ca is Evan Prodromou’s take on current SaaS and web applications practices. He writes in great detail about identi.ca’s inception in a blog post today. He writes for instance about walled gardens, mentionning how web companies such as Google or Yahoo are accustomed to suck in your data and history, and how most of them don’t allow data portability between different services.

Identi.ca in itself is a service similar to Twitter, in the sense that you use it to tell your network of “friends” about your current activity. The beauty of the system though lies with laconi.ca, a AGPL‘d software that anyone can install on their own servers. Once setup, you can exchange data friend updates with other laconi.ca servers.

If you sit back a while and think about the concept, it solves many problems. It’s for instance an immediate solution to Twitter’s scalability problems — the flow of activity streams are now handled by the users’ servers and not by one single and monolithic web company. It also allows users to customize, add, improve their own version of laconi.ca, opening new ways to use the service, for those who want more security, more flexibility or maybe an in-house closed version.

I foresee laconi.ca as the wordpress of microblogging platforms but in many ways, better. It’s also the only service I know of that has implemented OAuth with a new microblogging standards named OpenedMicroBlogging, used by laconi.ca to authenticate and publish updates to other connected servers. I haven’t myself tried out laconi.ca; as I am still trying to understand the ins and outs of OAuth. Anyways, it’s great to see such innovation, and congrats to Evan!

There is a huge array of marketing and tech entrepreneurship blogs on the web (too many to list here in fact); however if you would ever want to start a Montreal-based software company, it’s valuable to also follow Montréal bloggers and get a local take on marketing, product design, business and tech entrepreneurship. In this regard, I thought about showcasing the following blogs:

• Rednod is written by Alistair Croll, with blog posts covering mostly marketing. There are gems in the blog about product design, strategy and marketing. Alistair Croll is also a great communicator and I find he is gifted in finding just the right medium, angle and words to charm you & the potential user of your product. Alistair Croll also writes at bitcurrent.
• StartupCFO is written by Mark MacLeod, self-described as “serial startup CFO and operator”, and currently CFO at Tungle. You can find great insight in his blog about startups financing, leadership, business plans & execution. He also writes about operations, something that isn’t covered much in other blogs.
• Instigator Blog is written by Ben Yoskovitz, who is also CEO of standoutjobs. Ben writes a lot about entrepreneurship and gives valuable and practical advice on how to build and grow a startup; with also a personal touch, as a father and a Montrealer. As you may find out thought, the blog is updated less often that it used to be, since he needs to focus on standoutjobs.

This is just a personal  list of startup blogs; but I find them valuable and essential if you are a Montreal tech entrepreneur. And since the list is of course limited and arbitrary, you are also invited to submit your list in the comments.

Alok Chowdhury and I are launching a StartupDrinks next wednesday, from 5.30pm, at Café des éclusiers. The place is Café des Éclusiers, 400 rue de la Commune Ouest (map)

Here is a description of StartupDrinks:

A simple concept: startup culture in cities around the world gathers around a bar to have a pint and discuss what they are working on, what they need help with and what they can do for each other.

But really, this is open to all technology enthusiasts, and we hope to turn into a regular meetup for the local technology community. The first version (photos) gathered a crowd of 15-20 entrepreneurs, developers, investors, ISV owners. Now, we’re aiming to gather (much) more people and making sure you get to meet new & existing connections.

Now, for this upcoming meetup, we don’t have yet any fancy schedule — just come, have a drink and chat with people. We’ll be going along the crowd though and try to discuss if there is interest into getting with more features for the next StartupDrinks, for instance getting a company/startup to use the event as a launch party.

So that’s it folks! Come and bring friends! If you also know “wannapreneurs” or developers who haven’t yet come to local events, forward the event details to them!

There is a meeting open to all tomorrow regarding bill C-61. The bill is viewed by many as an abuse, which was solely submitted because of lobbying from the US music and cinema industry, as well as media groups in Canada; while the MPs who submitted it said that it’s a necessary upgrade to Canadian law.

The meeting takes place at Station C, 5369 bvd St-Laurent, suite 430, from 6.00pm; and aims at organizing citizen actions locally, campaigns and brainstorming next steps. The movement was started by Evan Prodromou (also well known for its various wiki projects and support of new and open practices such as Creative Commons), and we already had a first meetup last thursday, with 20+ people coming to discuss the Bill’s details.

I encourage anyone to come there and participate as Bill C-61 will have many consequences in the future, in the way you will enjoy music or any digital media. Personally, my opinion is that artists and authors should have the ultimate word and should be able, on an individual basis, to formulate what rights&obligations users have when they consume their work. If the artist state that nobody should be able to copy or reproduce his/her work, or if there’s no limitations when purchasing their work, then it’s ok with me — but in any case, I don’t think it’s the government’s role to decide on an universal basis what users can or cannot do with digital media. This might suprise you, but hey, it’s a personal opinion.