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Tag: montreal

  • Blitzweekend 2008 Kickstart Videos

    I went to film the Blitzweekend Kickstart event tonight (well, yesterday, technically). It’s now 4:15 AM and I am done cutting, converting and uploading the footage for your geeky and entrepreneurial viewing pleasure.

    Blitzweekend is an unique experience where designers, developers, and entrepreneurs are challenged to create a working product in 48 hours […] Find a solution to a current problem, meet and innovate with bright creatives, work in an environment built for rapid development, and get feedback from experienced entrepreneurs.

    1. Introduction (EN/FR)
      Introduction and last minute match ups.
    2. Team Introduction (EN/FR)
      Organizers and Sponsors.
    3. Rules and Principles (EN/FR)
      Question and Answers.
    4. Presentation – Ben Yoskovitz (EN)
      Starting and raising money for a startup.
    5. Presentation – David Fugère (FR)
      Utiliser Ruby on Rails pour programmer des applications Facebook.
    6. Presentation – Matthew Harrison (EN)
      Financial and administrative pointers for startups.
    7. Presentation – Arach Tchoupani (EN)
      The benefits of Python for rapid web applications development.
    8. Presentation – Yann Rousselot-Pailley (FR)
      Aides et subventions gouvernementales pour entrepreneurs Québécois et Canadiens.
    9. Presentation – Vincent Guyaux (EN)
      Panelist tips for the contestants.
    10. Presentation – Alistair Croll (EN/FR)
      “Making it Viral” (English starts 3 min. in)

    Mainly being on the techy side of things, I particularly enjoyed the more business oriented presentations given by Ben, Matthew, Yann and Alistair.

    Good luck to all the participants! See you on Sunday, when I come to film the demos and the event’s conclusion.

  • Change o' Plans. Joining the Praized Team!

    Funny the pace plans can change at, isn’t it? I was all organized and looking forward to formally announce my return to the world of independent consulting when things started to take an even more interesting turn instead.

    I am in fact very happy to announce that I have now officially joined the ranks of the Praized Media team.

    Praized Media is a startup company working on a web-based application that will enable you to find and discover local places and merchants with help from people you can trust. It’s also a tool that will structure local conversations within blogs and a new platform for local search providers to generate leads from the untapped social media market.

    I’ve been following Praized since mid-2007, when they really started to show up on my radar as a serious[ly fun] and innovative venture, oozing with potential, and backed by a winning trio of entrepreneurs: Sebastien Provencher, Sylvain Carle and Harry Wakefield. A fact which was only reinforced when Garage Technology Ventures decided to fund the company last September.

    I’ve been given the opportunity to increasingly involve myself in the company as a consultant since last December. The way things were evolving, I could not longer deny the clear fact that this is a project I want to be an integral part of. Something I can unequivocally see myself focusing on, even providing segues into some of involvements in the web and open source communities.

    Luckily for me, the feeling seemed to be mutual and today marked my first day on staff. Suffice to say, I’m sporting a mile long smile about it all.

    Praized is currently in stealth-mode, so although I can’t say much more, I can definitely hint that great things are coming! And with the people already on board, I’m in for a fun ride, striving to keep up with and help them in their efforts.

    Thanks for the opportunity, team! But shame on you though. Now I’ll have to can that site I worked on for my consulting biz’… ;-p

  • Rogers Canada Wireless Data Plan Update: Good vs. Bad

    It’s no secret that I have one of the infamous 1.3 million missing iPhones with me, here in Montreal.

    I only recently activated the phone features though, then found out that it took special (though widly published) credentials to be able to use Rogers’ EDGE network from the device.

    So I tried the latter a few days ago, and got somewhat of a nasty surprise after trying to load one (yes, only one) Facebook page through Mobile Safari: it ended up costing me around $8.00… Ooops, I guess I won’t be doing that under my pay-as-you-go account…

    I did find this a bit dishonest puzzling, since the same account (and SIM) allowed me to browse the mobile web for $0.05 per page from my older Motorola phone. Of course, there’s a difference between quasi-text-only pages vs. a standard page and all the attached media elements, but still…

    The obvious conclusion was that I’d wait to use EDGE until I could score a decent data plan, since gaining the voice and SMS features was really what I was looking for when unlocking my device.

    Looking for signs of such a plan, I found out that Rogers in fact recently released an unlimited data plan, without much fanfare, now matching Bell Canada’s $7.00/month offering. Details are very scarce and I’m not entirely sure this truly applies to my needs or if some types of weird partnership-based limitations are involved, but it’s definitely worth looking into. Unfortunately, the plan excludes anything but what Rogers wants to peddle, which still makes Bell’s offer a much better choice, but is unfortunately incompatible with the iPhone GSM capabilities (vs. CDMA)…

    Now to top it all off, here is what happened to me this morning and what every iPhone-totting Canadian must be aware of: I was waiting for the bus, browsing the web from my iPhone while connected to a public hotspot (hence why I’m not really in a rush to get EDGE browsing activated). Reception wasn’t great though, being a bit far from the source, and what ensued led me to find out that Rogers has indeed tweaked/opened their network for increased and simplified data access: even though I had cleared out the credentials previously required to access the web through EDGE, it turns out that my iPhone did switch from wifi to EDGE in the middle of my session.

    Of course, the reason I realized the latter fact was that my account quickly went from $7.00 left to $0.00… So unless you do have a ([un]limited) data plan, be very careful if you run an unlocked iPhone in Canada: the usual trick to disable EDGE (ie: not entering the special credentials) will not work anymore, and you might end up with a pretty bad surprise on your bill. Turning off Data Roaming (Settings -> General -> Network -> Data Roaming = off) won’t help either, since Rogers is my carrier. Just be sure that Mail.app doesn’t automatically checks for new messages (Settings -> Mail -> Auto-Check = manual), and avoid using network-based apps unless you have a good wifi connection.

    We’re getting We’ll hopefully get there… At a somewhat totally depressing rate, given countries like Iran and Estonia have better data rates and networks than we do…

  • The Blitzweekeend is Coming!

    From the Blitzweekeend web site:

    Blitzweekend is an unique experience where designers, developers, and entrepreneurs are challenged to create a working product in 48 hours. Find a solution to a current problem, meet and innovate with bright creatives, work in an environment built for rapid development, and get feedback from experienced entrepreneurs.

    There are a lot of good people putting a lot of effort into organizing this great event. Just check out their blog and wiki, and you’ll get ample proof of this fact. I predict a total success and I know I’ll be happy to join in the fun.