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Tag: technology

  • BarCampMontreal3

    I spent the afternoon at BarCampMontreal3 yesterday, and let me tell you, it’s good to be in Montreal! Startups, Open Source projects, successful ventures, etc. You name it, we’ve got it. But most of all, it’s the people that really make the difference. And we’ve got that too!

    Can’t wait until FaceBookCampMontreal next wednesday, especially in light of what is expected to be launched by Facebook on tuesday. Despite the event’s name, I’m fairly sure OpenSocial won’t be a stranger at this event though. ;o)

    Edit: Be sure to check out Heri’s complete report on the event, as well as Sylvain’s notes on the OpenSocial BOF.

  • Last Day at McGill. Counting the Minutes until Monday.

    Yesterday was my last day as McGill University‘s Web System Architect.

    It’s always sad to leave a team you’ve so enjoyed working with for five (long/short) years, but how could I refuse taking on the role of technology director for the dynamic Plank Design?

    As Doug, a teammate on the WPhone project, would so elegantly put it: *grin*.

    And as Buzz would, since one analogy is never enough (…): to infinity, and beyond!

  • Release: wpDirAuth 1.1

    Thanks to a lot of help from the support and development groups (special thanks to Richard and Adrian), and despite having focused on my upcoming job switch and WPhone in the last month, I finally found some time to release version 1.1 of wpDirAuth, an LDAP authentication plugin for WordPress I also maintain.

    The new version adds support for more directory server configurations and vendors by supporting privileged pre-binding. It also adds a few interface and documentation tweaks, and has been tested under WordPress 2.2.x and 2.3.

  • Release: WPhone 1.2.0

    Thanks to Warren Wilansky, owner of the excellent Plank Design, who was kind enough to lend me his iPod Touch for the weekend, we were able to finally view and use WPhone on an actual Apple device and hammer out most of the display glitches our original releases had. Well, that and a whole lot of tweaks and new features, such as some fixes in the bundled iUI Javascript library for which I started submitting patches upstream, etc.

    Sure feels good to not be flying blind anymore! Though I did have to give the iPod back today, which was about as painful as cutting off one of my own fingers… :p

    So, if you had downloaded an earlier version, be sure to try the new 1.2.0 release. Or if you’re into the whole living on the edge thing, checkout the development branch of our Subversion repository, where we’ve already started to add some neat new features after 1.2.0 came out (otherwise known as rapid fire development).

    Now, since our core focus is actually full support for the widest possible array of mobile, lightweight and accessibility devices (smart and non-smart mobile phones, PDAs, micro tablets, screen and braille readers, etc) what I really would like for the next step is to somehow gain access to some of the other targeted devices.

    So if you happen to be in Montreal, have any of the following devices/environments and are interested in helping us out, please drop me a note (comments or wordpress-AT-tekartist-DOT-org) and maybe we can get together for a bit of geeky fun. 🙂

    • Nokia devices running the S60WebKit browser or earlier versions (w/ or w/o JS),
    • Blackberry (any xhtml capable generation),
    • Windows Mobile smart phones or PDAs (EDGE and/or WIFI),
    • Symbian-based devices,
    • Opera Mobile and/or Opera Mini capable devices,
    • Jaws or other accessibility device/software,

    … or anything else that you would like to use WPhone on really.

    Who knows, maybe I’ll luck out at one of the countless tech events organized in Montreal, such as the BarCamps, etc.

  • Want to be an Imaginary Friend?

    Imaginary Friends Illustration

    I’m not an illustrator, but if you are and are interested in moving to Singapore or Jakarta (Indonesia), this might just be a dream job for you.

    Imaginary is a studio created by artists for artists. We are looking for people who work hard and play hard, and who have the talent, experience and passion to take things to another level.

    One thing’s for sure, their work is beautiful enough for me to feel compelled to point to their job posting even though I really know nothing of them as a workplace. 😉

  • Release: WPhone 1.0.0

    See, I told you I wasn’t all there today…

    I guess it takes a nasty fever for me to have forgotten to mention that Doug Stewart, Viper007Bond and I have jointly released the first version of WPhone last night, a plugin to bring the WordPress Administration to the world of mobile and accessibility devices.

    The project was, originally, in response to a challenge sent to the wp-hackers mailing list, but our take on it actually goes beyond the original parameters by trying to support full universal access instead.

    We’re now in the debug phase, since we’ve never actually had the chance to preview the souped up iPhone/iPod mode of our interface, but we’re hoping to be in a much better place on this front by the end of the weekend. The lightweight version of the interface, used for all non-WebKit browsers, is a lot more stable and seems to work like a charm on even my feature-deficient Motorola v551 (pre-RAZR, less RAM, about the same browser).

  • Goodbye McGill. Hello Plank! And thank you both.

    Hot on the heels of another match made in heaven, I too feel I have found a soul mate. The professional kind (I was lucky to find the romantic one early).

    I am ecstatic to announce that I will be joining Plank Design‘s wonderful team, as technology director, on October 29th 2007.

    Co-founded in 1998 by Warren Wilansky, Plank Multimedia Inc. is an advanced website & digital creation company that focuses on developing websites, with one guiding principle – to do things differently.

    Plank has been in a torrid love affair with all things digital for quite some time now, and helped clients such as Michael Moore blossom in their online endeavors. But more than a company, I am honoured and very much looking forward to work with some of the best professionals I have been given to meet.

    Talking about great teams, it is not without a bit of sadness that I will bid farewell to McGill University, and most particularly its Web Service Group, another truly fantastic group of people. If you are in the academic sector, you can quote me on this one: watch them, they know what they’re doing.

    So on this, 28 days to go (I’m not the 2-weeks-notice type), trying to complete as many McGill projects to try handing over the keys to a clean house, and I’ll be on my way to what promises to be professional bliss. Joy! :o)

  • Google Street View Car, Downtown Montreal?

    Hum… I was on my way back from work on Montreal’s Sherbrooke Street tonight when I spotted something in the oncoming traffic that most definitely looked like a multi-lens, 3D capture camera mounted on a standard black car.

    View Larger Map

    Difficult to miss it, perched 4 feet above the car’s roof and right at eye level for me in the bus.

    Knowing that Immersive Media, the company handling most (but not all) of Google’s Sreet View image capture, is from Calgary, I wasn’t exactly surprised. But it definitely got me curious.

    Well, it turns out that the bolts of controversy coming from the States have been duly noted by our government and its privacy watchdog. See also: Canada to Google Street View: “Car!”.

    Ms. Stoddart’s letters to Google and Immersive are available online.

    On my end, I’m equally interested in both parties’ perspectives.

    • As an individual and a Canadian, I do enjoy my privacy.
    • As a geek and having lived in many places, I do want the technology.

    Finding an appropriate compromise is the name of the game.

    Update: I guessed I had somehow missed the buzz on the always excellent Montreal Tech Watch. That’s definitely the car (see picture). I hadn’t seen the side logo from the bus. Oooooh. Aaaah.

  • Steve, listen to the frog!

    I couldn’t let this go unnoticed. :p mwah…

  • Release: Moostick 1.0

    Moostick is my take on a Mootools-powered, unobtrusive, Javascript news ticker library.

    Moostick will take in any type of <li> container (<ul>, <ol>…) and turn it into an animated news ticker, fading between each entry at a set interval.

    This project is an experiment in mootoology. Quite arguably over-engineered for its core purpose, I use it to hone my MooTools skills while trying to still provide a fun and stable tool for others to use.

    The unobtrusiveness aspect of the project is key in keeping the content accessible when pages are loaded without Javascript and/or CSS, whether by users or machines, and is one of Moostick’s top goals.

    See the project page for more information.