Category Archives: Technology

December 9, 2011

The Great US Paywall

I was recently in Florida for a Vacation and purchased an Amazon Fire device. The device is very similar to the Barnes and Noble Nook I purchased last year but I thought the Amazon content and store would provide a better experience. The first thing I did was sign up for Amazon Prime Trial, with no problems. I purchased some music, no problems and much better prices than iTunes. I also purchased a magazine subscription to 2600, no problems again.

Then I went to get an purchase an app. Suddenly I was unable to purchase any apps. The error message indicated I couldn’t purchase any apps in the my region. My region? What does that mean? I was in Florida, are apps illegal in Florida? After searching for and finding the Amazon customer service contact I sent off an email asking what was going on. Amazon responded that I was unable to purchase apps with a credit card from a Canadian bank and billing address. Basically because I was a Canadian in the US I couldn’t purchase applications for the Kindle Fire. The Kindle was returned the next day.

Apple and iTunes have done something similar for years where you can’t purchase from the US iTunes without a US billing address. The easy solution to this problem is to use the iTunes gift cards exclusively with a fake address ( preferably in a state with no sales tax ). With the launch of iCloud and iTunes Music Match though the company has changed its policy to require a US credit card and matching US billing address to be added to the account.

Donations

Wikileaks recently had problems collecting donations via credit card and Paypal froze its funds, limiting it’s ability to fundraise online. The ban has been so sever the only option to donate is the BitCoins system or to purchase virtual goods.  The BitCoin system has limited support and but may offer the best alternative to avoid the Paywall.

Regretsy has recently encountered problems with Paypal and their donation support. The company seems to allow you to use and collect donations but then freezes the funds. The confusion with the Paypal donation process is outlined in great detail by The Green Geeks.

The Paywall is effectively controlling donations and deciding who can fundraise online.   I’m sure this policy is need for some legitimate cases to prevent terrorist funding etc… but these are US companies that enforcing these policies largely without government direction or oversite.

Like the Great Chinese Firewall, the Paywall is proving to be a fairly effective means to control online purchases. Its surprisingly difficult to make purchases that do not involve your bank, credit card or Paypal.  The best system to get around the Paywall seems to be BitCoin.  The BitCoin system uses encrypted coins can only one person can ‘own’ through cryptology.  BitCoin includes an exchange and a defined Coin generation process.  This process means that once you own a BitCoin it can be transfered or exchange to anyone.  Eventually BitCoin’s must be converted by to real currency, this is where the Paywall may still be effective and few conversion points exist today.

The goal behind these Paywalls seems to be to create online economies of different scales.  For example an iPhone Application that sells for $0.99 in the US might sell for $1.19 in Australia or $1.49 in Europe.  This allows Apple and the application vendors to receive significantly more revenue for the same content from international customer.   The DVD system attempted the same with the DVD region codes a few years ago  but the system was quickly cracked and different pricing regions were never fully exploited.  The digital stores have so far been fairly effective at enforcing these restrictions, largely because they can heavily control the follow of money.

While physically in the US I can purchase just about anything at US retailers using my Canadian credit card and billing address.  As soon as the transaction goes online the Paywall comes into effect and my purchases can be restricted.  A very interesting development given the state of the US economy and the need to consumer spending…

December 8, 2011

I love Canada Post

Over the past few weeks I’ve ordered a number of things online and received shipments for all major shipping companies. My building has conceige that can sign for all packages that don’t require a payment for duty or COD. Its very interesting to see the process each company uses handle deliveries and collect the duty/COD charges:

Purolator

Purolator doesn’t leave a door hanger or and indicator that they’ve visited. Even if there is money owing or its the final shipment. Apparently this is a security feature to prevent someone from paying the duty/handling charges and stealing my shipment. They will attempt to call you if they have a phone number ( often they don’t ) or you have to use your mystic skills and call them when you think your package is due. The only pickup depot for Toronto is actually in Etobicoke. Once your pay any duty or COD charges the package is sent the next day. By far the worst experience…

DHL

DHL has decided to partner with Loomis in Canada for local delivery. The DHL number 1-800 number brilliantly says to call Loomis in Canada and then hangs up. Calling Loomis you are immediately told that DHL handles shipment from international destinations and you need to call them. If you’re lucky you can convince the Loomis rep to transfer you to the DHL otherwise its best to call the DHL US number via Skype and get transfered to DHL Canada. Once you pay the Duty or COD charges the DHL can contact the driver wirelessly and tell them to just drop off the package. This often doesn’t work though and the package will not be delivered until the next day. I wasn’t able to figure if my package would be a Loomis or DHL depot in Toronto, probably not aware near downtown.

UPS

UPS borrows from DHL with a single 1-800 that works in Canada and US but seems to transfer you to the US when the Canadian reps are busy. The US reps seem unaware/able to handle US packages. This means you have to keep dialling and hoping that a Canadian rep answers. The single UPS pickup depot is located up by York University, easily an hour trip on Transit or Car to get my package. And again once you pay the Duty/COD charges UPS can notify the drive but the connection process doesn’t seem very reliable and most of the time the package will be delivered the next day.

USPS/Canada Post

By far the best experience so far. If there is no duty due the package is dropped off without issue. If there is duty due then its a short walk to the Post Office, where I can pay the fees and walk home with my package. Canada Post has offices throughout Toronto and by far the easiest solution to deal with. If I were Canada Post I would make a stronger emphasis of their shipping benefits.

So I will be using USPS or Canada Post where ever possible. Its not an option with most online stores though and I would image that cost and easy of shipment these choices.

In my ideal world I’d love to be able to receive email notifications on shipments and pay duty/cod charges online. I’m really surprise that none of these services offer this yet…

November 23, 2011

The problem with Dropbox Teams

I’ve been a long time user of Dropbox and have had the 100GB personal account for several years now. I’ve been very happy with the way the system works and I’ve setup it up on all my computing devices. My wife now shares the account and we use it to save files we want backed up or accessible across multiple devices.

When Ascentum, my employer decide to use Dropbox too initially it was all good and we just shared files between users. Eventually we started running out of space with different users who only had the free account or small paid accounts. I also noticed that my work files were taking up space in my 100GB personal account quota. So we decide to subscribe to Dropbox Teams, which gives us more storage across all users. The system is priced at $750/year for the first 5 users and $125/year for each user after that and includes 1000GB and 200GB per additional user.

There are few problems with Dropbox team though. First many of our employees had Dropbox accounts, often with their personal email address and now we were inviting them to Dropbox team with their business email. The Dropbox app doesn’t provide the ability to switch accounts easily or allow personal and team logins. So we had to either add users with their personal email addresses or un-authenticate their computers and setup dropbox again with their new account. This also means re-inviting the new user to all the shared folders the old user used. And the employee would almost completely loose access to their personal dropbox account.

For employees with paid Dropbox accounts the process was even more difficult. If we added them using their personal account Dropbox would close their personal account and refund their balance to Ascentum. Yes, Ascentum, their employer and not the individual who paid for the account. This means that Ascentum would need to figure out how to re-emburse employees for their Dropbox balance. No email or billing detailing this transfer could be found, making the reconciliation very challenging.

After a few months of using the service a team member left the company and we need to figure out how to transfer the files they share. If they are not the “Owner” of the share folder its fairly trivial to remove the user with no impact. If they are the owner of the share folder it becomes very complicated because they may have shared folders with any of the other employees. There is no universal view of shared folders across the team. And Dropbox provides no ability to transfer shared folder ownership between users. Instead we need to open a support ticket for each folder we discovered and wanted transfer. It appears that removing the user complete will erase shared folders they own.

We’ve also had some weird folder sync issues between users where we can’t seem to give users shared permission. The only solution seems to be to create a new folder and copy the old content into that folder.

And lastly the Dropbox client features an option to sync over the LAN. This feature seems to enable on Wifi too and without bandwidth limitations can quickly consume most of the WiFi bandwidth. We found this feature to be particularly problematic with employees that recently return to the office and receive a bunch of Dropbox updates immediately from the other LAN clients.

November 23, 2011

New Site and Domain

After a long delay I’ve finally updated my blog and website. In the process I’ve also moved to ColinSmillie.com to ensure I have greater reach outside of Canada. The design is based on a WP Timeline theme, which I’ve modified to move away a little from the Facebook Timeline which it copied. Let me know what you think and if it you notice any issues with the new site.

December 6, 2010

Skype Reliability?

For over 2 days my skype account was offline and I was unable to login.  I could reset my password with the password recovery system ( and did multiple times ) but every time I kept getting an error that I couldn’t login.  No details were provided or contact for additional assistance.  Eventually I tried contacting Skype and was told my account was suspended pending verification.  The only verification they would accept was digits from my credit card which was on file, which I believe was setup when I created my Skype account 7 years ago.  I had no idea what card was used or even which bank it was from but I sent them a series of number I’ve used over the past few years.  Eventually I received this response today:

Hello Colin,

Thank you for your reply.

We understand your concern regarding your Skype account. We know the importance of getting this resolved the soonest time possible and we are more than willing to help you.

Upon checking our records, your account has been flagged for verification. Please be reminded that we do this verification process to maintain online security for all our customers and protect everyone from fraud which also indicated that you had carried out actions which are not allowed under Skype’s Terms and Conditions. Unfortunately we are unable to explain the specific reason for restricting your account.

However, we have now lifted the restriction, so you should be able to sign in again. Please note that if our systems detect further problems with your account then you will be unable to use your account again.

We hope this has clarified your issue. Should you need any further assistance or have additional questions please do not hesitate to contact us again.

Best regards,

Jolly
Skype Customer Service

I’m not really sure what triggered this request for verification or if did actually verify successfully. Suddenly after 3 days of suspension my account is now active again.

I use Skype alot for business and now as my 2nd phone line at home. I even pay a Skype subscription with unlimited calling in Canada & the US. With Bell or Rogers in Canada there are terms of service guarantees but its very clear that when using Skype your really are mercy…

October 15, 2010

Facebook Developer Garage Toronto – Oct 21, 2010

It’s been a while since the last Facebook Developer Garage Toronto. Come meet with fellow developers, marketers and agencies, members of the Facebook community in Toronto.   Formerly we called these Facebook Camps and its a great free event for Developers and Marketers.  The evening is free to attend and we have a great line up so far:
Agenda:
6:00 – Doors open – Social/Mingle/Get a seat
6:30 – Introduction
6:35 – Facebook Canada – TBD
7:00 – Iskandar Najmuddin – Syncapse
7:15 – Colin Smillie – Open Graph/Group API
7:30 – Oz Soloman – Social Graph Studios
7:45 – Eli Singer – Entrinsic
8:00 – Daniel Patricio – Orange Rhino Media
8:15 – Social / Mobile Integration – Vortex Mobile
8:30 – Social & Drinks at Pogue Mahone

**There is no guest list for this event – first come first served, doors will close when the venue is at capacity**

October 9, 2010

Why is Point of Sale getting harder?

Like most Canadians my credit card was recently replaced with a Chip Card.  Now my Visa requires a PIN to be entered when the transaction is processed.  This creates some very frustration experiences:

1/ No Remote Machine

Many restaurants only have Visa terminals in one location in the restaurant.  This means that I have to walk with the server to where the terminal is located to process to transaction.  Not the best experience for date night…

2/ Signature Too, Please

Some vendors seem to require a signature, even after I just went through the insert card and PIN dance.  I’m not really why but I think its a legacy issue.

3/ Transfering…

Many of the remote terminals transfer data over a very slow connection, this means I’m waiting while the terminal tells me also sorts of informative stuff like  DNS Established, TCP Enabled, Negotiation Established, Transfering… Transfering… and more Transfering… and finally approved.

4/ Strange Exemptions

Some vendors don’t seem to require my PIN at all, they can just swip and give me a receipt with no signature.  I’m not really sure the pattern here but McDonalds never asks for my PIN and Subway always asks for my PIN at roughly the same value so it must be vendor related.

The one good thing that the chip cards seem to have solved is whole card upside down or right side up issue that most swipe terminals struggled with…

April 7, 2010

iPad Day Two Thoughts, Apps…

Ok, been using the iPad a lot to consume content.  The Apple closedness does kind of get in the way of watching videos but hasn’t really been an issue for anything else.   There are a few really great apps for it:

Media

There are several media apps available but most don’t work well in Canada.  Pandora and the ABC app for example don’t allow content to be viewed in Canada, this is a deal breaker for me.  I haven’t tried Netflix yet but iTunes still seems to be the winner here ( no surprise ) with access to the best content.  Not sure the impact of the Canadian iTunes store but I suspect it will be pretty empty initially…

Games

The best game I’ve found is Civilizations.  I loved this game as I was growing up and the iPad version is awesome.  Dragging your armies around is a really great interface and it just feels natural.  The other fun app is the Colour Aquarium application, which is a free app and kind fun to play with a bit..

Twitter

I haven’t found the perfect app yet.  The two I tried are both free.  Twitdeck, which is a good first revision of the app for iPad but doesn’t work too well for reading posts.   I wasn’t able to click on links inside of the Tweet for example but the Tweet creation process is really smooth.  Twitter is kinda the reverse as a great app for reading your Twitter stream.   Very smart process to read and click on links etc..  The Tweet creation process isn’t great though.   For example there is no ability to add photos.  Hoping for another free option before I investigate the paid clients…

News

There are several apps that claim to be free but after download require a subscription fee to access any content.  The WSJ app is a good example of this with NO FREE content.  I uninstall and low rate all of these, Apple really needs to develop a process to indicate “Subscription Required” in the App store.  The 2 completely free apps that I did like were the USA Today and BBC Apps, both provide good content in a great format.

April 6, 2010

iPad Day One…

Apple iPad

I got my iPad today and I spent a few hours using it now. My initial impression is that is a great 2nd device to consume media. The screen is beautiful and watching video on it is awesome. The input is ok but will never really replace a laptop and is probably by design. I think Apple has designed the device to be a media consumption platform and not a content creation platform. For creation the Mac Book Pro or even my iPhone are better platforms.

I’ve downloaded a few iPad specific applications now and I’ll write some more on this shortly. If your an app developer and would like your an iPad app reviewed send me the details on your app in the comments below.

October 22, 2009

The Power of Real-Time Search

For years now Google has dominated the search marketing field.  Its Pagerank algorithm attempts to find content that is the most relevant to the keywords being search.  In most cases this means placing a greater emphasis on older more established content and ignoring the newer content.  This has worked well for most content types except for breaking news and trending items.  When Michael Jackson died a search for “Michael Jackson” was more likely to bring up fan pages than articles around his death.

Enter Twitter and Facebook, for trending topics the social networks have an advantage in that they can see trending topics developing in real-time.  And yesterday they announced a partnership with Bing to power its real-time search component.  This should provide Bing with an advantage in the real-time search market.  Its not clear how big the real-time market is as compared to the more traditional search market that Google dominates.

Its will be interesting to see if Marketers start to place a greated emphasis on purchasing keywords based on real-time trends that be associated with their brands.  The search engines are already well equipped with bid based pricing models to handle real-time price fluctuations in keywords.

October 7, 2009

Ted Rogers

I first met Ted Rogers about 10 years ago at a Rogers Wave booth at a home show in Toronto.  I was working with an ISP in Hamilton that was also launching cable modems.   My job at the time was to explain how cable modems worked and the advantages of dial-up and the soon to be released DSL.  As luck would have it Ted chose me to ask about the Roger’s Wave product we were launching.  He made a good impression and I think he really worked hard to understand how technology would benefit individuals.

March 4, 2009

DemoCampToronto19

Democamp was back on last night at the Imperial Pub. It was back to its root with a small crowded venue with hard to hear and see demos. I think with a 2nd speaker near the back would probably fix all this and the location was certainly work-able. It was also a lot of the Torcamp crowd. It looks like Democamp will be going to a monthly schedule which is pretty awesome and should help new people attend.

I arrived late and only cause the Kontagent demo near the end. I did see all the ignite presentations. One of the most interesting presentations was the N8T TXT project, which sends Haikus via SMS project. I thought it was really interesting that he’s using 416 number to sent a Haiku based on your current location, which you provide in the SMS text. Using a short code for this type of project would have been extremely expensive and using the 416 number gets around that.

There was also a lot of networking at the event and I was able to meet a few of Greg Wilson’s students, some that I’d love to hire ;) Overall it was great to see Democamp back in action and I’m looking forward to future nights.

Update:  I forgot to mention the Sun “Camera” give away at DemoCamp.  There was a Sun Startup Essentials rep at DemoCamp last night collecting business cards for a server give-away and Mesh ticket draw.   For entering you also received a USB “Camera”, unfortunatel the “Camera” turned out to be USB power flashlight.  I’m wondering if this is actually the Sun Server prize…

January 20, 2009

Top CNN Technology usage for Obama coverage

CNN really surprised me today with its use of technology around the Obama inauguration.  There’s 3 main components that I think stand out:

  • Facebook Connect integration, it was awesome watching the video online and getting comments/status updates from your friends or the general public in real-time.  This absolutely made the experience for me and I think it really highlights the future of video entertainment, its social.
  • PhotoSync in 3D, CNN guessed correctly that many people would be taking photos of the inauguration and using PhotoSync its possible to see a moment in time from various angles and photos.  A great use of technology that was powered by many independent people taking photos and sending them to CNN.
  • IReport with Google Maps, CNN also had a real-time map showing different photos and messages as they were received by CNN through its iReport service.  IReport essentially let citizen journalists report on the event either through a message or a photo. The other aspect of the map images was the size  of the crowds, seeing them on TV didn’t really do justice to the amazing mass of people present.

CNN has reset the bar in terms of coverage of major events.  It will be interesting to see if they use the same technology for other events.  It would be great for the Superbowl to have the same coverage…

October 22, 2008

IP Law gone wrong…

Matthew Ingram has a great article about the US Government trying to get control over a trademark controlled by a bike gang.  Matthew compares it to the Al Capone situation with regards to tax evation.  I think its a great example of IP Law gone wrong.  The US Government has put so much effort into IP Law and the DMCA that they are actually a bigger stick than many anti-racketeering laws.   I think its a pretty sad situation and McCain encountered similar problems during his campaign with the extremely restrictive IP Law in the DMCA.

I’m hoping we don’t see a repeat of the DMCA in Canada now with the Harper government tabling an agenda that includes copyright reform.  I think its pretty clear to most people involved with digital media that DRM and unrealistic controls on media are not going to work.  Apple, Amazon and even hopeless Yahoo have all been removing their DRM services in favour of DRM-free solutions.  It makes even less sense to be criminalizing most of society with unrealistic legislation.

October 7, 2008

Yellowpages.ca getting better…

Today we got our annual call from the Yellow Pages Group about advertising in their directories.  We’ve moved offices so we’re probably in the Toronto West book.  The major difference between the call last year and this year was the online only options.  Last year we didn’t really have an option not to purchase online only

September 11, 2008

Confused users? Just add stickies…

Facebook is trying hard to get users to user and like its new profile re-design.  I think one of the funniest new additions are little yellow stickies on all the new and non-obvious additions.  Kinda of a “we know you’ll miss this if we don’t tell you” approach to interface design.

I’m not sure how successful this will be with users.  In my case I’m mostly just clicking the x to get rid of these and non-obvious features will probably be lost on me or at least until Facebook changes something again.

September 4, 2008

Thoughts on Google’s Chrome

After trying the IE 8 Beta2 I thought it would be appropriote to talk about Chrome.  My first thoughts after reading the Google Comic was that it was going to be really fast and very unstable with the V8 engine.  My tests showed that its actually pretty stable ( about as stable as Safari or Opera ) but not really fast.  The only site I think it actually handles faster is Gmail.  Facebook is definitely slower, which is also a heavy Javascript site.  If v8 was really gonna shine it would be on Facebook.  I’m not sure if Chrome is just optimized for Gmail or if there are components of Gmail preloaded in Chrome.  It would be kinda smart of Google do to that, IE8 has benefited from Windows pre-loading stuff for years.

One area which was a great surprise was the developer tools.  Its has the equivalent of Firebug built-in ( Mircosoft, where is yours? ) and it includes a javascript console.  Its going to be great to debug/develop Javascript environments but unfortunately I don’t really see it challenging IE or even Firefox.  I think Firefox is still a better browser experience and the reports are that v3.1 is going to be even faster for Javascript processing.

As it stands it might be a browser I leave open as kind of my Gmail client but I’m not going to invest alot of time it switching over to it.

August 29, 2008

Thoughts on Internet Explorer 8

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 this week with a big push out to bloggers.  As part of my day job at Refresh we spend alot of time developing Facebook Applications and one of biggest hurdles is Internet Explorer support.  I think one of the biggest momentum shifters for Firefox has probably been Firebug.  It makes it easy for developers to develop and debug AJAX and JS applications for Firefox.  The Javascript console is awesome and there isn’t anything really close for Internet Explorer.  The result is that most web apps, including Facebook, are developed for Firefox first and then made to work on Internet Explorer.  This is a nightmare for Internet Explorer users, who are still fairly dominate, because the experience on Internet Explorer is immediately lower than Firefox.  Microsoft really needs to develop a competitive tool if they want to get serious about beating back Firefox.

My other major issue with Internet Explorer is the adoption cycle.  Many corporations are still using Internet Explorer 6 because of the update process.  Its possible to get Firefox v3 running on any computer in a matter of minutes, a quick download, install and go.  When I installed Internet Explorer 8 it downloaded for awhile ( via Windows Update ) and then immediately wanted to reboot to download some more, check for malicious software components, install, and then install updates.  The process took me about 30 mins and is very prone to errors because Internet Explorer tries to embed into the operating system.  I think Microsoft really needs to rethink the Internet Explorer architecture.  They’re done with the DOJ battle over whether Internet Explorer is a operating system component and it should be developed independently so that it can its a smaller and nimbler.  I can understand the resistance from IT staff to put all their employees through a 30 min download, reboot, download, install and then install more cycle.  The cost/benefit ratio of updating a browser just isn’t worth it.

July 16, 2008

DemoCampToronto18

Last night with the 18th DemoCamp in Toronto, I think I’ve been to about 11 since my first DemoCamp around #5.   The venue was at the SuperMarket restaurant/bar on Augusta.  The venue was way too small for the event, even though the SuperMarket does have awesome food.   The Supermarket even ran out of beer glasses with so many people enjoying the night.

The Demo’s for the nite were:

1/Refesh Analytics by Roy Pereira

As a partner in Refresh it was a good opportunity for us to demo our Facebook Analytics tool and showcase some of the new social influencer metrics we’ve added for applications.   I think Roy did a good job of covering the product and I think most people quickly understood our focus with.  I was little surprised that nobody asked about the business model.

2/BluePrints by Chris Gurney

Blueprints is a product to help business capture requirements more effectively.  Its combines a the components of a product requirements document with the ability to mockup a user interface.  The tool can then export the requirements as a requirements document, ULM and other formats.  Apparently it will also export test cases too.  I liked the demo and I think its a great product for product managers ( which I’ve been in the past ) but the price point is pretty crazy.  I also wasn’t too excited about using a desk top java based application, I think it would have been better to see this as a web app and maybe a SasS model to lower the cost of entry.

3/ Jabber Chat by Ali Asaria

Ali and the Well.ca team presented a tool they developed for Well.ca to allow customers to chat with a CSR through a web interface.  It was a pretty slick demo with the ability to keep the chat open as user browsed web sites and pass URLs to the user.  I think the most innovative aspect was the integration with Jabber clients so that different chat clients could be supported for the CSR.    I think this was most important aspect for Well.ca but there are a variety of cheap alternatives.  At Autotrader.ca we purchased a solution for $500 that provided almost the same solution but required that the CSR keep a web chat window open.

4/ IRC integration with DrProject by Kosta Zabashta

Many open source projects are using IRC as form of communication between developers and sometimes users.  The IRC integration project aims to integrate these conversations into the project development process.  The first component was the ability to access ticket information via the IRC channel.  This was handled through an IRC bot.  The 2nd component was the ability to tag conversations as part of a ticket and integrate the chat history into DrProjec.  It was a good demo and I can see the practical applications for larger projects.

5/ Bitstrips by Jesse Brown

This was the first demo/ignite after the break and I missed most of it socializing.  From what I saw it provides a tool to quickly create small comic strips that can be embedded into websites.  I grew up loving comics but I think the medium has probably passed.   I don’t think comics have the same appeal in a digital format, especially when we can get videocasts, postcast or even games that are more engaging.

6/ SpreedNews by Dave Coleman

I had seem some PR around the SpreedNews reader around the iPhone launch.  I had watched their video online and their demo was very similar to the video.  I was hoping to see more of the application in action as I’m a little skeptical that its that much faster to read news.  I’m looking forward to see it and I know it won’t be long in a limited beta.

7/ How Startups will Save VC in Canada by Jevon MacDonald

I think its no secret that venture capital in Canada has declined and its in pretty bad shape.  Jevon’s presentation highlighted this  but encouraged entrepeneurs to look past this problem.  I think he’s right in that there alot of Canadian startups that are succeeding without venture capital.  In some cases they are making business decisions to grow in a different way that doesn’t require huge capital ( keeping their day job, or financing with a service business ).  I think it will be interesting to see how this effects Canadian startups.   From what I’ve seen when I visit US based startups is that we’re generally more efficient with capital and we’re getting more done with less.  I think this might be the lasting impact of the lack of Canadian VC situation.

I think it was a great event despite the ridiculusly crammed venue.  The popularity of DemoCamp is going to continue to cause problems for revenues.

April 21, 2008

MeshU Schedule

The mesh guys have finalized the MeshU schedule with a great line-up for startups, and anyone building for the web.  MeshU is a one-day seminar, separate from the Mesh Conference, that focuses on web startups.   The day features 12 workshops and 3 streams ( design, development, management ).

I think the series highlights for me are probably Jon Lax, from Teehan+Lax, on getting through the design process.  I’ve gone through several site re-designs both a refresh and previously at Autotrader.  Its a difficult process, or atleast it should be get good results.

The Oauth session with Leah Culver looks pretty interesting too.  I’ve been following Oauth for awhile and how it relates to Identity.  I’d be interested to see how easy it is to implement, especially compared with SlashID integration on refreshclassifieds.com.

It looks like most of the talks are family platform agnostic but alot of the speakers do develop with PHP and Rails.  Both are great platforms for startups and I think most of the knowledge learned could be applied to .NET platforms as well.  Microsoft also has some free packages for early stage startups to use .NET.

April 1, 2008

Adobe openning the door for Silverlight?

Adobe has announced some major security changes in Flash 9.   Many of these changes break network enabled Flash applications.  Most notable applications that use any of the following:

or

The full release on the security issues are available here.   These changes mean that many Flash applications which have worked for years under Flash 7, will need to be re-written for Flash 9.  Some of these changes are so extreme that porting might not even be possible.

This looks like a real opportunity for Silverlight to pick up some market share.   I would Microsoft to put a big push on about there network security model and how it would be easier to support Silverlight rather dealing with the new Flash 9 security model.

March 25, 2008

Metronauts Launches

The Metronauts.ca site has launched and is accepting registrations for the next TransitCamp.  I attended first TransitCamp it and it was great event for discussion various transit related issues.  I think this time around the TransitCamp is looking for a more diverse crowd and I think I would just be another  internet geek, when they really want to get feedback from soccer moms and other hard core commuters.

March 24, 2008

The dark side of Cloud Computing…

Over the last few years I’ve been a strong advocate of moving most of my computing the cloud based services.  I’ve been using Gmail for all my email, including my business email.  I use Google Reader now for all my RSS feeds and often I’m using Google Docs to share files with colleagues.  I’m also a big fan of using social networking sites like Facebook to consolidate alot of my social communications like photo sharing and status updates…

Recently though I’ve had a few bad experience with cloud services and I think its important these services to have good systems in place for outages.  The most recent was with Facebook.  On Friday it seems Facebook decided to enforce a new policy of not allowing test accounts as application developers.   I’d read different reports about using test accounts as developers and the Facebook wifi indicates that its not supported.  As part of this new enforcement Facebook decided to disable all applications that had test accounts as developers.  In our case this effected 4 applications that we’ve developed, 3 of which were for 4 clients.  One application was just launching and we were able to contact someone at Facebook to get it re-enabled.  One application was still in developer so we re-created new application keys without any problems.  The last 2 are still missing and have now been offline for 4 days.  Not great in terms of a customer service experience and I think really highlights the need for better customer service with Facebook…

And then this morning I’ve been having a hard time getting into my Gmail account.  When I try to login I get a 502 error ( temporary web problem, try again ) and Gmail displays the following message:

This seems to be taking longer than usual.

If you are using a slow Internet connection, you can wait a bit longer for this page to finish loading, or just use basic HTML view for now.

If you are using your normal Internet connection and you usually get past this loading step without any problems, please refresh this page in your browser. If you continue to have trouble loading your account, please visit the help center for troubleshooting information.

Which sounds like there is a problem with my internet connection.  A quick visit to the “Google help center” leads to nothing useful but after a quick search of the Gmail discussion forum I find this:

Gmail Alerts Manager Google employee

We are aware that a subset of our users are currently experiencing 502 errors upon login. Our engineers are working to resolve this issue. Thanks for your patience.
(1 user) Mar 24, 1:54 pm
From: Gmail Alerts Manager
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 10:54:02 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Mon, Mar 24 2008 1:54 pm
Subject: 502 errors on login
Reply | Forward | Print | Individual message | Report this message | Find messages by this author
We are aware that a subset of our users are currently experiencing 502
errors upon login. Our engineers are working to resolve this issue.
Thanks for your patience.
Ok, so it is a Google problem, they are aware of issue.  I can use their basic HTML service while they resolve it.  It would have been better if they connected this message with the login error message though instead of having me spin my wheels.
I guess the move to Cloud based services is not without its growing pains.  I’m currently in the process of backing up all my Gmail and removing all test accounts from developer access.
March 17, 2008

IE 8 Virtual Machines

I’m a little late on this but one of the funniest announcements of out of  MIX08 was the IE 8 Virtual Machines announcement.  I’ve been running the IE8 Beta which was also launched at MIX08, mainly because I badly broke IE 7 trying to get a version of IE6 installed for testing.

The new IE8 virtual machines, or  Internet Application Compatibility VPC image,  let you run old version of Internet Explorer.   In order to make your website work with Internet Explorer it often required several ugly work-arounds to get the different versions to run together.  In my case these ended up breaking my version of IE 7.

I’m glad that Microsoft is actually taking this situation seriously and releasing the IE8 Virtual Machines.   I think its really telling though how much damage Microsoft and IE has done to web compatibility though.   Other browsers like Firefox aren’t perfect but they don’t see to suffer from anywhere near the compatibility issues and it doesn’t see that IE 8 is going to be radically better…

February 27, 2008

StartupCampWaterloo2

Last night was StartupCampWaterloo and I made my first trip out to the Waterloo Acceleration Center. Having gone to a lot of events around Toronto the Waterloo Acceleration Center is awesome, with an open lobby area for presentations. I think there was about 80 people in attendance but it was still an intimate environment for the Q&A.

Stefanus Du Toit provided the first presentation as an overview of this experience with RapidMind. I haven’t heard of RapidMind before and seems they provide tools for rapid development of 3D environments. They’ve done work with the IBM cell processor and a variety other GPUs.

In keeping with the Barcamp theme, everyone that wanted to present needed to pitch the crowd with a 60s overview of the presentation. I think there were about 8 companies/groups that wanted to present and in the end 5 presentations went forward.
The presentations were:

SlashID by Ross Bennett

I’ve worked with Ross before and I’ve been involved with SlashID for awhile. For disclosure, I am also an investor in SlashID. I think the original plans was for a 15 min presentation and it ended up being 5 mins, with 10 min Q&A. Ross did a good overview of SlashID and I think the feedback from the crowd was great. Key improvements for the pitch would be to address the differences between SlashID and OpenID earlier, and place less emphasis on the revenue from users.

Tagiton.com by Adam Joncas

I really like the initial pitch from Adam, about the goals of Tagiton.com in terms of moving a lot of emal discussions out of email. When they demo’d their product though didn’t find the filtering options or the ability to follow conversations to be too great. I think Gmail probably provides better tools today. Tagiton also seemed to be trying to introduce a different definition of the term “Tag”. I think the key take away would be to really look a how they can improve the email flow without launching new browser windows and creating new terms around their “Tagging” engine.

Garageentrepreneurs.com by Natalie McNeil

Garage Entrepreneurs are planning to develop a social network to let entrepreneurs to connect. I found there assertion about competitive sites like Facebook and Linkedin to be very weak. David Crow has some great feedback when Garage Entrepreneurs suggested charging entrepreneurs for access to the network. I think the key takeway for Garage Entrepreneurs is to focus on how to create some unique value for entrepreneurs ( outside of Facebook, or other social networks ) and a better business model that’s not based on users paying.

SmartPatterns.com

The pitch for the SmartPatterns.com presentation was really weak but I thought they made up for it with your demo and discussion afterwards. The company is in the process of moving their software from a desktop package to an online service. They provide the ability to quickly create custom knitting patterns online. While knitting is probably a fairly small market there are a number of opportunities to grow the business. I think the key take away was to get the service online fast and think about opportunities to work expand beyond just the knitting patterns.

Ghoti Studios by Majid Mirza

I don’t think the Ghoti Studios pitch and presentation were in alignment. I was excited initially about the possibility of more efficiently with graphic designers. It wasn’t clear from the presentation how Ghoti Studios planned to make working with graphic designers easier. There are a number of online tools designed to make working with designers easier, like ConceptShare, Octopz, and Kuzimo. I wasn’t certain where Ghoti Studios planned to fit into this process. I think the key take away would be to define the business plan a bit more and try to include the various feedback/suggestions.

Austin Hill wrapped up the night with a presentation of his experiences and recommendations for startups. I thought some of this experiences were one sided, for example his experience with service businesses. I think a lot of business can self-fund through services . I did really like his line about “Code talks” when dealing with financing. I thought this was a great summary of why startups need to get a working prototype.
Overall it was a good line up of companies and I think the interaction with the crowd was great. Jesse and Simon did a great job of trying to get discussions going. Simon was one the best MC’s I’ve ever seen and he should definitely continue with the MC duties.

February 26, 2008

Why Monopoly?

The Hasbro/Monopoly team has decided to remove the leaderboard from their Monopoly board top city vote.    Maybe they weren’t happy with the line-up of cities or all the interest the vote process was getting.  In a process that was fairly open from the beginning I’m not sure hiding the results at the last minute is a good plan.  If you haven’t already vote go to:

http://www.monopolyworldvote.com/en_CA/world

February 26, 2008

DemoCampToronto17

DemoCampToronto17 was last night at the Board of Trade.  It was a packed house again with tickets selling out a few weeks ago.  About half the crowd was new to DemoCamp again.  It’s a strange trend that so many new people are coming out.
The Demo’s for the night were:

AskItOnline.com by  Kaitlyn McLachlan, Clear Sky Media
AskitOnline.com is an online survey tool, similar to survey monkey and a lot of the other online tools.   The interface and the process for creating the survey is really what sets it apart from competition.  The interface looked really great and I having struggled  with other solutions I can see how it could have an advantage.

GigPark.com by  Pema Hegan and Noah Godfrey
GigPark.com is a recommendation based social network.  You can ask your friends to give you a recommendation on different services or see which services your friends are recommending.   Having tried a few recommendation based services in the past I think it’s a very competitive market.  Services like Yellow Pages can easily add user reviews and start competing, Ziplocal.com for example already has a basic review engine and friend network.

Mono Project .NET by Geoff Norton
The Mono project provides a open source .NET development environment.  I had heard of Mono before but I’ve never really looked into it.  Geoff did a great job of demo a fairly dull topic and didn’t let the hardcore developers in the crowd suck him down and any rat holes, like the licensing situation with Mono.

PlanetEye.com by Butch Langlois
Planeteye.com is a travel related site that lets users upload photos of different geographic locations around the world.  The site is absolutely beautiful and the interface between the photos and the map has really been thought out.  I’m not too clear how they intend to make money though.  The Travel  advertising industry is a tough nut to crack.

SceneCaster by  Alain Chesnais
I saw SceneCaster briefly at FacebookCampToronto a few weeks ago but it was great to see a longer version of their demo.  I think technology is really great and its impressive to see 3D environments coming to life in the browse.  I’m not too clear on their business model and how many businesses will really want to create 3D models to promote their businesses.  It will be interesting to see the product and probably the business strategy evolve.

Overall the demo’s were awesome, one of the best demo line-ups I’ve seen in awhile.   All of them were really well presented and  I think all were trying to solve a problem.
The Ignite presentations were:

The Future Is Simple by Geo Perdis
Geo’s presentation was how the web and the innovation is often about eliminating unnecessary components.  He had a few different examples of how business were more successful once they simplified their business.

Social Services Mashup  by Clara Severino
Clara’s presentation was about creating a mashup of different social services and connecting them using online mapping.  It was a good presentation and I think its really showing there is a huge opportunity at the hyper local level for a variety of services to co-exist.  It would be great to see social services publishing map co-ordinates etc..

How to Rock SXSW by Rannie Turingan
SXSW is a large interactive conference in Austin and Rannie’s presentation was about how to get maximum value.  I haven’t been to SXSW but it looks like a great time and I’d really like attend at some point.

The State of Wireless in Canada Sucks  by Tom Purves
Last year started a flurry of discussion around the state of wireless access in Canada.  His presentation was in a similar line and included a number of highlights about how Canada’s wireless data rates are not competitive with the rest of the world.    With most companies looking very hard for a wireless strategy is disappointing that Canadian wireless provides have been so limiting.

Leveraging Wide Open by Mike Beltzner
Mike Beltzner’s presentation was around how businesses can benefit from being open and using an open source philosophy.   It was an interesting discussion and Mozilla has certainly benefitted from the process.

Tom’s presentation was definitely the highlight of the Ignite presentations.  Oddly the ignite presentations were a lot rougher than the demo’s this time around.  I was really impressed with the quality of the demo’s, I think the Ignite format just presents too make challenges for good communication.