Quote of the moment (Fred Wilson, commenting on one of his post) :
i would way rather hang out with the “riff raff” that populates the comments on this blog than a fancy invite only conference. [From A VC: Comments or Discussions?]
As we say around here : “moi aussi”! Gotta love the messiness of barcamps and meetups and off-the-cuff blog comments… I really think that the most interesting stuff happens “in the gray zone”, these informal zones are ripe for discovery and insights....
Sometime, while thinking about what should be the “editorial” policy for a company blog, you fight with yourself a bit, and wonder why you are asking yourself such a (dumb) question. And then, you reconsider and decide that the best answer is “none - as long as we call it that way - all the stuff not good enough for our corporate blog”… and with some exploration, experimentation, you somehow get this masterpiece of the non-corporate blog that is all your company is about :
Thus was the concept that had evolved through the chit-chat which prompted this Geek to acquire a new set of skills, namely: soldering and hardware hacking. [excerpt from Easy Application Deployment Using Soldering and Jack Cords - The Razed Blog]
You then figure that working with that...
I’m sure we could get 20-40 twitter fans (at least! in Montreal somewhere in march, april or may)… [original idea via twittday]
Chime in the comments (or @afrognthevalley) if you are interested!...
Just finished my presentation at SAT about The Future of interconnected spaces.
It’s a really high level view of trends (with keywords) about what’s exciting in emerging technology.
It was a 10 minute introduction, so it’s short and sweet and jam-packed with too much info and not enough details, but anyhow, check it out. Might do a longer version sometime, if I have the opportunity (hint, hint).
Networked Humans (PDF 72kb / Canadian Creative Commons License BY-SA-NC 2.5)
In the spirit of connectedness, this is posted live from the stage…...
Interesting thinking, framed with a global perspective (did I already teel you 2008-2009 are the years of the global web?) :
Well, one company, Nokia, could challenge Microsoft. Nokia has the cash, the resources, and a killer global handset business with which to fuel the deal.
1. If Nokia wants to be a Web company, it needs a stronger desktop presence to complement its push into mobile applications.
2. Navteq + Yahoo = Nokia’s dominance of mobile location.
3. Nokia needs to grow its U.S. market share and Yahoo is a brand that could help it.
4. Nokia is a mobile ad company that needs to grow its share of online advertising.
5. Nokia cannot afford to let Microsoft or Google gain any more online market share.
[From The Top 5 Reasons Nokia Should Bid On Yahoo - Mobile Blog -...
Stéphanie Booth brings to our attention a sad consequence of some of the latest twitter updates :
I noticed this morning that Twitter is hiding messages addressed (using @username) to people one is not following. You can still see them by looking at a friend’s page, but they don’t appear on one’s home page anymore (…) This means that we do not see what is commonly called “partial conversations” — ie, conversations the people you are following are having with people that they are following but you are not. While some people will rejoice, because they found that annoying, I find that it’s a damn shame. And I’m not alone.
Why do I think it’s such a shame? Well, yes, twitter is mainly for keeping in touch with people you already know. But it’s also a really great...
The first definition of Web 3.0 that I like :
Web 1.0: Centralized Them. Web 2.0: Distributed Us. Web 3.0: Decentralized Me
[Via The Praized Blog » Blog Archive » Quote of the Day: Robert O’Brien on Web 3.0]
identity, diso...
For those tracking my many outputs, there’s a new one : The Razed Blog (All the stuff not good enough for our corporate blog).
montreal, startup, praized...
The geeky quote of the day on the potential acquisition :
As a nerd, one of my biggest worries about a MSFT acquisition of Y! is - what do they do to a Unix shop? (/me waves at Hotmail)
[Via Twitter / les orchard: As a nerd, one of my bigges…]...
“Why is Digg constantly updating their algorithm and making their power users angry?” There are diverging views on this subject. Sebastien gives the MBA perspective on the issue.read more | digg story...
Wow, is this the year of opensource buyouts or what? I esp. like this bullet point form the release :
The acquisition of Trolltech will enable Nokia to accelerate the cross-platform software strategy for mobile devices and desktop applications, and to develop its Internet services business.
[From Nokia Acquires Trolltech — Trolltech]...
Standout Jobs officially launched today, and announced a 2 million funding with great noise all around the blogosphere (Mashable, GigaOM, CenterNetworks, MontrealTech Watch and Startup North are a few notables).
The standout crew is well know in Montreal, the three founders (Austin Hill, Benjamin Yoskovitz and Fred Ngo) are heavily invested in local barcamps, founders and funders, montreal tech entrepreneur’s breakfast and Montreal on Rails… and they have this guy named MAC writing the fastest and lightest ruby server around, too!
I will be taking a closer look to their platform in the next few weeks, my schedule was bursting at the seams for the last few months… when they announced they where looking at companies to beta-test, we had to pass our turn then, we were -...
If I read this right, it means that SUN’s startup program is now available in Canada (but the official web page is not communicating this)…
And there really is going to be a launch: Sun’s Startup Essentials will be doing its Canadian launch. That’s a program that’s easy to understand. Be less than four years old. Have less than 150 employees. Get cheap hardware.
[Via ongoing · Launch Party Vancouver Jan. 25]
startup, canada...
The house is packed at the SAT, keynote by Graham Hill of TreeHugger fame…
9 different things he believes in :
The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior… go with your gut.
Incentives drives the world. What are people getting out of it?
The truth is told at the cash register, not in focus groups. Look at the actual data.
LIsten to Fred Wilson.
The network is the computer. The future is open, online… gmail, last.fm, mint.
Product first, marketing later. Build something great.
Keep hungry, Barely enough money is good.
“Companies are bought and not sold“
Good guys wins in a connected world. Media has been democratized.
That’s a great simple (and useful list)....
Moments ago the joint effort of the W3C HTML WG and WHATWG resulted in publication of two documents in the W3C Technical Report space: HTML 5 and HTML 5 differences from HTML 4. [Via The WHATWG Blog » Blog Archive » HTML 5 published as W3C First Public Working Draft!]...
Quote of the day on this huge news, from Matt Asay :
reestablishing Sun as the center of the web is worth billions [From Sun buys MySQL for $1 billion to take centerstage in the web economy | The Open Road - The Business and Politics of Open Source by Matt Asay - CNET Blogs]
The short version of my analysis : it’s a good thing and marks a turning point....
That’s the title of my presentation at CUSEC 2008, it’s all about startups…
Here’s the music line-up (sorry, I can’t distribute these, so text list here) :
Vive Le FeudBérurier NoirWe Didn’t Start the Fire / Billy JoelLight My Fire / The DoorsFire / Red Hot Chili PeppersRing of Fire / Johnny CashThe Roof is on Fire / Blood Hound GangAmerican Bad Ass / Kid RockCanadian Idiot / Weird Al YankovicEt Hop + Macadam Circus / Bérurier NoirSmells Like Teen Spirit / NirvanaVideo Killed The Radio Star / OffspringWe’re not Gonna take it / Less than JakeIt’s a Small World / DisneyImmigrant Song / Infectious GroovesEntre deux joints / Robert CharleboisTaking Care Of Business / BTOJe m’appelle Guillaume / Vulgaires MachinsStar Wars: Main Theme /...
There is no working jailbreak for 1.1.3 at this time. [Via 1.1.3 iPhone Update Liveblog - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)]
And I did heard good reports from fellow canadians with TurboSIM this afternoon, so if done carefully, you can iPhone in Canada… but as with other things, I might get bored before long (the potential Rogers announcements are nowhere to be seen after the iCeremony).
Tags: iphone, canada, jailbreak, gsm...
the FOAF to hell is paved with RDF triples [From Twitter / Paul Downey: the FOAF to hell is paved w…]...
Q.Is CouchDB going to be renamed WebSphereDB™? [From Damien Katz: FAQ about CouchDB and it’s new IBM overlords]...
So was spock.com just a fart in the wind, or did any of you make use of it? [Via Twitter / Collin Douma]...
Rumors abound that Yahoo! will make a major announcement about OpenID today at CES. It looks like at the very least you’ll be able to use your Flickr user page URL to log in anywhere that supports OpenID login. The code is live, view source of any user page and search for OpenID and you’ll find it.
It sure help to know that the session Open ID for Large Providers at the last Internet Identity Workshop was moderated by a Yahoo engineer… and well attended with tech talent from AOL, MS and Google too (and a few other key OpenID actors too). That’s the awesome thing happening right now, geeks have a lot of power within these large organizations, hackers of code and of large systems with complex algorithms (often called politics).
[Via Flickr to Authenticate OpenID -...
Nagios is a time-tested warhorse with a lot of community support. It’s ugly but it works and works well. [Via Hacker News | Ask YC: What tools are you using to monitor a site’s load?]...
I could have gone at CES this year again, my friends from Sympatico invited me again to video-blog the event. I really wanted to go. I could have gone.
But alas, Praized was taking all my energy and the strategic partnerships we have lined-up for january is both exciting and scary (good). So I had to declined, but for a geek like me it was quite a sacrifice. I remember walking in LV las year, thinking how I was *lucky* to be able to be there and cover the digital emergence and zeitgeist and just hanging out at the bloghaus…
But hey, I will travel for Praized this year, a lot. NYC is planned for January and SF for sure once or twice. Maybe europe. Most likely. It’s going to be an exciting year. Très!
CES, Untitled, 2008...
But we were a little surprised by what occupied the No. 2 slot among identity stores: the open-source OpenLDAP project. That is, we were surprised until we started talking to readers. What we learned is that OpenLDAP is driving a number of Fortune 500 enterprise IdM efforts, and adoption doesn’t appear to be slowing.
[Via IT Automation: Identity Management - Desktop Security - Dark Reading]
enterprisey, idenity...
Where should I host DNS for a large global consumer website?
A few good answers, including DNS Made Easy, Zone Edit and “a large tier 1 provider” or “your own machines”. I could add Easy DNS for most needs, not sure I would vouch for them for a large global consumer website, depending on your definition of large....
Two tidbits of news regarding XO laptops (from an email received from the OLPC foundation) :
We are in the process of finalizing shipment plans for Canada. Your laptop is scheduled to be delivered in the Jan/Feb ‘08 time frame.
So it’s coming… patience!
Thank you for participating in Give One Get One. Due to the generousity of Canadian donors, over 4000 laptops will be delivered to children in some of the world’s least developed countries in early 2008.
It’s more than I thought, maybe there could be some traction at local school around the country, anybody has more insight on this?...
Twitter / Andre Nantel : My secret for making the gym interesting? Tech Podcasts....
Great thread for those interested in neogeography : [Geowanking] SDI - time for a new name?...
Seth’s Blog: Blogs and self promotion
Once again, what do you know, it takes patience. It’s not a direct, first-order promotional thing, the way old media is. Instead, it’s one thing causing something else, which leads to a conversation and then, maybe, a sale.
[Via Martin Ouellette]...