1. Bell.ca, which doesn’t work with Safari.
2. Radio-Canada.ca, whose address they got wrong, and which opens audio content in strange 1px-by-1px pop-up windows.
3. Desjardins.com, which won’t let you me log into electronic banking with Firefox, and whose top-notch security includes such impossible-for-anyone-else-to-guess questions as “what high school did you graduate from?”
4. Videotron.com, which admittedly I haven’t had issues with, even if their cable and Internet service has much room for improvement.
5. Metro.ca, which uses Javascript needlessly, has a badly-designed site map page (the stupid web 2.0 sharing buttons hides some of the text) and shows 0 stores in Montreal with delivery service available.

Of course, when you judge websites through a mathematical formula that suggests quality of a website is directly proportional to the size of the organization running it, this is what you get.

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The Gazette amazingly managed to score an interview with its own columnist, and talks about the one-hour film.

See also:

• November 18, 2007 — Freed, your mind

So now that we’ve rewritten history and Ile Bizard did, in fact, vote to reconstitute itself as a city, what’s being done to ensure the democratic will is being followed?

Apparently, absolutely nothing. The judge didn’t order a new referendum, nor require the government to reconstitute the municipality. Instead, it will be left to a “political” solution. In other words, let the government do what they want. In other words, nothing.

Isn’t that great?

See also:

• May 15, 2008 — The Mario Dumont Show
• May 12, 2008 — By-elections today
• April 17, 2008 — .qc? No

My request was simple: Don’t vote for me in the sad popularity contest that is the Mirror’s Best of Montreal readers’ poll. Instead, it appears, someone did do exactly that because I came in eighth.

I’d say I was honoured, but I placed just below Drunken Stepfather. That doesn’t exactly fill me with pride.

Still, congrats to those who did end up on the list, especially those who didn’t use their blogs to inflate their votes (Montreal City Weblog, Spacing Montreal, Pregnant Goldfish).

I should also point out some other blogs on that list, which I’ve never frequented because they aren’t about the city, but are still interesting:

• Black Sheep Reviews (Hollywood movie reviews)
• Said the Gramophone (MP3 sampler)
• Hastily Put Together (webcomic)

I also think Coolopolis should have been there somewhere, as well as some francophone blogs. But this is about popularity, not quality, right?

No news here

As for the rest of the poll, nothing is particularly surprising for anyone who’s seen BOM results before. Chain restaurants still dominate the best eats categories (McDonald’s is there twice).

In the media categories:

• CKUT won best radio station
• CFCF best TV station (with Mutsumi Takahashi and Todd van der Heyden best news anchors, though the Mirror seems to think the later is the evening news guy, when last time I checked it was 8th-placed Brian Britt)
• K103’s Don Smooth best radio host (the Mirror has a profile)
• Mix and CHOM’s morning shows as best radio shows
• Nightlife Magazine won best magazine
• The Mirror, shockingly, came in first for Best Newspaper, again. The Gazette was second, which I think says something, followed by the three franco dailies, Voir, Hour, The Link, Metro and the McGill Daily.
• The Gazette’s Aislin won for Best Cartoonist, beating ballot-stuffing Radomsky and La Presse’s Serge Chapleau

And Boustan, who also mounted a self-promotion campaign to improve its standing, maintained its dominance in the Middle Eastern categories, improved in others and added two new ones:

• Best Middle-Eastern (still 1st)
• Best Falafel (still 1st)
• Best Late-Night Eats (2nd from 3rd)
• Best Delivery (2nd from 4th)
• Best Cheap Eats (3rd)
• Best Sandwich (5th)

However, people weren’t convinced enough to vote for it as Best Fries or Best Vegetarian.

Elsewhere in the bragosphere:

• Spacing Montreal
• Indyish (Pregnant Goldfish)
• Montreal City Weblog
• Slushblog

See also:

• April 13, 2008 — Best of Montreal: Don’t vote for me
• April 10, 2008 — Oh Guy!
• February 28, 2008 — Welcome to the blogosphere

To celebrate its new web portal (the city’s websites are going to keep reinventing themselves until they realize that the entire thing sucks horse manure and needs to be replaced from the ground up), Montreal’s library network crowdsourced (through a contest) the making of a minute-and-a-half-long commercial/film about how awesome the libraries are.

The results are pretty impressive. Above is the winner from among the 94(!) videos submitted (they’ve posted all of them to YouTube). It’s slick, heartwarming and even features a few cameos.

The videos use varying styles, including fast-talking animation, generic ad montage with cool music to appeal to a young audience, piano-accompanied first-person documentary targeted toward an even younger demographic, paper-eating film-WTF, silent-movie comedy, dramatic metaphor, creepy stalking, annoyingly-dubbed sock-puppet theatre, animated post-its, animated crumpled-up-pieces-of-paper, people-walking-around-with-numbers-on-their-heads, and, of course, awesome Transformers battle, plus dozens more that I haven’t gotten a chance to watch yet because I really should be going to bed about now.

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The Big Ten Network is a channel that focuses exclusively on U.S. college sports: football, basketball and other sports from Big Ten college athletic conference. Some people might question the need for a TV network devoted exclusively to college sports, but those people would be stupid. Comments on the proposal are due by Friday, May 16.

The Sportsman Channel is devoted to hunting and fishing (so perhaps it would more appropriately be called the Killing Animals For Fun Channel, but I digress). Comments on that proposal are also due by Friday.

Neither channel obviously competes with any Canadian offering.

See also:

• January 23, 2008 — CRTC may radically change cable TV as we know it
• October 25, 2007 — Rogers Sportsnet 2: Judgment play
• October 25, 2007 — CTV is drunk with cable power

(The original, in case you haven’t seen it, warning about language on both)

(via Dave Id)

See also:

• November 18, 2007 — My Olbermann fetish

Can’t be any worse than what’s already on Quebec talk radio, I guess…

See also:

• May 15, 2008 — Municipal democracy is for losers
• May 12, 2008 — By-elections today
• April 17, 2008 — .qc? No

One of the comments I got on that post was from one of those residents, who said he was worried about his kids having to cross a busy street to get to school every day.

I decided to interview the man for a Justify Your Existence piece. I figured I’d totally get him on that, but turns out I learned a thing or two (something I always enjoy doing as a journalist). Rather than drive to work every day, he takes a bike when he has to, and the rest of the time he works at home. His wife will use the family vehicle, in order to take the kids to school (they have three, ranging in age from about 3 to about 9, if I remember correctly). He’s very pro-environment and anti-car, despite living in a modest home in the suburbs.

Though still somewhat NIMBYish, the guy came off as a concerned father criticizing the creation of roads for the benefit of personal vehicles over public transportation.

Nice guy, nice wife, adorable kids. A fun way to spend an evening.

So why do I bring this up again?

The guy, 34-year-old Nicolas Stone, was arraigned in Longueuil today on charges he lured a 13-year-old girl into exposing herself online, and then had sex with her at least twice. I got a call from work to double-check it was the same guy.

The photo at right is stolen from his Facebook profile, since a scheduled photo shoot for that article fell through (had it happened, the paper would be running file art of the guy and his kids tomorrow).

All this to say, you can never tell just by looking at someone.

And this guy was worried about his kids crossing a busy street…

UPDATE: Let’s be careful with wording (unlike 940 News who don’t think they have to qualify calling him a “predator”) since he hasn’t been convicted of anything yet. All of this is alleged by police. And you never know, there could be a completely innocent explanation for a 34-year-old father of three having sex with a 13-year-old girl.

See also:

• March 27, 2008 — Media critic, criticize thyself
• March 25, 2008 — There are no generic people
• January 8, 2008 — This city kills

Specifically, it takes issue with an article from Le Soleil’s Richard Therrien and a blog post from Patrick Lagacé, both of which suggest that the decision was suspicious (the latter suggests that a friendship between Maxime Bernier and Quebecor’s Pierre-Karl Péladeau might have something to do with it).

I honestly have no idea what’s going through the minds of people at Quebecor (or just TVA?). Are they suggesting that management was not involved in this decision, and that any statement otherwise libels them somehow? Are we to believe that some non-management person made such a controversial decision on a major news story without discussing it with higher-ups?

And are we just to take it as coincidence that the Journal and TVA, both owned by Quebecor, are the only two news outlets that have kept her name secret?

Seriously, what’s their problem?

UPDATE: The Gazette’s Liz Thompson is also like: Dude, WTF?

See also:

• May 9, 2008 — MP’s ex is hot
• December 2, 2007 — Québec à la une: An advertorial in three parts
• November 29, 2007 — Bid for a date with Patrick Lagacé

• More service on 73 Dalton
• More service on 103 Monkland
• More service on 190 Métrobus Lachine
• Summer service on 210 John Abbott, making it a regular rush-hour bus instead of one tied specifically to the CEGEP’s schedule
  
• Service between rush hours on 219 Chemin Sainte-Marie
• More service on 225 Hymus
• Extended operating hours on 420 Express Notre-Dame-de-Grâce (to 11:55am eastbound, and 7pm westbound)
• More service on 460 Métropolitaine
• Earlier Sunday service on many West Island routes (right now many of them only start operating at 9am)

See also:

• May 9, 2008 — STM to introduce Old Port bus, 470 gets weekend service
• April 10, 2008 — New express bus route to Nuns’ Island
• March 14, 2008 — 209, 470 buses get extended schedules

The NDG Monitor, which peeved a lot of residents when owner Transcontinental changed its name to the West End Chronicle in 2001 (and thereby turning it into the West Island Chronicle’s little brother), is being reborn as The Monitor, serving the same west end community of NDG, Cote-St-Luc, Hampstead, Montreal West and neighbouring areas.

Editor Toula Foscolos says the current staff will remain, including their entire reporting staff (all one of him), and all their columnists (both of them). The huge editorial staff will even be enhanced with the addition of Nat Lauzon, who will have a bi-weekly column.

The paper has also moved to a new domain: themonitor.ca.

See also:

• March 20, 2008 — Nat Lauzon likes puppies

See also:

• April 3, 2008 — Chronicle just misses the sport
• August 24, 2007 — Stop inventing anglicized names
• March 11, 2007 — The full story? Nobody needs that

A profile on April 29 about Francisco J. Ayala, a professor who speaks often in defense of the theory of evolution, misstated the location of McGill University, where he gave a recent talk. It is Montreal, not Toronto.

The shame, oh the utter horrible shame…

See also:

• May 12, 2008 — It’s Canada. Who cares?
• April 30, 2008 — Metro is Number Noe!
• March 15, 2008 — Stupid

And with a project under way at 1.92 million, it’s about to drop to fourth.

What is the question? And what do these numbers signify?

UPDATE: Here’s a hint: The “most famous one” is at Mount Royal (The mountain? Avenue? Town? Metro station? Train station?).

UPDATE No. 2: BruB gets it right below. The question is “What is the largest park in Montreal?”

Mount Royal Park is an obvious candidate at 1.9 million square kilometres (192 hectares). But it’s beat by a bunch of parks on the periphery (it’s sixth, not third, according to figures from the city):

• Cap St. Jacques Nature Park, 288 hectares (2.9 million square metres)
• Jean-Drapeau Park, 268 hectares (2.68 million square metres)
• Pointe-aux-Prairies Nature Park, 261 hectares (2.6 million square metres)
• Bois-de-l’Ile-Bizard Nature Park, 201 hectares (2 million square metres)
• Anse à l’Orme Nature Park, 201 hectares (2 million square metres)

And the St. Michel Environmental Complex is being built into another huge park, which will measure about the same as Mount Royal Park in 15 years.

See also:

• May 5, 2008 — Montreal Geography Trivia No. 22
• April 21, 2008 — Montreal Geography Trivia No. 21
• April 14, 2008 — Montreal Geography Trivia No. 20

Congratulations to Global TV anchor Amanda Jelowicki, who recently gave birth to a boy, Frazer, and is now enjoying maternity leave while Jamie Orchard covers for her.

The robots controlling the cameras at Global’s Montreal studio really miss her.

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• Bureaus in the Middle East: 5
• Bureaus in Europe: 4
• Bureaus in South America: 2
• Bureaus in China and Japan: 3
• Bureaus in Canada: 0

Number of foreign bureaus at the New York Times: 23

• Bureaus in Europe: 7
• Bureaus in South America: 3
• Bureaus in Africa: 4
• Bureaus in Canada: 0

Number of foreign bureaus at the Los Angeles Times: 20

• Bureaus in Europe: 5
• Bureaus in South America: 2
• Bureaus in Africa: 3
• Bureaus in China and Japan: 3
• Bureaus in Canada: 0

Number of foreign bureaus at CNN: 28

• Bureaus in Europe:6
• Bureaus in the Middle East: 6
• Bureaus in South America: 3
• Bureaus in Africa: 4
• Bureaus in China, Japan and South Korea: 4
• Bureaus in Canada: 0

Does anyone else notice something odd there?

See also:

• May 5, 2008 — Dear CNN
• May 12, 2008 — Toronto’s McGill University
• February 14, 2008 — Is “unedited” a good thing now?

Last week, the Metrovision system went live at Bonaventure station, with flat-panel TV sets installed above the platforms. It joins Berri-UQAM, McGill and Lionel-Groulx as stations that provide time, weather and train arrival information as well as news from RDI, and of course advertising to pay for it all.

Hope they’re tied down tight because they look really stealable. Especially if the lights go out again:

See also:

• April 30, 2008 — Metro is Number Noe!
• April 1, 2008 — STM’s April pass is wrong
• March 19, 2008 — STM testing metro door chime

In other words, let’s get ready to grummmmmblllllllllllle!

The meeting is at the Intercultural Library at 6767 Côte-des-Neiges Road, just across from the cinema near Goyer St. It starts at 7pm and is expected to end at 9.

Expect a lot of discussion about the overall service improvements (despite nagging bus shortages). Also, expect grandma to go on for 20 minutes about how that bus was too full that one time.

See also:

• May 14, 2008 — Some details of STM bus service improvements
• May 9, 2008 — STM to introduce Old Port bus, 470 gets weekend service
• May 8, 2008 — Attention la terre, pollution

Unfortunately.

Should we add it to the Habs song list, or just hope we can forget about it before next year?

See also:

• May 3, 2008 — Your Habs playlist
• April 24, 2008 — Recognize any of these faces?
• April 24, 2008 — Round 2 begins tonight