An adorable little video from Roberto Rocha, who's taking a one-year leave of absence from his job as The Gazette's technology business reporter to go travelling around the world for no reason, starting in February. He went around telling everyone what he was doing and filmed their reactions.

While everyone is surprised and encouraging (except for the always dryly-sarcastic Basem Boshra), the star of the video is definitely business editor Bryan Demchinsky, who unwittingly plays the straight man, wondering aloud how this will affect his section and whether Rocha can be replaced while he's gone.

The video is being passed around a bit on Twitter, and is featured on a website he's setup about his upcoming adventure, which includes a description of what they have planned.

Thankfully Bryan is a good sport, otherwise I'd agree with Roberto that his job might not be there when he gets back...

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Employees carry signs outside 1010 Ste. Catherine St. W.

As Canadians went to the polls today, editorial, advertising and reader service employees at the Gazette staged a lunch-hour information picket line, carrying signs and handing out leaflets explaining the situation to passers-by. The union, which is negotiating with management for a new contract (the previous one expired June 1), received a strong strike mandate but has so far not exercised it. Conciliation talks are scheduled for next week.

Journalists and other Gazette employees hold picket signs to attract public attention.

Turnout was pretty good considering there are less than 200 members affected (this includes the entire editorial department). Picket signs surrounded the building on all four sides for about an hour and a half.

Union vice-president Irwin Block gets interviewed by a radio reporter. His T-shirt reads "The Gazette is Montreal, not Winnipeg."

Media coverage was very light, considering there's this whole election thing is going on (have you voted yet?) and all hands on deck fanned out to swing ridings. But a radio reporter and photographer showed up, so you might see a tiny bit of coverage.

The key, though, is that this is just the beginning of the union's public information campaign (should such a campaign become necessary).

Reporter William Marsden hands an information leaflet to a bus driver

Roberto Rocha: Communist hippie

Meanwhile, The Link covers the Gazette labour conflict and byline strike, and has an editorial which posits that in the new digital age, quality of journalism becomes key and wire copy doesn't cut it anymore.

And La Presse also covers the Gazette today, focusing on the Canwest student scab situation. It includes a new explanation from Canwest, that the student freelancers would be needed mainly to provide material to other newspapers to compensate for the Gazette loss (Canwest has no Montreal bureau and relies on Gazette copy for news from Canada's second-largest city). Of course, such articles would also be available to The Gazette.

UPDATE: Michel Dumais looks at the recent labour action around Canadian newspapers, and Le Devoir has an adorable photo of Phil Authier.

UPDATE (Oct. 16): Hour and Mirror both mention The Gazette's union issues in their editions this week. Hour has a really good article by Jamie O'Meara arguing against the outsourcing of Gazette jobs (and includes one of my photos to illustrate it). Mirror makes The Gazette its insect of the week for Canwest's attempts to recruit student scab labour.

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What's interesting about this project, unlike the thousands of other social networking sites, is that it's starting big. Millions of dollars big. Before it even has 100,000 users, it's going to flood the Web with advertising, spend millions on servers, and get as many famous people involved as possible to lure the young'uns on board. In other words, it's going to use traditional marketing methods instead of the word-of-mouth methods that created Google, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and everything else.

Their gimmick is a social currency ("zoops") that people can exchange by "tipping" each other. Voluntary contributions toward people whose content you approve of.

I'll reproduce here some of the concerns I expressed (and some new ones I've added) about the project on his blog:

Here's my issues with Capazoo:

1. The name. It's a random nonsense word like every other forgettable Web 2.0 startup. And it tells me nothing about what the site does.
2. Yet Another Social Networking Site. People assume they put up a website and they'll get Facebook/MySpace-like success within months. That's just not going to happen unless their site is much better or they have a distinct advantage with newcomers. Microsoft took advantage of the latter (leveraging its Hotmail and MSN services) to outseat ICQ in instant messaging. Google used the former to build its search engine and Gmail. I see neither as the case for Capazoo.
3. It's bad enough for startups that social networks require a large critical mass before they can take off. Nobody wants to join a social network that none of their friends are in. But their virtual currency system requires an even larger critical mass before any content producer sees real money.
4. I got the same weird feeling as TechCrunch about tying virtual currency to referrals. It sounds like a pyramid scheme. And the value of a Zoop is about equivalent to the value of a Zimbabwean dollar.
5. Content creators getting money is great and all, but the entire payment process is based on tips. And those tips might be worth a penny or two. I don't see even moderately popular people making a lot of money this way. And even if they did, wouldn't they feel obligated to zoop all of their supporters?
6. What's to stop someone from stealing a popular video off YouTube, putting it on their Capazoo page and profiting off it? How will they ensure originality of content? Any system that involves money will attract people who will try to game that system.
7. You have to pay them money in order to get money. Which means you have to make more money. Thousands of these "zoops" just to break even.
8. Deals with major content producers is a red herring that sadly a lot of people use. MySpace is good for listening to unsigned bands. Facebook doesn't have any of these content deals (that I know of). Reprinting articles from wire services and major magazines is a gimmick, and isn't going to overcome problems with the concept.
9. I don't like the layout. Facebook took away MySpace people (including myself) because it has a simple uncomplicated layout. Capazoo goes back to a giant mess with no apparent structure.
10. The walled garden. I know Facebook uses this approach (requiring people to login to see anything), but that only works when the desire to see what's behind the wall overpowers your frustration at having to register yet another account.
11. Their terms of use. They have the right to terminate your account and take all your zoops for any reason at their sole discretion. Capazoo claims non-exclusive, unlimited royalty-free rights to your content for anything they want. They're not even required to inform you of changes or ask for your consent.
12. They don't allow people under 16 to use the site. (At least not officially.) That's going to cause problems if the site gets popular. They also allow only people 18 years or older to earn money. So the site seems to be completely pointless to a key demographic for these kinds of sites.
13. Even if it's successful, what's to stop Facebook and MySpace from stealing the currency idea? Revver was started up as a competitor to YouTube in much the same fashion. So YouTube began compensating its top contributors. YouTube is still king.
14. The entire premise is based on what I think is a faulty idea: That most users of social networking sites feel they should be compensated for the time they spend there and the content they provide. While there are some people who put up videos and blog posts and other stuff because they're creative and want the world to see them, most people use social networking sites to comment on friends' photos, see who's broken up with whom, or communicate with old high school buddies they lost touch with. Nobody expects to get compensated for this.
15. And finally, like the others, I think it's silly to start with such a huge organization before the product is off the ground. Computing gives companies the ability to start small even when they're starting big. It's foolish to squander such an opportunity.

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In honour of the series, here are a couple of tales of my own about recent experiences with customer service:

Rogers Wireless

I got my bill from Rogers this month, and noticed the amount due was larger than normal. I noticed this because the amount is always exactly the same, to the cent. But for some reason, this month I had an extra $12.25 in "frais d'utilisation" (for some reason, half my Rogers bill is in French and the other half in English).

I try my best to figure this out on my own. My plan is unlimited incoming calls, 100 minutes days and 1000 minutes evenings and weekends. The bill showed a total 126 minutes for the days/weekends. But for some reason, I'm charged 49 minutes of "jour sem" (gotta love those descriptions) at the oh so reasonable rate of $0.25 per minute for a local call.

I call up customer service, dial in my phone number, talk to the automated voice-recognition system which kinda works, and eventually get connected with a young lady with a suspiciously Indian-sounding accent (I'm sure it's a coincidence). The first thing she asks me for, of course, is the same phone number I just dialed into the system.

I explain to her that it's mathematically impossible for me to have used 126 minutes on a 100/1000 minute plan and get charged for 49 minutes extra. After putting me on hold she tells me they have a "new system" which has accidentally overcharged me and I should only be charged for 26 minutes extra.

Now it's mathematically possible that this makes sense. If every last second I spent on my cellphone making outgoing calls was on weekdays during the day. I'm 100% certain that she still doesn't get it, but she promises to send me a bill that gives a rundown of the calls I've made so I can verify this for myself (why such a thing isn't included with my bill in the first place is a mystery to me, and she can't explain it either).

She asks me if I'm satisfied with how the call turned out, and I tell her I'll only know when I see the new bill she's going to send me.

Today I got the bill, which was sent to my old address (I told her during the call what my new address was), and not only does it not include the call history I was told I would get, but it still overcharges me by the original amount. Now I'll have to call back Rogers tomorrow and waste more of my time getting them to fix their mistake.

Via Route

During my move into my new apartment last week, I went to Via Route with my father to pick up a moving van. Since I don't have a driver's license, he was going to be the driver. And since it's my move, I was going to pay for it. Simple enough, right?

Well, not simple enough for Via Route. The guy asked to see my driver's license. I again explained that I did not have one. He says it's policy that the same person has to pay for and drive the vehicle. Why this is policy is a mystery, as is the reason this policy only exists now. He explains that the previous managers (he lists four of them in the past couple of years, which set off a few warning bells in my head) had their own ways and now there's new policies.

Eventually he accepts our situation and allows us to rent the truck. My medicare card number is put in the space of the driver's license number for the primary driver, and my father is listed as a secondary driver. This cost us extra, despite the fact that there is only one driver.

Then the guy has me sign the form, and initial a box that says I recognize that I have a valid driver's license. Again I explain to him that I do not have a driver's license and I will not sign a legal form in triplicate that attests to something that is not true.

He says "it's ok, just sign it."

Really? Do these forms mean nothing now? Is fine print just there for decoration?

My father initialed that box, and eventually we were on our way. But now we're going to think twice before considering Via Route for vehicle rentals, a company we went to in the first place because of their customer service.

Videotron

Cable is one of the luxuries I afford myself. I have a television and high-speed Internet package with Videotron. At the end of April, when I moved out of my previous apartment, I moved in with my parents. The plan was to spend a month there before I moved into my current apartment.

Internet wasn't a problem since I could use theirs, but they have classic cable and I wanted my Illico digital with its custom channels just for me. Fortunately, the box works anywhere attached to the cable network, so it worked fine there until about halfway through May.

I called Videotron, and the girl explained to me that service to my previous address had been disconnected, because another company was assuming cable service there (It's a big building, so I guess the landlord made some sort of exclusivity deal). No problem, I give her my address so she can reactivate my account.

There's a pause on the line. She explains to me that there's already an account at that address. Apparently Videotron doesn't allow more than one account for any address. There's nothing she can do. Even though it would only be needed for a week and a half, and it was working fine just a few hours before, she can't reactivate my account until I move somewhere that doesn't already have cable.

She suggests that I add the digital cable box to my parents' account. It's not an ideal solution, since we'd just have to remove it a few days later, but I inquire further. It sounds promising until she tells me she wouldn't be able to activate it until a technician was sent to hook it up.

But, I told her, it was already hooked up. It was working fine until you deactivated it. There's nothing for a technician to do. She couldn't help me. Her computer wouldn't let her.

When I moved into my new apartment, I setup an appointment the earliest I could. Apparently they have a two-week waiting list. To get someone to come within a week I had to settle for an all-day time slot, and sit waiting in an empty apartment between 7:30am and 8pm. I camped out with nothing but a TV, my laptop and a folding chair, and the next day the cable guy showed up.

He seemed nice. I showed him where the cable entered the apartment (the kitchen, for some inexplicable reason), and where I wanted it (the living room, five rooms away). It involved drilling three holes, an awful lot of cable, and quite a bit of time, but eventually it was installed.

When it came time to setup the modem, he told me to hook up my computer. I did, and DHCP gave me a 10.x.x.x address, which while unreal still means I am connected. Sure enough any HTTP request is rerouted to Videotron's modem activation webpage where I have to go through the process. I click on "English" to start up the process.

Nothing. The computer can't connect.

I sit puzzled. Why would the first page work and the rest not? About ten minutes later I finally figure out the problem: Videotron is rerouting HTTP traffic, but not HTTPS, and the second page of the process is HTTPS. I replace it with the equivalent HTTP address and it works, albeit unencrypted. How anyone else activates a cable modem in this way is a mystery to me.

As I was figuring this out, the technician asked me what kind of computer I had. Specifically, whether it was Windows Vista or Windows XP.

"Uhh, it's a Mac," I answer. Maybe he's just never seen an iBook before.

He didn't understand. He had poor English, so I don't blame him. I could configure the computer, he just needed to activate the modem.

He tells me to click on the Start button.

"I don't have a Start button, this is a Mac."

A few seconds later I come to a horrifying realization. It's not that he's not qualified to setup a Mac for Internet access. It's not that he's never used a Mac before. He had never heard of a Mac. He had no concept of what a Mac was.

This is a cable installation technician. He installs cable for Internet use (among other things). And he has never heard of a Mac.

(It was a situation eerily similar to today's xkcd comic).

The installation proceeded fine. He activated both the TV and Internet boxes through his cool Blackberry. I got Internet access, went to an internal diagnostic website he gave me, and it was all good.

I should note that this installation technician wasn't from Videotron. He was from a subcontractor hired by Videotron. That's how they do everything now. And, I learned from a previous subcontractor last year when cable was being installed in my last apartment (that process took months because the landlord and Videotron both said it was the other's responsibility to hook up the cable) that these subcontractors are paid a flat fee per installation, whether it takes 10 minutes or three hours. So if your installation takes too long, they'll just give up, make up some lie about why your cable isn't installed (like that you refused -- that's what they said about me last year) and cut their losses and move on.

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