Monthly Archives: December 2007

| Montreal, Technology

Videotron discovers Mac

Waiting only 23 years after the media-glitzed introduction of the Apple Macintosh, cable Internet provider Videotron has decided to start supporting the operating system used by hundreds of thousands of Quebecers.

I can’t find the press release online, so whether this will apply to subcontracted technicians who have never heard of Macs isn’t clear.

At this rate, they should have basic Linux support by 2020.

UPDATE: Roberto forwarded me the press release:

The only provider with in-house experts for Mac support

Videotron now supports Apple/Mac platform

Montréal, December 17, 2007 — Videotron has announced that it now supports the Apple/Mac platform in its regular customer service operations. The move will benefit the growing proportion of Videotron subscribers who use Macs. Customer service, technical support and technical quality staff have already received training to enable them to guide customers towards connectivity solutions between Apple/Mac systems and Videotron’s service.

“As the only major Internet Services Provider in its service area to support Apple/Mac users with in-house experts capable of solving Internet-related problems of all kinds on Apple/Mac platforms, we are proud to be able to serve this growing customer group,” said Manon Brouillette, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Content and Product Development.

Supported applications
Forty Videotron customer service employees have received training and are able to advise Apple/Mac users on setting up Mac software such as Apple Mail, browsers and Mac OS 10.x and higher, including Jaguar v10.2, Panther v10.3, Tiger v10.4 and even Leopard v10.5, the release of which was announced in October. Like other Videotron services, this support is available 24/7.

“With the booming popularity of Apple and Mac products today, we are confident that our decision to support these platforms and meet all the needs and challenges involved will have a very positive impact on customer satisfaction,” said Manon Brouillette.

As of January 2008, Videotron will be offering Mac users an Internet kit that has been fully redesigned for Apple/Mac systems, including installation CD, modem box and documentation.

Security on the Mac

Videotron has decided not to offer any security services for Apple/Mac products for now, since Apple/Mac systems have little vulnerability to security threats. However, the growth of Apple’s market share may eventually lead to the introduction of Mac security systems similar to what is available for PCs.

Videotron Ltd. (www.videotron.com), a wholly owned subsidiary of Quebecor Media Inc., is an integrated communications company engaged in cable television, interactive multimedia development, Internet access services, cable telephony and wireless telephone service. Videotron is a leader in new technologies with its illico interactive television system and its broadband network, which supports high-speed cable Internet access, analog and digital cable television, and other services. As of September 30, 2007, Videotron was serving 1,616,000 cable television customers in Québec, including 720,000 illico subscribers. Videotron is the Québec leader in high-speed Internet access, with 899,000 subscribers to its cable modem service. As of September 30, 2007, Videotron had activated 39,000 phones on its wireless telephone service and was providing cable telephone service to nearly 574,000 Québec households and organizations.

| In the news, Montreal

It’s another snow day! (mostly)

Since people have been Googling about school closures tomorrow (Monday, December 17), here’s a quick list of decisions that have been made as of 11pm Sunday. (Assume “open” means “tentatively open” and check the website before leaving in case they change their minds.)

School boards

(Decisions apply to all schools and head office unless otherwise indicated)

English private schools

(That I could think of, have your butler check the website (or CJAD’s list) if not listed here)

English CEGEPs:

Universities are usually open through all but the most crippling of snowstorms. Check individual class websites or student portals for details.

Doing my part

I was going to do some Christmas shopping today, but because (a) shopping malls amazingly are still closing at 5pm on weekends two weeks before Christmas and (b) I took one look outside, I decided to stay home and be one less strain on the transportation network.

That kept me in perfect position to see the lightning that everyone’s talking about, along with its acoustically suppressed thunder.

UPDATE (Dec. 18): The Journal wonders if the schools jumped the gun and if the closings were really justified.

| Media, Montreal

Wanna buy Mitch Melnick’s house?

Mitch Melnick, of the Team 990 fame (and his blog), is apparently in trouble with the city of Westmount (via Media in Montreal). Last month, the city ordered his home on Hallowell Street to be sold at auction (PDF) in January for non-payment of taxes.

Unless Melnick pays his back taxes by then (and really, these kinds of things are more threats than anything else), his home and others on the list will be up to the highest bidder on Jan. 30. You’ll have to pay a hefty price though, the city has it pegged at $579,600.

| Media, Sports

Herbie is never happy

Zurder

Fresh off his successful campaign to have Montreal Alouettes head coach Jim Popp removed, The Gazette’s Herb Zurkowsky is breaking the news of his replacement, a guy named Marc Trestman, and in the same breath suggesting the new guy is as incompetent (if not moreso) as the old guy. Could another campaign be forming?

Zurkowsky is starting to live up to his mean-looking mugshot.

UPDATE (Dec. 18): The Alouettes confirm the news, and Zurkowsky adds a pessimistic post about how bad a choice it was.

| Web design

Sit through e-greeting, donate to charity

Bleublancrouge, the advertising company behind The Gazette’s “Words Matter” campaign (including those TV commercials), is helping the newspaper with an interesting twist to its annual Christmas Fund campaign: The paper is donating 10 cents to its own charity fund every time someone sends an e-greeting card through its new e-greeting-card website.

Here’s one I’ve created especially for Fagstein visitors. You’re welcome.

Unfortunately, the design of the site (and the e-cards) is painfully annoying. In the same way that Bleublancrouge (and every other advertising company on the planet) has a Flash-only site that’s hard to navigate, this e-card site is also Flash-only. It features a 30-second piano rendition of Deck the Halls on infinite repeat, and the “sound off” button doesn’t appear until after you’ve already hit the mute button on your computer. It also appears to not have been sufficiently tested in Firefox on the Mac, because I have to scroll up and down to see anything. When you get to the card itself, it takes a full minute and a half to animate the 10-word message.

In other words, Patrick Tanguay, don’t click on that link.

That said, 10 cents to help a down-and-out Montreal family is worth a little annoyance. And if you don’t think so, feel free to donate to the fund itself via this page whose URL and design make it look a lot like a phishing page ready for your credit card information. (It’s not, of course, and you can donate by phone or in person.)

| Blogosphere, Media, Montreal, Opinion

Bilingualism isn’t a threat to Quebec

Chris DeWolf emailed me about this blog post on the two solitudes from Voir’s François Parenteau. In it, he argues that anglos are zombies (then he argues that we’re not zombies) and that we’re coming to get francophones so we can enslave them, or other such nonsense:

Et c’est vrai aussi que, d’un point de vue strictement francophone, les anglophones sont des morts-vivants. Ils sont vivants, en ce sens qu’ils marchent, travaillent, mangent, dorment, votent et font des enfants. Mais comme ils font tout ça en anglais, ils sont morts au regard de la communauté francophone. Ils ne créeront jamais rien en français. Ils ne consommeront aucun produit culturel en français. Ils ne retireront rien et n’amèneront rien à la sphère culturelle francophone. Ils la “compétitionnent” même avec la leur propre, indépendante, nourrie à même la culture majoritaire de ce zombie-land qu’est l’Amérique du Nord. Et pire encore, on le sait, ils transforment automatiquement en zombie les francophones avec qui ils entrent en contact. Il n’y a qu’à voir les communautés francophones hors-Québec pour s’en rendre compte.

My problem isn’t that he’s paranoid, or that he spews vitriolic hatred and xenophobia, painting hundreds of millions of people with one gigantic brush. My problem is how familiar this kind of language is, leading people to believe that such opinions are valid.

I wonder if I should even point out that the entire premise for the post is wrong. He says census data shows that French is the mother tongue of less than 50% of Montrealers (which is true), and that this is because of an increase in the number of English speakers. A quick look at the census data shows that almost all the change in percentages comes because of an increase in immigration and the number of allophones (who speak neither language at home). What’s more, a majority of these immigrants to Quebec are choosing French over English for the first time.

Of course, facts are irrelevant. What matters is what’s in his gut. And the irrational fear is there. Just like Americans think they’re going to get swarmed by illegal Mexican immigrants and have to speak Spanish, people like Parenteau think there’s an organized anglo conspiracy to rid Quebec of the French language, and that the percentage of francophones, now around 80% province-wide, will drop to zero.

I’m not suggesting that being surrounded by a population 50 times your size doesn’t put a melting pot pressure. It does, though nowhere near as big as alarmists make it out to be. And the shrinking population of francophones outside Quebec should be of concern as well to anyone who wants this country to promote bilingualism.

But it’s not equivalent to South African apartheid, as one commenter (who wants everyone to know he has a bachelor’s degree) suggested.

Facebook and YouTube have to change

Parenteau points to the English-only Facebook as an example of the assimilation of francophones into anglophonia. I think it’s annoying that Facebook is only now considering creating versions of itself in other languages. YouTube, which launched an English-only Canadian site despite already having translated versions, is even moreso.

But the blame for this should rest on Facebook and YouTube, not anglophones in general. And the suggestion that francophones should boycott these sites (yeah, good luck with that) is exactly how it should be dealt with.

Blaming anglos doesn’t solve anything

Even if we ignore all of that, the fact remains that Parenteau and company don’t put forward any serious solutions for the problem of “zombies” eating their brains. Some suggest sovereignty, which wouldn’t stop Quebecers from using Facebook, nor would it make French more common elsewhere in Canada. Restrictive legislation like Bill 101 just makes companies look for loopholes, which is why Momma’s Pizza House is now Maison de Pizza Maman but Burger King is still Burger King. Boycotts and popular campaigns don’t work.

And most importantly, blaming all us anglos for the problem and calling us names won’t do a thing for the cause. It’s not going to make us all run away to Toronto or start speaking French. It’s just going to get us riled up and start writing blog posts.

But I’m not going to stoop to François Parenteau’s level. I’m not going to pretend like he represents the majority of francophones. I know better than to suggest that 80% of Quebec’s population are ignorant xenophobes who want to rid the world of everyone who isn’t like them.

Why aren’t we happy with bilingualism?

Montreal is the most bilingual city in North America. It’s a place where it’s not uncommon to find people switching languages in mid-sentence. But rather than embrace that, the two solitudes are at each other’s throats. Yes, that means we have some unilingual anglophones, but they represent less than 5% of the population. Is this really the end of the world? The alien invasion? The apocalypse?

We should be celebrating the fact that we can speak two languages here. We should be promoting it as an economic strength. Instead, we have people like François Parenteau who believe refusing to speak another language makes him a better person.

| Blogosphere, My articles

TWIM: Gay religious types and copyright reform

For those of you who’ve missed my blog profiles, fear not. This week I profile The Evolution of Jeremiah, a very personal journal of a gay man studying to become a minister at Christ Church Cathedral:

“Among all the gay reads I have on my blogroll, I am the only one who writes about life and religion,” he says. “If I help change one life or I help a gay person come out and live to tell the tale, or I help an HIV-positive person live another year after diagnosis, then I say I have done my job.”

(More)

Also this week, another Bluffer’s Guide, this time about copyright reform going on in Ottawa. It’s as quick a summary of the situation as I could fit into 750 words (with lots of movie title puns that honestly were last-minute throw-ins). Those of you interested in it should check out Michael Geist’s blog.

It’s a tricky issue because nobody has actually seen the copyright reform bill that Industry Minister Jim Prentice is going to put forward next year. Most of the concerns are based on Bill C-60, an attempt by the Martin Liberals to amend copyright in 2005. It was heavily criticized as favouring the interests of big media companies instead of users, and was never passed. There are concerns this is a similar attempt, mostly because there has been no public consultation about the bill.

UPDATE: Geisted!

| Blogosphere, Business, Video

Compagnie de marde

Via Patrick Lagacé comes this video from comedian Jean-François Mercier, reciting his saga of trying to get a $100 mail-in rebate cheque from Bell Mobility, only to have them refuse to help him because of his “unprofessional” tone.

It’s eight minutes of him reading letters back and forth, but it’s probably the most entertaining eight minutes of talking-head letter-reading I’ve seen in a while. (Be sure to check out some of his other videos).It’s also why I avoid sales based on mail-in rebates and don’t count their discounts as real.

UPDATE (Dec. 17): Lagacé has a follow-up, with comments from a Videotron CSR who says we shouldn’t be shooting the messenger.

UPDATE (Dec. 18): Another follow-up from Mercier himself, who posts a video apologizing for his rude behaviour but reiterating how customer service agents aren’t servicing the customer and mail-in rebates are a scam. Naturally, his problem was solved quickly once his story hit the media, and he got a call from a high-up VP at Bell. (Sound familiar? We’ve seen this kind of blatant special treatment before from Bell.)

I’m sure Bell bigwigs think that having a VP stepping in to personally fix a situation and offer a thousand apologies gives people the impression that the company cares about customer service. But I think it just reminds people that all Bell cares about is the appearance of good customer service, treating people in the media with the red carpet and telling everyone else to stop bothering them. If Bell really cared about customer service, Mercier’s problem would have been resolved on his first phone call. It wasn’t.

| Media, Montreal

Karla Homolka found… again

Where in the world is Karla Homolka?

The winner of this round of Where is Karla Homolka Now? goes to TVA, for their EXCLUSIVE report that she’s trying to make a new life for herself in the Antilles.

Did I mention it was an EXCLUSIVE report? An EXCLUSIVE special report, even? Because this report has special EXCLUSIVITY written all over it. EXCLUSIVITATION is what it’s all about. EXCLUSIVELY.

The “reporteurs d’un réseau anglophone” they EXCLUSIVELY speak of (God forbid they should name another media outlet in their EXCLUSIVE report) is Global Quebec’s Domenic Fazioli, who EXCLUSIVELY tracked her down to an East-end apartment in July 2006.

But that doesn’t make TVA’s report any less EXCLUSIVE.

UPDATE: Both CanWest News Service and Canadian Press have put out wire stories that rewrite what TVA reported, even though TVA doesn’t provide a source for their report and nobody can verify any new information about her.

| Public transit, West Island

More West Island bus changes coming

Last week, the STM held a public consultation in the West Island, bravely exposing itself to the onslaught of residents with a lot of time on their hands and just as many complaints about how everything is run.

During the consultation, STM planning director François Pépin explained some changes that are coming to West Island bus routes over the coming years. Some changes will happen as early as next March while others will wait until 2009 or 2010.

Continue reading →

| Media, Slow News Day, Technology

Fagstein is This is news?

In case you hadn’t heard, Facebook has decided to drop the mandatory “is” from status updates, so people can say things like “Steve wants more ice cream.”

It’s a very minor thing, and an annoyance for many Facebook users, but hardly important news right?

Well, so far the mainstream media hasn’t been pushing it too much, but it’s still being treated as if we should have journalists writing about it. The Telegraph has a story, as does Wired. Some blogs are mocking the newsworthiness of the decision.

The Gazette, meanwhile, got quite a few negative comments when it posted a story as a leading news headline yesterday, questioning their choice of coverage.

Remember: Just because it’s Facebook doesn’t mean it’s news.

Of course, I’ll fully retract these comments if the local media covers design changes in my blog.

| Media, Slow News Day

AP needs more sleep

Apparently forgetting that correlation is not causation, Associated Press promotes a study that says more sleep leads to better performance in schools compared to all-night cram sessions the night before an exam.

It reaches this conclusion based on the fact that people who stay up all night have statistically better grades.

This is an uncontrolled study. Rather than take two randomly-selected students and have one stay up and the other go to bed, it asks people after the fact about their habits. While it shows a link between sleep and grades, it does not show that the lack of sleep while cramming causes a decrease in grades.

The study could be simply explained away by the fact that students who do poorly tend to procrastinate to the last minute and do all-night cramming. There’s no evidence that getting them to bed earlier would improve their grades, because nobody has actually tested for that.

AP (and the Globe) should know better than this. Comments attached to the Globe story pounced on it immediately. Why didn’t a journalist?

| Montreal, Opinion, TV

HDTV Networks: Canadian TV on the super-cheap

UPDATE: DE-NIED!

A company nobody’s ever heard of is giddy over the CRTC’s decision today to hear its application for a new national high-definition television network broadcasting over the air in Canada’s eight largest markets, including Montreal.

HDTV Networks Inc., a company owned by John I. Bitove, creator of the Toronto Raptors and president of the Toronto 2008 Olympic bid, is proposing to setup a network based out of Vancouver, with what are essentially retransmitting stations in the following cities:

  • Edmonton
  • Calgary
  • Winnipeg
  • Toronto
  • Ottawa
  • Montreal
  • Halifax

All the transmitters will be digital over-the-air HD, and the programming will be all HD all the time.

(The network is not to be confused with U.S.-based HDNet, which has the same all-HD gimmick but does not broadcast over the air.)

But what’s really unique about this application isn’t the fact that it’s HD. It’s the fact that this would be the first national over-the-air broadcaster without any local programming.

HDTV’s plans are to have a national broadcast centre out of Vancouver, with seven local studios in the other seven cities. The smaller studios will be 2,000 square feet, which is about the size of a small family apartment.

But unlike Global TV’s plan to have “virtual sets” with local news and local anchors, the national news program will rotate among the local anchors. They have plans for “no locally-oriented programming, aside from possible segments of local news nested within a national news program.”

They want to be licensed as a national network, much like Global TV in Quebec is licensed as a regional network. As a result, they would take no local advertising and would provide satellite providers with only two feeds (one for each coast), much like specialty channels.

Proposed schedule

HDTV’s proposed schedule will broadcast 18 hours a day of regular content, which includes 60% CanCon during the day and 50% during prime-time (6pm to midnight). This is consistent with CRTC minimums for broadcast channels.

Their 13 hours a week of original programming will include the following:

  • “Live @XM,” a weekly 1-hour video version of a radio show on XM (Bitove’s Canadian Satellite Radio Holdings owns XM Radio Canada)
  • “Your Canada News Roundtable,” a weeknight 6pm 1-hour newscast in which panellists will editorialize about the news. Will also include “i-news” or “viewer-generated content” (more on that below)
  • “The World Show,” a weeknight 11pm 1-hour satirical news program, similar to The Daily Show or This Hour Has 22 Minutes
  • A Canadian documentary (1 hour per week), such as “Day in the Life of Canada,” in which videographers record … uhh, life …
  • A Canadian variety show (1 hour per week)

The rest of the week will be split between U.S. programming (10 hours per week) and programming from other countries like the U.K. and Australia (38.5 hours per week).

This part is interesting. With Global, CTV and Global’s CH network gobbling up Canadian rates to U.S. prime-time shows, HDTV was left with either getting third/fourth-rate U.S. shows or coming up with another option. They are looking at importing content from overseas, which would be cheaper and easier, not to mention desirable for those of us who have so little exposure to such programming.

Budget

Revenue is expected to come from national advertising (they won’t have local advertising since they don’t have local programming), as well as some infomercials, for a total that slowly rises to $100-200 million per year by the end of the 7-year plan.

Expenses will mainly be in Canadian programming, creeping up slowly to about $100 million per year, divided as follows:

  • News, information and documentary programming: 48%
  • Music, comedy, drama, variety: 15%
  • Non-Canadian programming: 37%

Viewer-generated content

Although the application says it will represent “a small portion” or “a minute portion” of their overall program schedule, the idea of viewer-generated content comes up quite a bit in the application, as “a fresh and cost-effective alternative to traditional network programming”:

HDTV Networks will also suggest and encourage Canadians to supply and feed content for news and current affairs, much of it with Internet-based video services.

Part of this is good. They’re championing the case for “providing an opportunity for the new wave of Canadian indie low-budget filmmakers,” giving the unpublished a chance to be seen. The application goes on about how CanWest/Global and CTVglobemedia are ever-expanding, ever-consolidating media empires, and that having a new, independent network will revitalize the media landscape.

On the other hand, looking at the network’s schedule it seems clear that they want to lean on cheap programming, which might cause them to try to exploit naive amateur content producers (like one-hit-wonder YouTube stars) and broadcast their content without any compensation.

Their “news” shows are perfect examples. While they produce a study that shows young viewers prefer engaging, funny and thoughtful over behind-the-desk boring hard news, HDTV Networks seems to take this as an excuse to dramatically downscale its news department:

We estimate that our news division will employ approximately two dozen people

Two dozen people for a national broadcast television network. That’s barely enough people to run a daily half-hour local newscast.

The other problem with user-generated content is that it’s hardly HD-ready. In fact, most of it isn’t even good enough for standard-definition TV. Their response to this was that they have the ability to “up-convert” to HD, which means they’ll either make it small on the screen or stretch it, and either way it’s going to look pretty bad.

Regional transmitters

City Channel (digital) ERP
Vancouver 18 300W
Calgary 25 10,000W
Edmonton 50 100,000W
Winnipeg 40 15,000W
Toronto 26* 160W
Ottawa 50 9,500W
Montreal 15 450W
Halifax 14 15,000W

*The application presents this as a temporary channel, to be used until Toronto stations migrate to digital TV at which point a more permanent home would be found.

The Montreal transmitter would be on a CBC-owned tower southeast of Brossard, which used to broadcast CBC Radio One on 940 AM. (They originally wanted space on the CBC-owned tower atop Mount Royal that just about everything else transmits from, but they were denied permission.)

The 450 watts proposed for the transmitter is painfully low for over-the-air reception. So low, in fact, that according to their own coverage map residents of the West Island would get interference from TVA’s CHOT station in Hull, which also has a license for digital channel 15. CFCF-12, by comparison, has an ERP of 316,000W, and is well received across the metropolitan region. Global’s CKMI, on Channel 46, uses 33,000W, and CBC’s CBMT on Channel 6 uses 100,000W.

What they really want

So if they’re so keen on being over-the-air (after all, it would be much easier and cheaper to just get approval as a digital specialty channel), why set up such low-power transmitters and have no local programming?

A skeptic (and I’ve occasionally been accused of being one) might suggest it has something to do with the preferential treatment the CRTC gives local broadcast stations in cable and satellite channel lineups. Local cable companies are required not only to carry local broadcast stations, but they’re required to have them as part of their basic lineup, and keep them low on the dial. (This usually isn’t a problem, since the cable companies currently don’t have to pay the broadcasters to carry their stations.)

Global TV, which has transmitters in Montreal, Quebec City and Sherbrooke, used this when it setup a low-power transmitter in Montreal and secured the coveted Channel 3 slot on analog cable here.

HDTV Networks have made it clear that they want to take advantage of this, and will provide a “down-converted” standard-definition signal to cable and satellite operators.

Conclusion

The prospect of another national television network is exciting. Even if it’s low-budget, relying more on independent producers than big production companies, it’s a net positive for media here. (And so long as these independent producers are properly compensated for their work, this is to be encouraged.)

But the privilege of using our airwaves to broadcast television signals comes with a price: Broadcasters have to provide local news and information programming, not just copy content from elsewhere and make money off the advertising revenue.

As it stands currently, HDTV’s programming would make a great digital specialty channel. But not a national over-the-air broadcaster in our eight largest markets. And since the number of people who own HDTV sets but don’t have cable or satellite service is insignificant, I think that’s the way they should go.

HDTV Networks’ full proposal (ZIP file of PDF documents) will be discussed by the CRTC on Feb. 11, 2008. The deadline for comments is Jan. 17.

Also on the docket, competing for an HD license in Toronto (Channel 21, 9,000W) is an outfit called YES TV. It seems even more based on user-generated content, specifically from young people of high school and college age. The proposed broadcast schedule looks more like that of a college radio station, and many parts of the original application were incomplete (leading to a long response to the commission’s initial questions). But if they can pull it off, it sounds like an interesting project.

YES TV’s full proposal (ZIP file of PDF documents) will be discussed by the CRTC on Feb. 11, 2008. The deadline for comments is Jan. 17.