Category Archives: Blogosphere

| Blogosphere, In the news, My articles

Ségolène who?

I admit it, I haven’t been following the French presidential election as closely as I should be. Replacing Jacques Chirac after 12 years is a tall order, especially after all the country has been through recently.

So yesterday, as I followed a group of local French ex-pat bloggers (who knew there were so many of them here?) for a story in today’s Gazette (Page A3), I had to quickly familiarize myself with the playing field: Royal, Sarkozy, Le Pen, Bayrou.

The result came in the moment the polls closed. An online stream from France 24 (they had originally planned to watch it on TV5, but Café Méliès had cable problems) showed a countdown to polls closing, and they immediately called the election for the two expected front-runners.

Making the situation even more anti-climactic was that non-French news sources (Belgian and Swiss news websites and blogs) were posting exit polls hours earlier (and seeing their servers melt with the traffic). Everyone knew the result before the TV announced it.

So without anything interesting happening, I had to come up with a story. I talked to Laurent and Philippe, both of whom voted despite not having lived in France for quite a while, and both of whom had plenty to say about the election. (One thing I like about interviewing bloggers is they always have something to say.)

At 4 p.m. Montreal time, two hours after everything was decided, the group began packing it in, only to get a waiter walking over to say CTV was on its way to interview them. They stuck around for another 15 minutes while reporter Tania Krywiak asked them what they thought of the election.

Consensus seems to be that Sarkozy will take a narrow victory on May 6. But some (like Philippe) think Royal can take enough of centrist Bayrou’s supporters to steal the election, if Bayrou decides to support her.

In 15 days, we’ll know who was right.

| Blogosphere, Business, On the Net

Hot chicks sucking fags

There are a lot of interesting pornographic websites out there (don’t ask me how I know this): porn involving pregnant women, porn involving books, glasses and all sorts of other inanimate objects you wouldn’t consider sexual.

Now a Quebec entrepreneur is filling the gap of smoking porn. It’s not actually porn, since the girls aren’t naked or anything. They’re just smoking suggestively. And you have to pay to see it.

Dominic Arpin asks the obvious question: What are they smoking? And how smoke-deprived do you have to be to pay to watch other people smoke?

| Blogosphere, Business, Technology

It’s the Internet. Ethics don’t matter here.

Montreal Tech Watch points out the stupidity of a group giving website awards to companies like Bell, Videotron and Desjardins. These are big companies with complex websites, but are they really all award-worthy?

A theory:

The answer lies on the “experts” who choose the winner. There was SECOR Conseil, s2i web, Conseil Action and CogniLab. If I could make a hall of shame, I would put them on the list. These companies have Videotron, and all other companies on their customer lists. They are obviously praising these companies in order to get lucrative contracts; because you have to recognize their websites are not a model of excellence, accessibility and user experience.

Doesn’t that sound a tad fishy to anyone else?

I’ll add that in their press release announcing the winners, they don’t bother linking to the websites they mention. I know “A HREF” is a difficult tag to understand, but you’d think these people would get basic HTML down before judging websites for usability.

| Blogosphere, In the news, Montreal, Slow News Day, Video

Since when is a vigilante a hero?

I was thinking today about an episode of Frasier, where our lovable Dr. Crane is annoyed by being the butt of repeated impoliteness. The last straw breaks the camel’s back as a table he had been waiting for at a café is taken by a man who just arrived. Frasier loses it, decides to give him an “etiquette lesson” and physically throws him out.

The moral of the story becomes clear later, as his show’s listeners hear of his “heroic” act and teach others “etiquette lessons” of their own, answering inconsiderateness with more and more violent acts. Frasier appeals for calm, having learned his lesson that fighting fire with fire doesn’t work.

Claude Landry clearly hasn’t seen that episode, or he wouldn’t be whoring this YouTube video to the media. In it, he spots a man emptying his car’s ashtray onto the sidewalk, grabs a handful of it and throws it in the driver’s lap.

Now, the story has been picked up by CTV, CBC and The Gazette (who are still unable to link to YouTube videos in their stories), skyrocketing its exposure to over 35,000 views. According to CTV, the video even got the mayor’s blessing (this according to his brother Marcel — I guess CTV is unable to get quotes from the mayor himself). Since when is assault something that is encouraged by politicians? Did it come in a package deal with the new pro-racist agenda of the Quebec election campaign?

I’m not saying I’m perfect. Just yesterday on my way home, I got one of my buttons pushed as some inconsiderate kid tried to get on the bus without waiting in line. I nudged my way in front of him, pushing him back lightly in the process. I thought it was a bad-ass move, but I don’t consider myself a hero for it.

None of the mainstream press is making this point yet, and the blogosphere (well, the four posts I’ve found so far) is split. Basil is on my side. Dave is not. Neither is Mark. Or Grame. What’s your take?

UPDATE: Dave has a lengthy reply to my post on his blog.

| Blogosphere

Hyper-local: the future of politics

Basil throws an idea out there: Bloc Montreal, a party representing the interests of half of Quebec’s population that the big provincial parties seem to have recently learned to ignore.

On paper at least, it makes sense. Representation in legislatures here doesn’t depend on how many votes a party gets, but rather how many it gets in 125 (or 308) small areas. This system of democracy encourages local and regional parties with local interest, such as the Bloc and the Reform parties. These smaller regional parties eventually die out usually by getting absorbed into larger parties, or losing the media campaign wars to a larger all-region party.

But for over a decade in Quebec, anglophone federalists have learned that you either vote Liberal, or you vote separatist. So long as that mindset exists, there will always be two front-runners and the seats in Montreal will only be won by one of the two parties.

Then again, what do I know? The last federal election sent Quebec Tories to Ottawa, something I would never have predicted.