Category Archives: On the Net

| On the Net, Technology

Online privacy needs more than crappy videos

ISIQ, the Institut de sécurité de l’information du Québec, sent me a message (I guess I’m real important now) pointing me to their new campaign to educate Quebecers about personal information online. Their press release (unfortunately only in PDF form) is in English, which is nice to see from a Quebec government body, and it promotes their video campaign to teach … children I guess … how to safeguard their information.

The videos leave much to be desired. They’re grammatically incorrect (it’s “The Greens” not “The Green’s”), and they’re dubbed in badly-accented English.

I suppose I shouldn’t complain too much about the dubbing. I know francophones have to endure far more bad dubbing of stuff they see on TV. But couldn’t they find people who speak English well enough to do it?

Of course, a bigger problem is that while everyone must do their part to protect their privacy, it’s not just the users’ fault that this stuff is happening:

Social networking sites, especially Facebook, simply don’t allow anonymity. Facebook requires you to use your real name, which is great for all those high school classmates looking to find you, but is horrible for privacy protection. Even 12-year-olds know not to use your full name online. Facebook does provide some privacy protection (though not by default), but it still relies on sharing even the most mundane information to keep its users interested.

Wireless Network configuration is perhaps the most unnecessarily complicated procedure I have ever seen in my life. WEP or WPA? Or WPA2? A hex key or ASCII passphrase? Or password? Oh, but it has to be exactly five characters. Or 12. I’ve given up on them, and I have a computer science degree.

Phishing is something that fortunately is being worked on. Perhaps the fact that people actually lose real money in this is what has woken everyone up. Spam filters are being strengthened to weed out suspicious emails, phishing sites are being shut down, websites are improving their security, browsers like Firefox come with built-in phishing warning systems, and companies that involve money like banks and auction sites make it very clear they won’t email you out of the blue with threats to suspend your account if you don’t log in.

There’s still much to be done on this issue, and for that reason I’m glad the ISIQ is trying to get their message out. Hopefully their next campaign will be a little more professional-looking.

| Media, On the Net

CBC.ca redesign: copying everyone else’s mistakes

CBC launched a new website yesterday, with a new layout and I guess new features (I can’t find any obvious ones so far). The redesign affects the CBC.ca homepage as well as CBC News and CBC Sports websites.

Unfortunately, the new websites just copy everything that’s annoying about these Web-2.0 designs:

  1. An irrational fear of serif fonts, even for large blocks of text where such fonts would increase readability
  2. Rounded corners and gradients
  3. Overreliance on Javascript for navigation with no HTML backup
  4. Flash-based tickers and other changing content

Most importantly though, and the reason I dislike it so much, is that the layout makes no sense. There’s no structure to it. No easy-to-understand way to figure out what the purpose of each section of the page is. To illustrate, let me list the sections on the CBC.ca homepage by their section title:

  • Online video and audio
  • Top searches
  • CBCNews.ca
  • CBCSports.ca
  • Arts & Entertainment
  • Preschool
  • Words at Large
  • Music
  • CBC Inside Media
  • CBC Digital Archives
  • CBC Radio
  • CBC Television
  • Your Local News
  • Regional news, features & program information
  • Your comments
  • Most blogged stories
  • Most viewed stories

The CBC News website has even more sections than that. The sections are all of different sizes and styles, have no whitespace or lines to separate them from adjacent sections, and no logical order or structure to them. Instead of spending two seconds navigating to what you’re looking for, you have to spend minutes searching through each section of the page to find it.

That business story I was looking for, for example. Is it in Money, or Consumer Life? Or On the Money?

The sad part about it is that CBC has great content and good technology and can do a much better job than this. To compare, let’s take a website that isn’t affected by CBC tinkering: CBC Montreal.

  • News is easy to find and clearly categorized. It’s all in the middle column. Top stories first, followed by the sections.
  • Only one sidebar of miscellaneous material, and its “features” all have the same layout, indicating that they’re all part of the same section.
  • It’s just the basics. Program listings, program websites, contact information and everything else is on easy-to-access subpages. All you have here is what you need: News, weather and a couple of popular links (like “listen live” and the nightly TV newscast)

Hopefully as CBC goes through its “tweaking” process, it’ll make its website’s structure a bit simpler and easier to understand.

| Humour, On the Net, Video

Those kids and their video cameras

Casey McKinnon and Rudy Jahchan, the couple behind the geek-comedy web show Galacticast, have started up a new venture with their company 8-bit Brownies called A Comicbook Orange (sigh). As you might guess, it is a weekly comic-book review series. Its first episode gives you an idea of what it’s going to be like: a mix of B-roll and voice-over that unfortunately looks and sounds like just about every other TV review show out there, mixed in with the fun cheesy-FX sci-fi comedy that have made them the most famous Montreal-based sci-fi sketch comedy web video show in the world.

I met Rudy and Casey for Galacticast’s 1-year anniversary a couple of weeks ago, where they promised a “big announcement” coming soon. I thought NBC picked them up for a short summer run, but I guess this’ll have to do.

While I was at their exclusive VIP party (oh yeah baby, I’ve got it made!), I had a chat with Mommy McKinnon, and after some small-talk about the weather (Casey, why did you leave me in your living room with your mother?), I asked her the only question that came to mind: What does she think of her daughter going all crazy with the Internet stuff instead of, you know, making money?

“She’ll always be my baby,” Mom said. (Awwww…) Though Mom, as a non-sci-fi fan, doesn’t get 90% of Galacticast’s jokes, she watches it every week and fully supports Casey’s endeavour. Which is good, because if I threw away a good job to do this for a living, my mother would think I’m nuts.

Speaking of Galacticast, they’ve upgraded their equipment. A new wireless clip-on microphone will hopefully solve the dreadful echo that has been distracting from the quality of the show a bit, and they’ve hooked themselves up with an HD camera (like the one that filmed this episode).

The show itself has come a long way since I interviewed them back in December, and even longer since the show began. The scripts are tighter, the special effects are less cheesy and the production is more professional (though, without any crew whatsoever, it’s pretty impressive that they manage to do anything on a weekly basis). And when you’re taking on things like LOST, the Muppets, Star Trek’s mirror universe and Super Mario Bros., how could it be the coolest thing in the world?

| Business, On the Net

How hard is it to do online classifieds right?

Along with Quebecor’s acquisition of Osprey comes news that they’ve launched yet another online classifieds website. The Gazette’s Roberto Rocha correctly points out that they have stiff competition from everyone else out there. Some are run by big media companies, and others don’t suck.

I’m forever confused as to why big newspaper owners put out such horrible online classified sites. They senselessly limit their audience to just those areas where they own newspapers. They charge ridiculously high fees for simple ads online when others give away the space for free. They make their websites crazy-complicated while the incredibly popular Craigslist keeps it simple.

I mean, if you’re trying to outdo Craigslist, wouldn’t you at least want to copy some of their good ideas?

Continue reading →

| On the Net

Hate will cure our country

There are those in Canada (outside Quebec) who believe the best solution to the issue of Quebec separation is to simply let it happen. These people, tired of being asked to learn French in order to work in the federal government, think allowing Quebec to separate will turn Canada into the English-speaking-only paradise it is meant to be.

The website Canada Divided represents one of these groups. They think all Quebecers are francophones and all francophones are separatists. Without them, they argue, language purity can be achieved. French is not part of the “Canadian identity” and somehow represents “ethnic segregation” (a xenophobic website denouncing segregation — now that’s balls).

The website is pretty bare, just a web forum and some links to videos. The videos are posted to YouTube, including:

  • This one where a skinhead oppressed anglophone seems to think that the only people hired to bilingual public-sector jobs in this country are unilingual francophones
  • This one which warns that the media (which, as we all know, is part of a giant Jewish francophone conspiracy) is ignoring the growing threat of multiculturalism against our fine country.
  • This one points out for all us stupid people that the French civil code, which Quebec law is based on, is actually COMMUNISM, and that Quebec is secretly annexing the rest of Canada.
  • This one notes that all our health care funding issues are a direct result of the government wasting money promoting bilingualism.

Honestly, it’s really hard not to invoke the obvious comparisons that come to mind. Couldn’t they at least have picked a non-bald guy and had him speak in front of a non-black background, maybe have him smile a bit?

| Video

Hi. I’m an original idea. And I’m one that’s been badly copied.

Just when you thought you’d had enough of those “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ad spoofs, the Young Liberals are at it, launching three videos making fun at the Conservatives.

Quoting their press release:

“Look, it’s no secret the Conservatives are a wealthy party who can afford all kinds of fancy marketing executives and focus groups,” admits Pickup, “but within the Liberal family we’ve got talent, we’ve got dedication, and we’ve got a clear vision for Canada of which we’re proud.”

No money, eh? Chuck Gui(l)té didn’t return your phone calls?

Come on, I expect more from you, Youth Campaign Director and Online Campaign Co-chair Denise Brunsdon (also a former McGill Daily staffer). You clearly had enough money for the press release and the website. That’s far more than the New Democratic Youth of Canada could do.

| Montreal, On the Net

Are you a Tremblay fetishist?

Then you’ll love the MICU’s new website.

Wait, let’s back up a step. The Montreal Island Citizens’ Union, Mayor Gerald Tremblay’s party, has changed its far-too-long name to simply “Union Montreal”, and has a new 70s-throwback logo.

The big part of this is the party’s new website, which still carries the micu.ca domain. And that’s just the start of its problems:

  • The mayor’s face appears on its homepage at least seven different times. I realize he’s the centre of the party and all, but isn’t this just a bit of overkill?
  • What used to be a cardinal rule of web design: Don’t start playing audio until you’ve been asked to, is broken. So those of us who forgot to mute our audio will hear Tremblay welcoming us to the party’s new website. (Just what does that do for us anyway? And won’t anyone who wants to consult the site on a regular basis get fed up of that pretty quickly?)
  • “Arrondissements”, which is rightly plural, becomes the incorrect “Borough” in English. Below that it says “to acess your borough”. Further down you see the incorrect “Maisonneuve Street” instead of “De Maisonneuve Blvd.” You’d think they could hire a proofreader.
  • Video clips are provided with no captions whatsoever, leaving us to guess based on a tiny screen capture what they’re all about.
  • The site is entirely unusable if style sheets are removed. It is far too heavily dependent on Flash and images.
  • The “news” section hasn’t been updated in a year and a half.
  • The “cultural communities” and “youth”, proudly linked to at the top of every page, contain nothing more than a phone number for the person responsible for that portfolio.
  • Clicking on the “Pierrefonds/Roxboro” borough gets me a video greeting from the mayor of Lachine for no good reason, and it’s at the bottom of the page, forcing me to hunt for it to kill the audio.
  • The “become a member” page still uses the old name for the party.
  • Filling out the “become a member” page and submitting your information (unencrypted — fortunately they’re not asking for credit card numbers) results in a 404 error.
  • In fact, everything in the “getting involved” section is just another form. The website doesn’t actually provide any information on how to get involved.
  • Clicking on “Ahuntsic/Cartierville” gets you a video greeting from the right mayor, but only in French. Ther, mayor Marie-Andrée Beaudoin asks us if we knew that the borough’s northern border is on Rivière des Prairies. Really? Wow.

I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. This website is nothing to be proud of.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere: “Brand New” (The Other Bloke’s Blog)

| Blogosphere, Montreal, On the Net

Are these really the top blogs?

So this marketing agency I’ve never heard of has released a list of Quebec’s top 30 blogs (PDF).

Banlieusardises comes out on top, followed by our favourite taxi driver at Un Taxi de Nuit, the currently-on-hiatus Mère Indigne, Mitch Joel’s blog at Twist Image (the top anglophone blog) and Anne Archet (the top blog I’d never heard of before).

Other anglophones on the list: Julien Smith’s In Over Your Head Hip-Hop Podcast (6) (his take), StayGoLinks (9), Metroblogging Montreal (11, leaving MtlWebLog and Midnight Poutine off the list entirely), bopuc/weblog (25) and HabsBlog, the only sports blog on the list.

Of course, what’s crazy about this list is that Fagstein is not on it. After setting the blogging agenda around the city for weeks now, to be shunned like this is just insulting.

Seriously though, there are some local blogs that should be on the list:

  • Montreal City Weblog, Kate McDonnell’s no-frills daily news blog, which in addition to its age provides interesting links to what other people think of our city.
  • Midnight Poutine, the only blog that runs like an original news site, with regular weekly features (like their weekend podcast and metro roulette)
  • Chicagoan in Montreal, Frank’s fascinating look at the city from the eyes of an outsider (even if he’s been living here for a while)
  • Christelle’s blog (cute puppy! OMG!)
  • ChuckerCanuck, for those of you who doubt that crazy right-wingers exist here
  • Coolopolis, Kristian Gravenor’s look at Montreal’s unknown history
  • Expo Lounge, which was reminiscing about Expo 67 long before it became fashionable this summer
  • Montreal Tech Watch, probably the most comprehensive blog for news about the local tech entrepreneur community
  • Montreal LiveJournal community, which has become a one-stop advice centre for the city’s clueless Internet-enabled youth
  • MTL STREET, the fashion goldminer
  • Overheard at McGill, the most frequently updated “overheard” blog
  • Pow! Right between the eyes!, Andy Nulman’s blog about marketing through the power of surprise
  • Urban Photo, Chris DeWolf’s photographically-enhanced blog
  • Walking Turcot Yards, a blog entirely about an undeveloped piece of land and the giant concrete spaghetti mess of a highway intersection that runs next to it

In the Blogosphere: N’ayez pas peur (14), IPUB (27), Michel Leblanc (16), Montreal Tech Watch, Technocité

| Montreal, On the Net, Technology

Montreal: Home of pedophilia online

UPDATE: Macleans has a piece on pedophilia in Montreal in general, with a focus on Epifora.

A Seattle-based pedophilia website, with lists of events where sexual predators can find pre-pubescent girls to stalk, was shut down last month by Virginia-based Network Solutions.

Now it’s found a new home, at Montreal-based Epifora, and has re-launched.

Though the hosting provider’s terms of service state that any of its clients can be shut down for any reason, they also “accept controversial speech”, according to their homepage. They refused to comment on the pedophilia website, and it’s still online, which can only mean they support it.

Epifora is in turn hosted by Wisconsin-based Steadfast Networks, which lists “child pornography” as an example of “unacceptable content“.

Of course, the pedophilia website says it’s not doing anything illegal.

(via Digg)