Category Archives: Technology

| Montreal, On the Net, Technology

Boardwalk

In what is clearly the most important vote of our time, Montreal is leading the worldwide online vote for placenames to be featured in a new Monopoly game. This is no doubt due in part to the efforts of people with lots of time on their hands who are making it their life’s mission to put this city on top.

The top 20 cities by vote will be used on the board, along with two “wildcard” cities to be voted on in another round. The top 20 currently include Vancouver and Toronto, the only Canadian cities in the pre-selected list of 68 to vote for. The “wildcard” race includes Quebec City, Winnipeg and Calgary.

| Montreal, Opinion, Technology

Will Standout Jobs stand out?

One of the nuclear-launch-codes-level super-secret Montreal startup operations has finally launched this week. Standout Jobs is a career-search site that focuses more on building mini sites for each company than providing a big boring job-search database.

Unfortunately, despite all the emphasis from local startups, including Standout Jobs, on the local technology scene, the company launched itself not here but in California. Its website design also looks like the kind of cookie-cutter rounded-corners Web 2.0 template that’s been on every other website that’s launched in the past year. (And as Heri points out, the company portal pages are just a bunch of widgets and could be simplified, especially since the only reason you’re going to go there is to see what jobs they have available and what kind of company it is to work for.)

It remains to be seen how successful the company will be. That will come down to whether they can find enough companies willing to pay $149 a month for a recruiting site that they could mostly duplicate on Facebook or recreate on their own.

UPDATE (Jan. 31): Yoskoblog has video of the demo. The tools to post to job boards and keep track of candidates automatically are pretty cool, and underpresented on the StandoutJobs.com site.

| Business, Opinion, Technology

Bye bye, ByeByeLogement

Here’s one of those “really stupid business plans” examples: A startup called ByeBye Logement launched a month ago. For the low low price of $7, you can put a classified advertisement announcing an apartment for rent of sub-lease for 90 days on their website. It becomes part of a massive searchable database (a global search reveals they have a grand total of three listings across Canada right now).

Now, you might ask, why should I pay money to add an apartment-for-rent listing to a website nobody’s ever heard of (and whose visitors can’t even get access to my contact info without signing up first) when I can post to Craigslist or MoreMontreal, high-traffic sites with thousands of listings, for free?

And if you’d asked yourself that question, you clearly would have done a lot more market research than the people behind ByeByeLogement.com.

| Media, Opinion, Technology

Good riddance, vaporware column

The Gazette has dropped Mark Stachiew’s Canwest-syndicated NETworthy column, which every week lists a bunch of websites to visit. His last column was this past Monday. It’s one in a sea of columnists who are either leaving outright (Matt Radz, Lisa Fitterman) or who are leaving the paper as employees and sticking around freelance (Jack Todd, Mary Lamey).

In Stachiew’s case, I’ll say: Good riddance.

Stachiew himself seems like a nice guy, but the column is pure shite. Rather than focus on interesting websites that provide useful information, it’s filled with laughably forgettable single-function dot-com websites that sound like they were brought back in time from TechCrunch deadpool posts from six months in the future: meeting schedulers, CV or invoice templates, task managers, bookmark replacements or highly-focuses social networking sites (“It’s like Facebook for X” always prompts me to ask: Why not just use Facebook then?)

In exchange for providing these ridiculously trivial services, the websites try to get you to pay for them after using them for free, through the clichéd limited-time-free-trial, free-for-non-commercial-use or pay-for-advanced-features methods.

It’s clear from the columns that they’re written based not on thorough searches for interesting new websites, but on a random handful of press releases picked out of the inbox from companies who spend more on marketing than creating a product people will be interested in. Some websites are featured in this column before they’re even launched, or are based on the hope that user-generated content will eventually make it worth visiting.

There’s a hunger out there for lists of interesting websites to visit. That’s why people visit Digg or Fark. But these websites are not interesting, and unless the focus of the column changes it’s not good enough to put in a newspaper.

So ends my rant.

| Media, Opinion, Web design

LCN/Canoe needs to learn HTML 2.0

One of the recurring elements of my criticisms of big media websites is that you have to learn Web 1.0 before you try at Web 2.0. Uploaded stories from newspapers still don’t have clickable links, URLs are way too long, related stories aren’t linked to each other, etc.

Another example of this comes courtesy of Quebecor’s Canoe.ca website, which is presenting a “survey” with Quebecor-owned TVA/LCN, Quebecor-owned Journal de Montréal and Corus-owned Énergie 98.5 FM. The survey asks people questions in order to track down differences between Baby Boomers and younger generations (or more precisely, find out what the generations think of each other). Certainly no surprise for the Journal, which prefers to create divisive scandals rather than report on news that’s already out there.

But the version of the survey published online is ludicrously low-tech. Rather than have visitors fill out a web form (a technology that we’ve only had for about 12 years), it presents the options in barely-formatted paragraphs and then asks readers to cut and paste their answers into an email (that they format themselves).

How about I save everyone some time: Young people think Baby Boomers are old, boring, intolerant, stubborn and out of touch. Baby Boomers think young people are impulsive, irresponsible, weird, stupid and disrespectful.

Now where’s my Pulitzer?

UPDATE (Jan. 20): The first results are in, and ranking of priorities shows no real difference between the age groups (though I’m sure they’ll try to find one). Continuing the we-don’t-know-this-technology-stuff motif, the full results are a PDF focument of a scan of what looks like a bad photocopy of a fax of printed sheets of computer-generated charts. Have these people never heard of email?

| Media, Opinion, Technology, Video

“Fair use” is not a loophole

I hear (via Ingram) about Yet Another Popular Video Clip Show being launched by Digg and Revision3: The Digg Reel.Like TVA’s Vlog (which I wrote about last week in The Gazette), which was the focus of my piece last week, The Digg Reel relies strictly on the Fair Use exception to copyright law, and shows “short” clips of videos with “analysis.” In fact, one of the videos is a clip from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and bizarrely credited to the Huffington Post.

Judging from their first episode, I can’t imagine sitting through it on a regular basis, for the following reasons that seem to be part of some formula for all such shows:

  1. There’s no analysis. It’s just some bimbo giving the title of the clips (she forces herself to use the exact titles as submitted by Diggers, as if that’s somehow important), the number of Diggs (despite the fact that we can see it on screen, and again we don’t care) and a short description of the video, which sounds like it was written by an Academy Award presentation intro writer. Instead of the show’s producers making their own comments, which might be interesting, they just read selected comments attached to the Digg articles (most of which aren’t that interesting).
  2. I hate it when people credit screennames, especially in video. Not only does it sound stupid, but if people aren’t going to give their real names, why should we credit them?
  3. I don’t need help to discover the Daily Show, or TED, or Transformers, or Bill Gates, or Associated Press. I want to discover things I’ve never seen before, obscure web artists with good quality videos. If the show is going to artificially limit itself to only the most popular Digg videos as opposed to, say, exercising any editorial control, then it’s going to be nothing more than a popularity contest (and, eventually, porn).
  4. She’s not funny. Period. Sorry. And the only thing worse than unfunny hosts is unfunny hosts who think they’re hilarious.
  5. The format for this show is mind-numbingly simple, and yet there are mistakes. Videos are credited to the servers they’re found on instead of their creators (Daily Show credited to Huffington Post, Associated Press to Breitbart, others to YouTube). Comments aren’t read properly.

But the most important objection I have to this show is that, like Vlog and all the others, it blatantly tries to profit off other people’s work. Permission is not sought before these videos are aired. No payment goes out to their creators for a license to rebroadcast. Profits from the show aren’t shared.

And in my opinion, that’s copyright infringement. And I’m not the only one who thinks so.

According to Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback and his lawyers, it’s fair use (though he’ll gladly take down the Daily Show clip if Viacom asks) because they analyze it and provide short clips.

The problem is that these producers (and, I suspect, their lawyers) aren’t familiar enough with fair use (U.S.) and fair dealing (Canada) copyright exceptions. Yes, news and commentary are covered under these provisions, however they only do so under certain conditions:

  1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature: FAIL. The show is clearly a for-profit venture (even including commercial advertising) whose main selling point is the videos themselves, not analysis of them.
  2. The nature of the copyrighted work: FAIL. There is no overriding public interest in seeing a video of a rabbit opening a letter. There is no reason to believe these videos shouldn’t have copyright protections.
  3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole: FAIL. A 30-second clip from a motion picture or an hour-long TV show is one thing. But a 30-second clip of a 35-second video is a substantial portion and is not covered under fair use.
  4. The effect of the use upon the value of the copyrighted work: FAIL. If I can watch these videos here, there’s no reason to seek them online and buy them or look at the ads whose profits might actually go to the videos’ creators.

There’s this mindset among some producers that there’s a magic 30-second or 45-second rule that simply doesn’t exist in law. That as long as video clips are shorter than this length, that as long as they’re credited, and as long as there’s some random chatter about the videos, that their show is news and the use of videos qualifies as fair use.
It doesn’t.

And even if it did, it’s morally wrong to profit off other peoples’ work like this. Simply offering to remove videos after the fact is both ridiculous (what are they going to do, black out portions of existing episodes?) and shows a blatant lack of respect for people’s rights.

I expect this kind of thing from big media. I don’t expect it from Digg.

(You Digg?)

| In the news, Montreal, Technology

Kahnawake Gaming Commission on both sides of slaps on the wrist

The Kahnawake Gaming Commission, which takes advantage of lenient gambling rules on the reserve and access to a fat Internet backbone to host a gazillion online casinos, has been blacklisted denied whitelisting in the U.K. for undisclosed reasons. That means their casinos and poker sites (which represent over half of all such sites in the world) won’t be able to advertise there legally. Naturally, the commission isn’t pleased, throwing out some bullshit about indigenous peoples’ rights.

Tristan Péloquin suggests it might have something to do with the Absolute Poker scandal, in which company insiders cheated, checking others’ hidden cards and betting based on that information. The Commission eventually fined the company $500,000 (PDF report) and forced them to pay for surprise audits, among other things. But the commission’s reputation is of an uninterested party sitting on its hands while fraud goes on.

| Opinion, Technology

MacBook Air is a niche product

I could spend hours trying to read all the news articles and blog posts about Apple’s big announcement today of the new MacBook Air.

People are blindly rewriting Apple’s talking points praising it as “ultra-thin,” which I guess is true though it’s less than 25% thinner than Apple laptops from 3 years ago. They’re also talking about how the removal of just about every physical port from the device “isn’t a big deal” because everything’s wireless now.

I don’t know about that.

It’s a bold idea: there are only four connections remaining on the new laptop: headphone, USB, Micro-DVI (external monitor) and a power connector. Both the power connector and monitor connector are redesigns. The power connector is a new, thinner MagSafe connector, while Micro-DVI is Yet Another Redesigned Video Connector, replacing the Mini-DVI connector on the MacBook, which replaced the Mini-VGA connector on the iBook, which replaced the regular VGA connector on earlier notebooks.

Macbook Air

What’s missing? A lot:

  • Firewire ports
  • Spare USB ports
  • A microphone jack (which was removed from the iBook and brought back with the MacBook)
  • An ethernet port
  • A replaceable battery

But the most stunning omission is the optical drive. Those of you old enough might remember the iMac, when Apple decided to release the first computer without a floppy disk drive. (It was available as an optional external USB device.) That too was considered bold, but they were replacing it with an optical drive, Firewire, USB and networking. People got used to it because the cheap-but-really-low-capacity disks were already on the way out.

This isn’t the case with CDs and DVDs. We’re still arguing on a format for high-definition DVDs, and nothing is seriously on the horizon to replace optical disks as a data medium for music and movies.

The other thing that bothers me is that Apple proclaims that wireless is replacing all the communications methods. I can respect that. It’s just so much more convenient to use wireless Bluetooth and Wi-Fi communications now. But the optional external ethernet port and optical drive don’t have wireless: They communicate by USB. And with just that one USB port, it means you can’t connect to a wired link and read a CD/DVD at the same time. Or connect to the Internet and a digital camera at the same time to upload your pictures to Flickr. Or connect to your digital camera and burn a CD at the same time.

It’s a recipe for annoyance, just to get a quarter inch off the thickness of the machine (and sell it at twice the price).

But MacBook Air will have its niche. Some people don’t have peripherals (or they have a wireless base station they all connect to). Some people have no desire to watch DVDs while they’re sitting on the train to Toronto. Some people don’t need a second battery for their laptops. And some people just buy Apple products because they exist, whether or not they provide the features they look for.

It’s a niche market that sadly excludes me. I prefer to have a laptop whose “features” I don’t have to find creative ways to work around.

| Media, Web design

My 2008 media website wishlist

Lots of people are talking about what changes we’re going to see for big media news websites in 2008:

Having been a consumer of online journalism for quite a while now, I’ve become an expert — no, a god — in how these websites should be run. So below, in no particular order, are some of my suggestions to newspaper and other big media news websites on how to improve for 2008:

Continue reading →

| Montreal, On the Net, Public transit, Technology

AMT commuter train schedules on Google Transit

The AMT has quietly become the first transit agency in Quebec (and only the third in Canada behind Vancouver’s TransLink and Fredericton Transit) to add its routes and schedules to Google Transit.

Now, people using Google Maps to plan trips in Montreal will be given the option of using the train. Schedules for all five lines are included, but no buses so far. Google has some examples, like St. Jerome to Lucien-L’Allier station at 7pm (where the first available train is more than 12 hours later, assuming the next day is a weekday).

The search is still a bit clunky (it refuses to calculate routes from some general locations, and while it accepts “Gare Lucien L’Allier” as a location it doesn’t recognize “Gare Vendome” or “Gare Parc” or “Gare de la Concorde”), but it’s still pretty cool.

The next step is to see the STM, STL and RTL (as well as all the smaller AMT-run agencies) add their route information to the service. The STM already has a similar service with its clunky Tous Azimuts interface (which was nevertheless a technological breakthrough when it first came out). Hopefully converting data used in that service to Google’s Transit Feed Specification won’t be too difficult.

| My articles, Technology

Blogging for a better tomorrow

Today’s paper features an article by yours truly about Ryan Costello Jr., a playwright who’s using blogging (specifically, Facebook’s excuse for blogging) to focus his energies on fixing those little things about himself that he wants to improve.

Though he admits it’s not for everyone, it seems to have worked well for him. He’s healthier, stronger (as you can tell from the photo, he has the frame of a football player, so this is all relative) and he feels better about himself.

The website has a posted excerpt from his blog so you can see how he does it. There’s also a link to the Facebook group he setup for self-help blogging.

Who knew peer pressure could be used for good things too?

UPDATE: Ryan points out one of the many things that could have used more expansion in the article, the source of the idea:

The article says I got the idea from someone’s MySpace blog. This wasn’t just a random blog I happened upon. That someone is David T. Oliveri McGovern. He started a blog called 40 in 40, where he tried to improve 40 things in his life over a 40 day period. He seemed pessimistic at the end, but within a year of making such a run at self-improvement, he launched the Man Of The House (MOTH) virtual mentorship charity. http://www.mothboys.org/ Since I started my Obligations blog, I’ve produced my third play, my first variety show, and executive produced my first short film. Just making an effort to be better has made the two of us more productive and improved our lives.