Category Archives: Technology

| Opinion, Slow News Day, Technology

Wikipedia flame wars make good news filler

Janice Tibbetts of CanWest News Service has discovered the Wikipedia war between inclusionists and deletionists.

My favourite quote:

“…I started to see a sharp, sharp turn in what people considered newsworthy or inclusion-worthy…”

No kidding.

Even though I can’t find anything actually new about this story (no doubt it’s another banked holiday feature), and I haven’t been active on Wikipedia for a while, I’ll add a brief comment:

I’m not sure what camp I’m in. I think it’s funny that there are things like lists of Stephen Colbert’s Words and other pop culture minutiae. But when every article about some aspect of pop culture has a section that denotes what Simpsons or Family Guy episode references it, things are getting out of hand.

A limit has to be set, and sadly we’re still debating where to put that line.

| Business, In the news, Opinion, Technology

Bell Canada, our Do Not Call overlords

Bell Canada has been awarded the contract to manage Canada’s anti-telemarketing Do Not Call list.

Because when you think “customer service” and “convenience,” the name “Bell Canada” inevitably comes to mind.

No doubt the Bell Canada-run Do Not Call list will be fast, efficient, error-free and in no way a nightmare for thousands of Canadians stuck in customer service hell.

Oh, and the reason Bell won the contract? It was the only bidder.

Can you feel the irony biting you in the ass?

| Business, Montreal, Opinion, Technology

15 reasons I’m not crazy about Capazoo

Roberto Rocha has an interesting article in today’s Gazette about Capazoo, a Montreal-based social networking website that wants to take on Facebook and MySpace.

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.
| Business, Montreal, My articles, Technology

Station C

Station C

By now most of Montreal’s technology community has heard about the Station C coworking space being setup by Patrick Tanguay and Daniel Mireault. Patrick especially has been blogging about it since forever, talking about it at BarCamp and related events, and annoying his girlfriend about it.

Last week, I sat down to interview both of them at Laïka, which gave me a pretty good idea of the disadvantages of working in cafés (not that Laïka is particularly bad or anything). Right after our interview they walked over and signed the lease, which means they’ve passed the point of no return and the project is officially going ahead.

My article on Station C appears in this morning’s Gazette (Page B3):

Their jobs didn’t exist 20 years ago. Their offices consist of a laptop and a cellphone. And they want to work from anywhere but home.

They’re freelance geeks, and they’re wandering the streets looking for a place to work. You can see them lugging their laptops to cafés, buying coffee in return for a table, a power outlet and a few hours of wireless Internet.

But Web developers Patrick Tanguay and Daniel Mireault are getting tired of setting up offices in cafés. It’s loud and uncomfortable, the Internet access can be slow or unreliable, there are no printers or office supplies and no place to meet clients privately.

So two years ago, Tanguay and Mireault started toying with the idea of setting up an office that freelancers and telecommuters could share, even though they’re all working on different projects for different people.

It’s called co-working, and it’s already caught on in Toronto, Vancouver and dozens of other cities in the United States and Europe.

More…

I noticed during our interview that there are two types of people at Laïka: those who come to socialize and those who come with laptops to work or study. Some try to do both, but end up looking at their laptop screens more than their friends.

For those who are interested, other Canadian coworking spaces include:

The Network Hub (Vancouver): An incubator for Internet startups, The Network Hub offers an office for people with big ideas and small budgets. It provides funding and administrative services in exchange for 5 to 10 per cent equity in the company.

WorkSpace (Vancouver): Describing itself as “more like a club than an office,” WorkSpace is the first coworking space in Canada that runs as a business. Membership ranges from $95 to $695 per month. It also accepts drop-ins at $25 per half-day or $35 per day.

Indoor Playground (Toronto): Open since February, Indoor Playground is a non-profit space for working, collaboration and events. Rates from $50 to $300 per month, and there are day rates for individual workers or groups.

Centre for Social Innovation (Toronto): Offers private desks and shared desks for $75 to $350 per month. The centre’s goal is to encourage new ideas that foster social change, and it is home to over 100 community and non-profit organizations.

Queen Street Commons (Charlottetown): A member-owned non-profit space in a century-old three-story Victorian home, operating since the summer of 2005. Membership is $35 per month with a 12-month contract.

| Media, Montreal, Web design

Cyberpresse putting up 360 photos

Cyberpresse (which just started playing music on my laptop without permission) is putting up 360-degree photos on its website: already one of a snowy Gilford St. shovelling on de Mentana St., and a truck accident on Cremazie Blvd.

It’s just another example of how big media companies like Cyberpresse understand the Internet and are prepared to use cutting-edge 1994 technology* to bring things that are cool but uninformative to users. (The last picture is particularly apt at showing the weaknesses of the technology: a truck accident is shown from only one angle — it’s great that I can see out in different directions, but I can’t see the other side of the truck.)

*Actually, it’s a Flash-based emulator of cutting-edge 1994 technology, but otherwise indistinguishable from Quicktime VR (right down to the unintuitive navigation).

| 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.

| 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.)

| 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, Montreal, On the Net, Opinion, Web design

Media websites all Flash, no accessibility

Last week, a group called AccessibilitéWeb released a report that evaluated major websites for accessibility to the disabled. The Gazette described it as “scathing” for its exposure of the very poor performance of certain websites.

Canadian government websites, unsurprisingly, rated very high.

The other end of the scale will come as no surprise for those who read this blog regularly:

Media websites scored the worst, with an average rating of 5.48.

Later, the article explains one of the reasons for this:

To François Aubin, an expert at usability and ergonomics firm Cognitive Group, the numbers are not surprising. He goes as far to say that half of websites aren’t even accessible to able-bodied people.

Many times the text is too small for normal standards and the information is badly organized, he said.

“There’s a big paradox in Web accessibility,” he said. “Sometimes you make sites accessible, but not for the everyman.” As an example, the city of Montreal created a good accessible version of its portal, but the regular site remains confusing for the layperson.

“You can follow all the technical norms, but it’s more important for people to find info they’re looking for,” Aubin said.

Their table listing the top 200 websites accessible to Quebecers gives some more details on how the sites ranked. Only government websites received their top rating.

Here’s how the mainstream Canadian media sites did:

Radio-Canada

  • Ranked: 27th (C or “good”)
  • Accessibility problems: An over-reliance on JavaScript, missing or redundant/useless ALT text, unnecessary Flash, text in images, and a fixed, graphical-based layout.
  • My pet peeve: They have plenty of audio and video clips online, but make it almost impossible to link to them directly, assuming trying to view them doesn’t crash my browser.

Cyberpresse

  • Ranked: 109th (E or “very poor”)
  • Accessibility problems: Missing ALT text, links with the same text, tables used for layout, pop-up windows
  • My pet peeve: Archaic pixel-measured three-column layout. 275 links on the homepage is way too much. And is that MS Comic Sans as the photo caption font?

TQS

  • Ranked: 141st (E or “very poor”)
  • Accessibility problems: Over-reliance on Flash and JavaScript, broken links, missing ALT text, linkes with the same text, pop-up windows, tables used for layout
  • My pet peeve: The only thing worse than an 800-pixel fixed layout is a 1024-pixel fixed layout. Homepage is a mess, and almost completely unusable without its style sheet. Over 300 links on the homepage.

Canoe

  • Ranked: 146th (E or “very poor”)
  • Accessibility problems: Navigation by JavaScript, broken links, too much Flash
  • My pet peeve: Videos that play without you asking them to, >300 links, 1024-pixel fixed-width messy layout similar to TQS, text is way too small.

CTV.ca

  • Ranked: 155th (E or “very poor”)
  • Accessibility problems: Navigation by JavaScript, tables used or layout, very difficult to navigate without stylesheets, iframes, missing ALT text
  • My pet peeve: Links open in new window, lots of images, video requires Windows Media Player

Toronto Star

  • Ranked: 158th (E or “very poor”)
  • Accessibility problems: Missing ALT text, tables used for layout, lots of JavaScript
  • My pet peeve: Fixed-pixel layout, bottom half of homepage is a complete mess, can’t make heads or tails without stylesheet

Global TV

  • Ranked: 169th (E or “very poor”)
  • Accessibility problems: Missing ALT text, tables used for layout
  • My pet peeve: Video plays (with audio) without permission, a lot of things that should be links aren’t

If you’re thinking this list is incomplete, you’re not the only one. Le Devoir and The Gazette are notably absent. The list is based on the top 200 websites in Quebec according to ComScore, which I guess is an unbiased enough criteria. But you’d think exceptions could be made. Tetesaclaques.tv and Heavy.com are on there. Do we really care about those more than two major media sources in Montreal?

The other problem I have with the survey is its methodology: It seems to rely on a quantitative measure of the number of errors in the code rather than putting someone in front of a computer and seeing how well they cope finding information with each site. They just ran an online accessibility checker they created on each site and summarized the results.

I can live with that, even though it provides an inaccurate accounting of how accessible each site really is, but I’m not going to pay $500 for each site’s report. The only people who are going to do that are the owners of the largest sites, who can scan the report and make some recommendations to their code lackeys like “we should have ALT text for all images” that they should already know.

They’re still not learning

Automatically-playing audio, distracting animation, overcrowded homepages and bad JavaScript links are problems that have existed since the dawn of the WWW in one form or another. It’s shocking that these problems still exist.

But as Patrick Tanguay points out, the people who evaluate websites look at the wow factor rather than the ability to find information you’re looking for. Winners of the Infopresse Boomerang prizes show this very obviously: They’re all Flash-based, very inaccessible, and turn navigation into a frustrating game rather than an intuitive process.

One of their grand prize winners, Montréal en 12 lieux, is a perfect example. It has a lot of great content. Videos, pictures, stories. It’s really cool. But it’s also unnecessarily difficult to navigate. One level of navigation actually involves chasing after pictures that are spinning around at variable speeds. I had to stop watching the videos at one point because the strain on my poor computer’s CPU and memory became too much to bear.

At some point, people are going to have to learn that “cool” and “good-looking” aren’t synonyms for “good” when dealing with web design. Craigslist and Google should have proven that by now.

UPDATE (Dec. 12): A defence of the Boomerangs (basically about how they’ve honoured non-Flash sites in the past, which is a rather silly argument), and an idea for a competing competition, decided by users. And Patrick responds to responses of his criticisms of the awards.

| My articles, On the Net, Technology

TWIM: Facebook Beacon – threat or menace?

This week’s bluffer’s guide, courtesy of yours truly, is about Facebook Beacon, the outside-website-integration idea that provoked a lot of ruckus among techies because it wasn’t as clearly opt-in as it should have been. That, in turn, prompted a petition from MoveOn.org, media coverage, “block beacon” instruction sites and, eventually, a backtrack and apology from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Some privacy advocates are still concerned that Facebook is receiving the information even if it’s not publicizing it anymore without explicit permission.

| Business, Media, Slow News Day, Technology

Symantec survey thinks highly of Symantec

In today’s press-release-masquerading-as-news, comes “Calgary is Canada’s safest cyber-city,” an edited version of this press release by anti-virus software maker Symantec.

Reading that, you might ask yourself how geography is relevant to online security or other stupid questions. But rather than take a comprehensive look at online fraud, bank/mail fraud, or information security practices of businesses and government, it commissions a poll that rates cities based on how many people say they’ve installed up-to-date anti-virus software on their computers.

Talk about thinking highly of yourself. Naturally, the solution to all this is to get more people to install anti-virus and other security software on their computers. And it just so happens…

The press release cherry-picks selections of some other data, without giving any idea how to get full breakdowns from them. Either way, all the data is based on what people say, not on what kinds of online crime actually happen in those cities.

Any bets on how many other news outlets will overlook these facts and run this as if it was a StatsCan report?

| In the news, Montreal, Movies, Technology

Just give us the disk and we’ll give you your life back

Builders of the CHUM mega-hospital (that’s the French one) were showing off a prototype of their state-of-the-art patient rooms last week. They include the latest in accessibility and technology:

It will also feature an electronic gadget to read the bar code on a patient’s identification bracelet and automatically dispense appropriate medication.

“The bar code is to distinguish among three people (for example) all named Claude Gagnon on the same floor,” Leclerc said.

“The medicine dose will be prepared by a robot. The patient’s charts will be filed electronically in the computer.”

The electronic gadget will be connected to the hospital’s mainframe, which will be connected to the Net, but both will be protected from unwanted intrusions by Gatekeeper security software by Gregg Microsystems. So your medicine dispensing will be perfectly secure and 100% accurate, unless you’re friends with Angela Bennett.

(In case you don’t get the obscure movie reference, the previous paragraph is fiction.)

| Media, Opinion, Technology

On the importance of online copy-editing

Came upon this article at Macleans.ca about online gambling in Kahnawake, and noticed what appeared to be a strange typo in the headline:

Maclean’s encoding error

As of this writing, it’s still not corrected, which I guess means that nobody at Maclean’s checks articles once they’ve gone online.

Here’s how the end of that headline appears in the HTML code:

Even if it means starting a fight.

So it’s not my browser. It explicitly says “lowercase i with umlaut, mathematical negation symbol, and non-existent character with code #129.” My browser just did what it was told.

But why did this happen? For that we have to delve into two technical subjects I’ll do my best to explain: Unicode and ligatures.

Continue reading →

| Business, Montreal, Navel-gazing, Technology

Cell Unlimited not above outright spam

Got this text message yesterday from a shady outfit called “Cell Unlimited” (typos are theirs, not mine):

Appels Sortants Locaux et Interrubains Illimites a partir10$/Mois!
Info:514-227-6240
www.cellunlimited.net
Unlimited Local and Outgoing Calls for 10$/month!

From: 514-291-7194 (4pm Nov. 30, 2007)

I have, of course, never even heard of this outfit, much less had any business dealings with them that would give them the impression that they could text-message-spam me.

I’ve requested an explanation and will update this post if I get one.

(For the curious, the company is an automatic callback service that turns outgoing calls into incoming ones so those with unlimited incoming call plans can get free minutes. The fact that it costs $10 a month makes me wonder if it’s really worth it for most people.)