Archive for August, 2008
Declaring RSS bankrupcy
August 29th, 2008
Hello, My name is Denis and I’m an RSS addict. I’m addicted to information. I like to know everything. I 
subscribe to so many RSS feeds that I don’t remember when my Google reader was below "1000 unread" items. For those who don’t know, Google won’t show you the exact number of unread items when you hit the 1000 unread items mark.
I always managed to keep up with local events. I made Montreal and friends feeds a top priority. Then it was the rest of the world. Just like an addict, I always told myself that I could eventually catch up. That I would read all my feeds. I was wrong.
So I declared RSS bankruptcy.
Unlike email bankrupcy which is a more severe form of social exclusion, RSS bankrupcy will only affect me. No hard feeling if I haven’t read your blog, ok? Then again, chances are you will never know…
So earlier today I did what I thought would be impossible. I zeroed all my feeds. I have nothing to read now. I don’t know if it feels good or not yet but I feel like I can move on to something else. I also had to kill some heavy feeds and I had to change the way I management my feeds. I guess I should take some time to catchup with old emails now 
Posted in Blogs, Rant | Comments (0)
Your favorite OS is doomed!
August 29th, 2008
I remember sometime ago there was this race or perhaps some sort of war between the TV and the computer. People were wondering who would win. Would we be using the TV as a computer or perhaps the computer would be used to watch TV?
I think that with cloud computing being more and more present, we won’t be seeing computers nor TV’s anymore but just a specialized display that is IP enabled. In a way, it would look more than a TV than a computer but with optional peripherals like a keyboard and a mouse (wireless of course).
Call it the next-gen dumb terminal or what you want but I think this is what’s coming up. I look at what I do theses days and I’m amazed at the waste of computing resources. Word processing, web surfing, email and other simple tasks. I don’t need a 64 core CPU with 4G of RAM to support this environment.
A perfect example is the iPhone. What is it that you can’t do on the iPhone? Obviously very CPU intensive things like gaming and we now have specialized platforms to do that (PlayStation and so on). Most of your day to day tasks can be done on an iPhone especially if you use a Bluetooth keyboard. Now look at the iPhone closely and you’ll see that it’s got only 128M of RAM and it’s running on a 620Mhz CPU that is actually DOWNCLOCKED to 412Mhz.
Wow, 412Mhz. Think about it for a second. I don’t even remember when I had a computer that slow. I was the proud owner of a Pentium 500 Mhz back in the days but I don’t recall exactly when. Probably 10 years ago or so. The average 2.4Ghz CPU is 6x more powerful in terms of "hertz". I over-simplify here but that’s a big difference nonetheless.
Forget Windows, MacOS or Linux. What’s coming up is the Cloud OS. No more synchronizing files between your work PC, your laptop and your mom’s computer, no more crashes, no more hanged applications or messing with drivers. It will all be magic to you.
I also predict that since "computers" will be so simple in the future, they will obviously become a commodity and big brand names will start selling their own version. Your mom might be using a Louis Vuitton computer in the future. Who knows? Acer already has Ferrari laptops and LaCie Porsche external hard drive.
So should you sell your Dell stocks? Perhaps not yet but I see companies like Sony or LG having a competitive edge because they are in both markets and they understand those markets very well.
Posted in technology | Comments (0)
Encan Bougon’s offspring
August 29th, 2008
Encan Bougon just launched recently and there’s a lot of interest already. Branchez-vous mentioned about it on their homepage so this is a great honor for me. But in order to accommodate everyone, I decided to launch an international version under the name "DailyDollarDeal.com ". To be honest, I was surprised that the domain name wasn’t taken
I have more ideas in mind for this side project so keep visiting!
Posted in Startups, eBay, internet | Comments (0)
New eBay search tool for bargain hunters
August 22nd, 2008
"Encan Bougon " is a system that allows you to watch last minute auctions on eBay and for which the current price is below one dollar.
Why? Well the reason behind all this is that many auctions go unsold because they have typos and thus are not found by people. A lot of sellers are pretty bad at making their item "marketable" and have very bad title. And we humans are bad buyers. Most people only browse title, they don’t actually open the item to read the whole description. So a market of bad sellers and bad buys creates an opportunity for good buyers!
I started this tool sometime ago for my own personal use. I use it all the time to look for cheap baby/kids stuff and of course geek stuff. Instead of going on eBay, I use this tool to scan for products. You’d be surprised what goes unsold on eBay!
So I decided to convert my own research tool to everyone. This is a great tool for bargain hunters and although the site is only in French now (Canada, France and Belgium), it will be available for all eBay sites. Try it out and if you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know!
Posted in Launch, Startups, eBay, ideas | Comments (0)
I’ve seen this before…
August 22nd, 2008
I remember the good old days where you had to dial in a BBS (using a modem) to get information, talk to other people, download images and files, chat and so on.
I’m sure many people remember this. In the early days, each BBS was independent. This means that if you wanted to leave a message to a certain person, you had to visit that BBS and leave a message there. Pretty innefficient as you can see (compared to email).
Then came "network messages". There were various network message providers. Some very local which deserved many sites in a single city level and some were international. FidoNet is one that I remember. It was fantastic and please remember that this was back in the early 90’s…
Fast forward in 2008. Facebook, MySpace and all those so called "social" sites use local messenging systems that are not interconnected to each other.
History does repeat itself after all…!
Posted in social network, technology | Comments (1)
PodCamp Montreal coming up!
August 19th, 2008
Just a quick note to talk about the upcoming and very first PodCamp in Montreal which will take place at the "Pavillon du Design" at UQAM on september 20th and 21st.
Lots of speakers will be there and it seems very well done for an "anti-conference".
The word anti-conference actually makes me smile. "Unconference" I could understand as it’s a trendy word but anti-conference is a bit strong for my own taste. Let’s face it, it’s got speakers and sponsors: it IS a conference and that’s fine
As of today, more that 200 people and 15 speakers registrered. I think this will be the biggest event for september. Do not miss it!
Posted in Event, Montreal | Comments (2)
