How about “nothing” ?

While reading this interesting post about the history of the Internet, I realized that Napster was hot more than 10 years ago. It started in 1998 actually. Now we all know what happened with Napster and we also know what the music industry did to steer people away from Napster: they sued.

During that time, Apple came and started its own store. Taking people by surprise I guess as I suppose no one thought selling songs for 99 cents would ever be a successful idea. Oh boy… Who’s laughing now?

The music industry had over 10 years to come up with a solution to online music sharing and NOTHING is here now. 10 years is long in “Internet years”. Too long…! When people get fed up, they take matters into their own hands. Technology wise, we went from CRT TV’s to plasma to LCD to LED LCD’s that can show Youtube content. We went from tape to DVD to HD-DVD to Blue Ray. What the heck have they done..!?

They sacrificed long term profitability by using short term scare tactics. And where’s THEIR solution now?

I guess we can say they get what they deserve… Should we feel bad about them? I think we all know the answer.

So what could be a good use for this technology? There’s plenty but here’s one that would ease the pain of billions of people: A plain language translator.

Wouldn’t it be great to point your iPhone at a Chinese sign while visiting Hong Kong and BAM! get an automatic translation of what the sign says? Restaurant menus, bus routes and all these signs everywhere could be instantly translated.

Now THAT’S augmented reality to me.

And while we’re at it, I don’t understand why Google isn’t doing Optical Character Recognition in Street view to allow “super local searches” (i.e. bread store on St-Laurent). Yes, businesses open ad close but it could be useful if Google were to drive around the busiest streets… Then again, it might explain why they bought ReCaptcha..? Will we see street-view-style captchas soon?

At least they’re smart enough to pick the error.

We almost saw a very good example with the Bixi Mobile application for the iPhone but it was quickly and sadly put back in its grave.

Also, try to think out of the box. Here’s a free idea that I had a few days ago. I don’t know if it would workbut it doesn’t really matter. I even found a funny name for my idea. I would call it "Caxe". If you haven’t figured it out yet, it’s a play on "casque" (helmet) and "bixi". See, most cyclists wear a helmet and if you rent a Bixi, you most likely won’t have one with you. Not only that, what will happen to the Bixi’s once a regulation forces everyone to wear helmets? So why not ink some sort of agreement and lease helmets next to the Bixi’s?

This is just an idea out of the many ones out there. Here’s another one. Cater to tourists (and locals!) by printing special coupons on the back of receipts. It is very easy to find out if a bixi user is from Montreal or abroad by looking at the credit card number. Bixi could print rebates according to that factor including coupons to restaurants located not too far away from the current location. While this idea needs to be implemented by Bixi themselves, there’s gotta be a middle man to find the sponsors…

As you can see, there’s plenty of ideas around popular products!

Bref, si vous avez une entreprise ou si vous pensez en démarrer une, je vous invite à visiter mon nouveau site, DenisCanuel.com

Je vais continuer à écrire des articles sur le démarrage d’entreprise et la technologie sur ce blogue, en anglais.

Merci à tous les lecteurs!

I find it very interesting and there’s all sort of people: coders, entrepreneurs, designers, people with an idea (or not!) and more!

Read more about it here and RSVP here.

While I don’t recall everything, one thing struck me: the price (it was printed in very large size too..!) To call back home on that exceptionally low roaming fee, you’ll have to spit out 2 dollars per minute.

Yes, 2 bucks!

I immediately told myself that if I were the marketing VP, I’d be scared to lose my job. This is not advertizing, it’s corporate suicide.

In this rough economy, don’t go out and tell people that they have to pay a stupidly high fee (2$ per minute is nuts) to use YOUR product. Find a free or very cheap alternative or promote something else like how outdated your phones are…! Why couldn’t they promote Skype or something else like that?

Even if the regular roaming fees are crazy (up to 7$ per minute depending of where you are), don’t advertise a fee that rivals erotic chat fees!

This ad was obviously targeted at companies and we must remember that companies want to save money, not spend more! By seing that ad, it left me with a very bad feeling on how expensive cell phones can be and if I were a company president, I’d be looking at downsizing our cellular contract instead of looking at 2$ per minute roaming…

What a waste of advertising money from Rogers…

I really like this quote from Mr. Card of Forrester: “If it weren’t for Apple, God knows how bad the music industry would be,”.

I guess it’s called evolution. The main questions is, what would it take for Apple to become a “label” just like MySpace?

They could have their cake and eat it too.

Dans le cadre de Capital Innovation 2009, nous avons le plaisir de vous inviter mercredi le 25 mars 2009 au dîner-conférence de Guy Kawasaki, fondateur et PDG de Garage Technology Ventures. M. Kawasaki présentera son expérience en tant que “Apple Fellow” chez Apple Computer, Inc. comme modèle de stratégie d’innovation pour les entreprises du Québec.

Il s’agit d’une opportunité unique de rencontrer cet entrepreneur chevronné en compagnie de membres investisseurs d’Anges Québec.

So there you go. Guy doesn’t need any introduction and I urge you to attend if you want a once in a lifetime chance to talk to him.

More details on TechnoMontreal’s site.

If you think about it, Twitter is really like a big IRC server having just one personalised channel. The difference is that conversations in IRC are “real time” and require immediate attention. In Twitter, you ignore conversations coming from strangers (actually you don’t see them) and you read your friend’s conversations. This is not very efficient because what if someone (you don’t know obviously) is having a very interesting conversation with one of your contacts?

How can you gain from this? How can you get involved in this conversation? Perhaps you are an expert and would like to participate in this exchange? Should Twitter move away from the “follower” architecture and move to a “group” architecture? Trust might be an issue. Do you trust people you follow more than strangers in a group you trust? Perhaps. Do you trust your friend’s friends (which are complete strangers to you) more than complete strangers? Probably.

If you’re like me, you try to follow a bunch of people you think will have same ideas, thoughts or hobbies as you do, right? You probably follow people who are Internet savvy, who like politics, you like cats and so on because you probably read their blogs or know them in real life.

Doesn’t it sound just like IRC channels? You join the channels you like and (try to) follow a bunch of conversations? In IRC, you’re not a “friend” of anyone and you don’t follow anyone. You are in multiple groups and there are no relations between individuals.

Same goes in real life. You are in groups. Work, school, friends and neighbors are all groups you belong to. Just like IRC, some people come in and leave your groups.

So is Twitter just a big IRC server after all? If so, will we see integration with Identi.ca and Facebook in the future?

If Twitter is just a big IRC server, why is it worth that much? :)