Archive for the ‘internet’ Category
Is Skype dead?
October 2nd, 2007
Blognation has an article about eBay and Skype. Another cool product bites the dust? It seems that everything that was “once cool” but bought by some large corporate eventually dies. ICQ, Netscape, Skype, Dodgeball and so on are good examples. Do large corporations kill innovation?
Posted in Corporations, Innovation, Startups, internet | Comments (3)
Article sur les startups au Québec - prise 2
September 24th, 2007
Quelques personnes voulaient savoir quel était le mystérieux site où mon reportage sur les startups du Québec serait posté. Évidemment, le tout sera posté sur QuebecValley mais il s’agit en fait de TechCrunch France ou j’ai réussi à proposer l’article en question. J’ai déjà quelques startups qui se sont portées volontaires mais dépêchez-vous si vous désirez participer à l’entrevue en question. Vous n’avez qu’à me contacter via denis@quebecvalley.com.
Posted in Quebec, QuebecValley, Startups, internet | Comments (0)
The story of Plenty Of Fish
September 13th, 2007
I already mentioned about the founder of Plenty Of Fish and I wanted to point the readers to a very interesting story.
Markus Frind is basically a one man company and earns from 5M$ to 10M$ per year running his web site. Very inspirational and motivating story.
Posted in Startups, business, ideas, internet | Comments (0)
Praized raised some
September 12th, 2007
Praized.com, started by Sébastien Provencher, Sylvain Carle et Harry Wakefield received 1M$ funding from Garage today.
Good luck guys and keep up the good work!
Posted in Montreal, Startups, Venture capital, business, internet, investissement | Comments (0)
Internet for Small businesses
September 12th, 2007
The Videotron debate made me think about what I should do with my current provider and I thought it would be interesting to switch to a business account and host my projects at home. After all, even larger sites like plentyoffish.com used to do so (BTW, very interesting story here). While I don’t have a data center in my garage, I could surely put some servers there and it would be a nice way to kick starts my project (for a relatively low cost). I have plenty of computer parts to make something decent. This fits perfectly with my 1000$ start-up goal.
However, after talking with Videotron, it appears that even business accounts are very limited. Yes you can host pretty much any type of server you want, but bandwidth stays the same. This means you run all those services on the 800-900kbps stream. Wow, no way I told myself. I’m not Google but I know I need a bit more than that. The sales guy was quick enough to offer me a T1 but I kindly refused his overpriced under performing offering. BTW, anyone still using T1’s ??
So I went to Bell, even though some people have had bad experiences (oh, really?). There, after waiting for a few minutes and getting the wrong department for a few times (how hard is it for “Emily – the automated assistant” to understand “business internet connection” anyways?) I was told that there was no coverage since I was in a rural area and dial-up was my only choice. “Rural??” I told him. I’m a few minutes from downtown Montreal and I can see the phone junction box if I look outside so I should be able to get wire speed on your DSL. I even got the Bell Optimax flyer in my mailbox a few months ago when they installed fiber optic all over my street. That’s when I found out that he probably didn’t know that the 514 area code was Montreal and that he couldn’t care less about me. He was anxious to get the next call as some fish wanted to join the beaver team. *Sigh* Poor Sympatico users… I now feel your pain…!
Next I found Openface. They offer shdsl (up to 9MBps up AND downstream). While very interesting, it is limited to downtown so once again, I was out of luck.
SO… here goes my question to you all and I hope someone somewhere has an answer for me. What are the options for small business on the Montreal Island? Not everyone is hosting/co-locating in a data center! Are there any SDSL providers out there?
PS: If you’re an ISP, please contact me. I have money to give you! I want to be a customer! But I need a decent upload speed.
Posted in Bell, Startups, Videotron, business, internet | Comments (2)
My views on Google’s future plans
September 4th, 2007
I was thinking this morning while taking my shower (I know, I know it’s rare but it happens) and I thought how evil (in a genius way) the Google guys were. Let’s face it: they are trying to take over (or “create” I should say) the online applications world. I guess this is nothing new to most of us. What I like is the monetary part of it so keep reading. Google is in a very good position to quickly overtake Microsoft in terms of usage. The way I see it, people hesitate to buy Office for their personal use at home. I understand this considering the outrageous cost. Business don’t mind have choice for 1 reason: it’s the de-facto standard and they have no choice.
Google apps are now free but consider this: in the future, would you mind watching a 30 seconds advertisement to use a totally free version online? This is a great way of making a LOT of money for Google. Say that Google restricts you to 1 hour of free online editing after which you must watch another advertisement, that makes a lot of money at the end of the year. I don’t want to do big calculations but if we estimate a revenue of “25 cents per ad” X “usage per year” than that’s big money IF because there is a IF, you consider software piracy.
See, when Microsoft gets his software pirated, they don’t get any money at all. Some might say that MS wants people to pirate their software instead of other software as it creates a big pool of people who know and want MS software at work. The Microsoft rebates for students and teachers is a great way to mould those innocents brains and dictate them in the right path. Let’s face it, what are the alternatives to Excel and Word? While I could quickly give out some alternatives, most people don’t even know about Word Perfect, Star Office or Open Office.
But back to money. If you pirate Microsoft software, they get no revenues. That’s plain simple. If you use free software from Google, they get some money. Once again, using the 25 cents per ad example, someone using a Google app once a week for 1 year will bring in 13$ in Google’s pockets. If you use it everyday then that’s 65$ in Google’s pockets. See where I’m going? It’s not a lot, but better than nothing! Of course, if someone is paying for a full license, then Microsoft is making more money. But I’d be curious to know the percentage of people who pirate software and I’ll bet you the Google boys studied that as well and I’m sure they’ll be coming with a “watch ads as you need” plan soon… Evil? Hmm not really. Genius? getting close.
Also, let’s not forget that Google now includes Star Office in their free Google apps package. Time to sell your Microsoft stocks?
Forward yourself a few years in the future. The future is and will be the browser. TV channels, radios, newspapers and yellow pages are all virtually extinct within the geek crowd. Google is working on everything “online” including user storage. What we need to do now is to work on getting decent bandwidth and online storage will be interesting (I’m not even going to talk about privacy here!)
As a bonus to the readers, here’s a free idea to anyone willing to take on the challenge: Come up with a great way to play games “truly online”. By that, I’m mean games that are playable in a browser (without a console) and playable anywhere and anytime. And while we’re at it, why can’t games be free just like those Google apps? Product placement and micro-localized advertisement could do the trick. There’s money to be made in them kids!
Oh well, maybe when I get old… 
Posted in Google, Software, business, internet | Comments (0)
