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 Find a free or very cheap alternative or promote something else like how outdated your phones are…!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? :)

I’ve had cats in the past when I was younger but she was very different. She was very close to us and I always believed that she could understand us and feel our emotions – almost like a dog.

For the last month or so, she seemed to sleep all day. We knew she was weak. Then, on the day before I had to fly to attend a conference in the US, she had a very bad attack and collapsed. I thought she would die but she survived and was not in pain so we decided to keep her with us for a little bit longer before considering putting her to sleep. Before I left, I told her to wait for me, that I would return shortly. So I left for 4 days.

During my trip, her condition was pretty stable so I was relieved. I got home the day before yesterday at around 3AM and noticed that she was sleeping where I would normally sleep. She purred as she saw me.  I petted her before going to bed.

She passed away just 6 hours later.

She will be remembered…

There are various ways and here’s the message that you need to remember. If you go back to the gold rush era, people who earned the most money were not the gold propectors themselves but rather the small businesses selling shovels and other gold digging equipment.

This is what you must remember! So in these hard days, selling something new is much harder than selling something that people need to survive. Sounds simple but look at what you’re doing right now. Are you working on something innovative, where you’ll have to twist people’s arm, or something where there is an actual demand?

I have two examples for you. Mind you they are not the best examples but they’ve proven to be quite popular. However, I think that the popularity is due to the current economy, rather than my coding skills :)

You probably heard about Daily Dollar Deal, one of my pet projects. I invested about 10 hours of my time. The goal was to make something really simple for the user (and for me). I could’ve done way better but I wanted to give what the user wanted: an easy way to browse items under 1$ on eBay. No AJAX stuff, no this and that. Just 1 page. Check it out for yourself, how simpler can it get? And how about the ROI on time invested? Pretty amazing…

Then there is another of my pet project. It’s simply called “1000 Dollars Cars” and, you guessed it, it’s based on the succesful recipe of Daily Dollar Deal. When a recipe is good, why change it? Just duplicate it! I haven’t actually talked about it here and I haven’t made any advertising yet but Google “found” it and brought some people in. Since I never talked about it before, let me introduce it officially. 1000 Dollars Cars is, if you haven’t figured out yet, a market place for cars under 1000$. Why? Because once again, with the current economy, there is a high demand for used cars.

The whole idea behind this project is based on the “1000$ car theory”, which is:

Cars cost money to buy and run. The more expensive a car you buy, the more money you will lose on it, by depreciation alone if nothing else. A good way to save money on a car is to buy an old beater for a meager sum, usually not exceeding the equivalent of $1,000. If it is still capable of moving under its own power, it is statistically likely to stay mobile for more months than it would usually take you to spend $1k on payments for a new car. Once it requires anything more than a trivial sledgehammer-and-WD40 fix, you scrap it and get something new.

So it makes sense for a lot of people to buy an old car. It’s eco-friendly, cheaper and you recycle cars that would otherwise end up in the junk yard.  If you buy a brand new car (valued at $20,000) and keep it for 10 years then you can buy 20 cars at $1,000 each for the same price. That’s not considering insurance & interest paid on the $20K. Also remember that most used cars will live longer than 1 year.

Check it out for yourself and you’ll be amazed at how many cars are available at under 1000$. eBay alone lists over 40,000 cars on a daily basis! The only problem is that It’s currently only available in the USA.

These two projects use an affiliate model. This means that I get paid a small share everytime a sale is made through my website. This model has proven to be quite effective for me and I plan to use those models more often this year by building various sites. I will keep you posted on my experiences! I’d be curious to know if anyone else had success with affiliate marketing?

This is a perfect opportunity for students wishing to gain some real life experience or seasoned designers who have some time to kill.

If you’re interested, please email me at denis@quebecvalley.com and don’t forget to mention about your expertise (graphics, flash or both)

Thanks!