Frédéric Boulanger's Journal

Gmail and Google cal on googleGear!

2008-07-17T22:30:00.001-04:00

Google Gears Coming to Gmail and Google Calendar Soon - ReadWriteWeb
Please please please - Wouhoou if it's true! Like the post says as long as there is no offline mode, I can't have gmail my main client, although I use the backend. Getting the contacts through SyncML is great, if only the BB had a SyncML stack built in like many other phones. I wonder when Google is going to come up with a task management system, or buy RememberTheMilk.

YouTube monetizing

2008-07-17T22:06:00.001-04:00

Schmidt: YouTube + ads = 'holy grail' | News - Digital Media - CNET News.com

Is it me or there is something wrong with the following paragraph?

"Google CEO Eric Schmidt has spoken more than once this year about monetizing YouTube, but he showed some signs of patience on Thursday for finding a new, good way to sell ads on the video-sharing site. And when Yahoo gets the mechanism right, Schmidt said he expects to hit the mother lode."

unless I missed a press release recently about Yahoo and google!

From the wouldn't-that-be-great-coup dep: Hawking in Waterloo

2008-07-16T22:47:00.001-04:00

Physicist Hawking ponders move to Canada | The News is NowPublic.com
Apparently the invite has always been there for him to join the Perimeter institute of waterloo(which was founded by no other than Mike Lazaridis, co-ceo of RIM). I still remember reading A Brief history of Time and being in total awe about how easy it was for this guy to explain all that complex science.

Pure physic is a long shot, but developing leadership in that field is no doubt a great investment for the whole country.

Ottawa and Plasco Group getting down to business

2008-07-16T22:35:00.001-04:00

Ottawa Building North America’s First Gasification Facility | EcoGeek - I don't know how I missed this one, and I had to pick it up from EcoGeek, but this is good news. Ottawa apparently has unanimously voted to have Plasco setup a full fledged thrash processing plant. It's technology I don't understand, but after hearing Rod Bryden the ceo talk about it, I wanted to give him money. He is a very good salesguy no doubt, but I also think his group has got something going -it's not smoke and mirror. I'm very happy to see Ottawa buy local.

Blackberry or iphone - which is it going to be?

2008-07-16T22:23:00.001-04:00

BlackBerry busted - iPhone success sees analyst RIM downgrade | 9 to 5 Mac - one analyst thinks it's not RIM who has the winning hand. From the coolness factor Apple has the winning hand, but RIM in my mind has got a very full fledge enterprise offering, manageable by the IT department of large organizations. I think it would make RIM the kingpin of the Enterprise compared to iPhone. Apple has got a long way to go to get enterprise ready, and this is if they even care about that market.

Successful hiring

2008-07-16T14:50:00.001-04:00

Official Google Blog: Our Googley advice to students: Major in learning -
here is a good short blurb on what Google thinks. The usual suspect - analytical reasoning(being able to see beyond the obvious), willingness to experiement(ie it's ok to be wrong, i will find another way), communication skills(can you explain what you've done), team player(it's too bad when you have to go to a really smart guy/gal and say: look you really got to work on your people skills because nobody wants to work with you.), passion and leadership(no no leadership is not a bunch of people doing what you asked them to, it's the ability to inspire others to follow) and one that I really want to single out Passion, in my mind the person I hire must have a spark if not it won't work.

For the calculus freak in you, and a post similar to this see Passion:
if G = gift out of the factory, how intelligent one is, the raw talent
if P = drive, desire to make things happen, take on challenges...
if t = time

Successful candidate = G + Pt
the first derivative is P, over time what really matter is Passion. So I know it's over simplified but my point is simple - without passion in what one does one will not excel or contribute to its fullest to the organization. The passion post I wrote explains how a company should think its interview process with that in mind. For the hockey fans out there check out Alexandre Daigle, what do you think - lots of talent of out of the factory, but no passion - top pick for the ottawa senators, but ended up being booted out for two dozens hockey sticks.

Does anyone know when Kindle will make its way to canada?

2008-07-15T23:58:00.001-04:00

Kindle 2.0 Coming Around October 2008 - amazon is talking about the new version and we still have no word here in Canada where we stand on the kindle front. So what's the scoop Jeff?

TOP and OCRI for Innovation Hub

2008-07-14T09:57:00.001-04:00

It looks like the innovation hub is making some progress. I'm very happy that Ottawa is standing up for its fair share of money regarding this kind of infrastructure. I was at the Mars center in Toronto, it's pretty impressive and vibrant place to visit and work. I'm also very happy that the site they are looking at in Ottawa is downtown. There is so much going on in the market now, this will help create even more tech activities in that area.

Mining and lakes - a toxic combination

2008-07-02T13:28:00.001-04:00

Lakes across Canada to be used as toxic dump sites | The News is NowPublic.com

I don't know if you've read about this story before but it frustrates me. The situation is mining companies are using lakes as a reservoir to dump their toxic waste - resulting from their mining activities. I can't believe that in 2008 with all the awarness around the environment it's still acceptable to do so. This is one of the reason why I think we must seriously factor in the environmental impact of our activities - and make it show on the bottom line. Should we have any framework in place to make sure the impact on the environment is considered in the earnings of a company - this situation would not have its place in Canada. Maybe this would drive business elsewhere - yes maybe.

Vista SP1 con't - take III

2008-07-02T13:15:00.001-04:00

AS you may recall from my posts - my journey to SP1 has been anything but easy. I'm now proud to announce that I'm running a new and improved windows Vista, SP1 finally did install. How so I hear you ask - well finally Windows update has informed me it was ready to install SP1 on my machine and it has successfully installed. Who said a machine was not better than a human, in this case it's Machine 4, me 0 - 4 being the number of times I tried to install the darn thing. I'm now crossing my fingers that my machine is now going to be much faster and reliable. For example that darn WMI service crashing on me all the time. ok now back to enjoying my new life as a member of the SP1 club! ta-ta!

Google 411 now avail in Canada

2008-06-26T18:36:00.001-04:00

Finally - I posted about this a while back, but the services was only available in the US. Now we're good to go. Give it a whirl, it's 1-800-GOOG-411 or 1-800-4664-411!

testing your product

2008-06-26T10:32:00.001-04:00

ok raise your hand if you give that can of beating to your product - check out the video 30sec James Dyson on Engineering and Design. the concept that by combining good design and engineering principles - it's not because it feels light that it's cheap and a easily broken.

More access to the c-level at Google for Canadian businesses?

2008-06-26T10:20:00.001-04:00

Patrick Pichette from Bell is joining Google as CFO. Congrats to him for landing such a job in a great company like Google. I'm sure - Lot's of people will be trying to leverage that relationship now I'm sure from this side of the border!This makes me very optimistic about the opportunities this could bring for Canadian businesses within Google.

Kid Rock's go on steal that thing, and stay in school!

2008-06-25T22:44:00.001-04:00

I'm late on this but if you haven't seen this youtube video from Kid Rock go see it - it's pretty darn funny. It makes for a good show.

Kid Rock's surprising take on illegal downloading | The Audiophiliac - A high-end audio blog from Steve Guttenberg - CNET News.com

I also agree with the comments about buying on iTune is not the best solution either. Whatever we think we buy from iTune anyway.

Zemanta

2008-06-24T18:59:00.003-04:00

Image via WikipediaZemanta is the closest thing to a decent helper writing tool I have found. Thanks to a post from Alec Saunder's blog where I noticed it - I'm now going to be using it. It's recommendations of pictures are not all that accurate, but they make for so much more interesting post!!! But the related articles suggestions seem more accurate as you can see below -

From there the possibilities are practically endless. I suggest that like any web 2.0 firms out there they are about or have already opened up their API so that we can add our own widgets to ride on their engine. Widgets, could be weather, imdb, maps....

Rogers revamp of data plans for Blackberry

2008-06-24T17:46:00.001-04:00

My opinion - fine I will save 30$/month with this from now on. On the other hand, what about my voice plan - Rogers? The first time i read it, i thought iPhone were getting both unlimited voice and data for 30$ - that would have been insane - but no - it's only data and visual v-mail, so the unfairness is not that bad. I'm still very tired of getting creamed on voice calls at the end of each month. Wouldn't life be nice now with a voip on my bb so that I could make use of the 300MB of data I have now, or any wi-fi connection I have access to. Then pls mobivox - my life would be much nicer if you could create a sync services for my address book so that I could just dial mobivox's local numbers and deal with voxgirl to dial by name, or better create a BB add-on to insert yourself in the calling options and pass the phone number as input automagically...

From: BlackBerry Sync | get in sync with the latest BlackBerry news » Blog Archive » Rogers revamps BlackBerry data plans (iPhone data plans too)

Symbian is now Nokia and going the community route!

2008-06-24T11:34:00.001-04:00

Well well well - maybe Android was too much for Nokia, didn't want to have Google driving their business. Symbian is loosing steam, this is my understanding anyway. Getting something to run on Symbian is not straight forward, and requires hard core programmers. They will have their work cut out in the community. Nokia knows that if they unite every one around they will be stronger. Read/Write web was alluding to Nokia wanting more control "a la" apple owning both the hw and the platform, going the community route is not the easiest way to have control over a platform. On the other hand what can Nokia do, if they don't make it community - Nokia will be the only vendor with symbian phones.

If You Buy Chinese Made Goods

2008-06-16T23:02:00.001-04:00

Well this title should grab the attention of 33M people here in Canada alone! This post from nowpublic reminded me of this story I just heard. In this case it's not the China price but the Walmart price and its profound impact on our buying habits as well as our economy.

Take a good old water sprinkler 20years ago, made of really durable parts, all metal. Well 20years later it still works. Now take the same water sprinkler you bought at Walmart last year, it's all plastic, and you're lucky to have two seasons out of it. You wonder well duh! it's all plastic no wonder, it's going to break sooner or later. My point exactly. An you will go buy another one at Walmart, because it's the best price.

I admire walmart for several things they do, not the point of this post though. The practice of lowest price has a profound impact on how we build things and what we ultimately buy. So the water sprinkler maker, they sign Walmart, they are happy and they have every right to be happy, their year is made. Walmart says - we're going to be your biggest customer this year and for the years to come. This year we buy at $x, but next year if you want Walmart's business, you will sell the product to us for $x - 10%, figure a way to make it work. So you don't want to loose your biggest customer, so what do you do, you find a way to make it cheaper, you put plastic in it! Fast Forward 10years and it's all plastic, and your customers are now of the mindset that this sprinkler you just bought is meant to be replaced every couple of years, and Walmart is more than happy to sell you another one.

Canadian Copyright reform tabled - are we in the US

2008-06-16T22:48:00.001-04:00

I've been thinking for the longest time we were going to be smart about this Copyright thing. Well it looks like the US have had their way, they been painting us as the kingdom of piracy for the last little while, and now Harper's government is tabling a bill that will make an outlaw of every honest citizen in this country. Woopidoo - we now have the time to timeshift using our PVR, thanks M. Industry Minister. Read more here and at Alec's

Look there is no way it should be illegal for me to have my tunes in any device I want if I have paid for the tune. Or a movie for that matter.

The sad thing about this whole thing is the industry is annoying the very own people who are still buying their product! It won't stop the kids from doing anything, and now me an avid buyer of music to this day, I'm being told what I should be doing with my tunes. It's rubs me the wrong way.

plastic bags

2008-06-06T10:29:00.001-04:00

We all know the problem with plastic bags, they stick around in the soil indefinitely...or way too long anyway. Well one smart kid has successfully demonstrates not so. A canadian teenager of all things, just to make me even more proud of the discovery, as a science project has come up with a process to accelerate dramatically the decomposition of plastic bags Canadian teen's process decomposes plastic bags | The News is NowPublic.com. Way to go!

it's not about resuming the use of plastic bags, it's about getting ri of the billions of plastic bags already there in my mind, just to make sure you catch my drift.

Innovation according to Bezos

2008-06-05T17:12:00.001-04:00

I was reading this very interesting innovation issue of business week the other day. I'm a big fan of Bezos, because he is the example that bald people can be successful too! No seriously, every interview I read with him he is sharp, with a great dose of humour.

Anyway some of his thoughts on Innovation I like, here are a few takeaways for me:

constraints like frugality drives innovation

At first I thought this is another way of saying necessity is the mother of all invention. After a little bit more thinking, I think Bezos is saying my business is a low margins business and it doesn't mean I can't innovate, it means I have to be really smart about how I make money. You would think this would push a lot of process innovation, which they have done a fantastic job of at Amazon, they never ever share anything related to their infrastructure/logistic this is the secret sauce for him - but this is only one side of it.

you have to be willing to be misunderstood to innovate

This is cliché, and it doesn't have to be rocket science innovation where one starts to be mis-understood, it's all kinds, the little things. Make sure you check often, and check with the people who will want to pay for it, or are already paying if you can swing it!

because it's new - companies get skilled focused, why should we do that, we don't have any skills in that area, a more stable strategy is what do my customers need? And inventory the gap in your skills from there.

It's the CUSTOMER, get him/her on your Innovation bus if you want to go anywhere!!!

Software is getting better

2008-06-04T20:54:00.001-04:00

The much contested Standish group in some software engineering circles has published an updated study on software project failures. find the original study here. It was contested on the basis of how the research was performed by certain researchers.

The latest study points to some significant improvements over the figures of 94. They report that 35% of software projects started in 06 were completed on time, on budget and did what they were supposed to do. This compares very favourably to 94, where only 16% met the requirements above. In the category of projects that failed outright went down from 31% to 19%, so a significant reduction there as well.

Interesting numbers and very encouraging trend. Reading from the SDTimes, the three main reasons for such improvements:

Better project Management
Iterative development
web infrastructure

If you read the article you will quickly get the point that rapid iterations with users to see results, and check against their expectations, coupled with the users's familiarity with technology is helping capturing the requirements better.

What I take away - If your user does not have a seat on your innovation bus, forget about getting where you want to go successfully.

Adobe Launches Online Office Suite and New Flash-Enabled Acrobat 9 - ReadWriteWeb

2008-06-02T12:50:00.001-04:00

Holy Cow! I read that same news about Adobe building a office suite way back when, and I thought it made sense, but I was not thinking much of it. Now I checked out the review of ReadWriteWeb and I like what I read - experiment will tell us more about it, but come on it's looks pretty good ain't it.

Remember the blackout?

2008-05-30T07:36:00.001-04:00

Well apparently the chinese have precipitated the blackout. I don't how much of this is just FUD but it's an interesting read. Did China's Hackers Shut Off the Lights? | Danger Room from Wired.com.
The Chinese are a force in counter intelligence, ok I get that. The web is used in so many ways, and to read that states are using it to perform attacks on other states, and I'm sure it's not just one way by the way, ie just from China to US, but also the other way - is both exciting and scary to me. Exciting because it reads like a sci-fi book and scary because just like Ender's realizes at one point - it's all real, it's not a game.

FaceBook, MySpace, LinkedIn, SecondLife, blogs, IM etc...

2008-05-26T23:09:00.001-04:00

I was at Gartner's Outsourcing conference last week, one of the keynote speaker Dov Seidman was on the new ways we have to do business. It goes like this

We're extremely connected. We're in a world of extreme transparency. Connectivity somehow is now transparency. What we do/say as an individual or organization will stay around forever. Rarely now when I meet somebody new I won't google the person's name, or check things our on linkedin. Did you know that MySpace was the 11th most populous country on earth! The reputation game is now more than ever worth gold. As Warrent Buffet once said: "if you loose 1$ for the firm I will be understanding, if you loose reputation for the firm, I will be ruthless". The connectiveness is an opportunity to find new ways to lead. We know that unlike in the past, information can't be controlled, can't be accumulated just like land or cash could be controlled, and to top it off information is infinite.

We're going into an experience economy, and you can't automate experience it's so human. If you connect to people in this world of extreme connectedness - you get to influence, and this is the new green. Influence has always been important, it just seems on steroids with all things social on the web. As a an individual, one can always coerce, motivate or inspire - but the last one, getting people to buy in the vision as their own is the only one with a long term potential when one is in a connected world.