Really cool stuff is happening in Ottawa’s tech sector right now and this week’s big announcement is iotum’s launch of Calliflower, a web-based service for managing conference calls.
iotum has made in a name for itself in the voice-over-Internet-protocol space over the past year with their FREE Conference Calls app for Facebook, though CEO Alec Saunders has mentioned on a few occasions that the original plan was to build a LinkedIn-style social network based entirely around conference calling. With Calliflower, that vision seems to have now been realized.
Calliflower’s launch is being celebrated tonight by using the service to host an interview with legendary Canadian actor William Shatner from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific time.
Wireless data has been an absolute joke in Canada for years with early plans starting at 500 kilobytes of data per month (what on earth can someone do with 500k?!?)
As time wore on, Canada’s wireless providers started to get with the program, very slowly, but still not giving us for $20 per month for unlimited downloads available in the United States. Rogers has been the slowest of all to change but it seems thanks to the iPhone’s arrival in Canada, they have finally had to relent.
Today I’ve switched from my $40/month for 7 megabytes (yes, you read that correctly) to $30/month for 300 megabytes. Still a far cry from $20 unlimited (though the iPhone rate on AT&T has now jumped to $30 anyway) it is a significant improvement and I can now actually USE my Blackberry! Sweet!
I am now wondering just how much of a threat online video really is to Hollywood movies and television studios and whatnot. Yesterday, I got put on very sudden house-sitting duty as a friend of mine needed to leave and someone had to hang around her place to let an electrician in.
Well, as compensation, I got play around with a computer with a giant 20-something inch flat screen monitor and I figured I’d pass the time by watching videos on something that isn’t my little laptop. So, I load up some video and hit the full-screen button expecting this to look better than on my old TV.
Um, no. Stretching it out over that much screen space, all I could see what how grainy pixilated they were. Yuck.
It seems pretty far off from replacing going to a movie theatre or even renting something to watch on a proper TV since even the decades old television sets I usually use look better than this. Watching video in a tiny box is fine for clips or cats doing amusing things of babies laughing, but for anything else? Until we get proper broadband in North America so it’s possible to stream files big enough to hold all the detail, this isn’t a very good distribution method and I can’t imagine enough people are preferring grainy pirated videos to the real thing to be putting that big of a dent in revenues…
If I may, I need to step away from my usual ramblings about technology and self-employment to rant about something that truly makes me sick.
Living in downtown Ottawa, the ByWard Market is frequent stop for me. Walking through, it’s hard not to notice Craazy Dave.
Dave’s “home” is a milk crate behind the Rideau Street Chapters store. There he supports himself by writing poetry on pieces of cardboard and selling it to passers-by. Maybe it’s because of my brief period as a musician that I still romanticize the image of the starving artist or whatever other reason, but I like him. His poetry in big black letters adds character to the area, I’ve yet to see him bother anyone and he’s rather pleasant given the fact that he’s homeless.
This week, some “tax-paying citizen” who was sick of Dave getting a “free ride” took it upon himself to steal what meagre possessions the man had and destroy them. Then in the ultimate act of cowardice, sent a letter bragging about this “accomplishment” to a local gallery owner who displays Dave’s poems signing it “R.F. Cartier.”
I really have no idea how sleeping on a sidewalk constitutes a “free ride”, especially since Dave refuses to go on welfare or take any other social assistance. The possessions that were disposed of mostly consisted of poems and a collection of newspaper articles that had been written about Dave.
One of the defining characteristics that’s supposed to separate human beings from the rest of the animal kingdom is compassion. Clearly this Cartier person is severely lacking in that department. I mean, it’s one thing to walk around yelling at panhandlers to get a job, but to dispose of someone’s property that only has sentimental value seems like a pretty low depth to sink to.
I just hope Cartier remember’s one important thing: Karma’s a bitch!
Xobni, a product I’ve been interested in for some time has finally been released to the public.
It’s a Microsoft Outlook extension that claims to find the “hidden social network” in your e-mails. It’s functions do look really cool. For example, when you click the profile of someone you e-mail regularly, it’ll show things like phone numbers that person has e-mailed you, which sounds insanely useful.
One slight problem for me, though: I deleted Outlook from my life months ago. Being a broke freelancer who can’t afford an Exchange server, I keep all my e-mail synchronized through IMAP and Outlook’s support for IMAP is well, pathetic.
There’s still hope, though. Xobni recently walked away from a Microsoft acquisition which means they’ll be free to work on this extension for other e-mail systems so hopefully a Thunderbird (which has killer IMAP support) won’t be far behind.
Posting has been light lately, especially since this game called Grand Theft Auto IV came out…
But I’ll digress briefly to write about coworking. It’s a nifty concept where freelancers and small companies gain a full-on office environment by sharing the cost of a workspace. It also helps deal with the isolation of being a lone gunman freelancer working from home.
Ottawa will soon have its first coworking space when consultant Ian Graham puts the final touches on The Code Factory.
I mention it now since the web version of an article I wrote on the construction is now up on the Scan web site.
Also, Graham has been providing regular updates (including pictures) on a blog set up to document The Code Factory. Should be pretty damn cool when it’s done.
Facebook is looking a little more like MySpace to me this week. In the past few days, I’ve been fending off “friend” requests from women in the U.S. I’ve never heard of. They also seem far more attractive than any woman that would be likely to want to randomly talk to me. So, Internet logic dictates that they’re probably trying to sell me Viagra. Blah.
Today’s top story: Some guy I’ve only heard of passing deletes his Twitter account!
I suppose I’m perpetuating the insinuated complaint in this post by writing about it, but it needs to be said. I’m trying to imagine the level of ridicule that would be doled out if any other news outlet led with a story about somebody deleting an account on some web site.
Perhaps I’ve learned my lesson about spending too much time reading Techmeme. I do think aggregating the conversations across blogs and news sites is a neat idea and feel it’s useful to know what’s going on but when THAT is the top story? What’s gonna be huge tomorrow? “Robert Janelle deletes his Techmeme bookmark?”
And slow news day is no excuse when Gizmodo (link is just barely safe for work) is writing about a device that allows men to control their computer with their penis.
calls. 
