Some Ottawa startups are hiring
These companies has announced at DemoCamp Ottawa 8 on Monday that they are looking for staff, software developers and others, to join their team:
FavQuest (part-time, sweat-equity? for now)
My recap of Ottawa DemoCamp 8
The latest DemoCamp a couple of nights ago was interesting. A few observations:
- no dominant technology platform used across the board (asp.net, java , php, etc.)
- product maturity ranges from fairly polished commercial (DevShop) to various stages of “beta” (FavQuest, FriendsRoll)
- a professional emcee (David Schellenberg of LiVE 88.5) really helps makes it a better event
In addition to the wiki for this event, there’s a pretty good over-all recap of the event on StartupOttawa.com if you’re interested for a better coverage.
Google Sites is pretty neat!
Google Sites just came out. It’s quite well put-together, and much nicer than other Wiki’s. However, I don’t think it will get main-stream adoption yet. (Btw: it’s the re-worked JotSpot Wiki engine after they bought it at the end of 2006.)
See it in action at http://sites.google.com/ or watch this video:
Star chef Gordon Ramsey understands the importance of innovation
Innovation is the key to success everywhere you look. It even applies beautifully in low-tech environments like restaurants.
I’m a big fan of the show Kitchen Nightmares. In today’s episode, Mixing Bowl, the eye opener for the despaired owners is that the number of local restaurants has grown 10 times in the last 10 years, but they haven’t changed a bit. So, how to win in this situaion?
Gordon’s solution? It is not to simply improve or extend their menu offerings (something we tech companies do so often without thinking about the bigger picture). It is “innovation” as applied in their local context: offer something “nobody else” has, but obviously lacking, in that geographic area: a healthy menu.
The result? Innovation is the key that, together with the new efforts by the staff, helps the restaurant back on a profitable course.
Some Ottawa startups review
The Ottawa Business Journal has posted an article on the latest status of some Ottawa startups:
The tech companies mentioned in the article:
Avoca Semiconductor, voice-interface solutions, hardware & software
Distil Interactive, web education and training, software
Gridpoint Systems, carrier ethernet solutions, hardware
ImaSight, digital radiography solutions, hardware
Jaded Pixel, ecommerce solution, software
Kakiloc (closed), location-based social networking service, software
Liponex, biopharmaceutical research, medicine
Mercury Grove, group collaboration software, software
MODA Solutions, alternative payments and e-commerce, software
Sidense, memory cores, hardware
Ecommerce complexity for Canadians
Scott
Craig
On the subject of how to receive Ecommerce payments on websites, I sat over a cup of coffee with Scott Lake of Shopify and Craig Fitzpatrick of DevShop. They provided some great information.
Scott’s company is a hosted Ecommerce service provider for online merchants. Craig’s company provides hosted software development project management application and accepts payments on his website.
Essentially, the main issues are cost and control. Let’s take Paypal and similar services as an example. Cost: easier to setup, but the transaction fees are higher, making it suitable for small or micro businesses. Control: either direct your customers to their site during payment, or use their limited built-in web hosting features.
Otherwise, jump through the banking hoops will get you lower cost and full-control. Some of the “hoops” include signing up a credit card processor, getting a bank account with an US bank, get an US address and phone number, get an IRS EID number, etc. etc.
Yep, you have to deal with a lot of “US” issues, because payment processors do not like dealing with Canadian corporations. And, btw, despite some extra work, accepting payment from American Express cards right off the bat is a good idea.
Long story short, when it comes to receiving payment on your website, expect some planning and research. Side note: don’t forget to factor in taxes, inventory management, account management, invoicing, etc. etc.
Ecommerce payment processing options for your website
To receive payments from your website, which option should you choose? One of the best ways to find out is to learn from others with experience.
I am planning to do a series of ecommerce interviews with various local businesses. If you have a business that accepts payments on your website and would like to share your experience, I’d love to hear from you.
Amazon’s Kindle was sold out in 5.5 hours — praise for the design team?
(Credit: Amazon)
Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader sold out in 5.5 hours, yet it has received absolutely abysmal product reviews from the blogosphere. What do you think: Should Amazon continue to praise its design anyways?
This is a tough management issue to deal with. To be exceptional, Amazon needs to be honest with itself and make the necessary corrections immediately.
On an more practical note, Robert Scoble has just posted this excellent video rant on what’s wrong with it. I think it’s one of his best critics/blogs yet. If you care about usability, design, product launch execution, etc., it is an great critique along with suggestions on how to fix the problems.
Majority of users on Facebook are women
Bet you weren’t expecting that! The ladies are consistently the large majorities of users in every country.
Here are some totals and percentages:
- World total: 43 million users (63% women)
- US total: 18 million users (60% women)
- Canada total: 6.6 million users (67% women)
The TechCrunch post sourced it from Paul Francis’ post.
This is an interesting statistic to consider when building your social network applications.
(Credit: Paul Francis. Click to see the entire table.)