Victoria Entrepreneur’s Lunch–Hanging out with the cream of Victoria’s tech community
April 10, 2008 by Tris Hussey
Filed under Business News
By luck and happenstance (love that word) I was able to go to the Victoria Entrepreneur’s Lunch yesterday. Great time hanging out with techies for a while and talking tech.
The lunch is organized by Rian Bowden of DailySplice. Rian said it started small and informal and is now growing every month. There were 24 folks there yesterday. Which means if a truck drove into that corner of the Old Spaghetti Factory, Victoria’s tech sector would be pretty much wiped out in one fell swoop!
I say that it’s luck that I went because I happened to decide that yesterday would be the day I visited Flock North and hang out with Joshua McKenty and Mark Lise. Turns out Rian had been sending emails to an address I can’t get to anymore (my old One By One Media one, so please update your addressbooks to my gmail or b5media address) so Joshua said are you going to the entrepreneur’s lunch and I said “ahroo?”.
Rian is going to have them about once a month email him at rian [at] dailysplice [dot] com to get on the list for when the next one.
Speaking of Rian I need to try DailySplice now that it’s out in the wild. He told me about it under NDA a while ago (blognation days), now I need to try it and blog it.
Another outcome of visiting Flock was, well, trying Flock again. My only stumbling block was the blog this extension for Windows Live Writer … but with some help from Joe Cheng I got it figured out and it’s working!
Since I liked Flock before and I found it faster than Firefox, I’m using Flock now. I think I’m going to like it. Not to mention I’m using a “local” piece of software!
The rest of my pictures from the lunch are in my Victoria Entrepreneur’s Lunch Flickr set.
You want it now, but it’s not in stock? Then Buy It Later can help
April 9, 2008 by Tris Hussey
Filed under Business News
One of the cool things demoed at DemoCampVictoria–Success at DemoCampVictoria01–My thoughts from last night–was Joshua McKenty’s Buy it later. Joshua developed and pushed BountyUp for a long time, but on a whim one night decided to tackle a simple problem: you want to buy something at Amazon and it’s out of stock, why do you do? Joshua created a simple Firefox/Flock extension that let’s you click a button and have a service tell you when it’s available. If it is available, but you just want the best price, the Buy It Later will tell you when the price changes.
So let’s walk through it…
First you go to the But It Later home page and click the button to install the extension in Firefox or Flock:
After the standard install, restart reopen procedure, you’ll be asked to put in your email address. Now if you use Twitter, use that email address.
Now you’re set to go shopping. If you’d like, for example, Darren Rowse’s book, ProBlogger secrets on Amazon
Note that little button on the right there? Can’t see it? Let me zoom in for you:
You click the button and then get an email to confirm this and that’s it really. When the item is in stock or the price changes, you’ll be notified via email or Twitter. That simple. When you buy the item, the link is through Joshua’s Amazon affiliate id so he earns a commission. Of course this doesn’t change the price you pay, it just helps fund this cool effort.
Joshua has over 800 accounts already and, yes, he’s making money through Amazon affiliate links. I have some cool insight into what is coming up for the extension, but I’ll wait until it’s announced then I’ll give you details.
In fact, what is planned is very cool and collaborative and … innovative.
So why buy it now, when you can Buy It Later?
Photo/image credits:
Canadian companies in the Webware 100
March 3, 2008 by Tris Hussey
Filed under Business News
Checking out the list of the Webware 100 Finalist list I noticed several familiar names…
CoverItLive
Publishing & PhotographyFlickr
Publishing & PhotographyWordPress
Publishing & PhotographySource: All the Webware 100 finalists in one place | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone
Okay I know that Flickr, Flock, StumbleUpon, and WordPress aren’t Canadian per se, but Flickr and SU were born here and both Flock and WordPress have folks up here.
Still this list is very impressive. CoverItLive is one of my new fav online apps. If I have a solid net connection at a conference, be sure I’ll be using it to cover the sessions.
There are also several companies on the list who aren’t Canadian, but are ones I really like:
Feedburner
Publishing & Photography
Congratulations to all the finalists … this is a great time to try a new app or three. Sure some of the folks (IE, Yahoo, and all the Live services) are nothing terribly new or innovative, but they do influence the Internet and how we use it.
Update: Thanks to Greg at TechVibes for pointing out that I missed Toronto-based Octopz in my list of Canadian companies. Cool, another company to check out!
