Vancouver-based Strutta has finally launched to the world after being a hot presenter recently in Vancouver.  Strutta was on a lot of people’s lips at SXSW and I begged for an invite (yes, begged).  Jordan Behan emailed me last week with a heads up that they were launching today.
Other folks got in first with their reviews:
The Strutta site is built around the idea of online video competitions. Users can challenge each other in video-based Battle-Royales for bragging rights, nerd notoriety, and geek glory, or simply vote on entries in the various ongoing games. Source: Strutta Puts On Its Game Face
Techcrunch …read more

Although Josh thought I had forgotten about DemoCampVictoria in my last post about Canadian tech events I hadn’t but since it’s next week, now is a good time for a little update.
Checking out the wiki I see the following folks are on the docket to present:
Why DemoCampVictoria was created (Mark Lise)
Fortuno (Jesse and Jason)
Genetify (Andrew)
BountyUp – Social Commerce (Joshua McKenty and Todd Khozein)
DailySplice (Rian)
Flock – the social web browser (Clayton Stark and other flockers)
Songbird (Steven Bengtson and Peter Van Hardenberg) Source: BarCamp wiki / DemoCampVictoria01

I hadn’t checked out Songbird in a long time, but maybe it’s time to finally give …read more

At b5media we’ve been testing the PicApp service for months.  We know that having great images in posts is critical, especially for our Celebrity and Entertainment blogs.  More importantly, though, is having legal images for these posts.  Getting legal images of celebs, etc at a reasonable price is a difficult undertaking.  Then there is the whole area of images that are just illustrative of a concept…  Yes, stock photography is available, but managing licenses and rights across over 300 blogs is a nightmare.

This is why PicApp was so appealing to b5media.
Their service lets us find and include images from Getty …read more

Lee and Sachi posted another of their great “x in plain English” videos and today it’s Twitter–Video: Twitter in Plain English | Common Craft – Explanations In Plain English.

Since Lee and Sachi work really hard at keeping things simple, they missed what I like most about Twitter: fast information and connections.
Like this morning … I checked Twitter on my Blackberry (I use the mobile web interface) and saw that Kim Haynes wanted to know if folks would be into (and up for) a SXSW Tweet up on Saturday morning.  I sent her a direct message that, yes I would.
Mary Hodder …read more

While I’ve been catching up this week Strutta came out of stealth and Techvibes got the first post/scoop on this new online video-based game:
Strutta is an arena, a platform for video competitions, called “games”. A game is created with a theme, such as “Best George W. Bush Impression” or “Best Surprise Wedding Dance”. Users can submit videos for that theme, watch others, and vote which they think is the best.  A key rule is that a user must submit their own video: either they appear in it or are holding the camera. A broad set of categories makes space for …read more

In addition to what I do here at b5media, I’m also one of the Intruders.tv Canada.  While at DEMO I recorded several interviews and they are all ready to go up now.  The first of the 10 is xtranormal!
Interview with DEMOgod winners xtranormal

The remainder of the videos are going to go up over the rest of the week.  Just keep an eye there, I’m not going to post every video here, just my favourites.

Ottawa-based overlay.tv launched today with something that I think is pretty interesting and unique–letting users annotate and add to videos.
The idea is pretty simple (after you create an account) you find a video like on YouTube and put the URL into Overlay and then you, well, overlay stuff onto it.
Yeah I had a hard time grasping it too just reading it so here is there YouTube video (how they got the 70’s look I don’t think I want to know):

Okay you should have the idea now.  Once you create the overlay video, you then publish it and share it like …read more

You know that I am a huge fan of Kris Krug’s work.  I don’t think he’s taken a bad pic of me yet.  As I was skimming my feeds I saw this little baby:

Yep, that’s a pic by Vangroovy’s own Kris Krug there on the NatGeo website.  Some of us have to use the online fakery ones to live our NatGeo dreams (one day, one day) … but Kris gets to actually live it!
Congrats man.  Certainly an accolade long overdue.

Happy New Year all! Going to be an exciting year I can tell.  To start things off I’m going to get into the swing of doing a regular show on BlogTalkRadio here on Canadian tech-MapleLeaf2.0 Radio.  So I want to hear from you!  Lot’s of great tech in Canada so I’d like to chat with as many folks from Canadian tech start ups as I can.  If you want to be on the show, just leave a comment here or e-mail me at tris.hussey[at]b5media.com.
I won’t, of course, just talk about Canadian tech and social media-all manner of tech will be …read more

ScotiaBank, which has made its mark with the Money Clip podcast series, is moving into the online video market.
The bank’s first video podcast focuses on the importance of asset allocation and geographical representation. It features Fred Ketchen, ScotiaMcLeod Trading’s director of equity, and Bev Moir, a senior investment executive with ScotiaMcLeod Trading.
Scotiabank is also launching an interactive investor Web site that includes an interactive tool that helps investors calculate asset mix and foreign investments.