People who think that the startup climate in Canada might need some help, well I think this announcement should suggest otherwise:

Today we are announcing that we have taken an initial round of financing to expand StartupNorth, launch new startup focused projects and to further expand our blog-related publishing business. Most of you are aware of our first addition to the SUN network: wirelessnorth.ca Source: StartupNorth » Blog Archive » We are funded! StartupNorth takes a $3.2 million series A financing

Congrats to Jevon and David.  Now, given the hints that they’ve purchased some blog networks and have cool things in the works…I’m expecting some good scoops.

Come on you can’t just promote on your blog!

Update: Ha, ha joke’s on me I guess.  Man I hate April 1st.  Note new picture.  I though it fitting ;).

Photo by Tris Hussey

As I arrived in Vancouver on Wednesday, I got an email from Keith of CoverItLive giving me a heads up on some new features that are now live…and these features rock!

If you’re a CIL user you might have received the email from Keith, but if you didn’t here are the new features:

New Features:

• Quick Launch:  If you are covering breaking news or just need to start live blogging ASAP, Quick Launch (in the My Account section) let’s you launch a live blog immediately.  Just paste the Viewer Window on your blog and start.
• Panelist/Producer (multi-authored live blogging):  A much requested feature, “Can I have more than one author on my live blog?”.  Now, it’s as simple as sending an email to your Panelists (people who will ONLY write commentary) or Producers (people who can do everything you can do including approve reader comments and launch multimedia).  Very useful for live blogs with big readership or for running a Q&A session.
• ‘Always Allow’ Reader Comments:  Another popular request was to allow some reader comments to automatically publish without moderation.  Great for trusted readers or new readers who have great insights to share with everyone else.  This takes some of the burden off the writer of the live blog.  A maximum of 10 readers can be classified as ‘Always Allow’ per live blog (because more than that, and the live blog will become unwatchable for all of the disjointed commentary).
• Standby Mode:  Instead of launching several different live blogs to cover multi-day or long events, users can now put their live blog into Standby Mode.  This lets them take long breaks and disconnect, then come back any time within 48 hours to continue.  While in Standby, their readers can catch up on what has happened so far.  A great feature for conference attendees or ‘all day sports’ live blogs.  When you combine this feature with the new Panelist feature, round the clock coverage becomes simple.  Standby Mode will also automatically activate if a user has been disconnected for 30 consecutive minutes.
• Edit Completed Live Blogs:  Great for fixing typos or deleting unwanted entries.  Go to My Account/Completed Live Blogs and clean up your completed live blog.  All changes are immediately published in your Instant Replay.
• Download Completed Live Blogs:  For those who would rather store their live blogs locally, go to My Account/Completed Live Blogs and download your live blog for posting on your site.
• Syndication:  Although CoveritLive live blogs could always be syndicated to other sites and blogs, we have never really talked about this feature.  If you have other sites willing to ‘carry’ your live blog, simply give them the embed code (the code you paste on your site) to paste on theirs.  This lets them keep their readers on their own site while opening up your live blog to a wider audience.  Imagine sharing live blogs across a blog network or across multiple newspaper sites.

Chatting with folks at SXSW about CIL–I never pass up a chance to talk it up–some folks didn’t know that you could download the code and others wanted to be able to edit the post later.  Well the editing is there.  The download is there.  The multi-author capabilities, wow, that adds a whole new aspect to live blogging.  Imagine having a group of people live blog the same session or panel.  Talk about a range of perspectives!  I think I have to try this at my next conference.

CoverItLive just keeps raising the bar, imho, for live blogging.  Also in the email from Keith is some techie facts that their pure AJAX interface is now augmented with some HTTP streaming so they can handle hundreds of thousands of connections to your live blog (oh I wish I were that popular).

There are hints at the end of the email that they are working on ways to integrate CIL with popular apps and blogging platforms.  I’m hoping for a WP and WLW plugin to make the Quick Launch even quicker.

One of the misconceptions that I think people have about CIL and live blogging is that you have to write short bits, stream of consciousness blogging.  Totally not true.  I mix it up when I blog with stream of consciousness and more thoughtful things.

At SXSW blogging the online advertising panel, I found another really cool part of CIL…questions for the panel/speaker from readers!   Sam Harrelson asked several questions through CIL that I was able to ask for him, and type back the answers.

Keith was keeping the future plans close to his vest, but I’m sure I can drag something out of him soon enough.

What are you waiting for to try CIL?

I’m heading to SXSW in the morning.  But before I do, and before I start my SXSW coverage, oh yes there will be blogging–and pictures!, wanted to mention the recent news about LearnHub:

• LearnHub.com launches - Teach and Learn Online | StartupNorth
• Victoria Start-ups get Press | Techvibes Blog
• LearnHub Launches, looks great » ThomasPurves.com

I gave LearnHub a quick look today–not nearly long enough I think–and read the coverage and I’m pretty interested and intrigued.  You all know that I’m a big advocate of not only life-long learning, but also leveraging technology to make education more accessible to all.  From what I’ve seen so far, it looks like LearnHub has a lot to offer.  Its model, at least on the surface, is similar to OneBigU.  Granted OneBigU focuses on answering specific questions and LearnHub is about courses, but the idea is that people contribute to the learning of all.

Crowdsourcing education–sounds good to me.

Ontogenix, according to their homepage, wants to become something new in the social media ad space: “Ontogenix is focused on becoming the leading, trusted social media advertising company.”  From StartupNorth, now they have some money to help them meet that goal:

Ontogenix is raising the round to go to market with their first product, an Interest Correlation Engine. The technology is designed to increase the relevance of ads presented on social media sites (e.g. Facebook, MySpace, etc.) by targeting users based on their individual interests. The company searches for information on the general public’s interests, attitudes, and opinions on hundreds of publicly available sources such as social networks, blogs, and forums. This information, collected in aggregate to preserve user privacy, is then combined with the company’s proprietary data model to form the basis for a predictive engine that can tell advertisers which ads will have high relevance to different types of users. Source: Ontogenix raises funding from GrowthWorks | StartupNorth

GrowthWorks is a good group.  They do take some decent risks, but betting on social media advertising isn’t that much of a risk really is it?  I wonder if their technology will be able to help improve ads on blogs.  Sure Facebook is hot, and so is MySpace but I want to believe that they are thinking of and working on something more generic.  You have to bet on the technologies on the specific tools to be successful.  Facebook is a tool social media is the technology.

I also hope that we can start pushing the boundaries beyond the standard ads into something more interesting and unique.  What?  I have no idea…maybe Ontogenix does though ;).

Update: Just after hitting publish I saw Rob’s coverage on Techvibes … good read as well

Got a cool email today about a new site/service that let’s people in urban areas who have an extra parking space (driveway, etc) offer it for rent to people who need a place to park:

Why not park on someone else’s driveway for less? Source: ParkingHunter.com: Hundreds of parking owners across North America are making extra cash with ParkingHunter.com

I took a quick look at the offerings for Vancouver (there are also searches for Toronto, New York, Calgary, Boston, Montreal, Chicago, San Francisco, and other cities as well):

Looks like pretty decent coverage of the city.  The shot above is around the downtown core is where I would need to go when I go to Vancouver.  The premise here is pretty simple: you have a space that people can use to park, and you offer it for use.  Some of these might be free (use my driveway, I’m not there) or rental (daily, weekly, monthly) but if you know that you have a space to park, and near where you need to be, that is a lot of stress off your mind when driving into the city.

Of course there could start to be a bidding war for spaces in coveted areas, and I’m not sure if this is capitalism at its best or worst, but if parking is at a premium already…

If you have a space would you rent it or just let people park in your driveway for free?

I’ve been keeping an eye on Mark and company over at PlanetEye since their beta launch.  I haven’t been in a while, but I did know about the local guides plan…because I know the woman covering Vancouver (I don’t know if she is written publicly there yet, so I won’t out her).

Local guides are what, imho, is going to make PlanetEye cool.  Yeah you want to see the sights of a city.   Sure we want to know about the restaurants and places to see, but what you really want is the inside scoop.  When is the best time to get to the museum?  Where is that little hidden gem of a restaurant you’d never walk into without knowing about it?  This is the plan for the local guides:

A quick look through our website metrics is enough to conclude that our users spend about half their time in our map. We have to admit it was designed for its coolness factor and at least at first sight it is one of the most interesting features of our site. Yet, our philosophy on learning about a destination calls for deep knowledge that originates from passionate locals, so we have been working very hard to release a feature that we hope we’ll be a great research tool for travelers: the Local Expert Guide. Source: PlanetEye » Blog Archive » New in Beta: Local Expert Guides

While is sounds like a great idea, and I think it’s an great idea, the key will be making sure the local guides get enough content in there, enough hidden gems, to keep people coming back.

I’ll be dusting off my beta login to take a gander ….

I got a cool e-mail from the team at FreshBooks this morning.  Wait, cool email from the company you send invoices through?  Umm, Tris what’s in your coffee, buddy, you might be thinking.  Well first I like to hear from the companies and services I use and support.  Especially when I get tips, tricks and a little behind the scenes information.  The FreshBooks Supper Club, launched today, is a nice little notice.  Couple tips, a customer spotlight (and who doesn’t like that), and a bit of tongue-in-cheek talk about their upcoming road trip:

That being said we at FreshBooks are not quitters. Once we put our mind to something we pretty much run with it… so we have rented us a pretty sweet “large” RV and will be driving from The Future of Web Apps conference (February 29 – March 1, 2008) in Miami, Florida all the way to South by Southwest (March 7–11, 2008) in Austin, Texas with some very clear goals:

Meet as many users as we can, introduce the “south” to FreshBooks and what we offer, eat a Texas-sized donut, eat a country fried steak, get interviewed on a small town “morning show” (I am looking at you WPMI in Mobile, Alabama), pick up a hitchhiker, and of course, we want to be elected POTUS. Source: FreshBooks is hitting the campaign trail!

I’ve done that drive.  Well a lot of it anyway.  Lots of cool stuff to see (I did Virginia to New Mexico when I was in the Scouts).  Guys, let me tell you, Texas is a lot bigger than it looks!  The trek is supposed to be a faux Presidential race, however none of them can run for office–but I can.  Hmm, maybe I could be the FreshBooks nominee for President?

The FreshBooks team has also started tweeting, follow them on Twitter, hmm wonder was a twitter invoice would be.  “Give me money, please” in 140 characters or less.  Yeah sure.  Now do you do that as an @ reply or DM?