tekArtist

Yes! Praized Media, our Hub, Facebook application and other current integration options (API, plugins, etc) are now all live to the public and in full production gears. :)

Now Web publishers can easily write about local places while growing traffic and ad revenue. Praized is the first free local search platform designed specifically for social media sites like blogs, social networks and other online communities.

I said, back in January, how happy I was about joining the Praized team, and how much potential I was seeing in the company. Suffice to say, I’m just as ecstatic as I was back then, kicked up a notch or two.

Hey, maybe now I can reach inbox zero and start blogging again. ;-)

Edit: we’re getting some pretty good reviews so far. Crossing our fingers. Still work to do.

If you are using Amazon’s EC2 as a cloud hosting solution, you owe it to yourself to install the most excellent EC2 UI Firefox extension (source) to manage your server instances (note: not yet compatible with Firefox 3).

Now, if you also happen to be on Mac OS X, one annoying thing is that EC2 UI is configured by default to be used on Linux (and GNOME). Looking online, all I could find were questions on how to set EC2 UI on OS X to use the proper terminal and ssh, but no answer.

Fear not! Yours truly spent a few minutes on the case, and ended up finding a solution that is at least viable for myself, and will hopefully be for you as well. The trick is that I have X11 installed on my OS X box anyway, so I just use the binaries intended for this package.

There you have it. Now, I can right click on any instance listed in EC2 UI and select “SSH to Public DNS Name”. X11 and xterm are both seamlessly launched and proceed to log me into the desired instance.

From “UN Data: the Ultimate Research Tool - ReadWriteWeb“:

The new site at UN Data allows anyone to access the United Nations Data Access System. This online, easy-to-use database was created by the UN in order to provide current, relevant, and reliable statistics to the whole world, for free. Using UN Data, you can access statistical information on populations, demographics, trade, commodities, agriculture, employment, the environment, industry, education, tourism, and much more.

That’s awesome. CIA World Factbook 2.0 anyone?

The Blitzweekend was a success! You’ll soon be able to read more on their blog and Montreal Tech Watch, but in the meantime, here are the videos I shot of the demos that were given on day three (March 2nd).

1. Introduction
2. Noogl: WINNERS: Panel’s Choice
3. A2B
4. SneakSend
5. BlitzDirectory: WINNERS: People’s Choice
6. Reverse Payment system
7. Heron
8. Mandelbrot: 2nd most popular choice; my vote.
9. GoalR
10. Microfinancing for Macrolenders

And a few extra presentations, outside of the competition.

1. TikiWiki 1.10b
2. Digest (in French)
3. Business and Open Source Software

Congratulations to all the teams!

I went to film the Blitzweekend Kickstart event tonight (well, yesterday, technically). It’s now 4:15 AM and I am done cutting, converting and uploading the footage for your geeky and entrepreneurial viewing pleasure.

Blitzweekend is an unique experience where designers, developers, and entrepreneurs are challenged to create a working product in 48 hours […] Find a solution to a current problem, meet and innovate with bright creatives, work in an environment built for rapid development, and get feedback from experienced entrepreneurs.

1. Introduction (EN/FR)
   Introduction and last minute match ups.
2. Team Introduction (EN/FR)
   Organizers and Sponsors.
3. Rules and Principles (EN/FR)
   Question and Answers.
4. Presentation - Ben Yoskovitz (EN)
   Starting and raising money for a startup.
5. Presentation - David Fugère (FR)
   Utiliser Ruby on Rails pour programmer des applications Facebook.
6. Presentation - Matthew Harrison (EN)
   Financial and administrative pointers for startups.
7. Presentation - Arach Tchoupani (EN)
   The benefits of Python for rapid web applications development.
8. Presentation - Yann Rousselot-Pailley (FR)
   Aides et subventions gouvernementales pour entrepreneurs Québécois et Canadiens.
9. Presentation - Vincent Guyaux (EN)
   Panelist tips for the contestants.
10. Presentation - Alistair Croll (EN/FR)
    “Making it Viral” (English starts 3 min. in)

Mainly being on the techy side of things, I particularly enjoyed the more business oriented presentations given by Ben, Matthew, Yann and Alistair.

Good luck to all the participants! See you on Sunday, when I come to film the demos and the event’s conclusion.