They look gorgeous, no doubt.  Check out this trailer from Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.  Click the full screen button to see the full impact.  It’s really darned impressive.

Don’t expect to see a lot of Canadian high definition content, however.   Not that there aren’t people in this country shooting high definition video, who might have a strong desire to share that video.  It’s simply a matter of bandwidth and usage caps. All broadband providers in Canada, excepting a few small outfits in Vancouver, cap usage at between 50 and 150G of transfer per month, and restrict upload speeds to under 1 megabit per second, except Shaw who have raised their upload limit to a meagre 2 megabits.  We’d be in our graves before YouTube received our videos at these speeds.

Pathetic, no? Even worse, most of the small business offerings from these providers consist of repackaged residential service, with a better service agreement and a higher price.

Does it matter if a few people can’t upload video?  Perhaps not, unless you’re a Canadian culture supporter or Heritage Minister James Moore.  But what about the other impacts of capped usage and restricted upload bandwidth – the economic and environmental impacts?  Applications like VPN, remote desktop, and VoIP are the cornerstones of telecommuting strategies.  Those applications are dependent on high speed upload as well as download.  When telecommuting is impaired, it has an economic impact to business, and an environmental impact on society.  We should all care about that!

So how about it Rogers, Bell, Telus, Shaw and Videotron?  Download speeds have increased steadily over the last decade, but we’ve had upload speeds of under 1Mbs since the dawn of broadband.  Shouldn’t we have better?

We’re probably paying more on Bell, but I don’t really know how much more.  With Bell we’re paying $25 per month to get unlimited long distance (yeah – over 40,000 minutes), and we’re paying for some additional features.  Mookie argued that hardly anybody ever uses more than 1,000 minutes per month.  1,000 minutes is nearly 17 hours of calling.  He’s probably right that we would never use more than 1,000 minutes, especially considering that I already spend $5/month with my mobile plan to get 1,000 minutes long distance on that phone.  Woe betide you if you use more than the 1,000 minutes however – Uncle Ted’s rate on overage is a steep $.12/minute.

I didn’t take him up on his offer. 

“Mookie”, I said “my home phone bill just isn’t painful enough for me to switch.  Now, if you could do something about my outrageous monthly mobile bill, or the ridiculous price I pay for substandard broadband, then we’d be in business.”  Mookie demurred, saying that he only represented the home phone service. 

The hassles associated with porting our number, the equipment installation, and the things I’ve heard about Rogers Home Phone incompatibilities with security systems were enough to dissuade me.  If Google Voice ever comes to Canada with number portability, we might reconsider.  For now, however, we’ll pay a couple bucks extra per month and stick with the Bell system.

I suspect that there are a lot of people like us out there.  When Vonage came to Canada people flocked to sign up, us included.  Bell responded some months later with the current $25 all you can eat plan, which stemmed that tide.  Rogers is going to have to do something equally dramatic in order to win market share.  How about home phone on cable with unlimited long distance across North America for $10/month, no system access fee, and features that Bell not only doesn’t have but probably can’t easily provide? $40/month, however, is just too little, too late.

What do you think?  Would you switch?  Or does Rogers have to do more to win your business?

In this sequence, two knights charge at each other.  On contact, the blue knight’s lance is shattered in his hand, and the remains of the lance are seen in the next photograph, as the knight mounted on the white horse rides past the broken lance.

In this sequence, the knight on the white horse has struck the blue knight in the helmet with this lance.  You can see the shattered handle in his hands, as well as the wood flexing as the lance glances off the helmet of the blue knight, and the shattered pieces fly away.

And in this short video shot from my iPhone using QiK, both knights are unhorsed.

The Medieval Festival continues tomorrow at Upper Canada Village.  It’s a cheap and thrilling way to spend a family afternoon. Jousts, hand to hand combat, trebuchets, and more. Highly recommended.

May 19, the Canadian Advanced Technology Association held its annual award dinner.  Held at the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa, this $200/seat event was well attended.  More importantly, although I thought I knew of most of the players in the Canadian tech space, 75% of the awards went to groups that I had never heard of.

May 20, the Ottawa Network held its second Founders and Funders dinner happened downtown at the Velvet Room. This mixer is designed to put entrepreneurs and VC’s together over drinks and dinner for an evening of networking. There were a lot of new startups.  More importantly, 8 VC’s were present, and 7 of them were from outside Ottawa.  Although the local venture community has disappeared, Waterloo, Montreal and Toronto are moving in to fill the gap.

May 22, the National Angel Capital Organization is holding its Spring 2009 Co-Investment Summit in Toronto.  This fabulous event brings together individual angel investors, angel investment groups, and entrepreneurs for a day of networking and pitching.  Look for Calliflower at that event.  Our presentation will be in the afternoon.

If you have an interest in Canadian tech businesses, visit the new SCAN and let Tony know what you think.

At first I was puzzled.   After all, why should the President of OCAD care about venture funding and innovation cycles in the technology market?  After reading some of Ms. Diamond’s speeches on the OCAD website, however, it’s obvious where she’s coming from.  For her, design is one of the pillars of innovation.  As Canadian technology businesses like Nortel collapse,  I’ll wager that she’s thinking about her future graduates.  After all OCAD will have a problem if they flood the market with bright young design graduates with no job opportunities.

Good on you Sara Diamond.  I’m looking forward to reading more of what you have to say. 

It’s free, but there are only 30 seats available.  If this sounds like something you’d want to do, then get your application in quickly.

Call for talented technology individuals to join Lead to Win

If you are serious about starting a profitable tech-based business in the National Capital Region during the current economic situation, we invite you to apply to Lead to Win (LTW).

The first LTW training session starts May 19, 2009. If you have what it takes, we encourage you to apply immediately. To apply online, please go to www.leadtowin.ca.

LTW is the premier program for talented technology individuals who wish to establish and grow successful businesses in the National Capital Region.

Lead to Win (LTW) is free. In May and June we are investing in 30 talented individuals; each is expected to establish a technology business that can employ at least six knowledge workers over the next three years. We plan to repeat this investment six times during the economic downturn.

LTW has three phases. In the first phase, you provide contact information and answer ten questions. Participants will be selected based on their experience, commitment, and opportunity profile. In the second phase, you participate in an intense six day training program where you will learn how to lever business ecosystems, profitably serve attractive vertical markets, and the key factors that contribute to the ultimate success of a fledgling technology company. Upon completion of this second phase, you will be invited to launch your new technology businesses in the National Capital Region.  In the third phase, LTW connects you to strategic customers, revenue opportunities, and individuals, companies and organizations that can provide requisite resources, including capital. You keep all rights over your business.

The 2009 LTW program builds on the highly successful 2002 LTW program. LTW leverages the assets of the Talent First Network, alumni from the 2002 Lead To Win program, community expertise, and faculty members and graduate students of Carleton University’s Technology Innovation Management program (www.carleton.ca/tim).

Contact:

Tony Bailetti at Bailetti@sce.carleton.ca or call 613 829 8885.

Gladwell will be hosted by The United Way | Centraide.  When I asked them what the connection was between the United Way and Gladwell, they replied:

“the United Way | Centraide Ottawa have taken a leadership role in the community and we are showcasing people that we believe contributes as a community builder. This is someone who has left an imprint of their work and could inspire the rest of the community to become involved and play their own role in making Ottawa a stronger community.”

Packages of tickets, and a limited number of individual tickets are available now. 

Let’s face it.  The funding environment in Canada is a mess.  Mark isn’t saying anything new when the best option an entrepreneur has for financing is to appear as a contestant on the Dragon’s Den.

There is innovation happening here in Canada.  I’m not sure whether the current conversation has done anything to move the funding situation forward, however.  And does it really matter?  Most entrepreneurs seem to have moved on from the fantasy of a fat VC cheque to the reality of bootstrapping and angels.

Perhaps the best commentary of all has been offered by Suzie Dingwall Williams.  On her blog, Venture Law Lines, she writes about the just announced Ontario Emerging Technology Fund, saying:

…in the last two years, most of the province’s most promising entrepreneurs have designed and built emerging businesses specifically so they will not need to access venture capital that has not been there. If the provincial government is serious about preserving the current generation of entrepreneurs, then it needs to make sure that those who are in the market today can access ETF funds.

Suzie recommends visiting the ETF home page, and using the “comment” link at the bottom of the page to send email asking for insight and an opportunity to comment on the investment guidelines before they’re released.

Smart advice indeed.

Poilievre is asking Google to testify before Parliament, as part of an effort to overhaul Canadian privacy legislation.  He’d like to know what happens to those photographs, where they are stored, and what is being done to protect Canadian’s privacy. 

As we speed toward the world of 1984, it’s good to see some of our politicians asking the right questions.  Poilievre’s committee should also examine the unrestricted use of surveillance cameras, internet service providers obligations, and a host of other privacy related issues that are cropping up as technology continues to advance at break-neck speed.