Finally one of the biggest players in the web portals dedicated a special efforts to create a Canadian financial portal to monitor the Canadian market that is considered minor as compared to the South neighbor.
This is good news for Canadian students who are not sure where to find up to date Canadian market data and strive to collect data about Canadian stocks and derivatives here and there.
Official Google Blog: Google Finance in Canada - for real
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Monday, July 16, 2007
PHP Cow: A User perspective (Highly negative experience)
I was looking to buy a news script for a client to be used as a News manager and some other content issues. Looking at the features list of phpcow and the example templates, the script looked promising.
I registered for a trial account and tried to implement a new template. A lot of inconveniences because of the image path and other limitations. However, I put an order to buy the script hoping that a fully installed script would not have all these shortcomings.
Here started my negative experience. They claim to send the license within 24 hours but it took them 72 hours to send it to me. Their after sales support is too fast to be true. It needs almost a day to answer an email. They fix the license for an absolute URL and it does now work for any directory within the licensed URL. It should be always at the root of this URL. You can not even test it on a test server.
They claim client's satisfaction but there is no refund policy even though their script is encoded and one can not use it at all without the license. Still, bad luck if you buy it.
I suggest that one asks a lot of questions before registering a sale and wish you best luck if you got into this trap also.
I registered for a trial account and tried to implement a new template. A lot of inconveniences because of the image path and other limitations. However, I put an order to buy the script hoping that a fully installed script would not have all these shortcomings.
Here started my negative experience. They claim to send the license within 24 hours but it took them 72 hours to send it to me. Their after sales support is too fast to be true. It needs almost a day to answer an email. They fix the license for an absolute URL and it does now work for any directory within the licensed URL. It should be always at the root of this URL. You can not even test it on a test server.
They claim client's satisfaction but there is no refund policy even though their script is encoded and one can not use it at all without the license. Still, bad luck if you buy it.
I suggest that one asks a lot of questions before registering a sale and wish you best luck if you got into this trap also.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Free services fever
Another company is following the Google trend in creating a value for free on the net in order to attract more eyeballs for a paid service that is already established.
viatalkfree.com is another service that comes to clients without stealing their personal information or pushing them to register and get scammed with a lot of newsletters.
You can come to the site, no login, no registration and get 10 minutes of free talk.
The shortcoming are not that many but worth of mentioning. There is help or instructions on the format of the numbers and what is allowed or what is working. For example, I could not use it with international numbers. I expect this to be blocked but it would be nicer to have a list of countries that one can call.
In not nice to see people getting back the internet?
viatalkfree.com is another service that comes to clients without stealing their personal information or pushing them to register and get scammed with a lot of newsletters.
You can come to the site, no login, no registration and get 10 minutes of free talk.
The shortcoming are not that many but worth of mentioning. There is help or instructions on the format of the numbers and what is allowed or what is working. For example, I could not use it with international numbers. I expect this to be blocked but it would be nicer to have a list of countries that one can call.
In not nice to see people getting back the internet?
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Google in the Entreprise: Postini and Sugar??
Official Google Blog: Welcome, Postini team
A lot of analysts felt the threat that Google is brining into Microsoft main segment (Desktop Applications). With Postini Google got 10 million enterprise users for $625M only which means $62.5/user which less than 20% of what TD bank is paying to acquire a new individual client.
Is this a real threat to Microsoft? Not currently because this company is very small compared to the behemoth that Microsoft represents. However this is a sign only that Google has been working into this market for a while shopping for correct targets. Based on my experience when I was following the IT acquisition of Google, I expect that the huge shot is on the way and we would see Google putting at least $2 billions to acquire one of the most successfully enterprise management startups.
Why?
Google put $1.5 for Youtube which did not have a clear revenue model. So imagine how much they would pay for a company that would bring at least a billion dollar yearly.
Why I expect Google to acquire Sugar CRM?
Simple, Google is supporting a lot of the open source activities and Sugar has established its position is the throat cutting market of CRM applications. The beauty of CRM is the coherence with Google in the development culture and the coincidence that it is aligned with the line of business Google is targeting.
When this might happen?
I expect it to jump up around early 2008.
A lot of analysts felt the threat that Google is brining into Microsoft main segment (Desktop Applications). With Postini Google got 10 million enterprise users for $625M only which means $62.5/user which less than 20% of what TD bank is paying to acquire a new individual client.
Is this a real threat to Microsoft? Not currently because this company is very small compared to the behemoth that Microsoft represents. However this is a sign only that Google has been working into this market for a while shopping for correct targets. Based on my experience when I was following the IT acquisition of Google, I expect that the huge shot is on the way and we would see Google putting at least $2 billions to acquire one of the most successfully enterprise management startups.
Why?
Google put $1.5 for Youtube which did not have a clear revenue model. So imagine how much they would pay for a company that would bring at least a billion dollar yearly.
Why I expect Google to acquire Sugar CRM?
Simple, Google is supporting a lot of the open source activities and Sugar has established its position is the throat cutting market of CRM applications. The beauty of CRM is the coherence with Google in the development culture and the coincidence that it is aligned with the line of business Google is targeting.
When this might happen?
I expect it to jump up around early 2008.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Canada and Quebec Days
Coming from the middle east, I can understand the separation syndromes that people would have when they think that their national directions can not go with the path of the confederacy. Arabs themselves had a lot of national splits and units.
However, the issue in Canada is different because there is not much linkage between the diverse groups that constitutes each province and the country in general. Though, Quebecers are still praising the idea of having a "souverain" country for themselves.
Immagive that the closest neighbour of US having their own territory with all the tension between the Quebecers and their South neighbours. I do not think G.W. Bush is going to spare any chance to invade the new territory to promote his own Texan Democracy. I bet that Condy would love to come and take over the rules in Quebec as well.
On Canada day, I would love to praise the Quebec love for freedom and liberty. However, I think that what Canada and Quebec needs more is to look down the road to get rid of the debt being accumulated and establish a solid relations for a win win situations for both of them. Quebec might be able to survive out of Canada but it would be hard to sustain the same level of luxury.
However, the issue in Canada is different because there is not much linkage between the diverse groups that constitutes each province and the country in general. Though, Quebecers are still praising the idea of having a "souverain" country for themselves.
Immagive that the closest neighbour of US having their own territory with all the tension between the Quebecers and their South neighbours. I do not think G.W. Bush is going to spare any chance to invade the new territory to promote his own Texan Democracy. I bet that Condy would love to come and take over the rules in Quebec as well.
On Canada day, I would love to praise the Quebec love for freedom and liberty. However, I think that what Canada and Quebec needs more is to look down the road to get rid of the debt being accumulated and establish a solid relations for a win win situations for both of them. Quebec might be able to survive out of Canada but it would be hard to sustain the same level of luxury.
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