I am stoked to share with you the re-launched namescout.com. Our team worked super hard to bring it together & the re-launch marks the beginning of  new era for the momentous registrar group.

The project involved many teammates from momentous.ca, and sleek design/intro video by mad.ca.  Great work!

We are super happy to announce DemoCampOttawa 13.

• Date: April 15, 2010 – 6pm to 9pm
• Location: ClockTower Brew Pub (575 Bank St. and 417, downstairs)
• Format: 5 demos: 2 minute introduction, 8 minute demo, 5 minutes for Q&A and discussion

To sign up your demo and for more information: http://barcamp.pbworks.com/DemoCampOttawa13

Sign-up to attend: http://guestlistapp.com/events/18768

Hope to see you there.

That said, we are looking to add a few more people to our team in Ottawa.  If you are down with all things interweb, you love load-balancing, working on sites which get a tonne of traffic, and you roll with ASP.Net, SQL Server, and jQuery, then you are a match.  Come join our team.

We are always looking for good people, but we are going to fill these roles immediately:

• Director, Software Development
• Quality Assurance Analyst
• Junior Developer

Submit your resume through the site or fire it over to me (rob.villeneuve@momentous.ca) and I will put in a good word for you.  Also, stay in the loop our careers page.  Hope to hear from you.

The Gotcha!

If you copy your link into the visual editor, the editor my may surround it with the HTML tags, and the oEmbed tag may not work as expected.

The easy solution is to paste your link into the HTML view, and to double check that your oEmbed link is:

1. On its own line in the HTML Source
2. Is not surrounded by tags which may interfere with oEmbed

If all else fails, try surrounding the link with the short code.

The stash bash was a blast as always, and I made it to the final 4 with my character Randy Marsh from Southpark.

Paul Gallipeau of lechampoindumonde.com captured the mayhem with some amazing photographs.  You can see the Paul’s M4K photos on flickr.

For those of you who were to chicken to grow this year, hopefully you learned your lesson and see how much fun you are missing.  M4K 2010 will start October 2010, so be ready.

Learn how you can help without growing a stache.

My good friend Lisa Catana has launched a website called inboccaallupo.ca which showcases Lisa’s wicked photography.

Lisa did a fantastic job, and is not only responsible for the wonderful photography, but also the identity and web design.   My part was to help her with the interaction and quickly stitch it all together.

Lisa has gorgeous photography prints for sale, and if you are interested just contact her directly. Also, her work is on display at the Crawford Alexander Gallery until later this week.

Lisa Catana – InboccaAlLupo – Exit Strategy
Crawford Alexander Gallery
1112 Wellington Street West
Ottawa, On

It is that time of year again where we all man-up and grow a fierce stache for the kids.  Last year M4K Ottawa raised $20,000 for the Make a Wish Canada through pledges and brave growers.

Clean-Shave Day Meetup
Friday, October 30 @ 7:00pm
Clocktower Brew Pub
(575 Bank St.)

Website: www.m4kottawa.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/groups.php?ref=sb#/group.php?gid=190607961123&ref=ts

October 19, 2009 from 6pm to 9pm at the Clocktower Brew Pub, 575 Bank Street, Ottawa.
Sign up to attend | DemoCamp 12 wiki

Woo Hoo! DemoCamp Ottawa is back after a summer break.  I recently cornered Mark Stephenson to tell him I am dying for another Demo Camp. In true community fashion he told me to get off my butt and help. So, besides a little labor I offered the following rant.

What is your business plan?

The recent Demo Camp Ottawa measuring stick.  A question which comes from a genuine place,  serves as a reality check to the business model ignorant, and offers comfort to those with nothing worth demonstrating. It can be sobering, like when the Dragon’s Den crushes your dreams in order to save you time & money in the long run.  However; in my opinion, asking a bedroom/basement/garage developer for his business plan or monetization strategy is simply not rewarding.   These presenters are full of passion and have come not only to share their work, but a story of motivation, design decisions, comprises, challenges conquered,  and lesson’s learned. Yet we routinely ask them to prove their project’s value in market terms and fail to dive into the truly interesting and en-lighting parts of their story.

Demo Camp is about sharing and feedback.  So in the spirit of collaboration and keeping things interesting, I propose that we avoid the business plan question in favor of questions regarding the work itself.  There may be the odd demo with  a mind blowing business plan, but in that case I am sure the presenter will mention it.  If the presenter tells you he is going to make it rich off of his work, you have my support in asking how they plan to do so.  Otherwise, lets appreciate the projects for what they are, and not focus on their potential shortcomings as businesses.

Your thoughts?

I have noticed that many professional photographers have been using split toning for very pleasing effects with their  photos. In fact, split toning has probably reached the point of overdone, which means it is time for me to learn it. I used the split toning feature in Adobe Lightroom and whipped up these in a matter of minutes. Would you like to know how you can do this too? Watch Yanik’s Split Toning in Lightroom tutorial and learn all you need to know about the split toning tool in Lightroom.

Time for more research so I can master my mimicry technique.