Glenn Ballman from Saskatchewan instantly became the richest man in Canada when his company Onvia.com went public in March 2000. Onvia.com has a strong Canadian content section under the name Onvia.CA.
ATI and Matrox are both Canadian companies, too.
However, I certainly agree with your assessment that Canada lacks an identity on the web.
The importance of a.CA name is that it indicates strictly Canadian content. To register a.CA domain one had to have offices in two provinces, or be federally incorporated, or have a trademark. Even so, only one domain name was allowed per organization. And the process takes well over a week.
Finally, after many years, this will change as of November 1st 2000 when any Canadian resident can register as many domains as she or he wants. Still, what about companies that did meet the requirement? Can you explain why (until recently) more Canadians bought books across the border from Amazon.com than from Chapters.CA? That has to do with marketing, plain and simple. Amazon was first to market and has built up an excellent user experience. I still go to Amazon for the reader's book reviews before buying from Chapters.
Perhaps more important that domain names is the issue of payment. Canadian banks have been slow to offer online credit card merchant account systems. Small companies just couldn't open a site and sell strictly to Canadians in Canadian dollars. Only the large bricks-and-mortar stores had the resources to implement online payment.
It's not an issue of consumers being scared away from online payments, either. Look how Canadians have taken to debit cards, telephone banking and online banking! We're ready to spend, but there's nowhere to go!
Regarding the observation that most US stores with Canadian locations don't have Canadian websites, don't forget that the Canadian operations are different entities, and make their own decisions independently from the parent company. It would be a poor business practice for a multinational to attempt to force its branches to be exactly like the US parent company, including selling online.
As the issues are addressed, I think we'll see more Canadian online e-tailers. Be prepared to invest in Canadian banks as they start to rake in more profits by offering easier online payment systems in the form of turnkey solutions for startup web companies.
Initially, the data lived in a $100,000 HP optical jukebox. When that got too small, we scrapped it and bought IBM 7133 disk arrays. Bare, before you put the first drive in the box, they cost $36,000. Each nine gig drive is $2,000. (Yes, I know you can get them cheaper. But not hot-swap, not with an IBM warrenty, etc.) When you hit 144 gig (9 gig by 16 drives), you've got to buy another 7133. In order to get good performance, you can't just RAID-5 everything in one big SSA loop. You have got to have multiple paths. Each enhanced SSA card is a few thousand dollars.
I diagree. Online secure storage is as cheap as we think. We just installed a 500 Gig RAID for US$20,000 for storing huge (and critical) medical images. Are you saying that if you were to provide all of the text of articles of a single daily newspaper back to the the late 70's, that it would require anything more than 500 Gig?
Sure, I'd go for charging for old stories. Possibly micropayments. As long as the links stay the same! You work for a newspaper. How can we convince newspapers and other media to do this?
No, no... send 14 people up and the loosers each week have to remain on board the clunky rustbucket until the next round!
The final looser remaining gets to be the one to steer the station on a crash-collision course with the Pacific Ocean. Re-entry must begin over North America at 8pm EST on a clear night.
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Glenn Ballman from Saskatchewan instantly became the richest man in Canada when his company Onvia.com went public in March 2000. Onvia.com has a strong Canadian content section under the name Onvia.CA.
ATI and Matrox are both Canadian companies, too.
However, I certainly agree with your assessment that Canada lacks an identity on the web.
David
The importance of a .CA name is that it indicates strictly Canadian content. To register a .CA domain one had to have offices in two provinces, or be federally incorporated, or have a trademark. Even so, only one domain name was allowed per organization. And the process takes well over a week.
Finally, after many years, this will change as of November 1st 2000 when any Canadian resident can register as many domains as she or he wants. Still, what about companies that did meet the requirement? Can you explain why (until recently) more Canadians bought books across the border from Amazon.com than from Chapters.CA? That has to do with marketing, plain and simple. Amazon was first to market and has built up an excellent user experience. I still go to Amazon for the reader's book reviews before buying from Chapters.
Perhaps more important that domain names is the issue of payment. Canadian banks have been slow to offer online credit card merchant account systems. Small companies just couldn't open a site and sell strictly to Canadians in Canadian dollars. Only the large bricks-and-mortar stores had the resources to implement online payment.
It's not an issue of consumers being scared away from online payments, either. Look how Canadians have taken to debit cards, telephone banking and online banking! We're ready to spend, but there's nowhere to go!
Regarding the observation that most US stores with Canadian locations don't have Canadian websites, don't forget that the Canadian operations are different entities, and make their own decisions independently from the parent company. It would be a poor business practice for a multinational to attempt to force its branches to be exactly like the US parent company, including selling online.
As the issues are addressed, I think we'll see more Canadian online e-tailers. Be prepared to invest in Canadian banks as they start to rake in more profits by offering easier online payment systems in the form of turnkey solutions for startup web companies.
David
The entire album was available in a usenet binaries.mp3 group a week before it was even released in stores! Why go after Napster?
Initially, the data lived in a $100,000 HP optical jukebox. When that got too small, we scrapped it and bought IBM 7133 disk arrays. Bare, before you put the first drive in the box, they cost $36,000. Each nine gig drive is $2,000. (Yes, I know you can get them cheaper. But not hot-swap, not with an IBM warrenty, etc.) When you hit 144 gig (9 gig by 16 drives), you've got to buy another 7133. In order to get good performance, you can't just RAID-5 everything in one big SSA loop. You have got to have multiple paths. Each enhanced SSA card is a few thousand dollars.
I diagree. Online secure storage is as cheap as we think. We just installed a 500 Gig RAID for US$20,000 for storing huge (and critical) medical images. Are you saying that if you were to provide all of the text of articles of a single daily newspaper back to the the late 70's, that it would require anything more than 500 Gig?
Sure, I'd go for charging for old stories. Possibly micropayments. As long as the links stay the same! You work for a newspaper. How can we convince newspapers and other media to do this?
The final looser remaining gets to be the one to steer the station on a crash-collision course with the Pacific Ocean. Re-entry must begin over North America at 8pm EST on a clear night.
I'm assuming that there are red, green and blue sensors on the chip that together make up a single pixel.
What if the readout could be modified? Could we then have a 50.4 megapixel grayscale chip?
At 22mm x 22mm it sounds like a contender for conventional 24 x 35mm film.
Here is Foveon's press release.