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https://blog.cogecopeer1.com/why-montreal-is-fast-emerging-as-canadas-cloud-hub?utm_campaign=FY16%20Inbound%20GLOBAL%20Mar%20Colocation%20Digital&utm_content=32715745&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin
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Greece | Oil | Keystone XL | RRSPs | BoC | Apple | Target | Bombardier How the falling loonie and low rates could lure more foreign investors to Canadian housing Republish Reprint Garry Marr | February 26, 2015 | Last Updated: Feb 26 7:12 PM ET More from Garry Marr | @DustyWallet Twitter Google+ LinkedIn Email Typo? More Jason Payne/Postmedia News, file Jason Payne/Postmedia News, fileLennon Sweeting, a Toronto-based dealer with US Forex which trades in currencies, says the loonie is making housing more attractive to foreign buyers. Canada’s two priciest housing markets may not need the boost, but Toronto and Vancouver could be on the verge of a spike in foreign investment. Toronto's rental market reborn as housing prices surge out of reach for many ‘There’s a huge demand for rental… We are seeing for the first time in 40 years people are starting to build rental,’ says managing director of Timbercreek Asset Management With the loonie falling about 10% against the U.S. dollar in the last six months, foreigners who have their money parked in greenbacks or in currencies pegged to the American dollar are likely to ramp up their interest in the Canadian marketplace, say industry experts. Alberta, which is now facing a crunch of new listings and weak demand, is unlikely to see any benefit as investors run away from the province over oil price fears. “The reputation of the oilpatch here has been tarnished a bit,” says Dan Scarrow, the Shanghai-based managing director of Canadian Real Estate Investment Centre, which was set up just two months ago, and is run by Vancouver-based Macdonald Real Estate Group. He says the opposite is true in Vancouver and Toronto, where prices in January were up 7.5% and 6.1% respectively from a year ago, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association. “With the Chinese economy slowing down a bit and with the Canadian dollar depreciating 20% versus the RMB, it might change the calculus of some people of how much they want to leave in China and how much they want to bring to Canada.” To [foreign investors], the Canadian market has gone on sale Mr. Scarrow’s firm caused a stir last year with data it produced from its client base that showed 33.5% of all single-family homes sales in the Vancouver area could be traced to buyers from mainland China. Foreign buyers and their position in the marketplace have been a concern for some market watchers, who fear these investors are inflating housing prices. But there hasn’t been definitive data. Even the chief executive of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., Evan Siddall, conceded there were data gaps. The Crown corporation finally produced data two months ago on the condominium market that showed as much as 2.4% of Toronto highrises were in foreign hands and 2.3% in Vancouver, with some people still disputing those findings. Mr. Scarrow says in terms of Chinese investors they are divided between people still living overseas and people already living in Canada but with money still parked in RMBs. With Chinese New Year over, he expects investment to pick up. Related Foreign buyers taking over — this time it's Canadians in Florida IMF says housing in Canada overvalued by as much as 20% “Decisions have been held off until this week,” he says. “There is a lag for these things in terms of stats and what we see on the ground.” Brian Johnston, chief operating officer of Toronto-based Mattamy Homes, has never been a believer of the idea that foreign investment was a huge factor in Canadian housing, but he says when you get can a 10% to 20% currency swing it has to be positive. “To [foreign investors], the Canadian market has gone on sale,” said Mr. Johnston, noting his company also develops property in the United States it tries to sell to Canadians. “The reverse is true for them. The price of U.S. real estate just went up by 10%.” Lennon Sweeting, a Toront0-based dealer with US Forex which trades in currencies, says the loonie is making housing more attractive to foreign buyers. “The Bank of Canada has tried to offset lower prices with a weaker currency making investing in Canada more attractive,” said Mr. Sweeting, adding most high net worth investors are likely holding U.S. dollars right now. “Absolutely it makes it easier to buy [Canadian real estate]. If you’re holding U.S. dollars you are looking at buying at a discount and there’s plenty of supply.” Low interest rates have also boosted demand, even though foreign investors tend to have to put up larger down payments when borrowing to buy property. Shaun Hildebrand, senior vice-president at condo research firm Urbanation Inc., noted new condo sales in the Greater Toronto Area in 2014 rose over 50% from a year ago but it’s hard to pinpoint how much is attributable to foreign investors. “I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see more foreign investment in 2015,” said Mr. Hildebrand, adding surveys of Urbanation clients peg the foreign component of Toronto’s condo market at just under 5%. sent via Tapatalk -
Read More There are currently no phones on the market that use the 700 MHz band. It will be interesting to see if Videotron puts together an agreement with a US mobile provider to reduce roaming fees, just like WIND did for an extra $15/month* unlimited roaming in the US. If Videotron does come out with an interesting plan to compete against Rogers/Fido, Telus and Bell. I might as well switch. It would be nice if Videotron would have a plan that would match WIND or Mobilicity. Another thing that I suspected years ago, Videotron would buy WIND and Mobilicity to also increase their footprint (it might still happen but who knows). * $65/month - Unlimited calls within Canada/US, Unlimited Data within Canada/US, Unlimited SMS within Canada/US + Voicemail / Caller ID Videotron has a similar plan but you can't roam in the US/Canada but it is $72/month with 6GB of data. I did find something online talking about the 700 MHz upper and lower band.
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Wealthy Global Buyers Favoring Montreal Spur 17% Gains By Greg Quinn - Dec 4, 2013 11:09 AM GMT-0500 International buyers have thrust Montreal, a city sometimes overshadowed by Toronto and Vancouver, into the national spotlight. Montreal, known for its crumbling water pipes and bridges as much as its cobblestone streets, now stands out for drawing the biggest share of foreign owners. They purchased 49 percent of the 206 homes worth at least C$1 million in the first half of 2013, according to a Sotheby’s International Realty Canada report and survey of brokers. In Vancouver, which boasts a rugged Pacific coastline and cultural ties to Asia, 40 percent of buyers of 1,239 such homes were from abroad. Toronto, which has filled its skyline with condo towers over the last decade, had the smallest portion of international owners, making up 25 percent of 2,947 deals. “The share of foreign buying in the Montreal luxury market surprises me,” said Craig Alexander, chief economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank. (TD) “When we think about the presence of international buyers we tend to think about Vancouver and Toronto.” 16.9% Gain International buyers are shoring up high-end housing in Canada after regulators tightened mortgage rules in 2012 to cool the nation’s booming market. In Montreal, prices of bungalows of around 1,200 square feet (111 square meters) rose as much as 5.4 percent in the third quarter from a year ago, according to figures from Toronto-based Royal LePage Real Estate Services. Dwellings of at least 3,000 square feet worth about C$2.47 million in the Westmount area gained 16.9 percent in the same period. In Vancouver and Toronto, price growth of luxury housing in some neighborhoods also outpaced less costly homes, the data show. Julie Dickson, who heads the Ottawa-based Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, said scant data makes it difficult to determine the impact of foreign buyers on the market. “There is anecdotal evidence at a minimum that foreign investment plays a big role, particularly in Vancouver. And while I think that means Canada is a great place to do business, it also is a risk because it can dry up quickly,” Dickson said during a Nov. 25 presentation in Toronto. Full article ici. -
Métro: Activités criminelles dans les stations
un sujet a posté IluvMTL dans Projets oubliés et/ou en suspens
How safe is your métro station? http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Montrealers+safe+your+m%C3%A9tro+station/8972463/story.html Quiet stations tend to have more crime per capita Berri-UQÀM, in eastern downtown, recorded 12.5 million boardings in 2009. There were 20.4 crimes per 1 million boardings. Photograph by: Marie-France Coallier , Marie-France Coallier MONTREAL - For the first time, Montrealers can find out which métro stations see the most crimes. Turns out some least-used subway stops have the highest per capita crime rates. The Gazette has obtained station-by-station statistics after Quebec’s access-to-information commission sided with the newspaper in a three-year battle with the Montreal police department. The figures cover 2008 and 2009, as police only revealed partial information for more recent years. Between 2008 and 2009, criminality jumped at 38 of 64 stations patrolled by Montreal police. At 13 of those, the number of criminal infractions more than doubled. The network’s busiest station, Berri-UQÀM — a transfer point served by three métro lines — saw the largest number of crimes. There were 255 crimes in 2009, up from 243 the previous year. In 2009, 18 stations saw at least 10 crimes involving violence or threat of violence (“crimes against the person”), including Berri-UQÀM (59 cases), Lionel-Groulx (33), Sherbrooke (20) and Vendôme, Snowdon and Jean-Talon (17 each). For every station, The Gazette calculated the number of criminal prosecutions per 1 million passengers who entered the network there. Berri-UQÀM, in eastern downtown, recorded 12.5 million boardings in 2009. There were 20.4 crimes per 1 million boardings. But it was Georges-Vanier, in Little Burgundy southwest of downtown, that recorded the most crimes per capita. At that station — the network’s least used with only 742,000 boardings in 2009 — there were 28.3 crimes per 1 million boardings. Georges-Vanier is a reatlively desolate location, especially at night. It’s next to the Ville-Marie Expressway and no buses serve the station. Beaudry and Monk stations are other examples. Both are among the bottom five for boardings but in the Top 5 for per capita crimes. Click for an interactive map showing crimes in the métro. Reading this on a mobile device? Find the link at the end of the story. The figures give only an approximation of station-per-capita crime rates. The STM only maintains statistics for the number of people who pass through turnstiles at individual métro stations. That means ridership figures used in these calculations only give an idea of how busy stations are. Some stations have few people entering but a high number of passengers disembarking. In addition, transfer stations are busier than boarding figures would suggest because passengers there move from one line to another without going through turnstiles. Bylaw infractions, including graffiti and malicious damage to STM property, were also detailed in the 2008-09 statistics. In more than one-quarter of Montreal métro stations, there were at least 10 bylaw infractions in 2009, with Berri-UQÀM (378 incidents), Sherbrooke (76) and Atwater (67) having the most. The figures obtained by The Gazette cover the 64 stations on Montreal Island and Île Ste-Hélène. Laval and Longueuil stations are patrolled by their respective police forces. Every year, Montreal police publish crime statistics for the entire métro network, but the force has resisted providing more detailed data. After failing to convince the access commission that the data should be kept secret (see sidebar), police recently provided The Gazette with the number of crimes and bylaw infractions at every station in 2008 and 2009. But when the newspaper subsequently requested 2010, 2011 and 2012 statistics, the department did not provide comparable data. Instead, it lumped incidents such as lost objects and calls for ambulances with crimes and bylaw infractions, rendering the 2010-12 statistics almost meaningless. The Gazette is appealing the police department's decision to keep the 2010-12 crime figures under wraps. Police and the STM say Montreal has a very low subway crime rate compared with other cities. Crimes in the métro are relatively rare and the métro's overall crime rate has dropped significantly between 2008 and 2012. Montreal police started patrolling the network in 2007. Before that, STM officers were in charge of security in the métro system. The Gazette sought the station-by-station figures so it could tell readers at which station passengers are the most likely to become the victim of a crime or to witness crimes or bylaw infractions. Making the data public also allows the public to monitor progress in reducing incidents at particular stations. ariga@montrealgazette.com Twitter: andyriga Facebook: AndyRigaMontreal © Copyright © The Montreal Gazette -
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2013/06/new-global-start-cities/5144/ RICHARD FLORIDA Author's note: Start-up companies are a driving force in high-tech innovation and economic growth. Venture capital-backed companies like Intel, Apple, Genentech, Facebook, Google, and Twitter have powered the rise of whole new industries and shaped the way we live and work. Silicon Valley has long been the world's center for high-tech start-ups. Over the next few weeks, I'll be looking at the new geography of venture capital and high-tech start-ups and the rise of new start-up cities in the United States. I'll be also track to what degree start-up communities are shifting from their traditional locations in the suburbs to urban centers. America's start-up geography, with its well-established high-tech clusters in Silicon Valley and along Boston's Route 128, as well as more recent concentrations in urban centers like San Francisco and lower Manhattan, has been much discussed. But what does the world's start-up geography look like? What are the major start-up cities across the globe? Up until now, good data on the geography of start-ups outside the United States has been very hard, if not impossible, to come by. That's why a relatively new ranking of start-up cities across the globe by SeedTable is so interesting. SeedTable is a discovery platform that's built on the open-source database of more than 100,000 technology companies, investors, and entrepreneurs available at CrunchBase (one of the TechCrunch publications). SeedTable has information on more than 42,500 companies founded since 2002, including whether the companies are angel- or venture capital-funded (angel funders invest their own money; venture capitalists raise money from others), and whether the funder has exited, either by IPO or acquisition. The data cover 150 cities worldwide. It is reported by separate city or municipality, so the Martin Prosperity Institute's Zara Matheson organized the data by metro area and then mapped it by three major categories: global start-ups, companies receiving angel funding, and companies receiving institutional venture capital. The first map tracks start-ups across the cities of the world. New York tops the list with 144, besting San Francisco's 135. London is next with 90, followed by San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara (Silicon Valley) with 66, and Los Angeles with 64. Toronto and Boston-Cambridge tied for sixth with 34 each, Chicago is eighth with 31, Berlin ninth with 27, and Bangalore 10th with 26. Austin (23), Seattle (22), and São Paulo (21) each have more than 20 start-ups. Another 20 cities are home to 10 or more start-ups: Istanbul with 19; Vancouver and Moscow each with 17; New Delhi (15); Paris, and Atlanta with 14 each; Washington, D.C., Amsterdam, and Miami with 12 each; San Diego, Madrid, Singapore, and Sydney with 11 apiece; and Barcelona, Dublin, Tel Aviv, Dallas-Fort Worth, Mumbai, Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, with 10 start-ups each. The second map charts the leading locations for companies receiving angel funding. Angel funding comes typically from wealthy individuals, often established entrepreneurs who invest their own personal funds in start-up companies. San Francisco now tops the list with 138 companies receiving angel funding, followed by New York with 117. London is again third with 62. San Jose is fourth with 60, Boston-Cambridge fifth with 50 and L.A. sixth with 48. Chicago and Philadelphia are tied for seventh with 19, and Seattle and Portland tied for 10th with 18 apiece. Nine more cities have 10 or more companies receiving angel funding: Toronto (17), D.C. (14), Berlin, and Paris (13 each), Atlanta, Barcelona and Boulder (12 each), Dublin (11), and Cincinnati (10). The third map above charts the locations of companies that attracted venture capital funding. Now the ranking changes considerably. San Francisco tops the list with 354, followed by Boston-Cambridge with 248, and San Jose with 216. New York is fourth with 160 and London fifth with 73. L.A. is sixth with 65, Seattle seventh with 57, San Diego eighth with 48, Austin ninth with 47, and Chicago 10th with 29. There are seven additional cities with 20 or more venture capital backed companies: Berlin (25), Toronto and Boulder (22 each), D.C., Paris, and Atlanta (21 each), and Denver with 20. The big takeaways? For one, these maps speak to the urban shift in the underlying model for high-technology start-ups. With its high-tech companies clustered in office parks along highway interchanges, Silicon Valley is the classic suburban nerdistan. But, at least according to these data, it appears to have been eclipsed by three more-urbanized areas. New York and London, admittedly much larger cities, both top it on start-up activity and the number of angel-funded companies, while the center of gravity for high-tech in the Bay Area has shifted somewhat from the valley to its more-urban neighbor San Francisco, which tops it in start-up activity, angel-funded, and venture capital-backed companies. The globalization of start-ups is the second big takeaway. American cities and metros — like Boston-Cambridge, L.A., Seattle, San Diego, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Austin, as well as New York and San Francisco — all do very well. But London now ranks in the very top tier of start-up cities, while Toronto and Vancouver in Canada; Berlin (so much for the argument that Berlin is a lagging bohemian center with hardly any tech or entrepreneurial future), Paris, Amsterdam, Dublin, Madrid, and Barcelona in Europe; Bangalore, New Delhi, and Mumbai in India; Singapore and Sydney in the Asia Pacific region; and Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro in South America each have significant clusters of start-up activity. The world, as I have written, is spiky, with its most intensive economic activity concentrated in a relative handful of places. Global tech is no exception — and it is taking a decidedly urban turn. All maps by the Martin Prosperity Institute's Zara Matheson; Map data via Seedtable Keywords: London, New York, San Francisco, Maps, Start-Up, Venture Capital, Cities Richard Florida is Co-Founder and Editor at Large at The Atlantic Cities. He's also a Senior Editor at The Atlantic, Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, and Global Research Professor at New York University. He is a frequent speaker to communities, business and professional organizations, and founder of the Creative Class Group, whose current client list can be found here.
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(Courtesy of The Globe and Mail) First stop London, next stop global domination!
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The Best 25 Places To Live If You're Starting A Startup
un sujet a posté LindbergMTL dans L'actualité
Ouch! The Startup Genome, which collects data to figure out what makes startups successful, has released its latest results. TechCrunch reported that, these are the 25 best startup ecosystems in the world: Silicon Valley (San Francisco, Palo Alto, San Jose, Oakland) New York City (NYC, Brooklyn) London Toronto Tel Aviv Los Angeles Singapore Sao Paulo Bangalore Moscow Paris Santiago Seattle Madrid Chicago Vancouver Berlin Boston Austin Mumbai Sydney Melbourne Warsaw Washington D.C. Montreal In Silicon Valley, for instance, the Startup Genome's data showed that it had the following characteristics, which attracted entrepreneurs: "Strong early stage funding ecosystem. More mentors. Most Ambitious. High Risk." New York, on the other hand, had the following characteristics: "Diverse. Niche Focus. Marketplace and Social Network focus. High risk." Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook. Follow Boonsri Dickinson on Twitter. Ask Boonsri A Question > Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-best-25-places-to-live-if-youre-starting-a-startup-2012-4#ixzz1rqyx4diF http://www.businessinsider.com/the-best-25-places-to-live-if-youre-starting-a-startup-2012-4 -
Un ami à moi m'a refilé ce lien. Il nous lit parfois mais n'est pas membre. Il m'a dit que ça nous intéresserait. En effet!! Bien qu'il faille toujours demeurer prudent avec ce genre d'exercice, ça détonne tout de même dans le paysage médiatique actuel concernant la circulation à Montréal! Enjoy! http://gizmodo.com/5838333/the-most-horrific-traffic-in-the-entire-world
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Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/million+supercomputer+just+cool/4947908/story.html#ixzz1PNeR8W5L
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There are an article in The Gazette (which I shall put after this post) that speaks about Montreal embracing open data. Also, anybody every been to Ottawa, Quebec? lol How Open Data Initiatives Can Improve City Life by Aliza Sherman Major city governments across North America are looking for ways to share civic data — which normally resides behind secure firewalls — with private developers who can leverage it to serve city residents via web and mobile apps. Cities can spend on average between $20,000 and $50,000 — even as much as $100,000 — to cover the costs of opening data, but that’s a small price to pay when you consider how much is needed to develop a custom application that might not be nearly as useful. Here are a few examples of initiatives that are striving to make city governments more efficient and transparent through open data. 1. Apps4Ottawa – Ottawa, Quebec Careful to adhere to security and privacy regulations for their open data program, the City of Ottawa started sharing data in several areas: geo-spatial (roadways, parks, runways, rivers, and ward boundaries); recreation facilities; event planning; civic elections data; and transit, including schedules. Other data the city is pursuing includes tree inventory, collections schedules for garbage, recycling and compost, and bike and foot paths. Ottawa aligned their first open data contest, Apps4Ottawa, with the school year (September 2010 to January 2011 ) to involve colleges and universities as well as residents and local industry. Categories for the contest included “Having Fun in Ottawa,” “Getting Around,” “Green Environment/Sustainability,” “Community Building,” and “Economic Development.” The winner is scheduled to be announced later this evening. Guy Michaud, chief information officer for the City of Ottawa, said their open data efforts have already spurred economic development and is meant to be good for local entrepreneurs. The city receives no revenue through the apps, and the developers can sell what they create. In turn, Ottawa residents get improved services from applications that are created, with better access to city data and more user-friendly formats and platforms. 2. CivicApps.org – Portland, Oregon After tracking Vivek Kundra’s efforts at the federal level with data.gov, Portland, Oregon launched CivicApps.org, a project initiated out of the mayor’s office to bring a more localized approach to the open data movement. Skip Newberry, economic policy advisor to the mayor, say that the project’s main objective is to improve connections and the flow of information between local government and its constituents, as well as between city bureaus. To call attention to the release of public data, they also launched an app design contest, highlighting the tech talent in Portland’s software community. According to Rick Nixon, program manager for the Bureau of Technology’s Open Data Initiative for the city of Portland, CivicApps.org took a more regional approach to cover the multiple layers of local government: County, Metro, TriMet, and the City of Portland, all of which collect and maintain various kinds of public data. Data sets released include regional crime, transit, infrastructure (i.e. public works), and economic development programs. Additional projects, such as the PDX API, have been launched in order to make the raw data from CivicApps more useful to developers. In addition to developer-specific apps, a number of transit related apps — bike, train, bus, mixed modes — were also developed. A very popular and established transit app, PDXBus, was re-released as open source under the rules of the CivicApps contest. Other popular apps helped provide residents greater awareness of their surroundings such as where to find heritage trees, where to find urban edibles, and where to locate each other during disaster relief efforts. 3. CityWide Data Warehouse – Washington, DC For years, the District of Columbia provided public access to city operational data via the Internet. In keeping with the mayor’s promise to be transparent, the program CityWide Data Warehouse was launched, and provides citizens with access to over 450 datasets from multiple agencies. The first two datasets released were service requests from the mayor’s call center, including trash pickup, pot hole repair, street light repair, snow removal, parking meter issues and crime data. According to David Stirgel, program manager for Citywide Data Warehouse, the project looks for data that be of interest to the widest possible audience and which will remain reusable over time. Some of the applications that have come out of the program include Track DC, which tracks the performance of individual District agencies, and summary reports that provide public access to city operational data. Some of the applications built by companies and individuals using the data include Crime Reports and Every Block. In 2008, the District Mayor’s office, the District of Columbia’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer, and digital agency iStrategyLabs launched Apps for Democracy, an open code app development contest tapping into District data that cost $50,000 and generated 47 apps. The contest was repeated in 2009. Over 200 ideas and applications were submitted, and the winner was an iPhone and Facebook app called Social DC 311. It could be used to submit service requests, such as reporting potholes and trash problems. An honorable mention was given to FixMyCityDC. Unfortunately, neither app is maintained today. 4. NYC Data Mine – New York, NY NYC BigApps 2.0 is part of an initiative to improve the accessibility, transparency, and accountability of city government. According to Brandon Kessler, CEO of ChallengePost, the company and technology powering the NYC BigApps 2.0 Software Challenge, Mayor Bloomberg challenged software developers to use city data from the NYC.gov Data Mine to create apps to improve NYC, offering a $20,000 in cash awards to the winners. The second annual challenge closed its call for submissions at the end of January 2011 and opened the vote to the public. Voting ends on March 9. Requirements included that the software applications be original and solely owned by the entrants, that they use at least one of the datasets from the NYC.gov Data Mine, and be free to the public throughout the competition and for at least one year after the challenge. The panel of judges reads like a “who’s who” of New York tech luminaries, and includes Esther Dyson of EDVenture, Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, Jack Dorsey of Square and Twitter, and Kara Swisher of All Things Digital. One of the first year’s winning apps was WayFinder, an augmented reality Android app which allows users to point their phone in a direction and see which subways and Path trains are in front of them. 5. DataSF – San Francisco, California Like other city governments, San Francisco’s goal for their DataSF program was to improve transparency and community engagement as well as accountability. Ron Vinson, director of media for the city’s Department of Technology also stated potential for innovation in how residents interact with government and their community. With an emphasis on adhering to privacy and security policies, the city can stimulate the creation of useful civic tools at no cost to the government. Before launching, they reached out to Washington, DC to identify the most popular datasets, and learned that 20% of the datasets represented over 80% of the downloads. With this information, they went out first with crime, 311, and GIS data. They also allowed the public to request data through a submissions mechanism on the website where others could vote on their suggestions. This input is now required reading for the city administrator thanks to an executive directive and open data legislation. Since launching in August 2009, DataSF has accumulated over 60 applications in its showcase. According to Vinson, the city stays engaged with their tech community by participating in local unconferences and meetups. http://mashable.com/2011/02/15/how-open-data-initiatives-can-improve-city-life/ -
Houston study lauds red light cameras despite uptick in accidents We all know we shouldn't mess with Texas. And Houston, Texans shouldn't mess around with statistics, because the folks running the show are going to come to any conclusions they want no matter what the statistics say. This is the easy part: a study of red light cameras in the city shows that accidents have actually increased at intersections with the cameras. These are the parts that are open to interpretation: most intersections only have one camera looking at one (out of four) directions of traffic, but the accident rate went up for traffic in the other three unmonitored directions; and, in the one monitored direction, "accidents remained relatively flat or showed only a slight increase." What do you make of that? Mayor Bill White and the study authors say the city in general is experiencing a swell in the number of collisions, and claim that collisions at the monitored intersections haven't risen as much as the wider municipal rate. Yet they have no data to back up an increase in citywide collisions, and no year-on-year accident data at intersections (let alone an explanation for the uptick). White said that a 40-percent year-on-year drop in red light citations in the month of October shows the program is working and keeping drivers more safe. Critics say that the program is nothing but a cash register for city government. The study's authors plan to study insurance industry findings to come up with more substantive conclusions. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6185795.html
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TELUS modernizing telecommunications infrastructure of the City of Montreal
un sujet a posté jesseps dans L'actualité
(Courtesy of CNW Telbec) -
Toronto a suburb? It's begun RENÉ JOHNSTON/TORONTO STAR Apr 08, 2009 04:30 AM Vanessa Lu city hall bureau chief Toronto is at risk of becoming a bedroom community for the booming 905 regions, warns a new report by the Toronto Board of Trade. Cities that were once outer suburbs are now growing employment areas as more businesses have pulled up stakes in the downtown core for cheaper real estate. Meanwhile, the city itself faces increasing disparity between the wealthy, who buy downtown condos where factories once stood, and the poor who inhabit the increasingly deprived inner suburbs. So Toronto remains an attractive place to live, but struggles to keep up with its neighbours on key economic indicators such as employment, productivity and income growth. "It's a tale of two cities," president and CEO Carol Wilding said at yesterday's release. "We see the reverse, or mirror images, from the city proper versus the 905." Wilding agreed with a release for the report that said Toronto has become a "magnet for living, while the surrounding municipalities form the more powerful economic engine." "If you stand back, the data shows that at this point," said Wilding. "Given the employment growth that isn't there in the city centre – yet it is a hugely attractive place – suggests the doughnut effect. ... People flock to and live in the city ... but are actually travelling outwards in the region for employment opportunities." The split between the two regions is reflected in a prosperity scorecard that compares the Toronto region with 20 others around the world on 25 important indicators. While the Toronto region scored very well overall – tying for fourth place with Boston, New York and London, but behind Calgary, Dallas and Hong Kong – the findings show a growing gap between the city itself and surrounding communities. (The study is based on the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area, a tract that includes most of the GTA except Burlington and Oshawa.) If the 416 and 905 area codes were ranked separately, the suburban regions would have taken second place on the world list – after Calgary – and Toronto would have fallen into the bottom half. But Wilding credited Toronto city hall for taking steps to counteract the trend and boost economic growth, including a policy of gradually shifting more of the property tax burden from commercial and industrial property onto homeowners. "I think from a policy perspective, we've put in place many of the changes the data would have suggested we do ... two years ago. We didn't wait," Mayor David Miller said yesterday, reacting to the report. However, he said, "Toronto starts from a very good place" as Canada's financial capital and the third biggest centre of information communications technology in North America. "Council adopted a strategy two years ago because we didn't believe we could take success for granted," he added. "And I think the underlying data says we took the right step and we're on the right path." He noted both the tax rate cuts and the creation of two new agencies, Build Toronto and Invest Toronto, to lure business and investment to the city. Given that traffic is now jammed both ways on the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway in the morning rush hour, it hardly comes as a surprise that employment growth has been strong outside Toronto proper. But the data shows the gap is "far larger than people would have expected it to be," Wilding said. Employment in the suburban regions grew by an average of 2.8 per cent a year between 2002 and 2007, compared with 1.1 per cent in the city of Toronto. In fact, most of the employment growth over the past two decades has occurred outside Toronto. "That's a significant divide. Until we start to narrow that, then we aren't serving the interests of the region as a whole," Wilding said. Average real GDP growth during the same period was just 1.2 per cent in Toronto – compared with 4.2 per cent in neighbouring cities. After-tax income growth over the same period was 3.5 per cent in Toronto, compared with 5.9 per cent outside. Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone said the report's data is already a couple of years old and doesn't reflect recent actions the city has taken to stem the flow of jobs. The report cites a 10.2 per cent growth in non-residential building permits in the surrounding regions, versus only 8.9 per cent in the city. But Pantalone pointed out that today, 4 million square feet of office buildings are under construction in Toronto, compared with only 1.5 million square feet in the 905. "That's a historical reversal. It shows those policies are working," he said. "We have established new trend lines to correct that. And it seems to be working." As Miller pointed out, the report isn't all bad news for the city. It notes that Toronto is "a study in contrasts, struggling to keep pace on the economic fundamentals but scoring well on all the attributes of an attractive city." Using research from the Conference Board of Canada, the report points out the city is doing well on indicators such as commuter travel choices, a young labour force, university education and percentage of jobs in the cultural industry. New infrastructure investments by the province, notably in transit, will also help make Toronto more competitive. Some 44 per cent of Toronto residents walk, bike or take transit to work, while only 13 per cent of residents outside Toronto do. One of Toronto's biggest advantages is its diversity, with immigrants making up close to half of the city's residents. That puts it at Number 1 among the 21 global cities, above Los Angeles at 41 per cent and New York at 36 per cent. But Board of Trade chair Paul Massara warned that the talent that exists among newcomers must not be squandered – and their integration has to be ensured. "It's absolutely essential that we get this productive part of the economy working and enhance that," Massara said, noting governments have been working to improve settlement services. With files from Paul Moloney
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Analysis of Flickr photos could lead to online travel books
un sujet a posté ErickMontreal dans L'actualité
Analysis of Flickr photos could lead to online travel books Representative images for the top landmark in each of the top 20 North American cities. All parts of the figure, including images, textual labels and the map itself, were produced automatically from the researchers' geo-tagged photos. April 28th, 2009 By Paul Redfern Cornell scientists have downloaded and analyzed nearly 35 million Flickr photos taken by more than 300,000 photographers from around the globe, using a supercomputer at the Cornell Center for Advanced Computing (CAC). Their research, which was presented at the International World Wide Web Conference in Madrid, April 20-24, provides a new and practical way to automatically organize, label and summarize large-scale collections of digital images. The scalability of the method allows for mining information latent in very large sets of images, raising the intriguing possibility of an online travel guidebook that could automatically identify the best sites to visit on a vacation, as judged by the collective wisdom of the world's photographers. The research also generated statistics on the world's most photographed cities and landmarks, gleaned from the analysis of the multi-terabyte photo collection: • The top 25 most photographed cities in the Flickr data are (in order): New York City, London, San Francisco, Paris, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Seattle, Rome, Amsterdam, Boston, Barcelona, San Diego, Berlin, Las Vegas, Florence, Toronto, Milan, Vancouver, Madrid, Venice, Philadelphia, Austin, Dublin, Portland. • The top seven most photographed landmarks are (in order): Eiffel Tower, Paris; Trafalgar Square, London; Tate Modern museum, London; Big Ben, London; Notre Dame, Paris; The Eye, London; the Empire State Building, New York City. Interestingly, the Apple Store in midtown Manhattan was the fifth-most photographed place in New York City -- and the 28th-most photographed place in the world. The researchers developed techniques to identify places that people find interesting to photograph, showing results for thousands of locations at both city and landmark scales. "We developed classification methods for characterizing these locations from visual, textual and temporal features," said Daniel Huttenlocher, the John P. and Rilla Neafsey Professor of Computing, Information Science and Business and Stephen H. Weiss fellow. "These methods reveal that both visual and temporal features improve the ability to estimate the location of a photo compared to using just textual tags." As the creation of digital data accelerates, said CAC director David Lifka, "supercomputers and high-performance storage systems will be essential in order to quickly store, archive, preserve and retrieve large-scale data collections." The research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and by funding from Google, Yahoo! and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The CAC is supported by Cornell, the NSF, the Department of Defense, the Department of Agriculture and members of its corporate program. http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~dph/paper...omap-www09.pdf . -
L'année 2009 devrait voir un nombre reccord de faillites partout dans le monde: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/More-Tribunes-Lehmans-likely-coming/story.aspx?guid={F40FA856-6FE7-4A28-82B0-6729F7E57CB5}
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Telus announces $33 million "Green" Internet data centre Wednesday, 08 October 2008 Telus announces $33 million "Green" Internet data centreTelus today announced that it would be investing over $33 million to build a more energy efficient Internet data centre to be located in Laval, Quebec. The company says the state-of-the-art facility will be designed according to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards. An Internet data centre is a highly secure building that houses extremely powerful computer servers; all of which have redundant power, cooling and security systems. Recent estimates suggest that data centres now consume about 1 to 1.5% of all energy produced in North America and its share is growing therefore, longer term, greener data centres could make a significant dent in overall energy consumption. Telus, which currently operates eight data centres across Canada, says its newest Internet data centre will be a 44,500 square foot facility that will be connected to six mega-volt-amps of power, equivalent to the needs of more than 5,000 homes! In addition to the power required to power individual computer servers, data centers require a vast amount energy to counter the heat generated by the computer servers. The new data center features a high density power design and efficient heat exchange system will turn Quebec's cold climate into "free cooling" during two thirds of the year. Large, highly efficient air conditioning units will be used when "free cooling" is unavailable. The company says its newest, greenest Internet data centre will become operational in 2010.
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Il s'agit d'un contrat de gestion de l'infrastructure technologique et des applications logicielles de services bancaires de la société de Halifax League Data. Pour en lire plus...
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International Privacy Experts Meet in Montreal 9/7/2007 The privacy world will be in the spotlight as international privacy practitioners meet in Montreal to face rapidly changing technologies and heightened national security concerns. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada is hosting the 29th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners in Montreal from September 25 to 28th. Among the topics to be explored are: public safety, globalization, Radio Frequency Identification, nanotechnology, children and privacy, location-based tracking, data mining and Internet crime. Conference organizers say speakers include: - Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security, who will give a keynote address on privacy and public security. - Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel. - Bruce Schneier, internationally renowned privacy and security guru and best-selling author of books such as Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly about Security in an Uncertain World and Secrets and Lies. - Katherine Albrecht, widely recognized as one of the world's leading experts on consumer privacy for her work as director of CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering), an organization she founded to address retail privacy invasion. - Simon Davies, a pioneer of the international privacy arena and the founder and director of the watchdog group Privacy International. The complete program and speakers list are available at: www.privacyconference2007.gc.ca.
