Post-Mortem: WordCamp Montreal 2010
On August 28th, the second edition of WordCamp Montreal took place at UQAM's "Coeur des Sciences". Last year, at the SAT, we were around 100 people to attend. This year's attendance easily topped the 200, thanks to the organizers and the sponsors, which were also more generous than the year before, with giveaways of goodies like Adobe software, $1 hosting packs, two iPads and a table full of stickers. The organizers (Shannon "cafenoirdesign" Smith, Jeremy Clarke and Brendan "digibomb" Sera-Shriar) worked hard to  fill the schedule with interesting topics and speakers, keep the attendees interested, fed: St-Viateur bagels with Starbucks coffee in the morning, catered lunch on day one, pizza on day two, and even cupcakes!
There were two talks attendees could choose from at any given time, 21 in all. Here are the ones I attended and bit of a summary for each.
A more thorough (and politically correct) review of the X10a
My last post about Sony Ericsson's Xperia X10Â was a bit of a rant, as a friend pointed out. He's not wrong... but I think it's justified considering the obvious quality (or lack of) of their applications - both mobile and desktop. Anyway, I felt it was fair game to give my readers a more objective perspective on it because I've been asked after people have read my last few posts if I hated the Xperia - and I truly don't, so something must have been unclear or my sentiments weren't properly displayed. I never said I was a qualified blogger, I just thought I'd put the info out there because there's so few of it as of this moment on the Internet. Keep in mind that I've switched to the Xperia last week after using an iPhone 3G for two years. There will be some heavy comparing done here. So here comes a more professional, if you will, review of the X10a.
Xperia X10: First Impression of an Android Device
Wow, what an adventure this has been. Getting out of a contract and into a new one with a parent company? Not as easy as you'd think. I'll spare you the story, and instead, direct you to the Twitter rant that ensued the saga. Textual version: I went to a Rogers store during my lunch break to get the Xperia X10 from Sony Ericsson. First off, let me explain what carriers that are available to mobile users in the province of Quebec: Theoretically we have several carriers to choose from: Bell, Solo, Telus, Koodo, Videotron, Virgin, Rogers, Fido and Public Mobile, but technically, those are really only two carriers: Bell and Rogers because Solo, Telus, Koodo, Videotron and Virgin borrow Bell's network and Fido borrows Rogers'. As for Public Mobile, it was granted by the CRTC rights to operate in Canada as an independent carrier. As for the rest of Canada, Shaw, SaskTel and Manitoba Telecomm Services (MTS) are also available.
That being said, I've had a contract with Fido for about four years. I broke/renewed that contract two years ago when Apple's iPhone came out in order to benefit from their "get the iPhone 3G for 149$ with a three year contract" offer. I don't have a thing to say about Fido, they've been great. However, my iPhone is getting old. A new one is coming out in June (presumably). Thing is, I lost my iPhone 3G in a cab recently. I didn't expect to see it again. I was iPhone-less for a week. That week made me think that maybe it was time to look at new devices. Seeing as I'm an open-source enthusiast and a Linux advocate, I looked into Android devices first. A friend of mine then told me he had seen Sony Ericsson's Xperia X10 in action through another friend and that, as an avid iPhone user, had been impressed. I figured if he was impressed, being a jailbroken iPhone user, it was worth looking at. I looked up the device, read reviews, specs and videos and decided it was a good choice for my switch to Android. So, after having looked at that alternative... the taxi driver I lost my iPhone in calls me to tell me he's found my phone. I get my beloved iPhone back, but the damage is done. With Apple/Steve Jobs' latest antics against open source and platform accessibility, I had a score to settle. I had already been getting in my head the thought of having a new smart phone, and if you're an iPhone power user like I am, you know it's no small task to find something even remotely as useful as the iPhone. But in my opinion, I had with the Xperia X10.
