a canadian startup

Traffic from News Articles

After being mentioned in national newspapers, Well.ca experienced our highest ever sales and traffic. Here’s a graph of traffic:

Recent Press Coverage

All the recent press coverage is really fun to watch.

This is a link to the latest article on Well.ca in the Globe and Mail.

Well.ca was also thankful to be mentioned in the Financial Post twice:

• Lean times article
• Gen Y article

Anand sent me a link to this story about Obama playing BrickBreaker (the game I made a long time ago). This has nothing to do with Well.ca but makes me smile anyway.

Thank you everyone for all your kind words and emails. It’s much appreciated.

The real story is about our team. We built this together.

These stories come at a time of growth for Well.ca — we are working on a number of new initiatives and everyone here is excited about the coming year. I can’t wait to tell you more.

Also, I am calling this out before anyone else has the chance:

Does anyone else notice how I look like a younger, bearded-er version of Jeff Bezos? Just putting it out there.

Also, go to the Globe and Mail at 1pm on Friday to see a live chat with me and the readers. Please participate and ask me tough questions. :)

» Raising Money in 2009 | StartupNorth

I wrote an article on StartupNorth about Canadian entrepreneurs trying to raise money in 2009. Please read and comment there!

I actually used Idée’s TinEye!

So I sometimes tease Toronto startup TinEye because I like it so much but couldn’t figure out a use for it in my day-to-day life.

But here’s a cool example of a way it actually did something useful for me.

See, RIM has been advertising for the Blackberry phone I have, the Bold, using a picture of the phone with this really cool background:

Isn’t that city background really cool? Well I wanted to use that background but RIM doesn’t actually provide a copy of it anywhere.

I am not alone. Many people on the internet have been arguing about what city that is in the picture and where they can get a copy of the background.

Read here for a forum of sad people arguing about it.

Well. I’ve solved it. Using TinEye!

I first uploaded the picture I have above, but TinEye kept showing me more pictures of blackberries. Then I cut out the center part of the image of the actual skyline and this is what TinEye responded. (There’s no “link to this search” button on TinEye but I am now requesting it).

It turns out that the original image is a stock photo of the Tokyo skyline. Here’s a link. (The Blackberry version has been photoshopped to be darker, but if you look at the stock thumbnail, it’s definitely the exact same buildings from the exact same angle)

Great job, team TinEye! I am now the envy of the Blackberry Bold community!