
Can'tada - Tracking the stuff you can't use in Canada - teamonkey
http://cantada.ca/
======
MichaelGG
One thing that Amazon does way better than Google is handling out-of-country
experiences. With Amazon, I have a US-based account, and no matter where I am
(I primarily do not live in the US), _everything works_.

With Google, I'll install an app while in the USA. Then when travelling, I'll
get a notification that there's an update available. But when I go to update
it, I'm told the app doesn't exist. This is actually a security hole: If I
have a buggy app, I can't update while outside the US.

If I sign in with my Google account, nothing changes - I'm still given "local"
content. This is why I don't bother with Google Music. I'm not interested in
having my files disappear to "not available in your country", despite using a
USA credit card and address on my account.

~~~
bytefactory
Interesting - my experiences are quite different. I can order some stuff from
Amazon.com (US) from Canada, but many things aren't available. I can't use
Amazon Prime (they won't even let me sign up without a US address), and I
can't order books for my Amazon Kindle purchased in Dubai (it needs a US
address as well).

With Google, however, nearly everything works. I've been using Google Music
for some time now, although it isn't officially available in Canada. Same with
Google Voice. All I had to do was sign up for both with a VPN for the first
use, after which I can access it anywhere through the respective apps in any
country with no hassles.

~~~
Khao
I'm intrigued, I tried to get Google Voice in Canada but was unsuccessful. Did
you get a US phone number or you managed to get a Canadian area code?

~~~
eslachance
All you need is to have a US IP address to get it working. But, that requires
a VPN (which is sometimes expensive) and you`ll always have to go through it
to access the Voice service. That most likely means no access from an Android
phone though I'm not sure.

As for the phone number, it's going to be local to whatever adress he put in
in the US, there are no Canadian phone numbers for Voice.

What really makes me angry is that Google purchased GrandCentral to get their
voice software, then they completely shut Canada off from service and haven`t
opened it in years. It's not like GrandCentral didn't get the CRTC approvals
required to give service, so what's holding up Google? I'm really mad at them
for how all these services only work in the US. There are legal
considerations, but you'd think it wouldn't take 3 years to go through these
kinds of hurdles when you're freakin' Google!

~~~
stevewillows
I was Grandfathered in from GC and was lucky enough to have my Canadian cell
number transfer too. I have a Seattle GV number going to BC.

For 403 (Calgary) I believe GV works great.

------
ckevinc
Here's the interesting thing I find about all this (and one that seems not to
have been mentioned):

In Canada, we are more similar to America than anyone else (for the most
part). Now, before you fellow hosers scream "Sacrilege", hear me out.

Beyond all of the licensing issues and stupid protectionism rules and laws we
have here in Canada, services wishing to be in this country are doing so in
probably the most similar country to the US than anywhere in the world. The
dollar is almost at par, our language is the same (for most of us), culturally
we're incredibly similar, we like the same kinds of entertainment and laugh at
most of the same kinds of jokes. We share the worlds longest unprotected
border, with billions and billions of goods travelling across in an entirely
over-tariffed manner. We have very few barriers to entry into each other's
country, causing a hell of a lot of cross-border whatever-you-wanted-to-do.
Heck, we even have border cities named the same (Niagara Falls anyone?).

If fact, as a Canadian, if I were to simply just land in any US city and tell
everyone I'm a US citizen they'd probably have no reason to disagree with me
(at least until I ended a sentence in "Eh" or talked goofy).

In Canada, we're called a branch-plant economy
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branch_plant_economy>) and I'd hazard to say
that many American operating companies could simply provide service with very
little technical barriers.

I'm just amazed at how we're so accessible to each other in many ways and yet
so many services are off limits and stuff like iPads are released here a month
later. Perhaps it keeps us from being flooded by Americanism, who knows.

~~~
nateabele
Having only limited experience in this department, the guess I would hazard
(for non-huge companies, at least) is that the costs (marketing, distribution
in some cases, infrastructure, customer support, legal, compliance) for
operating a business that serves the Canadian market just aren't offset by the
market size, which is only about a 10th of the United States.

What I understand from my Canadian friends is that all things internet- and
IP-related exist under a _drastically_ different legal framework, so the legal
and compliance cost issues are non-trivial. Also, I could see some of these
differences having an impact on the actual business models of some companies
listed.

------
OriginalSyn
Apparently one of them is this website. "Error establishing a database
connection"

------
tlb
Canada isn't a strategically important market for web services. A
strategically important market is one where if global companies ignore it and
a local competitor gets traction, it will be hard to unseat them. There are
lots of examples: Mail.ru dominates in Russia, Seznam.cz dominates search in
Czech despite Google's efforts. Global companies missed the boat by ignoring
those markets until it was too late. However, I can't think of examples where
a Canadian web service dominates the market in the face of global competition.
I suspect most of the services listed here figure they can wait until the
market develops, then swoop in and own it.

~~~
brandon272
May I ask what you mean when you say "until the market develops"?

Some of these services are unavailable due to content licensing concerns (i.e.
other parties own the rights to distribute the content within Canada), but
absent those types of restrictions I view not offering services to Canadians
to be ignoring a significant market (34,000,000 Canadians, 8/10 households
connected to the Internet[1]) of people who have similar tastes and
preferences to the Americans you already offer services to, relatively
speaking.

I'd hope that any company not offering their services to Canadians would have
a pretty good explanation as to why they aren't taking advantage of that
market.

[1] [http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-
quotidien/110525/dq110525b-en...](http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-
quotidien/110525/dq110525b-eng.htm)

~~~
potatolicious
> _"May I ask what you mean when you say "until the market develops"?"_

Without speaking for OP, naturally:

One of the biggest issues with web businesses is public acceptance of the new
business model: think Netflix, Spotify, or even AirBnb, all are dramatically
different ways of doing things that require a non-trivial amount of social
change to gain traction. Changing society and the way people perceive/do
things is _really hard_.

Doubly so if there are licensing issues in the way - a la Spotify or Netflix.

In other words, if you're going to have to go all-in and expend an enormous
effort for adoption, you don't want to do it in Canada. It's easier for these
services to proliferate _first_ in other countries before importing it to
Canada where consumers are already chomping at the bit.

See: Pandora, Spotify, Netflix, all of which built up enormous pent-up demand
before they even showed up at Canada's doorstep.

> _"I'd hope that any company not offering their services to Canadians would
> have a pretty good explanation as to why they aren't taking advantage of
> that market."_

There's one very good, almost universal reason: Canadians don't spend as much.
In fact, per capita, they can spend _half_ of what the average American
consumer spends.

The reasons are numerous and not at all negative - lack of access to stupid
credit, general cultural aversion to debt-building, lower credit card usage
amongst the entire population, high taxation resulting in comparatively low
disposal income. These are all things Canadians in general take pride in, but
it also makes the market less interesting to businesses.

~~~
drpgq
I had Pandora in Canada years ago.

~~~
dhughes
Ah so I wasn't dreaming, I was sure I used it for about a week then it was
blocked.

------
engtech
With content deals, I feel like Can-Con is to blame.

Can-con is the law that a percentage of content must be Canadian in origin.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_content>

I personal hold Can-con responsible for the fact that Call Me Maybe is played
so often on Canadian radio.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_me_maybe>

~~~
msbarnett
CanCon doesn't apply to the internet. At all. It is zero percent to blame for
any content site being unavailable in Canada.

Canadian rights holders have been notoriously reluctant to sign internet
distribution deals. CTV and Global dragged their feet for _years_ on iTunes TV
distribution rights for a number of popular shows.

------
SCdF
I'd actually love this internationally in general.

 _Actually_ , I'd really just like companies who deliver services to realise
that people outside of the US may be linked to their site, care, and easily
and obviously list the countries they work in. In many cases you have to hunt
through their support tickets, and in some cases you aren't told until you get
all the way to the payment screen.

~~~
nucleardog
Mhmm. It's really annoying when I register for something, activation e-mail,
fifty other steps, get to the payment screen... No country dropdown. Only
United States.

It's bad enough that I can't use any ____ing services here, but quit wasting
my time and getting my hopes up.

------
omgsean
This led me to do some investigating and the fourth season of Arrested
Development will not be available in Canada. I don't use Netflix but I pay for
an account because I think it's the future of content delivery and I want to
vote with my dollars. As of five seconds ago I'm no longer a customer.

------
paulgb
Google cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oLV7ond...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oLV7onduYB0J:cantada.ca/+cantada&hl=en&client=chrome-
mobile&gl=ca&prmd=imvns&strip=1)

Looks like Stripe is missing.

~~~
slantyyz
Stripe is in beta in Canada now.

~~~
indiecore
Select beta testers only? Stripe would be pretty cool to have right now (super
stealth double pivot mode project on the go).

~~~
jarek
I got an invitation to beta test around two days after signing up on
<https://stripe.com/global>. This was on August 8, YMMV of course.

~~~
cubix
How has the experience been?

~~~
jarek
I have not used it yet. (I hope there isn't a finite, small amount of spaces
and I'm not hogging... but I signed up after this was mentioned on HN last
time and got a spot pretty soon so I'm guessing it's not that limited.)

------
mcrider
Hi all, this is my site. Not sure why it went down, still working on that. Its
hosted on Linode which has been remarkably stable even with traffic spikes (I
actually posted this as a Show HN about a year and a half ago and it was on
the top of HN for over a day -- which was completely unexpected).

FYI, I haven't updated the site in a while (other than converting it to
Wordpress) -- Believe it or not, I live in the states now :) I'd love to get
some guest editors on it; if anyone is interested please contact me.

~~~
xorbyte
I'm not sure what the current state of the WordPress world is, but I know that
without caching you were bound to crumble under any kind of traffic spike not
very long ago.

Perhaps that's a good first step (I'm sorry I don't know which of the caching
plugins is best, WP SuperCache used to be the one to use 'back in the day')

~~~
mcrider
Yeah; I converted the site to wordpress recently and just forgot to add
caching. I've add W3 Total cache and things appear to be working better.

------
jisaacstone
It bugs me that the hyperlinks are black & w/o underline. I was only able to
figure out they were links by thinking for a minute and deciding that they
must be, because what else could they be?

But they sure do look like body text.

_________

edit: Everything is fantastic otherwise. Sorry to be so negative w/o posting
any of my initial reaction(which was completely positive)

------
maguay
It's not just Canada ... it's most of the world. I live in Thailand, and can't
use most of these services. Only saving factor is that I'm American, and have
a US bank and address, so I can use some US services that way (iTunes, Amazon
Payments, etc.)

------
ghshephard
Google Voice lost me the very first time I tried to make a VOIP call from
Brazil and couldn't figure out how to make it work.

Switched back to Skype (which worked trivially in Brazil) - never looked back.

The irony is that whatever limitation Google had with Brazil, might have been
fixed in the last few years, but because of that one international hiccup, and
never once having any problem with skype in any country I travel to, they
basically lost me forever. (Even though last time I was using it, Google Voice
was free, and skype charges me by the minute)

------
Splines
I won't lie - when I moved to the US for a job offer out of college part of me
was excited that I'd finally be able to order from amazon.com.

------
MrFoof
Regarding Kickstarter, Sauropod Studio just successfully raised $702,000 for
Castle Story despite being based in Montreal. It probably requires some
significant extra work, but it's certainly possible.

<http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/902505202/castle-story>

~~~
uladzislau
If you can't provide proof of US citizenship there's no way you can be
approved for Amazon Payments and launch a Kickstarter project. The only way to
do so is to find someone in US willing to participate in your project. I
assume for a fee.

------
srehnborg
If these products are not available in Canada, sounds like a great opportunity
to bring something similar to that market.

~~~
paulgb
Or brand a US-based proxy server as a way to access geoblocked stuff :-)
$5/month should be enough to proxy a chunk of multimedia through US-based
servers, and I know people who would pay it.

I'm only semi-joking. I can't convince myself that it would be ethical to do
this, but I'd like to see it happen as a way to get people talking about
geoblocking as something that incurs a cost to Canadians.

~~~
jonny_eh
<http://unblock-us.com/>

~~~
gislik
alternatively, <http://playmo.tv/>

------
RKearney
Aren't all of these companies based in the United States? I mean yeah it sucks
Canada can't use some of these applications, but why doesn't Canada start
their own similar services to run in their country?

~~~
SCdF
Because the Internet is supposed to 'flatten' the world, and it does in
basically all cases except where money or media licences are involved. Which
is annoying, because while I can happily read the New York Times while not
living in New York I can't work with many of the internet businesses that
reside there.

------
kafkaesque
This is pretty cool.

I'll be going back home (Canada) from the States and have seen a lot of things
available in this country that aren't in Canada (yet! hopefully!).

I wonder if some can be done through the FOSS community in Canada.

~~~
jfb
I'm moving to Toronto this month, and am planning on compiling a list of
things that are different. Here's hoping that this site gets over their DDOS
and comes back on line.

------
47
Is not this is counter intuitive? Companies will look at this list and say oh
so many other companies are not supporting Canada, why should be spend time on
supporting Canada.

------
jewbacca
Love the idea, could be interesting to bitch about this kind of stuff in a
more organized way for a few years and see what comes of it. Wish the site was
up.

------
ffk
I misread your name as "Can, TADA!" :)

Maybe it can be a website that tracks things you can do in Canada! (maybe even
focusing on things that you can't do elsewhere)

------
lucian1900
Interesting how this website that complaints about myopia on the part of US
vendors is itself myopic to the rest of the world.

~~~
mcrider
The domain doesn't really suit other countries as well ;) But point very well
taken; I've gotten many suggestions for services unavailable in other
countries -- I'd encourage others to start a similar web site for their own
country or perhaps we can have a single international archive.

~~~
drucken
I do not know if I am misunderstanding the OP, but I think they possibly meant
_non-US services_ not available in Canada, not services not available in other
countries.

The latter would not make much sense, or at least would not be expected, given
the name of your site...

------
hyh1048576
We really need a Can'tchina... There are tons of stuff one cannot use in China
for various reason, e.g. Google+, Dropbox...

------
surgeterrix
This site isn't coming up for me, I'm in the U.S.

Strange form of karmic justice I suppose.

~~~
pokoleo
Looks like it's been accidentally ddos'd.

~~~
SG-
looks like it's a wordpress site without caching enabled.

------
mehulkar
Add turntable.fm!

