Comments on: Sometimes, being in Canada just plain sucks.

By: Cortis Clark

Cortis Clark — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:13:06 +0000

Hi Carl,

Just thought you should know we just brought Save Benjis to Canada. Apple isn’t counting it as a new release, but its now on the Canadian App Store. I wrote a quick note about it on my website.

By: Carl Mercier

Carl Mercier — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:43:18 +0000

Pants: last.fm does work, but I greatly prefer Pandora

Denis: totally agreed. The lack of competition and stupid regulations make us look like a 3rd world country when it comes to technology

By: Denis Canuel

Denis Canuel — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:35:25 +0000

There are many annoyances in Canada in regards to the web. I already have 2 paypal accounts (1 US and 1 Canadian) and in fact, while I was in the US, I had a paypal credit card which unfortunately expired since then. Since I don’t have a physical address there, I no longer have it. The benefits were not that great anyways.

Sometimes Canada is seen as another US state, but in reality, we’re more like a totally different continent…

Oh well, perhaps someday people will understand that the Internet is International after all…

By: Fancy Pants

Fancy Pants — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:23:59 +0000

Try and see if last.fm works.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:22:25 +0000

You don’t wanna use Loopt, trust me! It’s an evil app that sends SMS spam to all of your friends. STAY AWAY!

By: Carl Mercier

Carl Mercier — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:37:37 +0000

Denis: I thought of that, and I immediately started an EC2 instance with Squid to try it out. It didn’t work because Apple looks at your billing information, not your IP.

I finally found a way around everything. I have a US Paypal account for my company, so I changed my country to US in my iTunes Store account, and linked it with my US Paypal account. Works fine! (You may want to try linking your account with a Canadian Paypal account, it might work as well, not sure).

So now I can download apps, but I still can’t use some of them: Loopt is useless if you’re the only one around you using it, Yelp doesn’t have Canadian data, and Pandora won’t let you stream music if you’re on a Canadian IP. The solution would be to go through a US proxy all the time from my phone, but it’s kind of a hassle.

Nevertheless, I’m glad I found a workaround!

By: Denis Canuel

Denis Canuel — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:17:28 +0000

One word: proxy