It’s great to see how alive the Montreal tech scene is quickly becoming. I’m not sure you can call us “Silicon Valley North” just yet, but it’s still exciting to see companies getting funded and companies launching.

Two cool companies launched recently that I want to bring people’s attention to, because I think you could find the services valuable (as entrepreneurs, business people & bloggers.)

The first is Defensio. I’ve mentioned them before since I was an early alpha tester. According to Defensio, they’ve filtered out over 100,000 spam comments in that time.

I like Defensio a lot. They’ve got a few cool features beyond Akismet that make it worth switching. If you’re using WordPress, I’d encourage you to give it a try: it’s free and easy as any plugin out there to setup.

For additional information & coverage on them, check out:

• Defensio Sorts Blocked Comments by “Spaminess” (from TechCrunch)
• Startups: Challenge the Market Leader or Ride With It?
• Defensio Spam Filter: A First Look

The second company is CakeMail. CakeMail is a white-label email marketing platform targeted to small and medium-sized Web agencies. One cool thing about CakeMail is that it supports many languages, including: Quebec French, American English and Russian, with additional versions in the works, including French (France), Canadian English, Latin American Spanish, Greek and Romanian. I haven’t used CakeMail yet, but I know we were looking at it for some things related to Standout Jobs.

For more information on CakeMail and what it’s all about:

• Letting Agencies Bake Their Own With CakeMail (Web Worker Daily)
• CakeMail: Ready for Resale (StartupNorth)

Both Defensio and CakeMail are run by very small teams. That’s a testament to what a few guys can do. And both (if I’m not mistaken) are self-funded.

Congrats on the launches!