The websites we host (including this message) will be down for a couple of hours tonight, starting at 1:30 AM MST as we are doing a physical relocation of a couple of our servers. I’ll post a message when we’re back online.
Apologies for any inconvenience!
As some of you are probably aware, I used to live in Inuvik, NT and my family still lives there. It’s a very small town, probably only about 3000 people, so you tend to know everyone. As a result, when someone loses their life, like Matt Wojdak did today, the effect ripples through town.
My Dad has written a nice post explaining what happened. The Volunteer Fire Department, of which Matt was as member, has also posted a message. I know my brother and sister were really good friends of Matt, and are taking the news pretty hard. If you guys read this, I hope you’re okay. I don’t know what I’d do in your position, it must be so hard. Try to stay positive. You’ve got lots of great friends and family around you to lean on, and them on you, so support each other, and things will turn out okay, as they always do.
Edmonton has definitely got Champ Car fever! This weekend is of course, race weekend for the inaugural Grand Prix of Edmonton. And as such, there’s lots of stuff happening around the city, and not all of it is racing. For example, tonight was the Champ Car Night @ Rice Howard Way presented by Bridgestone:
Rice Howard Way in downtown Edmonton will be entertainment central when the West Edmonton Mall Grand Prix of Edmonton takes to the streets with non-stop entertainment for the whole family. The concert stage takes the green flag on Friday at 6:15 pm and Saturday at 1:00 pm. Featured musical performers include Sweeney Todd at 9:45 pm on Friday and Adam Gregory at 9:45 pm on Saturday. Show off your rock climbing skills, race scale model cars on the radio control track and meet Miss Molson Indy Toronto.
That’s right out the back door of our office (in a manner of speaking) so I went to take a look. Unfortunately I couldn’t find Miss Molson Indy Toronto, but I did manage to snap some photos. Enjoy!
Read: Grand Prix Edmonton
I just finished listening to today’s Daily Source Code, in which Adam Curry introduced his latest project, the Podsafe Music Network. The site aims to pair independent music artists with podcasters looking for music that is legal to play in their episodes.
I signed up as a podcaster to check it out. The site is in beta, so let’s keep that in mind, but here are some initial thoughts:
Why not license everything under Creative Commons? It’s entirely appropriate, and works perfectly for things like this. Seems to me that not including CC support is a major oversight.
I’ll keep an eye on the site, and see how it evolves.
Read: Podsafe Music Network
Reporting on a Blogspotting interview with Bloglines CEO Mark Fletcher, Mark Evans thinks that the blog search market is “ripe for Google to steal the business”:
Fletcher’s hitting exactly on what I’ve been harping on for months that there has to be a better mousetrap for blog search. Despite all the attention it receives, Technorati – with all due respect – is being overwhelmed by its willingness to post everything and anything. Someone really smart is going to come up with an algorith/methodology that combines a blog’s traffic, relevancy and high ratings to product superior and effective blog search results.
I disagree.
One of the greatest features of Technorati is that it shows what everyone is saying right now (ignoring their growing pains). Why should my search results or the tag page only show content from the so-called A-Listers (that’s what you’re getting at with traffic, “ratings”, and to a lesser extent “relevancy”)? Their content should not be given priority over anyone elses. It’s not like PubSub only watches the A-List feeds, nor does Weblogs.com only show when the A-Listers have updated their blogs.
I’ve talked about the definiton of blogs before (via Jeff Jarvis): Blogs are the voices of citizens in conversation.
Why should the conversation be limited to or enhanced for a select few? The so-called A-Listers already have problems with including everyone else, we don’t need a search engine to make things worse.
Perhaps what’s required is not better search results, but better ways of viewing and interacting with those results so that they are more meaningful and can be processed more efficiently.
Read: Mark Evans
The popular Creative Commons movement has created some really interesting projects, one of them being CC Mixter:
This is a community music sharing site featuring songs licensed under Creative Commons, where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want.
It’s a really great site for aspiring artists and music fans alike. I have been browsing the site a little, and have found some great tunes. I especially like one called Cuckoo. The site is also featuring a contest:
CC Mixter is currently hosting a remix contest featuring the work of Magnatune recording artist Lisa DeBenedictis with the entire Magnatune catalog of over 1,700 pieces of music available for source material. The creators of the top 10 winning entries (up to two winning entries per contestant) will get signed to a Magnatune recording contract and appear on a commercially available remix album.
Check it out! And if you’re hesitant, here’s a FAQ answering such questions as “is it legal?”
Read: CC Mixter
You’ve got to be kidding me:
An organization that lobbies for increased regulation of the food and drug industries called on Wednesday for cigarette-style warnings on soft drinks to alert consumers that too much of the beverages can cause obesity and other health problems.
I’ll admit that people generally don’t think of pop (or soda for the Americans reading) when they think of what causes obesity, but get real. A warning label? Yeah, because that’s really going to make me think twice about buying my weekly case of Coke. I saw Super Size Me and I still drink Coke when I order McDonalds. Maybe it’s just me?
Read: New York Times
The latest update to Firefox was released today by the Mozilla Foundation, version 1.0.5. No new features, but there are a number of security fixes, as well as improvements to stability.
Firefox 1.0.5 is a security update that is part of our ongoing program to provide a safe Internet experience for our customers. We recommend that all users upgrade to this latest version.
Release notes are up, and you can download from the Mozilla site.
I love Firefox, and use it as my main browser. I just wish that people would realize that it has the same potential for security problems as every other browser, including Internet Explorer. I mean, look at the issues that were fixed in this version – “Code execution through shared function objects”, “Standalone applications can run arbitrary code through the browser”, and a bunch of others. Nobody’s perfect!
Read: Mozilla Firefox
Just hours before the space shuttle Discovery was to take off, the launch was postponed. The NASA word for this is “scrubbed”:
In a telephone conversation, a NASA spokeswoman at the Kennedy Space Center confirmed that no launch would happen Wednesday. “It has been scrubbed,” the spokeswoman said.
Apparently there was a problem with a sensor in one of the fuel tanks. I was talking to Andrew about this kind of thing last night. If we could land on the moon seventeen times (and with inferior technology), how can we have so many problems launching the shuttle?
And isn’t NASA planning to launch a new vehicle anyway? I understand that they need to honor commitments made regarding the International Space Station, but surely they could have come to some sort of an agreement that would allow them to scrap the shuttles altogether.
Read: Return to Flight
I stumbled across TagCloud tonight, and I am really quite impressed! If you’re into tagging and folksonomies and the like, you’ll probably find it interesting too:
TagCloud is an automated Folksonomy tool. Essentially, TagCloud searches any number of RSS feeds you specify, extracts keywords from the content and lists them according to prevalence within the RSS feeds. Clicking on the tag’s link will display a list of all the article abstracts associated with that keyword.
Here’s the TagCloud for my blog. Basically, it gives you an idea of what I’ve been talking about lately in my posts. Very cool stuff, I must admit.
Read: TagCloud
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