Month: October 2005

Funny Alberta Cheques

Post ImageI came across this bit of satire today, entitled “Government of Canada to Issue ‘Screw You, Rest of Canada’ Cheques to Each Resident of the Province”. Needless to say, it made me laugh:

Totally out of character, the Alberta Premier became testy when an insolent reporter from Upper Canada had the temerity to question him about Alberta profiting from high energy prices while Canadians are about to face enormous increases in their heating bills this winter. “Look! It’s our money! Get your grubby Central Canadian hands off of it!” barked the Premier. “We’ll do what we want!”

“Bring on some more goddamned hurricanes!”

Each and every Albertan will receive one of six different special ‘Screw You, Rest of Canada’ commemorative cheques in the mail in the next six weeks.

You really have to read the entire article, it’s very funny! The cheques themselves are quite a riot too!

Read: The Hammer

Notes for 10/30/2005

One more day until November and still no snow – I like it!

  • Just got back from the Matthew Good concert at the Starlite. I went with Megan, making this like fourth time we’ve seen him perform I think. He played a really great set tonight, and he even played my favorite song, Weapon (he didn’t play it the last time I saw him).
  • My new favorite day of the week is Thursday. Why? Because there are $2 drinks at Lux!
  • Sharon wants to buy a portable CD player to replace her old one, and so I gave her my little speech on how she sould be buying an MP3 player instead. It fell on deaf ears, so I called her a luddite, and to my surprise she didn’t know what that meant! For once I knew something about the English language that Sharon didn’t!
  • I started reading Ray Kurzweil’s new book The Singularity a few days ago, and I am completely enthralled. It’s so interesting – it makes me want to go to sleep for twenty years and wake up when the good times are rolling!
  • Looks like the Telus strike isn’t going to end anytime soon – the union rejected a tentative agreement today. Very slim margin though, with 50.3% voting against the agreement.
  • It has been almost 24 hours since I last ate, so I think I am going to head home and have a bite to eat before I go to sleep. Oddly though I’m not hungry.
  • Happy Halloween!

The Podcast Network

Post ImageIt has been a while since I last looked at The Podcast Network, but I was quite impressed when I did wander over to the site today. They recently relaunched the site, and gave it a much needed makeover. Seriously, the old site was just terrible. I like the new layout, colors, and logo.

The site has some interesting new features too! There are tags on the front page, a news section, and a list of the latest shows. I really like the number of shows they have – shows great progress. I don’t think the network has evolved enough to meet a fate similar to Weblogs.com (which was recently purchased by AOL), but I do think they are on the right track. I’m going to have to check out some of the new shows – The Guy Parenting Show looks interesting for instance (and it’s such a specific market, they must do well on the advertising).

With the recent podcast directory craze going on, it’s interesting to see a project like The Podcast Network take a different route.

Read: The Podcast Network

More on social bookmarking

I have received quite a bit of feedback on my last post on social bookmarking. That tells me a couple things – first, that this blogging thing really works, and second that people are into
social bookmarking. If people didn’t care, my post would have gone
unnoticed. That bodes well for the future of social bookmarking!

One of the responses I received was from Djoeke van de Klomp, who is the User Community Manager for Blinklist, another social bookmarking site that I admit I have not tried. She passed along a link to The Great Social Bookmarking Survey,
which I of course filled out. You can fill it out too and in return
you’ll get a copy of the results (if you submit your email address).
Here’s what I had to say in response to the main question of the survey:

One of the features that I think would take social bookmarking to the
next level is greater awareness of content types (and context). Am I
bookmarking a web page? A flash presentation? An mp3 file? A video? An
image? I don’t think the interface, the metadata, and the other
supporting features are truly consistent for each of these content
types. The interface and metadata for an image should be different than
for a web page. Maybe this is like a mashup of Flickr and a social
bookmarking service, who knows! The way these services behave now
though isn’t THAT much different from the bookmarks we have in
browsers, except that they are available online. There needs to be
something more to take it to the next level. The value proposition has
to be more than just, “share your bookmarks online”!

Yes there are other things like tags, and services like Shadows
add discussions into the mix and while those features are great, I
don’t think they are enough to make the average user jump into social
bookmarking. They see it as more work! And it’s a tricky balancing act,
make no mistake about it.

How do we add enough interesting features that savvy users can run with
it and make it their own, while continuing to make it simple enough for
the average user to understand and use?

Tricky indeed. Another thing I’d like to see is an API that all
social bookmarking sites agree upon so that we can integrate them into
browsers and other applications! Or does this already exist? As far as
I know, Flock is the only project working towards integrating social bookmarking into the browser.

If you’re interested in taking a look at the various social bookmarking services, there is a pretty big list at Wikipedia. And roxomatic has a PDF which compares 19 different services (last updated on August 11th, 2005).

Read: Take the Survey!

Social Bookmarking and Walled Gardens

Post ImageBefore the current explosion of social bookmarking sites I became a total del.icio.us fan. It was among the first sites to have the funky URI, it has a very simple and extremely clean interface, and it makes me feel like I am in control. Overall, I have been very happy with it, and I have around 760 items in my bookmarks right now.

I still get the urge to try out some of the other sites though! I never end up taking the plunge however, and I think it’s because I already have so many links in del.icio.us. If there was an extremely easy way to import/export between the services that would be sweet, I’d have no problems! Unfortunately, there isn’t. I mean I could probably write a script that loads everything in del.icio.us and adds it to whatever service I am trying, but that’s not really feasible. I like to code, but I don’t have that kind of time! And yes, testing a new service with all of my existing bookmarks in there is important! If I am going to switch, it had better handle what I already have very well.

I don’t think this problem is limited to social bookmarking either. It’s not like you can export your photos from Flickr to another site with anything close to what I would call “relative ease”. I understand that it would take a lot of work on the part of the development teams to make it a reality, but we aren’t really in an open Web 2.0 world until it happens. And if it’s not going to happen, it would be better if I hosted my own bookmarks and published a standard API that services like del.icio.us could tap into – Web 3.0 maybe 😉

With all the recent talk about demolishing the so-called “wall gardens” of the past, I can’t help but think it’s all a farce.

Big Oil Profits and Alberta

I
thought I’d highlight this rather interesting discussion on the big oil
companies and their profits taking place at Robert McClelland’s My Blahg. After describing the profits of Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, and Petro-Canada (all up, surprise surprise) Robert had this to say:

Pricks. I say regulate them. And to hell with Alberta if they don’t like it.

And later in the comments he says:

Someone else: And the NEP worked really well last time didn’t it…

Robert: It worked great for Eastern Canada where I live and only care about.

I don’t know if he’s trying to be funny, or if he’s serious, but I
thought they were interesting comments nonetheless. I don’t think it’s
fair to blame Alberta for the current rise in prices. There are a
number of different factors, including speculators as explained by Mark Cuban back in September.

Not only that, but Alberta is using at least some of the profits from oil for worthy purposes. For example, we’ve stockpiled lots of Tamiflu and are ready to share.
We’re also investing more in our already top notch childcare
facilities. You can be bitter about the high cost of oil and the amount
Alberta profits, but it’s not like we’re actively spending money to
snub the other provinces!

That being said, I wish Alberta would take the lead and get a
national energy policy started. It would be wise to be proactive about
it, instead of defensive, I think.

MORE: One other thing I wanted to point out – I think Albertans have just as much reason to complain about oil prices as anyone else. The oil is extracted here, refined here, and doesn’t have to travel anywhere else, yet we pay around 90 cents a litre (as of today). How does that make sense? There are absolutely no distribution costs, especially here in Edmonton where we have a number of refineries, yet we pay just as much as everyone else.

Read: My Blahg

VS2005 and SQL2005 RTM!

Post ImageIf you’re a developer like me, you’ve likely been waiting for the release of Visual Studio 2005. The official launch is still November 7th, but it was announced yesterday that VS2005 and SQL Server 2005 have been released to manufacturing, and are available now to MSDN subscribers:

In addition, Microsoft on Thursday detailed a limited-time “migration pricing” program meant to attract customers of competitive databases.

For customers of Oracle, Sybase, and IBM’s DB2 and Informix database, Microsoft will give a 50 percent discount on a SQL Server Enterprise Edition license with the purchase of a regularly priced Software Assurance License. The promotion begins Dec. 1.

Definitely good news for us developer-types, as this means there will not be any more delays! I can’t wait to play with SQL Server 2005. If you haven’t registered for The Launch, taking place in Edmonton on November 15th, go do it right now!

Read: CNET News.com

BioWare – a Top 100 Employer

Post ImageLast week BioWare Corp. announced that they were recognized as one of Canada’s Top 100 Employers. From the press release:

“This acknowledgment is a great honour, and we are thrilled to receive this award. It is important to BioWare because it reflects our core value of Quality in our Workplace, and it also demonstrates that BioWare is an employer of choice for prospective employees not only in Canada, but world-wide,” said Joint CEO Dr. Ray Muzyka.

It’s great to see another Edmonton software company achieving great success! Seems to be a really positive wave going for local software firms – hopefully we can join in on the party!

BioWare is hard at work on their next major release, called Mass Effect. It’s a “revolutionary action RPG” being made for the Xbox 360, and it will be published by Microsoft. Looks like a cool game!

Read: BioWare

Gates on High School Education

Post ImageMany of my friends are in, or have graduated from, the Faculty of Education. I guess that means that whether or not they become teachers, they have some interest in education, and indeed a vested interest in seeing education move forward. Yet I have often said that I don’t think the way we do things is right. I have wondered aloud to these friends that perhaps a move back to the old “master and apprentice” way of learning would be more appropriate! Today I came across these remarks from Bill Gates made back in February:

When we looked at the millions of students that our high schools are not preparing for higher education – and we looked at the damaging impact that has on their lives – we came to a painful conclusion:

America’s high schools are obsolete.

By obsolete, I don’t just mean that our high schools are broken, flawed, and under-funded – though a case could be made for every one of those points.

By obsolete, I mean that our high schools – even when they’re working exactly as designed – cannot teach our kids what they need to know today.

I’d say that’s a fair assessment. Almost since day one of my University career, I have thought there must be a better way to do this. After the first two years of University, Grade 11 and Grade 12 largely seemed like a waste of time. Or maybe not a waste of time, but an inefficient use of time. Maybe I’m just cynical, I don’t know. I know there are teachers who care, but there’s often not enough resources. And some of the things that students need, they don’t have the opportunity to obtain.

I don’t really have a suggestion for alternatives though either – I simply haven’t given it enough thought. I do know however, that I want my kids to have the best education possible. There’s so much that we could be doing in high schools that we aren’t.

Read: Bill & Melinda Gates

Preliminary Podcasting Survey Results

Post ImageVia Derek I came across Peter Chen’s preliminary statistics from his podcasting and videoblogging survey. He makes it clear that the results are preliminary, and that follow-up data is being requested with more analysis to come. Having said that, the results are quite interesting! Here are some highlights I picked out:

  • Looks like the majority of podcasters publish content weekly. (48.77 %)
  • Average episode length is just over 29 minutes.
  • The average number of minutes spent producing an episode is almost 260! That’s an incredibly high number that we hope to reduce with our solutions. I know how much time it takes – that’s one reason I stopped BlogosphereRadio to focus on building the tools!
  • About 61% of respondents say they have no business model – they do it as a private endeavor. Sounds like my Average Joe Podcasting post was spot on!
  • English is overwhelmingly the most commonly spoken language. (85.75 %)
  • One stat that surprised me – around 83% of respondents were male. For some reason, I expected that to be a little lower. I think it’s because of the recent push in blogging to find female voices; I probably figured that podcasting would benefit.

Very intriguing results. I look forward to seeing what Peter comes up with next. I also wonder just how representative these numbers are – there’s no margin of error or anything posted (probably because they are preliminary results).

Read: Peter Chen