2009

By Mack D. Male · January 10, 2009 at 6:38pm

Here are some Edmonton-related things I found interesting this week:

Thursday was the official start of Winter Light 2009, Edmonton’s new winter festival. I wrote about it here, and Todd Babiak wrote a good article in The Journal today.
Numbers released by Statistics Canada on Friday show that Edmonton has the lowest unemployment rate in the country among major cities at just 3.6 percent.
Sun Media announced on Tuesday that Edmonton Sun editor-in-chief Graham Dalziel is leaving his post and will not be replaced. Instead, Calgarian Jose Rodriguez will be responsible for all of Sun Media’s properties in Alberta.
I suppose it’s not a huge surprise, but the City’s new 311 phone service (which cost $10 million by the way) is being abused. They estimate that up to 40% of calls are from people seeking information the service cannot provide.
The proposed idling bylaw would carry a fine of $250 and would rely on citizen action for enforcement. Combined with the numerous exceptions, I can’t see why anyone would think the bylaw is a good idea.
Half of Edmonton Police Service employees who responded to a recent survey considered quitting. That’s not good news.
The latest Edmonton Startup Index was posted by Techvibes on Monday. Nexopia (startup?) continues to lead the pack.
The City of Edmonton is looking for volunteers for the EXPO 2017 bid. There are four key areas: community engagement, theme development, sponsorship, and site and infrastructure planning. You can learn more at the official website, or you can check out the information session on Thursday, January 15th at 7:30pm in City Hall.
Pecha Kucha Night 3 is coming up on February 5th, and Next Gen is still looking for presenters. If you’re interested, the submission deadline is January 12th – you can email Christine Causing for more information. It looks like they have selected the Matrix Hotel downtown as the venue (subject to change).
Another one from Todd Babiak: he calls the Edmonton Transit System pathetic. My tweet about it received a ton of comments, most of them in agreement. In case you missed it – I want an API for ETS.

Registered for Northern Voice 2009

By Mack D. Male · January 9, 2009 at 5:15pm

Early this morning I registered myself and Megan for Northern Voice 2009, taking place in Vancouver on February 20th and 21st. As you may recall, I submitted a speaking proposal back in December. Unfortunately, my submission wasn’t one of the 18 selected, but that’s okay. I’m glad to hear that the organizing committee received over 100 proposals as it suggests to me that the conference will once again have high quality content this year. Thanks to the committee for considering me and undertaking the nearly impossible task of narrowing that list down!

There are only 300 tickets available for the conference and as of earlier today, they were 75% sold out. If you haven’t already done so, you had better head on over to the registration site and book your spot! Keep an eye on their blog and Twitter account for updates. I suspect they’ll once again have a waiting list, but you don’t want to be on it.

Hopefully they announce the schedule soon – I’m keen to see who’s speaking!

You can read my previous posts related to Northern Voice here. You can also look at my photos from 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008.

Are you going to NV2009? Let me know!

Edmonton Winter Light 2009

By Mack D. Male · January 8, 2009 at 11:12pm

Today marks the start of Winter Light 2009, a new festival designed to “usher in the winter season” and “enjoy Edmonton’s winter spirit.” The opening ceremonies were held tonight in Churchill Square and City Hall. It couldn’t have happened on a day more representative of winter than today – temperatures were around –22 C (and –32 C with the wind chill) and we received a fresh dump of snow during the day!

Sharon and I made our way to Churchill Square at about 7:45pm and found it mostly empty except for the volunteers. Despite having a number of warming tents and fire/heat displays, most people were inside City Hall enjoying the free food (provided by NAIT) and the entertainment of Le Fuzz and others.

We wandered around the square for a bit and eventually found the information tent where they were offering free hot chocolate to anyone who brought their own cup. Great way to be a little more environmentally responsible! The hot chocolate tasted great and allowed us to stay outside a little more before heading indoors.

Sharon was excited to see what culinary delights NAIT was offering so we headed straight for the tables of food. Unfortunately the good feeling we had by bringing our own mug for hot chocolate disappeared when we found the disposable plates and spoons being used for the food! Ah well – everything was very tasty!

We spent some time enjoying the performances, and managed to catch the official “welcome” to Winter Light with one of the organizers and Councillor Ben Henderson (Councillor Kim Krushell was also in attendance):

Next up for Winter Light is Deep Freeze on 118th Avenue, which takes place this weekend on January 10th and 11th. Activities include outdoor curling, free hay rides, snowshoeing, snow sculpting workshops, and of course, free food! On January 15th the sixth annual Ice on Whyte festival gets underway.

Although there were far more people out for the much colder New Year’s Eve than there were tonight, I wouldn’t call the festival’s success into question just yet. The main events are what will really draw people in, and tonight was basically just free marketing for those events.

I’m excited to see how the next 10 weeks unfold – I’d say Winter Light 2009 is off to a fairly good start. You can see my photos from this evening at Flickr, and some video at YouTube.

UPDATE: Sharon posted her thoughts and a bit more about the food at her blog.

Recap: DemoCampEdmonton5

By Mack D. Male · January 7, 2009 at 11:42pm

Tonight we held our first DemoCamp of 2009, once again in ETLC at the University of Alberta. Despite some cold weather, slick roads, and an Oilers game (featuring the return of Mats Sundin) we still had at least 75 people in attendance tonight at DemoCampEdmonton5. A great way to start the new year!

We had five demos tonight:

Randy Troppmann showed us RunningMap.com, an online tool for running enthusiasts to track and share routes. Users can map a route, view elevation, add photos and other points of interest, and more.
Mark Donovan from Titan Gaming Inc. showed us Titan Strike, a social networking platform for games. It features team and guild management, a built-in awards system, and tournaments. The idea is to have game publishers use Titan to build an online community around their games.
Timo Ewalds of Nexopia fame showed us one of his side projects – artificial intelligence for the game Pentago. It was without a doubt the most technical demo we’ve ever had, but it was fascinating to hear Timo describe everything he had to do to get it working well.
Victor Rubba from CrazedCoders showed us the UI they designed for the new Linksys MediaHub, just announced today at CES. It’s a Flash interface unlike anything you’ve ever seen before on a Linksys device.
Matt Skopyk showed us his Seizure Violin. It’s hard to describe in text, but essentially he’s using instruments and computers together to manipulate electronic music. Very cool stuff.

Just like last time, all of the demos went very well and looked very slick.

I think my “demo of the night” goes to CrazedCoders, with Matt Skopyk very close behind. I’m very impressed that a local company designed the new interface for a mainstream Linksys device (photo here and here), and will be revamping the interface for their line of routers as well. Engadget said in their post about the device, “we’ll see how that interface runs in person later this week.” How cool is it that we got to see the interface directly from the developers tonight here in Edmonton?! More than that, the interface looks amazing. They’ve really done an amazing job. As for Matt’s demo – it was just plain cool. I love seeing the interesting things that people are up to, and the music and lights was definitely a crowd pleaser. You can watch it here (audio is pretty quiet, sorry):

For more on the demos, check out Twitter where I posted live updates from the event. Afterward we again converged at The Windsor Pub to continue chatting, meeting one another, and occasionally watch the hockey game. It was absolutely packed!

Thanks to everyone who came out tonight! If you’d like to be notified about future DemoCamp and BarCamp events in Edmonton, sign up for the mailing list here.

I want an API for Edmonton Transit (ETS)

By Mack D. Male · January 6, 2009 at 11:45am

When the new edmonton.ca website launched back in the fall, I was hopeful that the Edmonton Transit portion of the site would receive more than just a facelift. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Though I’m disappointed, I can understand why. Edmonton Transit is not in the business of developing websites or software, it’s in the business of transportation. They’ve got to make sure buses and trains run efficiently and effectively first, and then they can focus on everything else.

That’s not to say that the website, or BusLink (over the phone), or the other services they offer aren’t important, just that ETS has limited resources and must deploy them accordingly. That’s why I think an Edmonton Transit API makes a lot of sense.

To build an application for looking up transit information, you need both an interface and data (I’m simplifying things a bit). ETS has all of the data of course – they know all of the route numbers, bus stops, and schedule information. What they lack are great interfaces. If ETS exposed their data through an API, third party developers could build great interfaces on top with relative ease.

Here’s the kind of information I’d like to see exposed through an ETS API:

Route Information – return name, start and end point, and other details for a given route
Stop Information – return coordinates, address, photo, and other information for a given stop
Route Stops with Stop Times – return a list of all stops along a given route with stop times
Routes at Stop with Times – return a list of routes for a given stop with stop times for each one
Search for Stop by Location – return the closest stops for a given address or set of coordinates

That list is similar to the information exposed by the unofficial TransLink API. A good starting point would be to simply clone what they’ve done! More advanced API features could include:

Route Interruptions – return a list of routes currently affected by construction or other interruptions
Stop Interruptions – return a list of stops currently affected by construction or other interruptions
Search for Stop by Landmark – return the closest stops for a given landmark
Trip Planner – return a list of route and transfer options for a given location of origin and destination
Information for St. Albert Transit and Strathcona County Transit

In the future, the sky is the limit. I know ETS is testing GPS technology on buses, so why not expose “distance from stop” information for a given route? That would be wicked, and incredibly useful when the weather dips below –25 C.

It’s not feasible for ETS to develop interfaces for each new platform that emerges. They have a website, but what about an iPhone application? Or a BlackBerry application? Or a Twitter bot? If they focused their limited software development energies on building an API, I’m confident that local entrepreneurs and software developers would build a plethora of interfaces on top of it. I would definitely build a Twitter bot!

There don’t seem to be many transit systems with APIs available, but that won’t be true for long. Here are a few others I’ve found: TransLink (unofficial), Bay Area Rapid Transit (official), Portland’s TriMet (official), Chicago Transit Authority (unofficial), Charlottetown Transit (unofficial). And here are a couple other resources I’ve come across: the Public Transit Openness Index, and a list of publicly available official GTFS (Google Transit Feed Specification) schedule data feeds.

I’d love to see Edmonton Transit take the lead and offer a completely free, fully functional transit API, and I’d be willing to help make it happen. In the meantime, don’t forget that you can now use Google Maps to find ETS trip plans.

REVIEW: Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5500 Revolution

By Mack D. Male · January 5, 2009 at 10:23pm

Usually I’m not in the city on boxing day, so I don’t have much experience with finding post-Xmas deals. I did venture out this year however, and managed to snag a fairly good deal on a new mouse and keyboard at Best Buy. Listed at $199.99 CDN, I picked up the Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5500 Revolution for just $99.

Cordless Desktop MX 5500 Revolution

I had been using a plain old Dell USB mouse and keyboard since my last cordless Logitech mouse died about a year ago. It used two rechargeable AA batteries, but would consistently kill them with just a couple hours of use. The Dell mouse worked fine, but it’s most advanced feature was a scroll wheel. The Dell keyboard also worked well, and had some handy media controls on top, including a volume dial. Other than that however, I found it incredibly loud and the keys sometimes stuck. I knew it was time for a new mouse and keyboard, but it wasn’t a high enough priority for me to go searching.

I’m really glad I found the deal and picked up my new mouse and keyboard. The MX Revolution mouse has both a tilt scroll wheel and a thumb wheel (for more precise scrolling), back and forward buttons, and a search button. Best of all, it comes with built-in batteries and a charging stand so that I never have to change batteries. The keyboard includes the standard layout, plus media controls on the left and an integrated LCD screen on the top that can display the date and time, temperature, media information, and more. Both devices use Bluetooth.

The mouse feels very comfortable, and the soft built-in palm rest on the keyboard is a nice touch. The keys are incredibly quiet compared to my old keyboard, and feel very smooth. So far the battery life on the mouse has been great (haven’t had to charge it yet). The scroll wheel took a bit of getting used to (it turns into a hyper scroll wheel when you have a long document) but now I really like it!

I’ll admit that the LCD screen isn’t incredibly useful, but it is pretty darn cool. Based on the first week of use, I think I’m definitely going to like this mouse and keyboard.

Notes for 1/4/2009

By Mack D. Male · January 4, 2009 at 10:55pm

Here are my weekly notes:

Finally finished reading Richard Florida’s book Who’s Your City? today. I enjoyed it, but the endless lists of cities became monotonous by the end. One of the most interesting parts is right at the beginning, when the concept of using light to measure economic activity is introduced. Very cool.
Techmeme published a list of the top 50 headlines for 2008, arranged chronologically.
The comments at FriendFeed on this headline are hardly surprising: Scout Earns All Merit Badges Possible.
From Jeff Jarvis: statistics that show the state of the news business.
Here is Sharon’s write-up of “The Art of the Brick”, the LEGO exhibit we went to see on my birthday.
Canada plays Sweden tomorrow in the gold medal game. Go Canada Go!
Back to work tomorrow. Normal schedule resumes. I’ve enjoyed my time off!

Edmonton Notes for 1/3/2009

By Mack D. Male · January 3, 2009 at 11:35pm

Here are some Edmonton-related things I found interesting this week:

First of all, happy new year! Don’t miss my Edmonton in 2008 recap post. Also – I posted a few photos and video of the downtown celebration (you can see the countdown below). It was freaking cold!
Anna Angela Samu was Edmonton’s first baby of 2009. She was born at 12:01am at the Misericordia Hospital.
This year, 2009, marks the 30th anniversary of Boyle McCauley News! Congratulations!
On Friday morning the LRT was shutdown due to an electrical problem. Not good news for commuters considering it was –30 C outside! Service was restored at about 5:30pm.
In 2008, Epcor paid the City of Edmonton roughly $190 million from dividends, franchise fees, and property taxes. City taxes would have to go up 25% to replace lost revenue if Epcor didn’t exist. Really great article on Epcor in the Journal this week.
The next Donate-a-Ride campaign started on December 31st and runs until January 31st. You can learn more at their website.
Our fifth DemoCamp is coming up on Wednesday, January 7th – don’t miss it!
Thursday, January 8th is the start of Winter Light 2009, Edmonton’s new winter festival. The opening ceremonies get underway at 6pm in Churchill Square. The Free WiFi Project is happy to be providing access to Ice on Whyte, which starts January 15th.

DemoCampEdmonton5

By Mack D. Male · January 1, 2009 at 8:46pm

democampedmonton We’re not wasting any time in 2009 – our next DemoCamp takes place in less than a week! Join us on Wednesday, January 7th at 6:30pm for another set of great demos followed by Edmonton’s best networking opportunity for tech professionals (and entrepreneurs, investors, etc. – everyone is welcome). You can read about our last DemoCamp here.

Date: Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Time: 6:30pm (and drinks/networking afterward)
Location: E1 003, ETLC, University of Alberta (map)
Cost: Free

Once again, we’d like to ask everyone to help us spread the word. Check out the BarCamp Edmonton blog, our Facebook group, the Facebook event, and of course, the wiki page. Be sure to tag your posts, photos, and other things with the democampyeg tag.

See you next week!