MasterMaq's Blog » Paramagnus http://blog.mastermaq.ca The official blog of Mack D. Male, an Edmonton blogger. Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:31:25 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Your Guide to Summer Festivals & Events in Edmonton! http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2011/06/01/your-guide-to-summer-festivals-events-in-edmonton/ http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2011/06/01/your-guide-to-summer-festivals-events-in-edmonton/#comments Wed, 01 Jun 2011 23:07:37 +0000 Mack D. Male http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2011/06/01/your-guide-to-summer-festivals-events-in-edmonton/ Exactly a year ago, I posted a listing of as many of the summer festivals happening in Edmonton as I could find. We truly are Festival City – there were 25 festivals in my initial list. Lots of people found it useful, so I thought I’d do the same again this year!

Once again powered by ShareEdmonton, here are a list of 29 festivals you can look forward to over the next few months, complete with iCal feeds and some basic social media information.

You’ll note that each one has a link to ShareEdmonton, where I list the festival dates and locations as accurately as possible. As I get more information I’ll update the listings.

Here’s the information for all festivals:

You can subscribe to that iCal feed using Outlook or your favorite calendar application. In Google Calendar, you can “Add by URL” and just copy/paste the iCal link above. I’m sure there are more festivals happening over the summer that I’ve missed. If your favorite isn’t on the list, let me know. If you subscribe to the iCal feed above, any new festival that gets added to the ShareEdmonton calendar will show up automatically!

Of course, ShareEdmonton has more than just festivals. You can also keep up-to-date on your favorite local sports teams:

There are hundreds of other events in the calendar too (for example, a listing of all the farmers markets). Check out the featured events listing or calendar for some of the highlights (or subscribe using iCal). If you know of an event that isn’t in the calendar, add it!

Happy summer!

]]> http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2011/06/01/your-guide-to-summer-festivals-events-in-edmonton/feed/ 4 Edmonton Election 2010: It’s election day! http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/10/18/edmonton-election-2010-its-election-day/ http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/10/18/edmonton-election-2010-its-election-day/#comments Mon, 18 Oct 2010 23:59:45 +0000 Mack D. Male http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/10/18/edmonton-election-2010-its-election-day/ There’s just a couple of hours left to vote today, so if you haven’t already done so, go vote! You can find out where your voting station is here. I voted this morning and spent the day with Dave visiting campaign offices and getting a feel for the election. So far, turnout is looking decent.

As of 4pm today, a total of 77,947 Edmontonians had voted. If you add the 17,658 who voted in advance voting, the total is 95,605, which is nearly 26,000 higher than the 69,638 for the same period in 2007.

If you’re looking for a place to see the results tonight, check out the ShareEdmonton election results dashboard!

There weren’t any lines to deal with when I voted at 10:30 this morning. I ran into a couple of Mandel supporters on the way back:

Mandel supporters

My next stop was City Hall, to get an update on the morning voter turnout from Edmonton’s Returning Officer Alayne Sinclair:

Edmonton Clerk Alayne Sinclair

Dave and I then began our tour of election campaign offices, starting with Mayor Stephen Mandel’s:

Stephen Mandel's Campaign OfficeStephen Mandel's Campaign Office

The mayor himself was pretty happy with the effort put in by his team!

Stephen Mandel's Campaign Office

Our next visit was David Dorward’s office, where we had a great chat with David MacLean. Most of the team was out getting people to the voting stations, but the office was getting setup for a party.

David Dorward Campaign OfficeDavid Dorward Campaign Office

From there we travelled to Daryl Bonar’s office, but there was no one there. They were out getting people to vote, as they should have been!

Daryl Bonar supporters

We headed back north of the river for our next stops, starting with Scott McKeen’s campaign office:

Scott McKEen Campaign OfficeScott McKEen Campaign Office

A short trip away was Tony Caterina’s campaign office. We caught him just as he was leaving!

Tony Caterina Campaign OfficeTony Caterina Campaign Office

We stopped at Don Koziak’s campaign office, but there wasn’t anyone there. Our last stop, on the way back to City Hall, was at James Johnson’s campaign office:

James Johnson Campaign Office

You can see the rest of my photos here.

Of all the campaign offices we visited today, I’d say that Mandel’s felt most like what I was expecting. There were lots of people there, phones were ringing, people were running around – there was energy!

Results

We should start to see results coming in around 8:15pm tonight. Stay tuned to #yegvote on Twitter and check out the election results dashboard at ShareEdmonton. You can quickly see the overall results, and if you click on a ward, you can get more detail about just that race.

]]> http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/10/18/edmonton-election-2010-its-election-day/feed/ 1 Edmonton Election 2010: Video Resources & Statistics http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/10/14/edmonton-election-2010-video-resources-statistics/ http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/10/14/edmonton-election-2010-video-resources-statistics/#comments Thu, 14 Oct 2010 20:15:00 +0000 Mack D. Male http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/10/14/edmonton-election-2010-video-resources-statistics/ With less than five days to go until the election, time is running out for candidates to spread their message and for Edmontonians to get informed. I suspect there will be lots of people “cramming” over the weekend! Currently, 90 out of the 112 candidates running in this election have a website. Most of those websites have information on issues, platforms, etc. That information is great, but it can be hard to get a sense of someone through text alone.

Video can help you learn about a candidate in a different way. Body language, intonation, and emotion are all important aspects of communication that are lost when all you’ve got is text. From a practical perspective however, video is difficult to use. It can take significant time and effort to both create and consume. And if recent research is to be believed, it can be hard to justify the cost when nearly 20% of viewers abandon a video after just 10 seconds!

That might help to explain why just 12 of the candidates have YouTube pages. In total, they have uploaded 76 videos this election season, which in total have been viewed over 10,000 times (about 134 times each, on average).

In total, I have aggregated 1046 videos related to the election at ShareEdmonton (so far). You can see all videos, videos by ward, or videos by candidate. For example:

Here are some statistics on the aggregated videos:

  • Every video has been viewed at least once. In total, those 1046 videos have been viewed more than 26,000 times.
  • The average number of views per video is 25.
  • Daniel Dromarsky’s video on the Downtown Arena is the most viewed.
  • There are 104 videos with comments (9.9%).
  • The average number of comments on those videos is just under 2.
  • Daniel Dromarsky’s video on the City Centre Airport has the most comments.
  • There are 142 videos with ratings (13.6%).
  • The average rating on those videos is 4.2. There are 108 videos with an average rating of 5.

The vast majority of those videos have been uploaded within the last month or so.

That lonely video off to the left is from Ward 1 candidate Andrew Knack, who definitely started early.

There have been two key producers of election-related video: CTVnewsEdmonton and edpublicschools. Of the 1046 videos, those two users have uploaded 916. As a result, most candidates have some kind of video online, and a number of them have simply embedded CTV’s or Edmonton Public Schools’ videos on their own websites.

There are lots of other places to find election video (and audio):

And hey, what’s a post about video without an actual video! Here is one from the edmontonian on the basics of the municipal election:

You can watch part two here.

The final mayoral forum takes place tonight at Eastglen School, and election day is Monday! On election night, only CTV is planning to have live coverage on television, but there will be lots of online coverage. ShareEdmonton will be updating live with results, I’m sure #yegvote will be busy on Twitter, and the edmontonian will be broadcasting live.

Make sure you vote!

]]> http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/10/14/edmonton-election-2010-video-resources-statistics/feed/ 2 Edmonton Election 2010: Nomination Day Statistics http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/09/21/edmonton-election-2010-nomination-day-statistics/ http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/09/21/edmonton-election-2010-nomination-day-statistics/#comments Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:30:00 +0000 Mack D. Male http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/09/21/edmonton-election-2010-nomination-day-statistics/ Yesterday was nomination day, the day that all candidates in the upcoming municipal election needed to file their paperwork and pay their fees. Dave was at City Hall and has a nice overview of how things went.

Now that we know who’s running (though some may still drop out) let’s look at some stats. In total, there are 113 candidates vying for the role of mayor, councillor, public school trustee, or catholic school trustee. Here’s a breakdown of the various candidates:

I wondered about gender, since that is often a hot issue in politics. Here’s the gender breakdown for the candidates:

The web is going to play a very important role in this election. It’s the first place people turn to when they want to know more – they search. How many of the candidates could be found online as of last night? And which details did they make available?

As you can see, candidates have some work to do.

Quite a few people, myself included, followed along yesterday on Twitter. Kudos to Dave and John for live-tweeting and posting lots of photos! Here’s what yesterday’s #yegvote activity looked like:

Candidates could file their paperwork between 9am and noon, which explains the big spike in the morning.

I hope Edmontonians take the time to learn about their candidates, and to voice their concerns and thoughts on the issues facing our city. I have updated ShareEdmonton to (hopefully) help make that easier. Here’s what’s new at the Election 2010 site:

I’d love your feedback on how I can improve the Election 2010 site at ShareEdmonton. And if you find additional candidate information that I’m missing, let me know. I’ve got a few planned improvements on the way, so stay tuned!

]]> http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/09/21/edmonton-election-2010-nomination-day-statistics/feed/ 2 Your Guide to Summer Festivals in Edmonton! http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/06/01/your-guide-to-summer-festivals-in-edmonton/ http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/06/01/your-guide-to-summer-festivals-in-edmonton/#comments Tue, 01 Jun 2010 17:00:00 +0000 Mack D. Male http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/06/01/your-guide-to-summer-festivals-in-edmonton/ With dozens of festivals happening throughout the year, Edmonton is rightly known as Canada’s Festival City. During the summer in particular, it seems as though there’s a festival of some sort happening every day. I guess that’s because there is!

Here’s a list of 25 festivals you can look forward to over the next three months, complete with iCal feeds, and social media information (see below for an iCal feed for all the festivals):

You’ll note that each one has a link to ShareEdmonton, where I list the festival dates and locations as accurately as possible. Festivals like Creative Age and Improvaganza have really good detail, while others like the Fringe do not (they haven’t released the schedule yet). As I get more information I’ll update the listings. You can also see related tweets for each festival, and very soon, related photos and blog posts too!

Here’s the information for all festivals:

You can subscribe to that iCal feed using Outlook or your favorite calendar application. In Google Calendar, you can “Add by URL” and just copy/paste the iCal link above.

I’m sure there are more festivals happening over the summer that I’ve missed. If your favorite isn’t on the list, let me know. If you subscribe to the iCal feed above, any new festival that gets added to the ShareEdmonton calendar will show up automatically!

]]> http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/06/01/your-guide-to-summer-festivals-in-edmonton/feed/ 8 Live Music in Edmonton now at ShareEdmonton with YEG Live http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/05/31/live-music-in-edmonton-now-at-shareedmonton-with-yeg-live/ http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/05/31/live-music-in-edmonton-now-at-shareedmonton-with-yeg-live/#comments Mon, 31 May 2010 16:00:00 +0000 Mack D. Male http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/05/31/live-music-in-edmonton-now-at-shareedmonton-with-yeg-live/ It’s difficult but not impossible to discover all of the events that happen in Edmonton, and I’m continually working to improve the listings at ShareEdmonton. One of the ways I’m doing that is by working with others who already have large, accurate collections of events. The latest such example is YEG Live, Edmonton’s source for local live music, artist, venue, and event listings. You can now see all YEG Live events at ShareEdmonton!

I can’t remember how I was introduced to YEG Live – it might have been via Twitter, or it may have been because they use one of my photos for their header background. In any case, I was impressed. Founders Chris Martyniuk and Cameron Gertz have created an excellent online hub for local music in Edmonton. Most importantly, they really care about the accuracy of the data on the site. As a result, YEG Live has a superb collection of artist profiles, venue profiles, and of course, live music events. I contacted Chris to see if he’d be interested in working together, and fortunately, he was!

Now when you browse entertainment events at ShareEdmonton, you’ll see the ones that come from YEG Live highlighted with the icon to the left. When you click through to an event, such as tomorrow evening’s show featuring Sweet Thing at Haven Social Club, you’ll see all of the usual details you’d expect at a ShareEdmonton event page (start & end time, location details, related tweets, etc) as well as links and short bios for the artists performing (which link to YEG Live). There are also prominent links to the YEG Live event and ticket information pages.

Thanks to Chris for all the work he did to make this integration possible! There’s no sense in duplicating the tremendous effort he’s already putting into creating an accurate calendar of live music events in Edmonton, so I’m glad we were able to work together. It’s a win-win-win as I see it: ShareEdmonton is a little more complete, YEG Live gets a little more exposure, and Edmontonians are more likely to discover great live music events happening in the city!

]]> http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/05/31/live-music-in-edmonton-now-at-shareedmonton-with-yeg-live/feed/ 0 Edmonton Public Schools & Open Data http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/04/08/edmonton-public-schools-open-data/ http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/04/08/edmonton-public-schools-open-data/#comments Thu, 08 Apr 2010 21:00:53 +0000 Mack D. Male http://blog.mastermaq.ca/?p=3670 Today I’m very excited to announce that Edmonton Public Schools has taken a big step into the world of open data by releasing a data set containing information on all of their schools, including the six opening later this year. I understand the data will be made available in the City of Edmonton’s Open Data Catalogue early next week, but you can download the CSV file today if you like.

Download the Edmonton Public Schools Data in CSV

Back in early February I met Jeremy and Paul for lunch to chat about open data and the community here in Edmonton. One of the things we talked about was how Edmonton Public Schools could get involved. In addition to attending events like the Open City Workshop, Jeremy and his team also started working behind-the-scenes to pull together data that might be useful to share. I helped define the fields that should be included and did the geocoding work, but they did all the rest. The result is a great data set of public schools in Edmonton, containing the name, address, lat/long, grade levels, programming information, and contact details for each.

Edmonton Public Schools follows in the footsteps of the Edmonton Public Library in embracing open data. Both organizations should be applauded for being “early adopters” and for their enthusiastic participation in the open data movement here in Edmonton. They have set an example that others can follow. Specifically:

  • Start small! EPL released branch locations, EPSB released school locations.
  • Work with the community! In both cases, I was able to help with some of the work. There are many others in the community who are eager to help as well.
  • Engage the City! In addition to getting the data in the catalogue, which is really important to have a central repository, the City has also offered some suggestions for improvements.

Thank you to Jeremy and the rest of the team at Edmonton Public Schools for making this happen!

No post about a new data set would be complete without mentioning that the data is now available at ShareEdmonton! You can now see a list of all public schools and on the details page for each one, you can see the relevant school ward, grade level, and programming information on the right side (for example, McNally, the high school I attended). More improvements coming soon!

]]> http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/04/08/edmonton-public-schools-open-data/feed/ 28 Edmonton Neighbourhood Census Data http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/04/07/edmonton-neighbourhood-census-data/ http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/04/07/edmonton-neighbourhood-census-data/#comments Wed, 07 Apr 2010 17:15:56 +0000 Mack D. Male http://blog.mastermaq.ca/?p=3663 For a long time I’ve wanted to get the City of Edmonton’s neighbourhood census data in CSV format (or really any usable format other than PDF). Recently, with the help of Laura (and Sandra) at the City’s Election & Census Services department, who I met at the Open City Workshop, I finally got it. And now you can have it too!

Download the Edmonton Neighbourhood Census Data in CSV

I’ve also emailed this to the City’s open data team, so hopefully they can get it in the data catalogue soon.

Visualizing the Data

Why is having the census data in a format like CSV useful? Well for one thing, it enables creatives to do stuff with that data through code or other tools. For instance, I was able to generate a heat map for the City of Edmonton:

The darker sections are more heavily populated, the lighter yellow regions are less populated.

Not all neighbourhoods are reflected, as the City does not release details for neighbourhoods with a population between 1 and 49. Here are some other things we can learn from the data set:

  • Total population in the data set is 777,811, which means there are 4628 individuals unaccounted for (total for 2009 was 782,439).
  • The average neighbourhood population is 2424, or 3039 if you exclude neighbourhoods with a reported population of 0.
  • The median neighbourhood population is 2216.
  • Oliver and Downtown are the only two neighbourhoods with a population greater than 10,000.
  • More dwellings are owned (192,171) than rented (121,953).

ShareEdmonton

Another reason having this data in CSV is useful is because app developers can more easily integrate it into the things they are building. For example, all the census data is now available at ShareEdmonton! So when you view a neighbourhood, you’ll see the census data on the right side (see Alberta Avenue for example). You can also browse neighbourhoods by population. I’ve also fixed the neighbourhood search, so it works better now.

This is just the first of a few neighbourhood-related updates this month, so stay tuned for more!

Apps4Edmonton

Yesterday the City released more information on the Apps4Edmonton competition. The first phase, from now until May, is “accepting community ideas”. Basically they want you to tell them what data you want. Aside from the obvious “we don’t know what we don’t know” problem, I think the community has done a pretty good job of defining desired data sets already.

They City had a great start in January with the launch of the data catalogue, but we need more data. Especially data like the census data, which myself and many others have been asking for since the day the PDFs were released. There are clearly some internal issues that need to be worked out if I was able to acquire this before the open data team was. I hope they get everything resolved for the competition, because it’ll be a pretty boring one if we still only have twelve data sets (New York and other cities had dozens, maybe even hundreds, before their competitions).

That said, I know there are passionate, smart people working on it. Email opendata@edmonton.ca if you have data set requests or want to get involved in Apps4Edmonton.

]]> http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/04/07/edmonton-neighbourhood-census-data/feed/ 28 Update on ShareEdmonton http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/02/02/update-on-shareedmonton/ http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/02/02/update-on-shareedmonton/#comments Tue, 02 Feb 2010 19:00:00 +0000 Mack D. Male http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/02/02/update-on-shareedmonton/ I’m still working on improving ShareEdmonton, slowly but surely, and I wanted to provide a brief update on my progress. Over the last couple of weeks, my primary focus has been on improving the event calendar. Making it faster, more complete, and easier to browse. There’s still a lot of work to do, but here are some of the recent improvements:

  • There’s now a Featured Upcoming Events page where I can highlight specific events.
  • Related events have been improved. For example, if you look at the page for this Saturday’s Old Strathcona Farmers’ Market, you’ll see other upcoming dates as well.
  • That feature highlights something else – events on ShareEdmonton are as granular as possible. Instead of just having one event for The Citadel’s upcoming run of Sweeney Todd that starts on February 6 and ends on February 28, each individual show time gets its own page. That’s important in helping to answer the question, what’s happening in Edmonton at a given time and place? There are only a few exceptions to this, such as International Week.

I’m going to continue to make it easier to find and browse events, especially by tag, like valentine’s day or family day. I have made good progress on making the calendar more complete too. Currently, there are more than 200 unique events in ShareEdmonton for February, with more than 600 different instances (a unique event would be “Sweeny Todd”, and each showtime would be a different instance). There are probably hundreds more that I don’t yet have in the calendar. It’s a tricky problem, but I’m working on it!

Another thing I’ve been working on is improving Places in ShareEdmonton, which includes adding more places! Most recently, I started adding places that have been made available as part of the City’s open data catalogue, such as Police Stations. That’s a handy page to see all the police station locations in Edmonton. I’ve got some more neat stuff coming with this, so stay tuned.

If you have feedback, let me know!

]]> http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/02/02/update-on-shareedmonton/feed/ 1 What’s happening at your local library? http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2009/12/10/whats-happening-at-your-local-library/ http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2009/12/10/whats-happening-at-your-local-library/#comments Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:30:46 +0000 Mack D. Male http://blog.mastermaq.ca/?p=3356 Ever wonder what’s happening at your local Edmonton Public Library branch? Today, finding out becomes easier than ever! I’m excited to announce that ShareEdmonton now contains all EPL events, with new events being continuously added. The events will show up in all the usual spots, but there are a few sections of the website I wanted to highlight:

The EPL has had event listings on its website for a long time now, and while they are quite detailed, they aren’t necessarily the easiest to find or browse. The ability to subscribe to events is also somewhat limited – you can choose the next 2 weeks of all EPL events via RSS, or events at your branch via email. Still, the EPL is ahead of most organizations in that they’ve been able to aggregate all events into a single place.

Shortly after ShareEdmonton launched, Peter Schoenberg, Director of eServices at EPL, got in touch with me to see if we could work together. I explained the idea behind ShareEdmonton, and he outlined some of the digital initiatives the EPL is undertaking. We identified a couple of actions. The first was for EPL to get started with Open Data, by releasing a data file of library locations. The second was for ShareEdmonton to import those locations and all the events taking place at them.

Importing events required a little bit of custom work on both ends – thanks to Peter and his team for working so efficiently and for their patience! Having the EPL events in ShareEdmonton helps us both. For the EPL, it helps users find out about their local libraries, and exposes EPL events to a different and potentially wider audience. It also makes it possible for users to subscribe to events in Outlook, Google Calendar, or any other calendar application supporting iCal. For ShareEdmonton, it’s another important step toward becoming Edmonton’s de facto calendar.

Check out the EPL branches and events on ShareEdmonton!

]]> http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2009/12/10/whats-happening-at-your-local-library/feed/ 4 Introducing ShareEdmonton http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2009/10/20/introducing-shareedmonton/ http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2009/10/20/introducing-shareedmonton/#comments Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:00:50 +0000 Mack D. Male http://blog.mastermaq.ca/?p=3221 Today I’m excited to launch ShareEdmonton, a local aggregation platform for Edmonton and area. With it, I want to redefine local media and improve Edmonton by embracing the fact that communication is increasingly taking place online.

You can think of ShareEdmonton as an events calendar, at least right now. It certainly has that functionality, and I want it to become the de facto events calendar for Edmonton. I’ve taken the opposite approach of most online calendaring sites, such as Upcoming or Eventful. Instead of starting at the global level and working down, I’ve started at the local level. This is a simple, but important distinction.

I believe that place is more important than ever. That’s why place is at the heart of ShareEdmonton. Unlike other sites, each place exists once and only once in ShareEdmonton. If you want to find out what’s going on at the Shaw Conference Centre, you can be confident there’s only one in the system. In addition to individual places, ShareEdmonton currently supports neighbourhoods, such as Downtown. This is a powerful way to roll up data about a collection of places.

What kind of data? Events, obviously, but also tweets. For any event, place, or neighbourhood you can see recent related tweets written by people in the Edmonton area, in real-time. Or you can see all tweets written by local users. Over time, I’ll be adding other kinds of data alongside tweets, including blog posts, photos, and more.

ShareEdmonton is all about aggregating the immense amounts of data available online and helping you find the bits that are important, relevant or interesting to you, through place, topic, or some other filter. Here’s an example – George W. Bush is in town tonight, at the Shaw Conference Centre. Here’s the event page on ShareEdmonton (and here’s the page for the rally against him). On it, you find information about the event, the location, and recent related tweets – people talking about the event. Two more examples, using topic as a filter: weather and traffic. That’s pretty powerful, I think, and has the potential to become even more powerful over time.

What’s available today is just a small part of what I hope the site will become. Today is step one, and there’s a long way to go until the vision is realized. I have grand ambitions for ShareEdmonton!

Here are a few other quick points:

  • Though I’m not calling this a beta, it is a work-in-progress.
  • The entire site features clean, hackable URLs.
  • The site also features Microformats. If you’re running Firefox, install Operator and you’ll see your browser “light up” with events, locations, tagspaces, and more.
  • All tweets pages have RSS feeds, and most event listing pages have both RSS and iCal feeds.
  • ShareEdmonton is not, and will not be, open source. I am and will be embracing the concepts of open data, however, so stay tuned for more on that.
  • The engine is generic, so you could in theory turn on ShareCalgary or an aggregator for another city.
  • As I was quoted on Saturday – I’m really not concerned with the business model at the moment. I want to build something that is valuable first.

I want to say a big thank you to everyone who has provided feedback, done testing, and otherwise helped me out with this, especially Chris, Cam, Reg, Eric, Rob, Dickson, Jas, and Adam. Also, though she probably would rather me not say it, Sharon played a big behind-the-scenes role in this – thanks!

Please check out ShareEdmonton, and let me know what you think. Tweet it, blog it, leave a comment below, email me, or post something on the Uservoice forum I’ve setup. You can also follow ShareEdmonton on Twitter, which is where I’ll announce new features. Thanks!

]]> http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2009/10/20/introducing-shareedmonton/feed/ 23 Tech stuff I’ve been learning about lately http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2009/04/28/tech-stuff-i-have-been-learning-about-lately/ http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2009/04/28/tech-stuff-i-have-been-learning-about-lately/#comments Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:00:55 +0000 Mack D. Male http://blog.mastermaq.ca/?p=2720 I haven’t done one of these lists in quite a while, so I figured it was time for an update. Here are some of the geeky tech things I’m currently playing with/learning more about:

Facebook Connect
I’ve added support for Facebook Connect to ShareEdmonton, and was surprised at how straightforward it was. Little bit of a learning curve initially, but nothing major. I’m impressed with the way it works.

OAuth
Looking into this one for use with Twitter and Brightkite. I’m not very far along yet, but it also seems fairly straightforward. Check out this ReadWriteWeb article on how a recent OAuth security flaw was addressed by the community.

MSMQ
I’ve been using this since January, actually. It works great, and I wouldn’t hesitate to use it again. I want to explore some of the more advanced uses now.

OpenCalais
You might consider it a semantic web service, because Calais is all about giving meaning to data. I came across it via bit.ly, which uses Calais to automatically extract names, places, and other metadata from the links you shorten.

Google Maps API
Again, this one is fairly straightforward. Lately I’ve been looking into the non-visual services it provides. For example, geocoding and reverse-geocoding in the background, without necessarily having a map on the page.

Public Data Sets on AWS
This one I’ve looked into the least so far, but I’m keen to check it out. In particular, I’d like to explore working with the Freebase data dump. It’s still amazing to me that you can tap into such a vast amount of data with relative ease.

As you can probably guess, almost all of these are related to work I’m doing with ShareEdmonton. I should have an update on that soon.

]]> http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2009/04/28/tech-stuff-i-have-been-learning-about-lately/feed/ 0 Recap: DemoCampEdmonton6 http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2009/03/12/recap-democampedmonton6/ http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2009/03/12/recap-democampedmonton6/#comments Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:19:48 +0000 Mack D. Male http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2009/03/12/recap-democampedmonton6/ Last night was our sixth DemoCamp here in Edmonton, and I think it was probably our best yet. We had around 140 people in attendance, which isn’t much different than DCE4 but it somehow seemed bigger. Maybe it was all the cameras and video cameras? We had Peter Urban and the Smibs TV team record all the demos – watch for the video there soon. I was also really surprised that so many people had never been to DemoCamp before. We’re definitely reaching new people, and I think that’s great!

We had five demos:

  • I showed the first little bit of ShareEdmonton, and EdmontonTechScene. It wasn’t the best demo in the world, but it wasn’t bad for having just two days :)
  • Graham Batty showed us bittablog, an interesting microblogging service that he recently cooked up.
  • Ryan Leland showed his unique take on social networking – you-vs-me. It was a definite crowd pleaser thanks to the humorous topics like Cougar-vs-Bear. You can use the democamp invite code to check it out.
  • Mark Matichuk showed us Clinitrust, a secure messaging platform for medical professionals.
  • Our final demo was Peter Urban and Paul Bellows, who showed us their new joint venture (between Smibs and Yellow Pencil). It’s a tool to help move content from one CMS to another.

The general consensus afterward was that Peter & Paul’s was the demo of the night. Though they did a little too much talking in my opinion, the product is definitely intriguing. It’s not hard to see that there’s a big market for what they are doing. It’ll be a time saver, indeed. Hopefully we’ll get to see more of it soon.

DemoCamp Edmonton 6DemoCamp Edmonton 6

See what I mean about the tripods and cameras? After the demos almost everyone wandered over to RATT (Room At The Top) in the Students’ Union Building. A little too much drinking and karaoke ensued, but it was a fun time!

Twitter featured more prominently this time at DemoCamp. We had TwitterFall up on the big screen before we got started, and that encouraged lots of people to start tweeting. Soon after the demos started, we broke into the top ten trending topics at Twitter Search, and eventually rose as high as #7. Very cool!

Don’t miss Walter & Alain’s great list, 10 things I liked about DemoCamp Edmonton 6. Brittney also has a funny post of fun facts about DemoCamp Edmonton 6. Also, Cam and I did an interview with The Gateway, who wrote about DemoCamp and IDEAfest today.

I can’t wait until DCE7! Thanks to everyone who came out last night. If you’d like to be notified about future DemoCamp and BarCamp events in Edmonton, sign up for the mailing list here.

]]> http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2009/03/12/recap-democampedmonton6/feed/ 7 Ups and Downs for Podcast Hosting in 2008 http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2008/12/29/ups-and-downs-for-podcast-hosting-in-2008/ http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2008/12/29/ups-and-downs-for-podcast-hosting-in-2008/#comments Tue, 30 Dec 2008 01:42:43 +0000 Mack D. Male http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2008/12/29/ups-and-downs-for-podcast-hosting-in-2008/ podcasting Back in October, Dickson and I announced that we were shutting down our hosting service Podcast Spot. At the end of November, we disabled uploading and are now in the final transition phase for downloads and RSS feeds. In February 2009, the site will be taken offline completely.

We’re not the only podcast hosting service that shutdown in 2008 – at least two other services also called it quits recently:

The most visible of these services was Podango, so news of its demise created some discussion over the holidays. From Podcasting News:

While Smith attributes Podango’s state to the effects of the financial market, Podango and other podcast hosting services have not demonstrated that there’s much of a need for podcast-specific Web hosting services.

Podcango’s situation raises the question: Is there a real need for podcast-specific hosting services?

It’s a good question, and one I have thought about quite a bit in the latter half of 2008. For the vast majority of people, YouTube, Flickr, and similar tools are good enough. If they want to share some audio or (more likely) video, these services make it easy to do so. Increasingly, video cameras come with built-in support for YouTube, so the user doesn’t really have to do anything but record. This was the curve we attempted to get ahead of with Podcast Spot.

For a smaller number of people, something more advanced is required. Maybe they want to sell advertising, or have more control over production quality, or gain access to better statistics. I think this group can be split into two – the DIY crowd, and the use-a-hosting-service crowd. So yes, there is a need for podcast-specific hosting services, but perhaps the market is a lot smaller than everyone thought.

It wasn’t all bad news for podcast hosting in 2008 though. Some familiar services still appear to be going strong: Libsyn, Podbean, and Podkive to name just a few. Back in July, RawVoice announced they were entering the market with Blubrry. In August, Wizzard Software announced increased revenues and decreased expenses and losses. And on October 21st, Blip.tv announced they had raised another round of investment.

I’d expect 2009 to be similar – a mix of ups and downs for podcast hosting services.

It’s important to realize that we’re talking about podcast hosting here. I don’t think the demise of Podango or any other service should be taken to mean that podcasting itself is in trouble. As Paul Colligan said:

Podango’s problems say as little about the future of Podcasting as GM’s problems say about the future of cars.

Podcasting is all about communication, and the need for that hasn’t gone away. Podcasting itself is doing just fine.

]]> http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2008/12/29/ups-and-downs-for-podcast-hosting-in-2008/feed/ 1 Podcast Spot: What would I have done differently? http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2008/10/23/podcast-spot-what-would-i-have-done-differently/ http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2008/10/23/podcast-spot-what-would-i-have-done-differently/#comments Fri, 24 Oct 2008 05:06:02 +0000 Mack D. Male http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2008/10/23/podcast-spot-what-would-i-have-done-differently/ podcast spot Last night I presented in the VenturePrize Seminar Series with James Matsuba of IdleTime. The seminars are meant as a primer for this year’s competitors on business plans, building a company, and pitching ideas to investors (and judges). When I attended the seminars back in 2006, I found the most useful part was getting to hear the experiences of other entrepreneurs.

For that reason, I have been more than happy to go back and share my own experiences from the competition and beyond. Last night I talked about the VenturePrize process and making it to the finals, and James talked about his experience last year in the student competition and gave his presentation from the finals too.

As a presenter, I think the most enjoyable part is the question and answer period. Both James and I answered a ton of questions last night, but one stuck with me. After I had explained that we were shutting Podcast Spot down, someone asked what I would have done differently.

I didn’t have to think about it for very long, probably because Dickson and I have talked through this a number of times. There’s a ton of things I might have done differently, but two things in particular:

  1. I would have avoided using the word “podcast” in the name of our service.
  2. I would have focused on sharing audio and video for a specific niche.

I personally have nothing against the word podcast. I don’t think we hitched our wagon to the wrong horse or anything, because the underlying technology is sound and in use by millions of people around the world. The word itself has always been confusing and misleading, however. I’ve written many times that podcasting is just a word, but unfortunately most people don’t see it that way.

I also think it would have been a good idea to target our service to a specific group of people. As a service for anyone and everyone to share audio and video, we were a little too much like a YouTube clone (even though our feature set was quite a bit different). I think we could have executed more effectively with a smaller target customer base.

The follow-up question is, of course, why didn’t we do those two things? That question is much more difficult to answer!

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