Tag Archives: lists

Edmonton in 2010

By Mack D. Male ·

Over the last few weeks I’ve been gathering links to articles, blog posts, and more related to Edmonton in 2010. I did something similar in 2009 and 2008. I’ll keep adding to this list as new stuff comes up.

Here are the articles and posts that I have found so far. Where it makes sense to do so, I have included an archive link:

Here are some other links related to Edmonton in 2010:

If you have another link to add to either list, let me know!

Edmonton in 2009

By Mack D. Male ·

Last year I did a recap post called Edmonton in 2008. You can’t recap something as large as an entire city, but I did find the post useful to refer back to. I thought I’d do the same kind of post again this year, for the same reason. Over the last few weeks I’ve been gathering links to articles, statistics, and more related to Edmonton in 2009. I’ll update this post as I find more.

News Articles for 2009

Other Recaps for 2009

Facts & Figures for 2009

  • Population of Edmonton: 782,439 (source)
  • Number of calls to EPS reporting suspected impaired drivers: 9,201 (source)
  • Home sales: 19,139 (source)
  • Average single-family house price: $364,032 (source)
  • Average condo price: $240,322 (source)
  • YTD Passengers at EIA as of November 2009: 5,561,131 (source)
  • 2009 CFR Attendance: 83,904 (source)
  • 2009 Capital EX Attendance: 717,966 (source)
  • 2009 Edmonton Fringe Ticket Sales: 92,279 (source)

Leave a comment if you’ve got something else I should add to the list – thanks!

Edmonton Twittersphere: #yeg’s 25 Most Listed

By Mack D. Male ·

In the December issue of Avenue Edmonton magazine there’s an article on Twitter, written by @Persepolian with photography by @bruceclarke. I was interviewed for the piece, and was asked by Avenue to supply a list of local users I’d recommend that newbies follow. There are so many great local users so it was quite a challenge! I think following the #yeg hashtag is probably more useful anyway.

Now that Twitter has had the Lists feature for about a month, I thought it would be interesting to see which users appear on the most lists. Let’s see who the community thinks you should follow! Here are Edmonton’s 25 most listed:

  1. dragonage (399)
  2. redneckmommy (379)
  3. revtrev (314)
  4. NHL_Oilers (293)
  5. wearestereos (200)
  6. gsiemens (199)
  7. lealea (179)
  8. edmontonjournal (164)
  9. cleversimon (159)
  10. patkSTEREOS (155)
  11. mastermaq (149)
  12. paradepro (148)
  13. Pat_Lorna (146)
  14. MilesSTEREOS (136)
  15. britl (124)
  16. CBCEdmonton (120)
  17. ctvedmonton (118)
  18. melanienathan (113)
  19. motherpucker (113)
  20. lyndasteele (112)
  21. CityofEdmonton (109)
  22. dancinginlife (101)
  23. Gen22 (97)
  24. GlobalEdmonton (97)
  25. pixelens (95)

This is based on a dataset of 3732 users, which is the number of users who posted at least 10 tweets from October 1st to November 25th (late last night). Of those, 1999 or 53.6% are members of at least one list, 561 or 15.0% have created at least one list, and 341 or 9.1% subscribe to at least one list. On average, local users are members of 10 lists, have created 3 lists, and subscribe to 3 lists. No one has created more than 20 lists, and just three users subscribe to more than 20 lists.

Two caveats: this only reflects public lists (I have no access to private lists obviously) and it reflects the entire Twitter community (dragonage is on 399 lists, many of which may have been created by non-local users). I hope to have some more detailed stats for the next State of the Edmonton Twittersphere (you can see October’s stats here).

As a total aside, I also looked at the new geo support that Twitter recently launched. You have to go into your Settings to enable it. Turns out just 40 users or 1.1% of the dataset have done that.

Stay tuned for more stats in the next couple weeks!

Edmonton in 2008

By Mack D. Male ·

What do you remember most about the past year in Edmonton? I think I’ll look back on 2008 as the year that I started to fully appreciate everything that our city has to offer. I learned a lot about Edmonton this year, and I look forward to learning even more in the years to come. Hopefully I can have a positive impact on the city as well!

Edmonton Skyline

Obviously a topic as large as an entire city is impossible to recap, but that doesn’t stop everyone from trying. Makes for interesting reading, right?

Here are some Edmonton-related year in review articles from around the web:

Know of another list or article that I missed? Leave a comment or email me and I’ll add it.

Now for a list of my own! Here are the 5 most popular Edmonton-related posts on my blog from the past year:

  1. Big Earl 96.3 is now Capital FM
  2. The Apple Store opens in West Edmonton Mall
  3. Edmonton is home to the future of Future Shop, and very close behind that, A look at Edmonton’s new Future Shop
  4. Use Google Maps to find Edmonton Transit schedules and trip plans
  5. New Concept for Edmonton Arena in The Quarters Downtown

All of those posts were written in 2008. If I had included the popular ones written in 2007 and earlier, four of the five would be related to Edmonton radio stations. Work at a radio station, particularly a NewCap radio station? You need to improve your web presence!

These three were close to making the list also:

Finally, here are some facts and figures from 2008 that I’ll likely want to refer to again at some point:

  • Population of Edmonton: 752,412 (source)
  • Edmonton Oilers record (calendar year): 42-31-5
  • Capital EX attendance: 743,374 (source)
  • Homeless Count: 3079 (source)
  • Number of homicides: 35 (source)

If you have another fact or figure for the list, leave a comment or email me.

I’m looking forward to a wonderful 2009, thanks for reading!

Suggestions for getting started with Twitter

By Mack D. Male ·

twitter As a fan of Twitter, I often find myself telling others about the service (you might argue that me being a fan is not as relevant as me being addicted). I do my best to explain that you can’t really explain Twitter. It’s one of those things that you have to experience before you get it. Michael Martine does a good job of describing this in his post Twitter is like sex.

I also try to offer some advice on how to get started. The most important thing I mention is actually #8 on this list, but I wanted to approach it from the perspective of just registering for the site.

Here are my top ten suggestions for getting started with Twitter:

  1. Pick a good username. If you already have a username you tend to use around the web, stick with that. If you’re coming up with something new, make it easy to type and to say verbally. Try to avoid names that might look “spammy”, such as “john351” or something like that.
  2. Keep your tweets public. I’m not really sure what the point of joining Twitter is if you’re just going to keep everything private. Besides, Twitter truly shines when it can aggregate everyone’s tweets together, and it can only do that with public tweets.
  3. Change the default background/theme. I see that there are a bunch of new defaults, but I still think it’s a good idea to personalize your profile a little. It makes a difference when others are looking at your page deciding whether or not to follow you. Don’t go overboard here though. Some services let you create a background full of text and other information, but I think those look messy.
  4. Enter your website URL if you have one. One of the first things I’ll do when looking at a new profile is click the web link. It’s a great way to learn more about the person. It won’t drive a ton of traffic to your site, but it doesn’t hurt either.
  5. Set your location correctly. It might seem funny to set your location to something random like “my room” but setting your location properly makes it easier for others to find you. I think the format “city, state/province, country” works best because then others can search by all three criteria.
  6. Post some tweets before you follow others. Shortly after you follow someone, they’ll likely be looking at your profile. If it is empty or contains only a tweet or two, chances are they won’t follow you back.
  7. Go easy on the following at first. If you try to follow hundreds of people all at once, you’ll likely be flagged as a spammer by Twitter. Even if you aren’t, it looks bad to be following 500 people without any followers of your own.
  8. Follow users who live where you do. This is my favorite suggestion, because I think it’s the quickest way to get value out of Twitter. People often complain that a tweet like “Calgary Trail is a parking lot” seems mundane, but to others in the area it can be really useful (that’s a busy road here in Edmonton). By following other locals, you’ll reduce the number of tweets that seem mundane.
  9. Learn the lingo and etiquette. It’s quite simple really. As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, an update is called a tweet. If you start your tweet with @username, then it’s a reply and it’ll show up on the replies tab for that user. Something like #yeg is called a hashtag, and it’s basically a way of categorizing your tweets. If someone tweets something that you’d like to reshare, start your tweet with RT @username (or you can use “retweet” instead of “RT” if you like).
  10. Start using Twitter Search right away. I can’t stress this enough – Twitter Search is what really makes Twitter useful. I always have a tab open with a search for “mastermaq”, so that I can see any tweets that reference me. I also use it to find out what people think of the latest movie, or to find links on a topic I’m interested in. Make Twitter Search your best friend – you won’t regret it!

Those are my suggestions. The only other thing I would mention is to be interesting, but that’s harder to define. I think the most interesting users on Twitter post a combination of random tweets, replies, and links. As with anything else, you can learn a lot by simply paying attention and observing others.

Have I missed anything? What are your suggestions? Let me know!

Happy Tweeting :)

How do you keep track of things?

By Mack D. Male ·

post it notesI’m a bit of a scatterbrain at times, I’ll admit that. I generally need to write something down if I want to have any hope of remembering it later. If an event is not in my calendar, I’ll almost certainly miss it. I also find that I’m terrible at keeping track of paper, so I try to avoid post-it notes whenever possible. Here are some of the tools I currently use to help me keep track of things (tasks, ideas, events, etc):

As you can see, it’s not a small list. You might think that there’d be quite a bit of overlap between these, but there isn’t really. For instance, I use RTM for tasks, things I actually need to do something about. In contrast, I mainly use OneNote for brainstorming.

For the most part, this toolset helps me keep track of things. It’s not the most efficient system in the world though, and I wonder if there’s something better? For a creative person such as myself, who loves to read and has a million thoughts and ideas a day, what tools exist to help keep track of it all? It’s like I need something to help annotate my life.

Maybe a new tool isn’t the solution. I don’t regularly review the items in each of the tools above, which might be something I should start doing.

Things Of Love From 2007

By Mack D. Male ·

Great post today by MegFowler. She says:

I know that none of us feels loving or loved all the time, but sometimes forcing yourself to think through the things you enjoy/are passionate about/get the tingles for is a good way to pull yourself through the muck. A small step, but an important one.

But instead of focusing on the next year yet, I’m going to ask YOU to tell me what YOU loved in 2007.

Using her template, here’s my list.

Movie of Love: Transformers – such a good movie! I’m still impressed with it.

Song of Love: Umbrella by Rihanna. I also listened to JT’s What Goes Around… quite a bit. Yes, again. Oh and Linkin Park’s What I’ve Done…great song!

Book of Love: The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I read so many books it was hard to pick, but Dawkins wrote a book that definitely made an impression on me.

Album of Love: Riot! by Paramore. I’m still not sick of this album. Love it!

Place of Love: Facebook. Hard not to love it now that almost everyone is on it!

Month of Love: December…all the travel (London, New York, Yellowknife) was tiring, but totally worth it. Plus there was Christmas with my parents, and my birthday too!

Best Day of Love: June 12th because I graduated from university!

Best Moment of Love: Justin Timberlake concert, especially when all the cameras flashed, it was so awesome.

Word of Love: sweet! I also said "that’s how I roll" quite a bit.

Purchase of Love: Moleskine notebook, though I don’t use it enough! And I bought a second one while in NY (at the United Nations store).

City of Love: New York, of course! I’d go back in a heartbeat.

Food of Love: Goat cheese. Dunno why, but I seem to have fallen in love with it!

Beverage of Love: Coke Zero, my drink of choice. Also drank an awful lot of Starbucks.

Person of Love (someone who made a difference for you this year): So many people made a difference, in so many different ways. I’m thankful for all of them. If I had to pick just one though, I’d say Mom. She’s always making me smile with her Facebook and MSN messages! Yeah, I’m a momma’s boy ;)

Spot of Love (the best place to go to just be): Starbucks, for dozens of reasons.

Clothing Item of Love: Gap socks! So glad I finally bought some.

Random Thing of Love (anything you want): Text messaging. Couldn’t live without it!

That was harder than I thought! What does your list look like?

Read: MegFowler.com

Five Geeky Things I Want To Learn More About

By Mack D. Male ·

Like lots of other netizens, far too much information passes across my virtual desk in a day. With blogs, TechMeme, Twitter, and dozens of other sites and services, there’s far too many things to process all at once. At the same time, I don’t like missing anything. Usually what I do is bookmark things with del.icio.us, and then review them later. Sometimes those links are unrelated, other times they are part of a larger topic or subject. Here are five such topics:

  1. Silverlight
    Microsoft’s platform for Rich Internet Applications. I’ve checked out demos, examples, overviews, and other general information, but I need to get my hands dirty. I need to create something using Silverlight.

  2. F#
    Another Microsoft item on this list shouldn’t surprise anyone. F# is a functional and object-oriented programming language. I’ve heard many developers say that you should learn one new programming language a year, and F# seems to be worth looking into. Especially since Visual Studio will have full support for it!
  3. SOCAN
    Society of Composers, Artists and Music Publishers of Canada. The link is an Engadget article talking about the SOCAN push for a tax on music downloads here in Canada. I’ve been reading tons about the music industry lately, especially since the Radiohead experiment, but I want to know more about how Canada specifically is affected.
  4. OpenID
    A decentralized, single sign-on system that seems be all the rage these days. I’ve actually played with some code on this one, but I need to devote more energy to it. I want to know how it works with other systems, and where the system is going in the future.
  5. APML
    Attention Profiling Markup Language. Possibly the geekiest thing on this list. Essentially it’s an XML format for sharing your “attention” or “interests”. It enables you to rank your likes and dislikes, and to share that information with other services and applications. I think it could enable some really interesting scenarios if it was used widely enough.

There are dozens of other things I could have mentioned, of course, but these five are particularly interesting to me.

The 10 Most Connected Cities

By Mack D. Male ·

Believe it or not, most people think that North America is the best place in the world in terms of Internet access. They are shocked when I tell them that in comparison to the rest of the world, we suck! Internet access here is expensive, and not nearly as quick as in other places. Finally, there’s a list to back up what I’ve been saying (via WiFi Edmonton):

Through a blend of private and public investment, a number of cities have had remarkable success in providing almost complete connectivity throughout their city limits. For residents in these cities, high-speed access is available almost anywhere and at any time, and often for below-market rates.

Number one is Seoul, and the example I always use, Hong Kong, is number four. The top 5 spots are Asian cities, Stockholm is number six, and at number seven is the first North American entry and it’s not even a city; it simply says, “Various Municipal Projects, United States.” The only other North American entry is Silicon Valley at number ten (even though Mountain View is included in the number seven entry too!)

Clearly, we have a long way to go in making North America the most (and best) connected place in the world.

Read: DailyWireless

Ten Favorite Rock Songs

By Mack D. Male ·

Last week my Dad posted about a book he is reading called Broken Prey. In the story, the main character tries to come up with the 100 best songs of all time. So my Dad took a cue from the book and is asking for input on the ten best rock songs of all time. Now, typically a meme like this starts somewhere in the digital world not a book, and when you take part in the meme you’re supposed to actually take part (my Dad is not posting his top ten until later), but I’ve seen it circulate before too, so I decided to take part this time. Megan’s recent listing of her ten favorite albums also swayed me to posting this.

First let me say, it’s damn near impossible to come up with only ten songs for any of these kinds of lists. I basically said to myself, what songs can I listen to over and over again and still love? I came up with more than ten, so I had to spend some time narrowing it down to these ten:

  1. Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana
    From Nevermind, one of my favorite albums of all time, this is one of those songs that I never ever get tired of hearing. It’s really too bad Nirvana’s life was cut short, as I am sure Cobain and the boys would have made some more classics.
  2. Weapon by Matthew Good
    Though not from my favorite Matthew Good album (which would be Beautiful Midnight) this is definitely my favorite Matt Good song. The musical build up is amazing, and the video was pretty interesting too.
  3. Billie Jean by Michael Jackson
    I guess I could have put all of Thriller on this list, but Billie Jean has always stood out for me.
  4. Wonderwall by Oasis
    I’ve never been a huge Oasis fan, but this song in particular I have always loved. Great lyrics in this one.
  5. Numb by Linkin Park
    Linkin Park have come to be one of my favorite groups in the last few years, and while I like almost all their songs, Numb is the best one for me.
  6. Fill Me Up by Staind
    Another favorite group of mine is Staind, and I absolutely love the lyrics in this song.
  7. The Ground Beneath Her Feet by U2
    I could have put just about every U2 song on the list, but this one has great musical build up that gets me every time.
  8. Blurry by Puddle of Mudd
    This song makes the list due to it’s lyrics and the memories it makes me think of.
  9. Enter Sandman by Metallica
    It was this song from the Black album, or more correctly their self-titled album, that really got me into Metallica.
  10. Iris by Goo Goo Dolls
    One of the best songs of all time in my opinion!

Here’s ten more songs from my list of favorites: Every Breath You Take by The Police, Forget It by Breaking Benjamin, Pour Some Sugar On Me by Def Leppard, Last Train Home by Lostprophets, You Oughta Know by Alanis Morissette, Clumsy by Our Lady Peace, Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden, Zombie by The Cranberries, 1979 by The Smashing Pumpkins, and Time of Your Life by Green Day.

You’d think it would be easy to list your ten favorite songs, but it’s not. It’s a good exercise though, because you probably haven’t thought about it before, and you’ll probably discover some forgotten favorites in the process.