Month: August 2005

Crazy Frog Radio

Post ImageI was reminded again today why I don’t listen to the radio. I was driving along when I finished my CD, so I decided to change to the radio, just because it had been so long since the last time I tuned in. First, I checked out The Bear, only to find commercials. So I next switched to The Bounce, and to my surprise, I heard that annoying Crazy Frog Axel F song!

You know, the song based on the ringtone that knocked Coldplay out of first place in the British music charts a while back. I couldn’t believe it! Anyway, I switched to Joe FM, and listened to that for a while. Then, around six, I switched to 96X and guess what was number eight on the hot 9 at 6? That damn frog!

So I’m going to have to burn some new CD’s tonight, or transfer more music to my Zen. In case you’re new to the frog, here’s the story from Wikipedia:

Crazy Frog is the marketing title of a ring tone based on The Annoying Thing, a computer animation created by Erik Wernquist. The animation was originally created to accompany a sound effect produced by Daniel Malmedahl whilst attempting to imitate the sound of a two-stroke moped engine. The advertising of the Crazy Frog brand has drawn a great deal of criticism, with advertising authorities being inundated with complaints about the frequency and focus of the adverts, and the display of the frog’s genitalia.

I guess I should just be happy I don’t live in Britain.

Read: Wikipedia

World of Warcraft invading privacy?

Post ImageI know at least a few of you reading this are hardcore World of Warcraft players, so I thought it would be interesting to get your take on this:

A number of “World of Warcraft” players are up in arms over software being used by the game’s publisher to scan users’ computers for hacks prohibited under its terms of service.

“It opens the ability for a company to do a whole list of things under the guise of security,” said a frequent “World of Warcraft” player who asked to be referred to only by his first name, Dennis. “Once you give a company the right to scan your system, you’ve basically opened the door…Now you must fully trust that company with any data on your computer, because it’s at their discretion that they download this data and do whatever they want to with it under the guise of stopping the hackers.”

Do you care about the privacy issues? Do you really think Blizzard would do anything malicious?

Read: CNET News.com

Camping Trip August 2005

Post ImageWhat a great camping trip! We got back this afternoon from Wizard Lake, after an excellent weekend with pretty good weather (except for this morning when it rained a little). Among the campers were myself, Jane, Yi-Li, Andrew, Megan, Warren, Lucky and sometimes Dickson (he came and went). Highlights include midnight frisbee with glowsticks and the most massive coffeemate fire known to man, but here’s a quick recap of everything:

Warren, Yi-Li and Andrew were the first ones to arrive at the campsite on Thursday night, followed by Dickson, and then me. With no women around, we took our time putting up the tent, making drinks, and cooking steak (very delicious) over the fire. Yi-Li brought glowsticks, and so we each wore one on our wrists, and we taped a couple to the frisbee so that we could play midnight frisbee! It’s actually pretty cool, playing in the dark.

The next day we mostly just waited for Jane and Megan to arrive! Warren cooked bacon for breakfast, and we spent the day walking around the campground, playing frisbee and badminton, exploding pop cans, and crashing a basketball game the girls who were staying next to us were playing. Jane arrived as we were playing basketball, so Lucky joined in the game 🙂 When Megan arrived, she brought with her a massive screen house that we built and put a picnic table inside of, and of course, a can of coffeemate. Needless to say, we built a big fire and threw a whole bunch of coffeemate on it! But the best was yet to come, as we all decided we needed more coffeemate for the next night. Megan even said she’d bring a fourth can if I touched the burning logs in the fire – so of course I did!

Dickson went back to Edmonton on Friday night, but came back during the day Saturday, while Megan left in the afternoon to go back. As a result, Saturday was spent waiting for Megan to return with four cans of coffeemate! We bought some more wood and chopped it, after which we built an incredible base for the biggest coffeemate fire ever seen. We played Risk, cooked marshmallows, hotdogs and hamburgers, and once again prepared for midnight frisbee with glowsticks. When Megan returned with coffeemate, all four cans, we almost couldn’t wait to burn it.

The fire took a while to start, as our incredible design didn’t allow any air to get in. Jane ended up taking most of it apart to light it, after which we stuck it back together. Then the festivities began. We tried a bunch of different methods, but found that if we held two handfuls, and threw in one after the other with the second slightly higher than the first, the coffeemate made the biggest fireball. We thought it was amazing when all seven of us were throwing coffeemate at the fire, but after about ten minutes, the neighbours had seen what we were up to and had formed a large group of onlookers. Sensing an opportunity that could not be missed, we invited them to partake in the craziness. And that’s when the largest coffeemate fire known to man burned – when thirteen different people each threw two handfuls of coffeemate into an already oversized fire! The resulting fireball was absolutely incredible, all of it captured on three different video cameras (Dickson has posted the video – download it here [WMV, 20 MB]). Definitely something to remember!

We spent the rest of the night drinking, reflecting on how big fires attract girls, and waiting for the meteor shower that was supposed to happen (we only saw a few). Eventually we went to sleep, only to wake up the next morning with rain! We had planned to leave around lunchtime anyway, so we packed up early and headed back to the city where we stopped at Denny’s. I had to clean my car this afternoon too, as it was completely covered in coffeemate from the big fires. Fortunately, it looks as good as new now!

And that was the camping trip! Dickson has posted some pictures on Flickr, and you can see my pictures on Flickr too (seventy six in total).

Read: Pictures

NowPublic Tags

Post ImageAs you can probably tell, I jumped on the tagging bandwagon very early on. I think tags are an excellent way to self-organize the vast amounts of information available to us. So I am really happy to see that NowPublic, a site I have written about before, has added proper tags!

I say proper tags, because while you could tag news at NowPublic in the past, you couldn’t really link to a tag. Now all you have to do is link to http://www.nowpublic.com/tags/edmonton, for example, to see all of the stories tagged with “edmonton”. Previously this required a search of the website.

Very cool! I’m happy to see the site continuously improving – can’t wait til it’s out of beta.

Read: NowPublic

Podcast enters the dictionary

Post ImageHow can you tell if a technology has made it? Sales figures, media buzz, pop culture references (like mentions in a movie or song or something), lots of different ways. Another way is when a word enters the regular lexicon, and eventually, the dictionary:

The Oxford English Dictionary added new words including “podcast” and “phishing,” saying they are now part of the English language, as it published its second edition today.

The words, which refer to music downloading and Internet fraud respectively, are part of a list of new additions that reflect the growing influence of technology on daily life. Oxford Dictionaries uses databases of words compiled from books, television programs and Internet chat rooms. There are 355,000 words in the new dictionary.

I’m still waiting for all the evidence that podcasting is just a fad. Might sound good in an article or two or three, but it doesn’t add up in real life! Not when the number of new podcasters continues to grow exponentially and the word itself makes it into the dictionary.

Read: Bloomberg

Tech Babe Asia

Post ImageEver see a beer commercial without a hot girl in it? It’s a rare occurrence indeed. So too is announcing a new gadget without booth babes! You know what I’m talking about right? The hot asian girls that show off the new gadgets at conferences, expos, and other excuses to have a booth with babes. Problem is, you would have to actually go to all of those conferences to see the girls gadgets, and that can be costly!

But fear not! Today I came across the tech babe asia blog, where booth babes and their gadgets are posted in all their glory. It’s one of those websites that makees you wonder, why didn’t I think of that?! Enjoy 🙂

Read: tech babe asia

Waterproof Paper

Post ImageSounds like a pipe dream right? Waterproof paper? Well a nanotechnology start-up called Ecology Coatings stumbled across a spray-on coating that makes it a reality. Like some of the greatest inventions and discoveries, this one was made by accident:

Sally Ramsey, founder of Ecology Coatings, jerry-rigged an apparatus in her lab to show a chemical company representative how rapidly one of Ecology’s coatings dries when exposed to ultraviolet light. To avoid making a mess, she put a piece of paper underneath the object she wanted to spray.

When cleaning up, Ramsey exposed the paper to UV light to dry it and make it easier to throw away. On a whim, she checked to see if the coating, which was enhanced with nanoparticles, made the paper impervious to pencils or ink.

“For a minute, I was really disappointed. I could write on it all over the place,” she said. “Then something clicked.”

Pretty cool stuff! Just think of the possibilities. You could make so many different objects waterproof, where it just wasn’t before possible! Ah scientific progress…

Read: CNET News.com

A walk down Jasper Avenue

Just got back from a quick walk down Jasper Avenue. I went from the office here (on 101st street) to the Starbucks on 109th street (was craving coffee). I have decided that the south side of Jasper is much nicer than the north side. The buildings are cleaner and nicer, and the sidewalk has less trash strewn about.

Anyone else ever notice that?

Everything online? Not likely!

Post ImageIn a recent post, popular PR blogger Steve Rubel says:

It’s not to hard to picture a world without Microsoft one day if you believe these guys. ePlatform, now in beta, promises to deliver over the Internet virtually every application you need to effectively manage your life, all available on demand.

Sounds like a great concept, but it’ll never, ever fly. Why not? Let’s list the main reasons:

  • I very much doubt the majority of consumers would be willing to give control of their personal data to a third party. We’ve seen this time, and time again. Remember Hailstorm anyone?
  • Video games continue to grow, and you just can’t power Doom3 or Halo2 over the net. Even if we did get fast Internet access absolutely everywhere, there will always be an argument for rich clients. Games are just one example, video creation is another. It’s not feasible to edit your 20 GB of video using a program hosted on a server thousands of miles away.
  • How about taking content offline? That’s one of the main reasons I used NewsGator as my aggregator – I can take all the blogs I read offline on my tablet. As much as I want wireless everywhere, so that I’m always connected, we’re a long way from that goal.

There are lots of reasons both for and against so-called “thin clients”, but I think that the “rich client” world pitched by Microsoft is more likely to succeed, for the reasons I’ve noted above as well as many others. I’d guess that the closest we’d ever get to a thin client world would be if everyone had their own central server in their house or office. Actually, I guess that’s already happening with tools like the Xbox and Media Center PC. But a third party acting as the central repository and processing house?

Not likely.

As an aside, I think it’s interesting to note that the ePlatform application looks a LOT like Outlook 2003 and Outlook Web Access.

Read: Steve Rubel