Year: 2005

Bush accepts responsibility for Iraq

Post ImageOn the eve of historic parliamentary elections in Iraq, US President George W. Bush has finally accepted responsibility for the debacle otherwise known as the war in Iraq. More specifically, he acknowledged that intelligence failed, but remained confident in his decision to go to war in Iraq.

“It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong,” Bush said. “As president, I’m responsible for the decision to go into Iraq.”

The president’s mea culpa was accompanied by a robust defense of the divisive war.

“Saddam was a threat — and the American people and the world is better off because he is no longer in power,” Bush declared, as he has before.

Too little, too late? The speech was no doubt designed to try and improve Bush’s approval rating, nothing more. As a purely political play, I’d guess it will probably go over quite well with the American public.

As far as I am concerned, Bush getting rid of Saddam was a good thing. At least we know that Bush himself will be out of power in a few years. Who knows when the tragedies Saddam carried out would have ended?

Read: Yahoo News

Sports bra monitors your heart

Health-related technology seems to be one of the most popular and innovative areas of research lately, with really interesting projects like this sports bra from Numetrex:

A sports bra from Numetrex picks up a runner’s heartbeat and sends the signal down to a computer attached onto a waistband or worn on the wrist. The system effectively cuts out the sometimes uncomfortable attachable sensors that runners and cyclists generally have to use if they want to monitor their heart.

The bra sells for $45, or $115 in a bundle with a Polar watch and transmitter.

Seems like a very good idea to me, makes a lot of sense. It also looks pretty much like a normal sports bra, which means there shouldn’t be too many reasons to stay away (except, presumably, price – though I have no idea how much sports bras normally cost). It’ll be interesting to see what other kinds of electronic fabrics we see. Even something like a pedometer built into your pants or shoes would be useful!

Read: CNET News.com

Big Earl 96.3

If you’re scanning the radio dial here in Edmonton, you’ll notice we have a new station. Or, more accurately, an existing station that has for the thousandth time changed formats. What was known most recently as 96X is now Big Earl, who apparently “plays everything country.” There are some really great posts in their forums, like this one:

I wonder how many of these loyal 96X listeners would convert to listening to country if they gave it more than 10 minutes of listening. I personally know of two people who HATED country music until they listened to it and then it became all they listened to!

I think a lot of people would be surprised if they actually gave country music half a chance.

And of course there are some not so good posts, like this one:

YOU HAVE SERIOUS ISSUES SO GO TO A COUNCELOR YOU SUPPOSEDLY DONT CARE WHAT PEOPLE SAY SO I GUESS YOU WONT CARE ABOUT THIS……………GET A LIFE AND DONT WORRY BECAUSE PEOPLE WILL NEVER LISTEN TO YOUR STATION BECAUSE YOU MADE IT AND BECAUSE YOU SUCK SO IF YOU REALLY ARE SMART…….YOU WILL CHANGE IT BACK

With this reply:

I HATE U STUPID BIG EARL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

To be truly honest, I really don’t care. I almost exclusively listen to music or podcasts on my Zen Touch in the car now anyway, and if I do happen to listen to the radio it’s to either The Bear or Joe FM (yeah I have come to like Joe FM). That being said, it’s always fun to throw out my two cents.

I think what happened is that The Bounce and Sonic started to take away listeners from 96X, so they “did some research” as their program manager said on the 6 O’Clock news tonight (must have been a slow news day) and decided country would be the way to go. The format is actually a copy of a Big Earl station that launched in Camrose last month, and that one is probably a copy of another station. In my opinion, Big Earl is doomed to failure. We already have a very successful country station in CISN, and unlike 96.3, they don’t change their format every year destroying any sort of listener base they might have managed to accumulate.

Futhermore, we already have the “play anything” format in Joe FM, so will a subset of that be successful? I guess we’ll find out, but I doubt it. The only thing that’s for sure is that being a program manager at 96.3 must suck.

UPDATE: My mistake, there are two country stations in Edmonton – CISN and CFCW. Also, looks like both 96X and The Bounce lost listeners in the Fall 2005 ratings while CISN and CFCW gained listeners. You can see the ratings here. Oh and the official website for Big Earl is http://www.bigearlonline.com. While we’re on the topic of new radio stations, did you know that MAGIC 99, a Smooth Jazz/Adult Standards station launched on Thursday? Check it out at 99.3 or online at http://www.magic99.ca.

UPDATE 2: Found a better ratings page complete with descriptions and commentary.

UPDATE 3 (3/28/2008): The station has changed once again, to Capital FM! You can read about it here.

Notes for 12/11/2005

Here are my Sunday notes, a little late, but posted nonetheless.

  • I went to see The Chronicles of Narnia on opening night, and came away quite impressed. The best part of the movie had to be the casting – the actors and actresses who played Lucy, Edmund and the White Witch were brilliant.
  • Bad time to go to Denny’s: Saturday night, 2:30 AM. Good time to go to Denny’s: Sunday night, 4:30 AM.
  • If you haven’t turned on ClearType, or if you don’t know what it is, read this!
  • It was a crazy week as far as weather is concerned. First we got tons of snow, then it was incredibly cold, and now there is no snow and it’s above zero again.
  • As Dickson pointed out, classes finished on December 7th. I’ve got two exams left and then the semester is finished for me.
  • In case you missed it, podcast was word of the year for 2005. Tis the season for lots of “best of 2005” or “2005 in review” type posts, TV shows, articles, etc.
  • Remember the Wikipedia problems I talked about earlier? Turns out the guy who posted some of the false information anonymously was tracked down and has apologized.
  • Christmas shopping isn’t going so well for me – I need to get started!

Squidoo

Post ImageI first learned of Seth Godin’s project called Squidoo a couple months ago, but the service was only in private testing. Now Squidoo has entered public beta so it’s ready for you to kick the tires. A lens is what Squidoo is all about – lensmasters create a lens on a topic they know a lot about, and users search through lenses to find whatever it is they are after. From the FAQ:

A lens is one person’s (lensmaster’s) view on a topic he cares about. More specifically, a lens is a single web page filled with information and links that point to other web pages, to continually updated RSS feeds, or to relevant advertising. It’s a place to start, not finish.

There’s a lot more useful answers in the FAQ, so check it out. So far I have noticed the site has been a little slow, no doubt because it’s probably received a lot of traffic all of a sudden. Aside from that (and the rather plain and unhelpful homepage) I am quite enjoying Squidoo! I have created my own lens, titled MasterMaq on Podcasting. Hopefully I can share some useful information on podcasting.

I’ve got to play with it a little more, but here are some initial thoughts:

  • I hope they make it possible to add your own modules in the future! I think there would be lots of interested developers, myself included.
  • It doesn’t look like there’s anyway for a reader to communicate with the lensmaster, at least not without tracking down their blog and then their contact information. There doesn’t appear to be any comments or anything.
  • For the most part I like the interface. As I mentioned, the homepage is kind of useless, but beyond that it’s pretty well thought out.
  • Why are the Google Adwords styled so much differently? I think the colors should look more like the rest of the site.

I read this somewhere in the last couple days (I forget where, sorry) and it’s quite a good description – Squidoo is like About.com for Web 2.0. That pretty much sums it up! Time will tell how useful it is, and how much I gain from being a lensmaster. In the meantime, I encourage you to go check it out! There’s lots of interesting lenses already, and it’s pretty easy to make your own.

Read: Squidoo

Yahoo buys del.icio.us

Post ImageIf someone asked me who I thought was winning the Web 2.0 game, my answer would most definitely be Yahoo. The same company that bought Flickr has now also acquired social bookmarking site del.icio.us:

Joshua Schachter, the founder of Del.icio.us, confirmed a posting on the New York-based start-up’s site that the company had been acquired by Yahoo. A Yahoo representative confirmed that the agreement to buy Del.icio.us had closed on Friday.

Neither party disclosed financial terms.

“We are joining forces to build my vision of creating a way for people to remember things together,” Schachter told Reuters in a phone interview. “It is a shared-memory site.”

That means that Yahoo now owns both of the so-called “web 2.0” companies that I use most. Here’s what Joshua posted on the del.icio.us blog in a post cleverly titled “y.ah.oo!”:

We’re proud to announce that del.icio.us has joined the Yahoo! family. Together we’ll continue to improve how people discover, remember and share on the Internet, with a big emphasis on the power of community. We’re excited to be working with the Yahoo! Search team – they definitely get social systems and their potential to change the web. (We’re also excited to be joining our fraternal twin Flickr!)

Fraternal twin indeed! I can’t wait to see what Yahoo cooks up with two of the most popular new web properties now under its ever-growing umbrella.

Read: CNET News.com

ClearType

Post ImageI’ve been having problems with my tablet the last couple days – something is wrong with the power supply (not the cord, but where the cord plugs in). As a result, I setup the spare tablet (the one that was in the Podbot) to use. There’s lots of little things that get setup over time, and you don’t realize they are there until you no longer have them! There was one thing I noticed was missing right away on the new tablet though – ClearType.

If you don’t currently have ClearType enabled in your computer, stop reading this and go enable it! I couldn’t believe the difference when I first logged into a new profile on the new tablet. All of my other computers have had ClearType enabled for a long time, so I have become used to it. Looking at the screen without ClearType made me think that something was wrong. Fortunately it only took me a minute of confusion before I realized that ClearType isn’t enabled by default. Wondering what ClearType is? From the Microsoft site:

ClearType is a software technology developed by Microsoft that improves the readability of text on existing LCDs (Liquid Crystal Displays), such as laptop screens, Pocket PC screens and flat panel monitors. With ClearType font technology, the words on your computer screen look almost as sharp and clear as those printed on a piece of paper.

ClearType works by accessing the individual vertical color stripe elements in every pixel of an LCD screen. Before ClearType, the smallest level of detail that a computer could display was a single pixel, but with ClearType running on an LCD monitor, we can now display features of text as small as a fraction of a pixel in width. The extra resolution increases the sharpness of the tiny details in text display, making it much easier to read over long durations.

I find it makes a difference even on CRT monitors, but it definitely is superior on an LCD.

I wonder what the ClearType story is for Windows Vista? With vectorized graphics, I don’t know how necessary it will be. If it makes a difference though, let’s hope it’s enabled by default!

Read: ClearType

Paper thin batteries!

Post ImageLike everyone else, I have far too many battery powered devices and not enough long lasting, reliable batteries! As a result, I am quite interested whenever I hear about some sort of advance in the battery market, like the new paper thin batteries developed by NEC:

NEC has debuted some ultra-thin and flexible quick charging batteries named ORB, for Organic Radical Battery. We’re having a hard time deciding what is the coolest part about these; their 0.3mm thickness that allows them to be flexible, or the fact that they can be recharged in about 30 seconds. The organic radical materials inside the battery are in an “electrolyte-permeated gel state,” which is supposedly about halfway between a solid and a liquid. This helps ions make a smooth move (no, the other one), reducing resistance, allowing the batteries to charge faster. 1 square centimeter will give you about 1 miliwatt hour.

These batteries will be useful for things like RFID tags, electronic paper, and wearable computers. If they can boost the power though, maybe they’d make their way into normal laptops and other small computing devices. Even something like the iPod Nano would benefit from super thin batteries!

Read: Engadget

School Libraries in Canada Weblog

Post ImageAs some of you know, I have been the Technical Editor of SLIC for a couple years now. SLIC, or School Libraries in Canada, is the Canadian Association for School Libraries‘ journal for teachers and teacher-librarians and has been an online journal since I joined. I haven’t said much about it on my blog, but I thought our most recent issue was rather interesting!

The latest issue is titled Teacher/Teacher-Librarian Collaboration, and in addition to a collection of articles written by teachers, teacher-librarians, and other contributors, we have for the first time published a weblog! Aside from the fact that we probably won’t be making any new posts, it is a real blog, complete with web feeds, comments, and all of that other good blog stuff. Definitely a good way to talk about collaboration! Here’s the description for the new issue:

This issue of School Libraries in Canada examines the importance of that most elusive of ideals, the equal partnership of classroom teachers and teacher-librarians. The articles present the research findings on the effectiveness of collaborative teaching practice, discuss strategies, offer suggestions, and tell tales of passion and sorrow, frustration and success. At the heart of it all is a way of teaching that requires and models mutual respect, trust, cooperation and the power of shared vision. From the dry data to the practical experience, our writers share the importance of our work to the success of our colleagues, our students and ultimately our schools. This issue also includes SLIC’s first weblog – a venue for the community of teacher-librarians to discuss the challenges and rewards of collaborative teaching practice. We hope you will take advantage of this opportunity to explore the issues surrounding collaborative teaching practice with teacher-librarians across Canada and around the world.

This is just another example of blogging becoming more and more commonplace. Indeed I think educational institutions have been quick to warm up to blogging as it’s a really versatile medium – it’s perfect for class projects, teacher updates, school news, or even teacher and teacher-librarian collaboration!

Read: SLIC Online

Similar Music Videos

Post ImageI saw the video for Hilary Duff’s new song “Beat Of My Heart” the other day, and I didn’t think too much of it. Seemed like a pretty normal video, nothing too amazing but it was decent enough. Today though I came across this posting by Kat on the MuchMusic Blog:

When Hilary Duff’s video for “Beat Of My Heart” surfaced a couple of weeks ago, I had a sudden rush of deja vu – for once it wasn’t the melody or the lyrics that were making me nostalgic – it was the VIDEO! Where had I seen this video concept before?

Look no further than Liz Phair’s 2003 video for “Why Can’t I?” for the answer. The videos are eerily similar, in fact, a side by side comparison, as done by Willa over here shows you just how identical these two videos are. Is Hilary a copycat? Most likely not – because both videos were in fact directed by THE SAME PERSON! Looks like Phil Harder’s run out of ideas. And if you take a listen to Liz Phair’s “Why Can’t I?” you will notice that she even sounds like today’s pop princesses.

Once you see the side by side screen captures, you’ll see what she’s talking about. It’s really quite amazing that two videos could be so similar, even if they are done by the same person. You’d think that Duff’s people would have something to say about that, no?

You know what they say, where there’s smoke there’s fire – makes me wonder which other music videos are copycats!

Read: MuchMusic Blog