Month: November 2006

Maclean's sucks up to the U of A

Post ImageI don’t know about you, but today I lost all remaining respect that I had for Maclean’s magazine. The annual ranking of Canadian universities came out, and the University of Alberta placed first in the reputational ranking. Kind of suspect, don’t you think, considering the U of A led the charge to boycott the rankings due to suspect methodologies. If there was any doubt about why the U of A and 26 other universities chose to boycott the ranking, I think it’s gone now. Nothing says guilty like sucking up.

If you’d like to see past results, the University of Waterloo has a handy page with all the data – not surprising considering they have ranked first in 13 out of 16 years the rankings have been produced.

For its part, the University of Alberta stands by the earlier decision, though Provost and Vice President (Academic) Carl Amrhein said placing first “certainly feels good.” I guess that’s a fairly diplomatic answer.

Read: Maclean’s

Zune doesn't hate podcasting after all?

Post ImageIt may be true that Microsoft’s upcoming Zune device doesn’t explicitly support podcasting, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t copy a podcast episode to it yourself. In that sense, it’s a lot like any of the other Windows Media based devices out there.

Until today, I was more worried that Microsoft and the Zune would snub podcasting altogether. No mention of podcasting in any literature, marketing, or other materials. No hope for future updates to the Zune to support podcasting. That sort of thing. Today however, Microsoft launched Zune.net and put my fears to rest:

Zap! You’re connected to your best friend and send the new song your band recorded in the garage last weekend. Another friend gets the hilarious podcast your kid brother made at school…

Emphasis is mine. See! They don’t hate podcasting!

Maybe there’s hope for V2 after all.

Read: Zune.net

Minnesota to launch solar wifi network

Post ImageYay for wireless everywhere! Let us all follow the fine example about to be set by Minnesota. According to Web Worker Daily, the state is getting ready to take a major step into the wireless world (via Tris Hussey):

From a state better known for wind chill and the latest in fur-trimmed parka fashion, a plan to create a wireless mesh network with nodes powered by batteries refreshed via solar panels is gathering steam.

The solar panels being used are apparently the same type already being used for highway signs across the country. The battery system is theoretically capable of lasting nearly seven years between replacement. And all the hardware is promised to work even during the dead of winter, through snow and sub-freezing temps.

Canadians take note! This sounds like the kind of technology we need to deploy here in our own cities. Apparently 300 residents are already testing the network (not currently solar powered) and a final decision on the project should be made on Monday.

Wireless Internet access provided by an all-weather, solar-powered mesh network. Awesome.

Read: Web Worker Daily

Dynamic multi-dimensional scrolling in Vista

Post ImageThe launch of Windows Vista is drawing near, so you might be wondering if it is worthy of your hard earned dollars. Ask someone to tell you about Vista, and they’ll likely tell you that it is more secure than XP and has much nicer eye candy. That’s all well and good, but what you really want to hear is that Vista has dynamic multi-dimensional scrolling. No really, that’s what you want to hear. Long Zheng has an awesome animation that compares the scrolling experience in XP with the new experience in Vista (if you’re too lazy to look, essentially Vista does horizontal scrolling for you automagically).

I can’t say it better than Long:

Is it a feature? No. Is it worth mentioning? No. Is it a selling point? No.

Does it deliver a great experience? Yes.

Assuming Vista contains many more of these little gems, you’ll want to spend your money on the new operating system.

Read: Long Zheng

Canada to tax Income Trusts

Post ImageBy now you’ve probably heard that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced today a new tax on income trusts. The decision has drawn lots of criticism, especially since it comes just three weeks after BCE proposed the biggest trust conversion in our nation’s history. Telus was another major corporation looking to transform itself to an income trust.

So what the heck is an income trust? That’s been my question throughout all of this. According to Wikipedia:

An income trust is an investment trust that holds income-producing assets. The term also designates a legal entity, capital structure and ownership vehicle for certain assets or businesses. Its shares or “trust units” are traded on securities exchanges just like stocks. The income is passed on to the investors, called “unitholders”, through monthly or quarterly distributions.

Interestingly, the article also points out that they are most common here in Canada.

Anyway, that definition helps a little, but not a lot. When I heard that “BCE wants to turn itself into an income trust”, I thought, “but they are a company?” So if I understand things correctly, they just wanted to save some money on taxes, and becoming an income trust would allow them to do so. And indeed, as the CBC article points out, BCE would have saved itself $800 million in taxes by 2008. That’s some serious dough.

Actually, it turns out the CBC article is more helpful in understanding things:

Trust conversions are increasing in popularity because trusts do not pay corporate tax. Instead, they pay out most of their income in distributions to unitholders, who then pay tax on those distributions at a preferential rate.

Clearly, the government was not happy that it would be losing so much tax money. Existing trusts have a four year grace period until the new tax takes effect, while new trusts face the new rules immediately.

I don’t know if this is a good thing or not. I simply don’t understand things enough to say one way or the other. Certainly the markets don’t like the new rules. My feeling is that companies like BCE and Telus simply discovered a weakness in the laws and sought to exploit it. The government realized it had a problem, and took immediate action. Which one of them is correct? I don’t know. Tax avoidance probably isn’t a good thing for the country, but on the other hand, the companies were not breaking any rules. I can only hope that Mr. Flaherty’s rhetoric about income trusts hurting the economy is true, and not just a statement made up for his own purposes.

Read: CBC News

Windows Media Player 11: Not Impressive

Post ImageOn Monday, Microsoft released the latest update to Windows Media Player, affectionately known as version 11. Apparently the release was supposed to happen a week earlier, but was delayed due to concerns about the quality.

They should have delayed the release even longer.

I wrote about Beta 1 and Beta 2, and in general, the final release hasn’t changed my opinion about the software. Here’s what I like about it:

  • The interface is clean and looks modern and attractive.
  • Searching is excellent, and really becomes the main way you interact with your media library.
  • Synchronization with portable devices is superb.

And pretty much everything else falls into the “indifferent” or “don’t like it at all” categories. They have tried to make the app easier to use, but as a result, they have taken out some of the functionality that advanced users such as myself want. The best example here is adding media to the library. I want to have explicit, tight control over what goes into my library and what stays out, so forcing me to monitor folders or play a file completely sucks. Give me multiple different ways to manage this kind of thing!

What else: lots of visualizations are missing, there aren’t any Canadian stores supported, sometimes it appears to freeze, and a bunch of other minor things.

The biggest problem of all? Windows Media Player 11 is not an “oh my god you must get the latest version” kind of update to previous versions. As far as I am concerned, WMP11 is the first such release of Windows Media Player. I think WMP9 was an excellent improvement, and WMP10 was better still. It sucks that I can’t say the same about WMP11. I was really hoping for something better.

I guess I’ll have to wait for version 12.

Read: WMP11