Here are my weekly notes:
- On Friday, ProTraining held a holiday open house. I took some photos. Thanks guys! Also on Friday, I went to liveblog Walter’s session on social media at CPRS Edmonton – photos are here.
- Twitter doesn’t really have a policy on usernames at the moment. It’s a free-for-all, unless someone makes a trademark complaint. That happened to Steve Poland recently, which prompted him to argue that Twitter needs a better policy on usernames. I would tend to agree, keeping in mind that a similar situation has worked out mostly okay with domain names.
- In his new book Outliers (which I think Santa sent me for Xmas!) Malcolm Gladwell explains the 10,000 hour rule – basically that it takes that length of time to become truly expert at something. I’ve seen a few people agree with this, such as Chris Anderson. Can’t wait to read the book.
- I’m sure you heard about the Iraqi journalist throwing a pair of shoes at President Bush. Not surprisingly, a few folks have cashed in on the event, such as Alex Tew who built a flash game and put it up at sockandawe.com. He then sold the domain on eBay for £5,215. Not bad!
- Apparently a few more undersea cables were cut this week, again within a short period of time. Curious.
- Interesting report from The Bivings Group that I’m definitely going to have to examine in more detail: The Use of the Internet by America’s Largest Newspapers (2008 Edition).
- Sharon and I had a great time at Jennifer, Martin, and Andy’s place for dinner tonight. Thanks for having us!
- Just four more sleeps until Christmas! I need to get my shopping done…
MasterMaq's Blog 
Thanks for the tip on the Gladwell book, Amazon.ca has my money now, but I had to order some other books to take advantage of free shipping…