Year: 2008

Another troubled Newcap station rebrands: K-Rock is K-97 once again

K-97 Back in March, Edmonton radio station Big Earl 96.3 switched formats to become Capital FM. The station (CKRA-FM) had been in decline for quite a while, prompting owner Newcap to try something new. Now they’re at it again, this time with K-Rock (officially CIRK-FM). Tune your radio dial to 97.3 FM and you’ll now hear K-97, classic rock.

Here’s what the Edmonton Radio Ratings site had to say in the Spring 2008 book:

While the return of popular morning man Terry Evans was hailed as the second coming (or the fourth or fifth instalment of his career), the station seems to be suffering from the effects of past damage done.

Once a top-three station, the blame of K-Rock’s 11th place showing can’t be solely put on on Evans’ inability to spark interest in the station (he only works mornings, after all). Look instead to a demographic that’s aging, shrinking and growing tired of the same old.

According to Wikipedia, this rebranding is actually a return to the station’s roots:

CIRK signed on the air in 1979 as K-97 and became an Edmonton favourite during the 1980’s. In 1997 the station was rebranded as K-Rock.

More detailed rating information can be found here (PDF link). The next ratings should be released next week, on July 14th. Time will tell if the new (old) name has any effect on Edmonton radio listeners.

Ping.fm helps you post to many sites at once

ping.fm I’ve been using a new web application called Ping.fm for the last couple weeks. It’s a really simple service that helps you post to multiple social networking sites at the same time. Instead of updating Twitter, Facebook, Jaiku, Tumblr, etc. separately, you can do it all at once with Ping.fm.

The best part about Ping.fm is that they expose a number of different interfaces for updating. That means you don’t need to have a browser window open in order to post! In addition to the website, there’s a mobile web app, an iPhone web app, a Facebook application, an iGoogle gadget, an API for developers, and IM support for AOL, Yahoo, and Google Talk. I find that I use the Google Talk and iPhone interfaces most often.

When you setup your services, you can assign them to three categories: Statuses, Micro-Blogs, and Blogs (for example, I have Twitter in Statuses and Micro-Blogs). Then when you post a message to Ping.fm, you choose which of these categories to update. Additionally, you can setup “custom triggers”. For example, I have #t setup. If I post something that starts with #t it will update Twitter, Tumblr, and Identi.ca. Finally, you can update specific services with “service triggers”, like @fb for Facebook.

The current list of supported services is: Bebo, Blogger, Brightkite, Custom URL, Facebook, FriendFeed, hi5, Identi.ca, Jaiku, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Mashable, MySpace, Plaxo Pulse, Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr, Twitter, and Xanga. Three of these (Custom URL, FriendFeed, and Identi.ca) have been added in just the last ten days or so. The Ping.fm team is obviously very actively adding functionality based on user feedback.

Another thing I like about Ping.fm is the API. I recently requested an application key, and while I haven’t really played with it yet, I intend to replace some existing update code I have with calls to Ping.fm. I suspect there will be quite a few third party tools and services that make use of Ping.fm’s API. Having an API is key for a service like this.

I’m really happy with Ping.fm, but it’s not perfect. Here are a few wishes and things I’d like to see improved:

  • None of the checkboxes work in Opera. I’ve never seen this before on any other website, and it’s really annoying.
  • I’d like to be able to set a “prefix” for Facebook. By default, my updates are just mashed together, as in “Mack Tempted to take a nap :)” but I’d like to specify a prefix of ” – ” to get “Mack – Tempted to take a nap :)”. Same goes for LinkedIn.
  • I really wish Ping.fm had an SMS gateway. Then I could update via text message. I wrote my own code with Twitter’s API to accomplish this for now.
  • Would be cool to have a setting to turn off URL shortening by default.
  • I’d love to see OpenID support too.
  • Support for IM statuses as services would be wicked – Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger, and Skype would be at the top of my list.

I’ve seen a few people write about Ping.fm, wishing that it had a way to aggregate your friends messages at all of the supported services. I hope they don’t go down that route – that’s what I use FriendFeed for. I’d rather Ping.fm stay focused on posting, not reading.

If you’d like to give Ping.fm a shot, use the beta code “pingyoulater”. I think these codes change from time to time, so if that doesn’t work, search Summize for a new one.

Notes for 7/6/2008

Here are my weekly notes:

  • Went to see my Dad at the airport yesterday as he had some time to kill before his flight home to Inuvik. They must have raised the prices for parking, because it cost me $11 for just an hour and half!
  • Not sure how I missed this, but it turns out that the downforeveryoneorjustme.com website was created by Alex Payne – he works at Twitter.
  • Vanity Fair has a fascinating article on the Bear Stearns collapse. Some believe it was the greatest financial scandal in history. It’s long, but worth the read if you’re interested.
  • 37signals is dropping support for IE6 across their entire product line. I think we’ll see a lot more announcements like this, especially as IE8 nears.
  • Fellow WordPress bloggers – here are 10 things you need to know about WordPress 2.6.
  • According to a study by Ipsos MediaCT, 82 percent of Americans have never used text messaging. I call BS – I don’t believe that for a second.
  • After a week of incredibly hot temperatures, we had quite a bit of rain in Edmonton this weekend, complete with thunder and lightning. I managed to take a couple photos of a rainbow that appeared yesterday evening.

The Apple Store opens in West Edmonton Mall

This morning the brand new Apple Store in West Edmonton Mall finally opened. Sharon and I arrived at 9:15am, and found ourselves at the back of a line roughly 200 people long. A few of the people I talked to near the front of the line had been waiting since 6am, and apparently one guy camped out overnight. That’s the kind of dedication one would expect for the launch of an Apple Store.

Almost there!

As the grand opening time of 10am neared, the sales associates exited the store cheering and proceeded to run the length of the line, high-fiving everyone as they went. It was a nice way to say “thanks for waiting!” Eventually they opened the doors and started letting people in. Before we knew it we were entering the store, shaking hands with the greeters who continued to cheer. Each person received a little white box which contained a black T-shirt that reads “West Edmonton” with an Apple logo beside it. I was amazed that they just continued to let people in…there were probably fifty employees to begin with, so the place was just packed!

My first experience with an Apple Store was at the flagship outlet on Fifth Avenue in New York back in December. The WEM store is quite a bit smaller (and doesn’t have the wicked glass cube overtop) but it still contains all of the elements that I love about Apple Stores: free Wi-Fi, the Genius Bar, roaming sales clerks with wireless payment devices, and of course, lots of excellent Apple gadgets.

Grand OpeningLined up outside the Apple StoreInside the Apple StorePicture in PictureGenius BarT-Shirt Boxes

We hung around for a bit, used the free Wi-Fi, chatted with people we ran into, and eventually I bought a Universal iPod Dock (had to buy something!). They were still giving out free T-shirts when we left just after 11am. We’ll have to wait and see what effect, if any, the Apple Store has on Westworld Computers but either way I’m glad that Edmonton is now a “have” city.

There were lots of people with digital still and video cameras (lots of Flips actually) so it’s safe to say that the grand opening was well-documented. You can see all of my photos and videos of the grand opening here.

More than 100,000 have used Meraki's Free the Net

meraki VentureBeat is reporting today that more than 100,000 people in the San Francisco area have used Meraki’s Free the Net WiFi service. That’s good news for the city, considering the much-talked about Earthlink service was abandoned. Maybe the business model is the reason:

Unlike Earthlink, Meraki isn’t seeking the city government’s financial support or approval, and it isn’t looking to make money from the network, either. Instead, [Chief Executive Sanjit Biswas] describes Free the Net as a “testbed” and showcase for the company’s wireless technology, which Meraki then sells elsewhere.

The company also runs local ads, but apparently doesn’t make any money from them.

Wireless is something I hope to talk more about at the upcoming BarCampEdmonton1. I would love to see a wireless service in Edmonton with over 100,000 users. I think the Meraki approach (not relying on the government) is probably the best way to accomplish that.

My friend Eric is going to be enabling WiFi at BarCampEdmonton1, so if you’re interested in learning more about how Meraki and Open Mesh work, definitely come down and ask some questions! We’d love to show you how it works.

And if you’d like to help expand the network in Edmonton, check out wirelessedmonton.ca.

Selling seats to an experience: The Dark Knight in IMAX

After reading some early reviews of The Dark Knight today, I started thinking about the movie business again. I also came across this Techdirt post, which reiterates that the movie business is not selling movies, but selling seats to an experience. Here are some of the things I’ve read about the film:

“The haunting and visionary Dark Knight soars on the wings of untamed imagination. It’s full of surprises you don’t see coming. And just try to get it out of your dreams.”
– Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

“I have been given the go ahead to review The Dark Knight, but this is the type of film that I need to see at least two or three times before attempting such a task. The film is so very expansive, so incredibly epic…If you don’t see this movie in IMAX than you haven’t seen the movie.”
– Peter Sciretta, /Film

“‘Batman Begins’ follow-up is a faster-paced ride that will have you wanting to buy a ticket for the next showing when you leave the theater…Do yourself a favor and see it in IMAX.”
– Larry Carroll, MTV News

Most articles I’ve read say the the film really should be seen in IMAX. Christopher Nolan went to great lengths to make everything in the film as real as possible, and “is the first Hollywood director to shoot key sequences of a major feature in IMAX” according to Wired. So today I bought two tickets to the midnight IMAX showing.

I happily paid $30 today for the IMAX tickets, because I am looking forward to the experience. Yes I think the movie is going to be awesome, but it’s the better experience that really has me excited. And I’m really just talking about the screen and sound in this case…imagine if the entire moviegoing experience was better! Too bad Hollywood hasn’t yet figured this out. I hope Nolan rubs off on his peers.

And yes, I still think simultaneous movie releases could work with an improved moviegoing experience. I’d love to buy a copy of The Dark Knight on my way out of the theatre, thank you very much.

Happy Canada Day!

It’s almost tradition for me to wish readers Happy Canada Day now (2005, 2006, 2007). I’ve had a pretty relaxing day so far, even though I did do a little bit of work earlier. Sharon and I are going to head down toward the Legislature grounds pretty soon to see the waterfall, and of course, the fireworks.

I had been looking forward to visiting the brand new Apple Store at West Edmonton Mall today, but found out yesterday that the launch has been delayed until Saturday. I’m not sure where he read this, but Bruce Clarke says the first 1000 people through the door will receive a free Apple t-shirt.

Happy Canada Day!

Notes for 6/29/2008

Here are my weekly notes:

  • Went down to Red Deer today to visit Tom. Had a good time, though it was pretty darn hot sitting in the sun watching his soccer game. I dunno how they managed to keep running!
  • While in Red Deer I got the news that the Oilers traded Greene and Stoll to Los Angeles for Lubomir Visnovsky.
  • Friday was the last day at Microsoft as a full-time employee for Bill Gates. Of all the “goodbye Bill” articles I’ve read, I think this one by Anil Dash is one of the best.
  • ICANN is relaxing the rules about top-level domains (TLDs), which means a whole bunch more will join the familiar .com, .net, .org, and country domains. Unfortunately, with a price tag of over $100,000 it’ll only be big businesses that can afford to create their own TLD.
  • According to Gartner, there are now over 1 billion installed PCs worldwide. We should pass the next billion in 2014.
  • Sharon and I went to see Wall-E last night. Wasn’t my favorite Pixar movie, but it wasn’t my least favorite either. It’s pretty much as good as everyone says. My only complaint would be the live action videos which featured Fred Willard – they seemed out of place for an animated film. Especially one like Wall-E, in which the animation was so amazing!

jQuery: Don't build websites without it!

jquery For the last few weeks I’ve been using a JavaScript library called jQuery. The more I use it, the more I wonder how I ever built websites without it! Here’s the official description:

jQuery is a fast, concise, JavaScript Library that simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript.

jQuery makes all of your page manipulations easier. Best of all, it does so in a consistent, reliable way across all browsers. No more little hacks in your JavaScript to make something work in both IE and Safari.

In general, I’m a big fan of doing things client-side on the web. That might sound weird coming from an ASP.NET developer, since the whole idea behind ASP.NET’s postback model (called Web Forms) is to make everything happen server-side. I think most experienced ASP.NET developers would agree however, that the postback model is crap. It’s flawed, and if you can avoid it, you should.

We built Podcast Spot in ASP.NET, but we don’t use postbacks. ASP.NET is essentially just our rendering engine. We made use of prototype, another popular JavaScript library, but a lot of the code we wrote is just ugly. I wish I had known about jQuery back then. I’m tempted to rewrite everything using jQuery, but I’m mindful of the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” adage.

It’s very unlikely I’ll be building anything new without jQuery though. That’s how much I love it! Here are my favorite things so far:

  • Works in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Opera. Cross-browser support FTW!
  • At just 16 KB for the minified, gzipped version, it has a very small footprint.
  • The API feels natural if you already know JavaScript quite well.
  • Chainability – the magic of jQuery. If you’re familiar with object-oriented programming, you’ll love jQuery.
  • The jQuery UI API is much more consistent and complete than script.aculo.us, and the effects seem much smoother too.

To get started with jQuery, just visit the website. You’ll probably also want to take a look at jQuery UI. The documentation is excellent, and there are quite a few tutorials available online.

I'm sad to see CNET's yellow and green go

cnet Earlier this week, Dan Farber posted a preview of CNET’s new, improved look. The main changes are to the logo (the pipe between the “c” and “net” is now gone, as you can see to the right) and the color scheme (yellow and green have been replaced with red, black, and grey). I’ll admit that I like the new design, because it is cleaner and simpler. At the same time however, a part of my own personal web history is dying along with the yellow and green.

When I was in junior high (grade seven if I remember correctly), living in Inuvik, NT, I had a summer job at the Inuvik Centennial Library. Part of my job was to scan in old yearbooks and other volumes so that they could be viewed (and presumably searched) using a computer. The other part of my job was to assist library patrons in using the computers and the web (this was around 1996, so the web was still new to most people). Both of these jobs meant that I had a lot of free time, either waiting for the slower scanner to do its thing, or waiting for people to need assistance. To pass the time I would read whatever technology news I could find online. In 1996, that meant CNET’s News.com.

Every morning, I was greeted by the yellow and green coloring of CNET’s properties. My passion (or addiction) for following tech news started at that library, reading News.com. I daresay I became quite fond of the yellow and green!

Over the years I have visited News.com less frequently, of course, due to the appearance of blogs like TechCrunch and aggregators like Techmeme and FriendFeed. Occasionally I’ll still check it out, but usually I find myself clicking through from Techmeme. News.com is no longer the destination for me.

For a trip down memory lane, check out the Wayback Machine. The version of News.com from December 22, 1996 is particularly trippy!

So long, CNET yellow and green, and thanks for all the fish.