Year: 2008

Notes for 11/16/2008

canux Arrived safe and sound today in Banff for CanUX 2008 (you can read more about the first day at Techvibes). The highway was perfect until Red Deer, and was covered in snow and windy the rest of the way to Banff. The roads inside Banff itself are quite icy, so I’m glad the main townsite is only a 15 minute walk from The Banff Centre where the conference is taking place. Hopefully I’ll get some time to head down there.

I’m having a great time so far! Two of the best things have been the food and the wireless. I wasn’t sure what to expect from hotel-provided food, but it is actually very good. I can definitely handle another two days of this. The other positive is the wireless – the entire grounds are covered in wireless Internet, and it seems pretty fast. Upload isn’t terribly quick, but that’s okay.

Another plus was getting to meet some more Edmonton Twitterers in person: @designcookhouse, @trevvg, @jessmcmullin, and a few others. Oh and @mwarf from Lethbridge too!

Here are my weekly notes:

You can find my photos from CanUX here (I’ll keep adding to it). Also – follow along on Twitter!

Edmonton Notes for 11/15/2008 – Holiday Light Up! Edition

Earlier this evening, Sharon and I went to check out the Christmas on the Square Holiday Light Up! event. Mayor Mandel and Santa were on hand to help light up the largest Christmas tree we’ve ever had in Edmonton – 83 feet tall, with over 8000 energy efficient lights on it! BrightNights was also launched, and there were choirs, free wagon rides, and a tented version of the 104th Street City Market. Great weather today meant that Churchill Square was absolutely packed!

Holiday Light Up!Holiday Light Up!

You can see more photos and video here. The neat thing about the fireworks is that they were timed to the music!

Here are some Edmonton-related things I found interesting this week:

Edmonton Homeless Count 2008

Last night Sharon and I attended the Homeward Trust Volunteer Appreciation event at The Billiard Club on Whyte Avenue. Volunteers who helped at either Homeless Connect or the Homeless Count were invited to attend. Everyone received a complimentary drink and was entered into a draw for door prizes. In addition to simply saying “thank you”, Homeward Trust showed two videos produced by local firm Bearpaw Media Productions. I was quite impressed with the quality of both videos, and thought they served as an excellent introduction to both the Homeless Count and Homeless Connect. I hope Homeward Trust puts the videos up on their website, but I’m not holding my breath.

Homeward Trust also shared some information about the results of this year’s count. They didn’t release the report today as promised, but here’s what they told us last night:

  • The number of homeless individuals counted in 2008 was 3006 3079, up from 2618 in 2006.
  • The count lasted 17 hours and involved 180 agencies and over 220 volunteers.
  • Over 80% of the volunteers this year were new, and Homeward Trust did not get as many volunteers as they had hoped for.

I’ll update this post with a link to the final report as soon as it becomes available. You can find the results of the previous counts here.

Enumerators

Sharon wrote about our experience volunteering for the Homeless Count back in October. I enjoyed the quick conversations we had with people on the street, though our route along 107th avenue was mostly empty. It was a little awkward asking everyone we encountered the required questions, but we got better at it. I was happy to be able to help out, and I’d be interested in doing it again next time!

What’s next for Homeward Trust? They’ve just launched the annual Toque Campaign. Now in its 13th year, the Raising the Roof initiative is a way to raise funds and awareness in the fight against homelessness in Canada. Since 1997, over 575,000 toques have been sold to Canadians! I bought one last night for $10 (the minimum donation). Don’t forget to wear your toque to show your support on Toque Tuesday, which takes place on February 3rd, 2009.

Finally, Homeward Trust is already planning for the next Homeless Connect event to take place sometime in the spring. The event on October 5th was a huge success, with over 1500 homeless people getting a unique opportunity to access over 50 services. I was under the impression you had to be affiliated with one of the participating agencies to help out, but that’s not the case! I’ll be volunteering for the next one. Maybe I can help people use the computer and get on the Internet or something.

Thanks to Homeward Trust for their excellent work and the opportunity to help out!

UPDATE (11/22/2008): Homeward Trust finally released the report to the media yesterday, the total number is 3079. They still haven’t posted it to their website.

UPDATE (11/24/2008): They have posted the report here. (PDF)

Edmonton Code Camp 2008

edmonton code camp We’re just over two weeks away from a really cool event for local software developers – Edmonton Code Camp! What is code camp? It’s a free event by developers, for developers. It’s an opportunity for local developers to get together to share with and learn from one another. Similar to DemoCamp, slide decks are frowned upon – show us the code! It doesn’t matter what your programming language of choice is, everyone is welcome!

Code Camp is an annual event here in Edmonton, organized primarily by Steven Rockarts from EDMUG. I’m really looking forward to it! Here are the details:

WHEN: Saturday, November 29th, 2008 from 9:00am until 4:30pm
WHERE: Building #5, MacEwan Downtown Campus (map)
Click here to register!

[geo_mashup_map height=”200″ width=”575″ zoom=”15″]

You should be able to see the embedded map above also – I’m testing the WP Geo plugin. Works quite well I think! I’m now testing the Geo Mashup plugin – seems to work better, and I can specify the zoom on a per-post basis!

If you’d like to present something at code camp, let us know! You can add your name to the wiki, leave a comment here, or email Steven Rockarts. Just want to attend? That’s cool too! Just register here, and then tell your friends!

We’ll have more updates as we get closer to the event, so keep an eye on the website and wiki. Hope to see you there!

My favorite hosted wiki: MindTouch Wik.is

MindTouch Wik.is Back in May I started looking for a hosted wiki for the EdmontonTweetup. I wanted a wiki so that others could contribute and help to organize our meetups. I also wanted a hosted wiki, because I didn’t want to mess around with running yet another system with yet another database. My only other requirements were that I wanted it to be free or very low cost, and relatively simple and clean (I would have been fine with some advertising).

I tried a bunch, including Wetpaint, Wikidot, PBWiki, StikiPad, Wikispaces, and finally Wik.is. I’ve had experience with both PBWiki and Wikispaces and like them both, but it was the last one that turned out to be my favorite. We’ve been using Wik.is by MindTouch to power the EdmontonTweetup wiki ever since! And today, I setup another one for Edmonton Code Camp.

Wik.is is a hosted version of Deki, the enterprise wiki solution that MindTouch sells to businesses. There are two account levels – Basic which is free, and Pro which costs $99 USD/year. The Basic level includes:

  • 100 MB of storage.
  • WYSIWYG editing.
  • The ability to have a public or private wiki.
  • Themes and the ability to edit CSS to further customize the look of the wiki.
  • Integration with popular sites like YouTube and Flickr.
  • RSS feeds, templates, redirects, and other common wiki features.

The Pro level gives you 10 GB of storage, the ability to customize the HTML, and the ability to use your own domain name.

I love that Wik.is is fast and contains no advertising! It’s simple to get started – all you need to do is choose a domain name prefix, such as “edmontoncodecamp” in http://edmontoncodecamp.wik.is. After you’re logged in you can make your wiki public, upload your own logo, and choose from one of the 20 or so pre-installed themes (or you can customize your own). You can enable anonymous editing, or require users to create an account before they can edit pages.

When I first started with Wik.is, my only complaint was that the WYSIWYG editing didn’t work in Opera or really anything other than IE and Firefox. That was fixed quite a while ago though, so I was complaint-free until today. After setting up the second wiki, I realized that there’s no such thing as a “Wik.is account”, which means I have two “mastermaq” accounts – one for the tweetup wiki and one for the code camp wiki. It would be much better if I could use just one account to login to both.

That’s a fairly minor issue though! In general I’m really happy with Wik.is, and I highly recommend it if you’re looking for a hosted wiki solution. I’m also a fan of MindTouch! They have an active blog, and a few of them are quite active on Twitter, such as the founder, Aaron Roe Fulkerson. Keep it up!

Finally, here are a few things you probably didn’t know about Deki (the software that powers Wik.is):

  • It started in July 2006 as a fork of MediaWiki (the software that powers Wikipedia)
  • The frontend is built using PHP, while the API is written in C# for Mono and the .NET Framework
  • It powers the Mozilla Developer Wiki

Windows 7 Feature Request: Presence & Status API

When RSS feeds were all the rage, Microsoft took notice and built support into Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Vista. I think the Common Feed List was a great addition to the operating system – why try to manage and synchronize a different list of feeds for each application? It makes far more sense for the OS to manage it. This situation is a good example of how Windows can make your life easier.

I would like to see a similar feature added in Windows 7 – a common presence and status API.

Presence is your availability, such as “Available”, “Busy”, and “Not Available”. There are dozens of applications that support this type of functionality in their own way. I’ve got three running right now – Windows Live Messenger, Skype, and Pidgin (well and Exchange, I suppose). You’ve probably got a similar list, perhaps with a few more applications.

Status is the short text description of what you’re doing, such as “Working in the office”. Think Twitter and Facebook. Many software applications have this type of functionality as well, including Windows Live Messenger and Skype.

Here again, the operating system should be taking care of this to make life easier. When I want to change my presence from “Available” to “Busy”, I currently have to make that change in every single application. Likewise, to update my status I need to copy and paste it to a bunch of different places. Too messy, too much work.

Here’s what I’d like to see in the API:

  • The ability to set the presence and/or status of the currently logged in user.
  • The ability to query the presence and/or status of the currently logged in user.
  • An event subscription mechanism to be notified when the currently logged in user’s presence and/or status has been updated.

That would be very cool, I think. I could then change my presence or status in Skype and it could be reflected in Windows Live Messenger and other applications. This information could also be displayed in other places, such as the Welcome screen, or in my email signature, etc.

But we can make it better – let’s hook in Windows Live support! Extend the Windows Live Presence API to support status updates as well, and let me grant access to third party services. That way I could potentially hook in Ping.fm and other services. When I update my presence and status on my computer, it updates Windows Live in the background, which in turn updates any other services I’ve added.

With that in place, this scenario becomes a reality: I open a gadget on my desktop, change my presence to “Available” and my status to “Writing a blog entry” and it’s reflected in Windows Live Messenger, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

I’d love to have that functionality! Perhaps it could work with the new location API too. I’ve got tons of feature requests for Windows 7 (as I’m sure everyone does) but this one would definitely be near the top of my wish list.

Use Google Maps to find Edmonton Transit schedules and trip plans

Earlier today I stumbled across this thread on Connect2Edmonton which pointed out that Google Maps Canada now has Edmonton Transit schedules and trip planning features. I immediately jumped over to the website to check it out, and sure enough, it’s all there!

The ETS website has offered trip planning for quite some time now, of course (an average of 89,000 trips were planned each month in 2006). It works well enough, but it’s awkward to use. Everything you do seems to open a new window/tab, and it’s not the fastest service in the world. But the main drawback has always been that you have to know far too much information in advance.

When you need to get from point A to point B, you typically know the address of each, but you don’t know the bus stop number near each one and you certainly don’t know which bus to get on!

That’s where Google Maps absolutely destroys the ETS website. Here’s an example.

I need to get from my apartment building to the current Questionmark office in the west end. I live at 10350 122nd Street, and the office is at 11434 168th Street. Let’s start with the ETS Trip Planner:

  1. Date and time of travel are no problem. The “arrive by” feature is particularly nice.
  2. Enter Starting Bus Stop # or Choose a Landmark. Uh oh, what’s my bus stop number? I could go outside and look or I could try to look it up. Let’s look it up.
  3. Okay not bad, enter my address and click Get Bus Stop #. Okay wow, now I have to choose from 14 different stops! I’m not entirely sure which direction I want. The office is northwest from my house, but do I want a westbound stop or northbound? I’ll choose the first one, heading west.
  4. Now I repeat the same thing for the office address. This time I have a list of 7 stops. Again, I’ll choose the first one.
  5. Now I can get my trip plan! Or not…some sort of error just popped up – “Error in Trip Solution Results”. Excellent. Honest I’m just doing this as I write.
  6. I’m really not sure why I got that error, but I did the whole thing again and after about 30 seconds or so, I got my trip plan – six different route options. Shortest time is 46 minutes.

Now let’s do that with Google Maps:

  1. I enter my home address.
  2. On the pin that comes up, I click “From Here” and enter the office address.
  3. Next I click “Public Transit” on the left pane.
  4. That’s it! I have three suggested routes. Shortest time is 34 minutes, and each one includes walking directions too.

If you want, you can do a few more advanced things as well. Clicking “Show options” will let you choose the “Depart at” or “Arrive by” times, just like the ETS website.

directions

And it gets better! There’s no way for me to get back to that trip plan I made using the ETS Trip Planner. Unless I printed it right there, I’d have to do it again. With Google Maps however, my plan has a permalink! Very nice.

I would love to see ETS link to the Google solution. Competition might be a concern, but it’s probably a better use of resources to help Google improve their system than to continue building an inferior one. I think it’s funny that the “Local agency information” link at the bottom of the results pane is broken. You can thank the new Edmonton.ca website for that!

Of course, the Google Maps solution isn’t yet perfect. It doesn’t seem to contain as much information as ETS, nor does it include Strathcona Transit or St. Albert Transit (as Michael Wilson pointed out to me).

Still, if you need to look up transit information in Edmonton I’d highly recommend you look at Google Maps before trying your luck with the ETS Trip Planner.

UPDATE: Found the official list of cities with transit information at Google Maps. Edmonton is not on the list yet. The currently listed Canadian cities include Vancouver, Fredericton, Ottawa, and Montreal.

Notes for 11/9/2008

Here are my weekly notes:

Edmonton Notes for 11/8/2008

Here are some Edmonton-related things I found interesting this week:

How do you define mainstream?

Lately I’ve been thinking about the word “mainstream” and what it means. Princeton’s WordNet defines mainstream as “the prevailing current of thought” while Merriam-Webster defines mainstream as “a prevailing current or direction of activity or influence”. I think many people have a different definition however, something more akin to the one at UrbanDictionary:

Mainstream is what’s the new trend. When one "style" gets old, a new one is reborn; a mainstream person is someone who jumps from trend to trend so that they fit in with the rest of the crowd.

That definition has 514 positive votes and only 51 negative votes. There are a few others there too, but that one is the most popular. The definition at Wiktionary is similar.

Two recent articles got me thinking about this. On October 27th, the Wall Street Journal said that Twitter is going mainstream:

When the service first appeared a couple of years ago, its appeal seemed largely limited to narcissists who wanted to let everybody know what they were doing in real time. But, like blogs and social-networking sites, Twitter is starting to cross into the mainstream, as a wide range of people find interesting uses for the brief notes.

Is the WSJ right? Has Twitter crossed into the mainstream? I think that depends on which definition you use. Based on the one in the dictionary, I’d say they’re wrong.

The second article was from The Economist. They say blogging is mainstream now too:

Blogging has entered the mainstream, which—as with every new medium in history—looks to its pioneers suspiciously like death.

Hold on a sec – blogging has only just entered the mainstream? If that’s true, how can Twitter possibly be considered mainstream? Seems the “mainstream” media have different definitions for the word too!

Maybe everyone has a different definition for the word? I think it all depends on what your litmus test is. For instance:

  • Has Twitter been mentioned on TV and in the newspaper? Yes, it’s mainstream.
  • Does anyone make money using Twitter? Yes, it’s mainstream.
  • Do my parents use Twitter regularly? No, it’s not mainstream.
  • Do all of my friends use Twitter? No, it’s not mainstream.
  • Will a random person on the street know what Twitter is? No, it’s not mainstream.

I think that’s pretty close to what my litmus test is. Replace “Twitter” with “Google” or “Facebook” and all of the answers are yes.

What’s your test? How do you define mainstream?