Year: 2009

Help Edmonton’s Free WiFi Project grow!

free wifi project As some of you know, I’m involved with the Free WiFi Project here in Edmonton (along with Eric, Rob, and Stephen). We’ve been slowly progressing things, trying to figure out how we’d like to grow the project and spread free wireless Internet access across the city. There are a few initiatives in the works, but one I’d like to point out is that anyone can now order a community router from our website!

It’s pretty straightforward. Just head over to the Help Us Expand page to learn more about how the whole system works and what the costs and benefits are (each community router costs $60). When you’re ready, simply click the order link and follow the instructions. You’ll first have to enter some personal details, such as your name and address. Next you’ll be taken off to PayPal to make a payment to us. Finally, we’ll confirm the address we’re going to ship the router to. Within about a week you should receive a package from us with some simple instructions on how to connect your new community router!

Simple right? We’d love to have you join the network! If you give it a shot and have any feedback for us on how to improve the process, please let me know in the comments below or contact me. We want to make it as easy and painless as possible.

Stay tuned for more good news from the Free WiFi Project. As always, you can see a list of our current locations here. Thank you in advance for supporting us!

Notes for 1/25/2009

Here are my weekly notes:

Edmonton Notes for 1/24/2009

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

Questionmark still hiring .NET developers in Edmonton!

questionmark The software development company I work for here in Edmonton, Questionmark, is once again looking for developers to join our team. The job descriptions I posted back in September are still relevant, but here are the requirements again:

A minimum of 3 years of commercial development experience. Highly skilled in software development using our core technologies: C#, ASP.NET, XML, Ajax, Javascript, T-SQL. Experience with SCRUM a plus. Excellent written and oral communication are essential.

You’d be working on the latest and greatest, both technology-wise (.NET 3.5, etc) and product-lineup-wise (the company’s newest products). It’s a great opportunity!

We’re currently in the process of moving to our brand new office in the Empire Building downtown (10080 Jasper Avenue). As some of you may know, I’ve had offices in the building twice before, and I think it’s a fantastic place to work. It’s great to be right in the heart of downtown, with easy access via public transit and lots of amenities within walking distance (parking isn’t so great, of course).

Job Description for Software Developer

If you’re interested in applying or would like more information, either send me an email or email Kaitlyn Lardin. Thanks!

Restricted Access

restricted access I’m rarely on the University of Alberta campus anymore, so I only heard about the SU’s Restricted Access campaign fairly recently. The main event takes place tomorrow morning at 7 AM, roughly an hour before the U of A Board of Governors’ meeting. Students will be gathering to send a message that access to education is an issue:

The cost of a full educational experience is rapidly increasing. Mounting financial burdens are preventing a growing number of hard-working, qualified students from completing or even starting their university education. Join the Restricted Access movement and protect the right to an education that all qualified students have earned.

If ratified at the meeting, tuition will increase 4.1% next year while residence rent rates will increase 8%. Dave Cournoyer, who may be live-blogging the meeting tomorrow, says that “residence rates at the U of A will have increased by $220 per month since 2006” when the increase is approved tomorrow. That’s quite a bit!

It sounds familiar. I remember all the students protesting tuition increases back when I attended the university. And yet tuition always seemed to go up anyway. The university isn’t immune to the current financial crisis either. By March, it is estimated that the U of A’s endowments will have declined by nearly $100 million.

The increases don’t affect me directly anymore, but I still find the issue important. I’m one of many former students trying to repay student loans to the federal government:

Investments in post-secondary education must be part of the federal government’s economic recovery plan, and it must help relieve massive student debt, which on Wednesday hit $13 billion, according to the Canadian Federation of Students.

According to CFS estimates, the average student graduates with a total debt load of $25,000 to $28,000. Big numbers, indeed.

Back to the campaign. The Students’ Union has distributed red scarves and handbills to students, hung posters, and manned information booths. They’ve also made use of social media tools to help spread the word. There are over 1900 members in the Restricted Access Facebook group, and nearly 400 have confirmed attendance at tomorrow morning’s event. The SU recently created a Twitter account, and they’ve been regularly updating their blog. The website also has a form that makes it easy to send letters to MLAs. Good stuff.

As this Gateway article notes, the campaign provides a platform for future discussions:

“This project is truly broader and deeper than the yearly tuition and rent increase debates that have happened. Access is a long-term project and it’s going to take a long-term push from a lot of students to make real, substantive, systematic changes,” [SU President Janelle Morin] explained.

They’re off to a good start, I think.

If you’re a student looking to participate tomorrow, meet at the tent in Celebration Plaza (outside the Admin building on the bus loop) at 7 AM for free hot chocolate and donuts, and don’t forget to wear your red scarf!

Windows 7 Feature Request: Unified Application Updates

I’m sick of the way software updates are handled in Windows, and I want a new unified application update center in Windows 7 to solve the problem. Apparently Microsoft is asking Windows 7 beta participants questions related to “a single place for finding and managing updates on my PC.” The survey seems to go beyond updating however, and covers installing, uninstalling, configuring, and even discovering new applications. I think they should keep it simple – make updating applications easy.

The problem today is that every new application ships with its own update mechanism, if it has the ability at all. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told the Adobe Updater to screw off because it has started automatically downloading 500 MBs worth of updates in the background. At least Logitech asks me before it starts using my bandwidth. Why is it bad for each application to have its own updater?

  • Instead of one OS component running to perform updates, dozens of little apps or background processes may be running to support the various applications you have installed. Each one takes resources.
  • Every time I want to configure an updater, I have to start from scratch because they all have different interfaces and options. This wastes my time.
  • Related to the previous point, if I want to see if my applications are up-to-date, I have to check each one individually! Again, this wastes my time.

I’m not sure exactly how Microsoft would go about implementing this (do Adobe servers push notifications to Microsoft servers?) but I think it should be like Windows Update on steroids. Here’s what I want:

  • The ability to see all of my applications and whether or not they are up-to-date.
  • The ability to define a schedule for downloading and installing updates, preferably on a per-application basis.
  • The ability to see a complete history of application updates.
  • The ability to easily suspend all updating temporarily.
  • Options for notifications. I want to be notified about some application updates, and others I never want to hear about.
  • The ability to have a restore point set before each update.

I think having unified application updates would drastically improve the user experience on Windows. It would reduce user frustration and improve system performance and security. The survey is definitely encouraging – I hope this becomes a reality!

Inauguration Day 2009 Around The Web

Did you miss the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama earlier today? Don’t worry, there are tons of resources online for you to check out. Here are some of my favorites, starting with this incredible image:

CNN was making a big deal out of this satellite image all day. Fortunately, BoingBoing posted a link to it this afternoon. Zoom in and check it out!

The most anticipated part of the day was probably President Obama’s Inaugural Address. The complete transcript is available here, and you can watch the video at CNN (or below).

Above is a word cloud of Obama’s speech, courtesy of ReadWriteWeb and Wordle.net. They compare it to the inaugural speeches of Bush, Clinton, Reagan, and Lincoln too.

Here’s the oath and inaugural address, courtesy of CSPAN:

You’ll notice the oath didn’t quite go as planned but Talking Points Memo points out that Obama didn’t mess it up, Roberts did:

Roberts started the oath. Obama went a little more quickly than he’d anticipated. And then in the second stage of the oath Roberts got the words wrong. Instead of "I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States" he said "I will execute the office of President of the United States faithfully …"

There was a moment of awkwardness, but they eventually sorted it out. The swearing in is just a formality anyway – Barack Obama became President at noon EST even before he had taken the oath (they were slightly behind schedule).

Here are some other great links:

Know of any others? Let me know.

Finally it’s a reality – Barack Obama is President! Now the real work begins. I hope he’s ready.

Tracking the 2009 presidential inauguration of Barack Obama online

The 2009 presidential inauguration of Barack Obama is now just a few hours away! At 8am MST (10am EST) the program will begin, and by about 10am MST (noon EST) the oath of office and inaugural address should be underway at the United States Capitol. Two million people are expected to attend the event, with millions more following along remotely. I’ll be one of the many people using the web to keep an eye on things. Here’s how I plan to do it:

TechCrunch has a few more resources in their Guide to the Inauguration. Lifehacker also wrote a Guide to Catching the Inauguration from Anywhere.

Make no mistake about it, Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration is a big deal. The cellphone carriers are bracing for a flood of mobile traffic, and have spent millions of dollars to upgrade their networks in Washington. Antivirus vendors are also preparing for the event – a large amount of inauguration-related spam and malware is expected. Curiously, the most popular search requests are related to Beyonce, who will be performing for Barack and Michelle’s first dance at the inauguration ball.

Need a blast from the past? Read about previous inaugurations at Wikipedia, or watch the videos.

Finally, keep an eye on Whitehouse.gov. At exactly one minute after noon (EST) the new website will launch. As the AFP’s headline states: Change.gov is coming to the White House!

Anything else I’ve missed? Let me know!

UPDATE: Here are a few more resources: National Post liveblog, CNN & Facebook (very cool), Twingly Microblog Search.

Notes for 1/18/2009

Here are my weekly notes:

  • Finally got a new phone today! I gave in and got a BlackBerry. I was looking at the Pearl, but in the end went with the Curve (8330 on Telus). One of the first things I did when I got home was download TwitterBerry!
  • I’ve been playing with a new C# library for Twitter this week called tweet# or tweetsharp. It was written by Daniel Crenna and features a fluent interface. Very cool.
  • Also on the topic of libraries for developers, jQuery released version 1.3 this week!
  • I’ve seen dozens of Windows 7 reviews this week, but none as interesting or useful as Tim Sneath’s Bumper List of Windows 7 Secrets. Don’t miss it.
  • A number of blogs discussed the state of Enterprise RSS this week. Greg Reinacker from NewsGator wrote a fantastic reply on Thursday. He says Enterprise RSS is there as an enabler, and is “in more places than you probably think.”
  • Interesting article at The Daily Beast on The Gig Economy. Tina Brown posits that no one has a job anymore, instead they have gigs.
  • Ready for Tuesday? I’m looking forward to Barack Obama’s inauguration!

Edmonton Notes for 1/17/2009

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