Category: Uncategorized

Happy 25th Birthday Diet Coke!

Twenty five years ago today, Diet Coke was introduced to the world at Radio City Music Hall in New York. Just four years later, it became the #1 low-calorie sparkling beverage in the world, a title it continues to hold to this day.

I am definitely a fan of Diet Coke. I have been drinking mostly Coke Zero lately, but I enjoy a Diet Coke every now and then. It has a very distinct taste that I think is fairly divisive: either you like it or you don’t.

Diet Coke is about more than beverages however:

“Since its launch, Diet Coke has been synonymous with stylish sophistication,” said Katie Bayne, chief marketing officer, Coca-Cola North America. “Through the years, Diet Coke marketing and advertising has reflected and embraced pop culture, and the brand has become a global icon that embodies great cola taste with an undeniable sense of style.”

Ah yes, pop culture. Numerous celebrities have endorsed Diet Coke, and the drink itself has become something of a celebrity recently – along with its good friend Mentos, that is. Oh by the way, if you like the image I included in this post (and who doesn’t) then check out the video.

If you have some time to waste, check out the Wikipedia entry for Diet Coke. I had no idea there were so many sub-brands, for instance. Lots of interesting information.

I still haven’t seen Diet Coke Plus anywhere, but I’d like to give it a try. Hopefully it shows up in Edmonton soon. Oh and Cherry Coke Zero too.

Happy Birthday Diet Coke!

Read: Coca-Cola

Did you have problems with Telus Mobility last night?

I just got off the phone with a client service representative at Telus Mobility. The good news is that their support service is still fast and effective, as I mentioned back in May. The bad news is that the Telus network doesn’t seem incredibly stable.

Around 9 PM last night, my phone stopped working. I couldn’t make or receive any calls, nor could I send or receive text messages. Every attempt was greeted with an annoying “beep beep beep” and text messages just disappeared into the unknown. I was kind of lost without my phone, and I mentioned to Megan that I should almost buy a backup pay-as-you-go phone on another network for precisely this type of thing. She just laughed!

Calls started working again around midnight, but text messaging still was not working this morning. Hence the call to Telus. The service representative asked a bunch of questions, and by the way I was answering, I think she got the hint and asked if this had happened before. I said yes, unfortunately, and asked her to send the clearing message. She did, and also said she was going to “do a reset” which means I have to turn my phone off for twenty minutes. Stange, I know. Hopefully it works.

I wasn’t the only one with problems it seems:

I’d like to know what happened, and if it was limited to just Edmonton and area or whether it was more widespread. Too bad they suck at communicating that sort of thing. Telus needs a blog!

It's all green to me

I wonder how long it will be until we all have green overload – I am guessing it’ll be sooner rather than later. These days, you’re simply not hip and with it unless you’re proclaiming how environmentally friendly you are. That goes for individuals, companies, and all other organizations too. Trying to cure cancer? Great – so long as you go about it in a “green” sort of way. Okay maybe it’s not quite that bad, but it’s getting darn close.

Did you know Discovery is launching an entire TV channel dedicated to the green movement? Apparently the New York Times had the story back in April, but I just came across it tonight while reading about Leonardo DiCaprio’s latest project:

DiCaprio is set to executive produce “Eco-Town,” a 13-part reality series which will follow state and local officials in their quest to build an ecologically – and economically – sustainable town in Kansas, aptly named Greenburg.

Yep, even famous movie stars need to add a shade of green to their images. No one is safe from the big bad green machine!

A television channel is one thing, but a niche blog is quite another. If the recently launched earth2tech blog doesn’t scream “go green or go home” nothing does:

Earth2Tech is a publication devoted to intersection between the tech industry, their eco-moves and the next generation of tech innovation that will combat climate change.

When will it end?

Some Thoughts on the Association for Downloadable Media

Post ImageLast week a new organization calling itself the Association for Downloadable Media launched. The ADM aims to provide standards for advertising and audience measurement for episodic and downloadable media. From their press release:

The ADM will focus primarily on the world of podcasting, downloadable media and portable content monetized by advertising and sponsorship. The ADM will create a landscape that facilitates the commercialization of this growing audience.

Monetization of podcasts is a growing opportunity for these parties, and the ADM supports the momentum of this channel through the collective mindshare of its members.

They have sixteen organizations already on board, including Apple and NPR. Individuals can join for $150/year, for corporations the price is $1000/year.

First of all, I’m not sure the organization is needed. Where are all the content creators and advertisers complaining about the lack of standards? Furthermore, none of the member companies are bound to do anything anyway. They can, however, point to the ADM as an example of how they are “participating in and improving” the industry. Take the five “initial” committees they have already created – isn’t it kind of early to have such committees? Probably, but it makes them look more legitimate.

More importantly, will the ADM really be able to accomplish anything? Aside from Apple and the NPR, the organizations currently on board are small fish in the grand scheme of things. Yes even venture-backed companies like Podshow, PodTech, and Revision3. What happens when NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox jump into the downloadable media market? Or perhaps even other media outlets like the New York Times? The ADM will drown in the ensuing splash, that’s what. The big fish will be able to do whatever they like, regardless of what the ADM has already “standardized.”

One other thing – downloadable media is a fairly broad term, don’t you think? Fairly ambitious of the group to proclaim themselves the association for such a thing.

I hope I’m wrong. I hope the ADM will accomplish great things. I don’t think it’s going to happen though. I suspect the ADM will be nothing more than a distant memory come this time next year. Time will tell!

Read: ADM

Laura Vandervoort is Supergirl

I was pretty sure Kristen Bell wouldn’t be cast as Supergirl, but that didn’t stop me from hoping! Turns out I was right, she won’t be making an appearance on Smallville, as the CW has announced their choice for the role:

Look, up in the sky: it’s a bird, it’s a plane! It’s…Supergirl! This fall, Supergirl will be joining the lineup of burgeoning superheroes and villains in SMALLVILLE.

Laura Vandervoort (The Lookout, “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation”) has been cast as Kara – Clark’s (Tom Welling) 19-year-old cousin.

I don’t know much about her, but I think they made a good choice. She’s young, hot, and Canadian! Okay she’s from Toronto, but still. Her Wikipedia entry is here, and her IMDB profile is here. Her last name has a cool sound to it too, don’t you think?

According to IMDB, the first episode of season seven (titled Bizarro) will air on September 28th. Just over two months to go!

Read: CW Blog

Harry Potter Mania

Post ImageAre you ready for Harry Potter mania? I am! And by that I mean I’ll happily ignore it just as I have for all the previous books. I haven’t read any of them. I’ve only seen two or three of the movies. It’s not that I am anti-Harry Potter or anything, I just (for whatever reason) have never gotten into it.

I do intend to read the books one day, simply because so many other people have read them. It’s almost like I am obligated to read them in order to really be part of society or something. I’m fine with that – I always give my best “WTF” look when someone tells me they have never seen Star Wars, and I’d rather not be a hypocrite.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the new book, as I’m sure you know, and it has broken all kinds of records:

Amazon said that as of midnight, it has received more than 2.223 million pre-orders worldwide on its various Web sites, eclipsing the previous pre-order record of 1.5 million held by the sixth book in the series.

Apparently on its busiest pre-order day, Amazon.com received more than 1.75 orders per second. Ridiculous and impressive, all at the same time!

You’ll notice the picture above is of The Simpsons – I found it here. I haven’t seen the episode, but I guess The Simpsons spoofed Harry Potter in one of the Halloween episodes. Here’s a seven mintue clip. Good stuff!

If you’re a fan, enjoy reading the book this weekend! If instead you’re an indifferent muggle like me, try not to spoil it for the Potter-heads, mmkay?

Checkers solved at the U of A

Post ImageHow many games of checkers can you win in a row before someone beats you? Quite a few? Doesn’t matter, eventually you’ll lose right? You think, “it’s only a matter of time.” Well some Computing Sciences researchers at the U of A have figured out why – it’s because humans make mistakes. They’ve solved checkers, completely, and have software that is invicible:

After more than 18 years and sifting through 500 billion billion (a five followed by 20 zeroes) checkers positions, Jonathan Schaeffer and his colleagues have built a checkers-playing computer program that cannot be beaten. Completed in late April, the Chinook program may be played to a draw but will never be defeated.

Their research and “proof” were to be published in today’s edition of the journal Science.

This is pretty incredible when you think about it. It speaks to the advances we’ve made not only with technology, but with our understanding of how to harness it to do things that previously seemed impossible.

I generally consider checkers to be a fairly simple game, but don’t let that fool you:

The popular game may be simple to play, but it holds a potential 500 billion billion positions. That’s one million times more complicated than any other game solved before, says Jonathan Schaeffer, the computer science professor who began the project in 1989.

Congratulations to Schaeffer and his team! I can’t imagine what they’ll figure out next.

Read: ExpressNews

Microsoft's Internet TV strategy

You’ll recall that last week the first post in a two part series I wrote for last100 on Microsoft’s Internet TV strategy was posted. I’d say the post did very well, receiving over 20 comments from readers and 300 diggs. Today, part two is up:

The product to keep an eye on is definitely Mediaroom (and Mediaroom on the Xbox 360). There’s a reason Microsoft chose Mediaroom as the brand instead of simply Microsoft TV: they are looking to the future of entertainment, where TV is just one piece of the puzzle.

You can read the entire post at last100, and you can digg it here. As always, let me know what you think!

Read: last100

World Internet Population: Reading the fine print

Post ImageYesterday comScore released their global Internet traffic rankings for the month of May. Their research shows that 772 million people worldwide were online in May, which is a pretty large number. Still, as ZDNet notes, that’s only 12 percent of the world’s population. Here’s how the press release reads:

There were 772 million people online worldwide in May (defined as those individuals age 15 or older who accessed the Internet from a home or work location in the last 30 days), an increase from 766 million in April, representing a 16 percent penetration of the worldwide population of individuals age 15 or older.

And further down the page, we find the fine print:

** Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

Seems to me that excluding mobile phones in particular would lead to a much lower number than the true online population. In the developed world, computers dominate access to the Internet, but that’s not the case in the developing world!

A quick search led me to this W3C press release (from September 2006):

According to the World Bank, more than two billion people own a mobile phone and 80% of the world’s population has access to GSM service. With one million new subscribers every day, almost four billion people will have a mobile phone by the end of 2010.

I suspect the vast majority of those phones are web-enabled. If anyone has a link to usage statistics, let me know in the comments!

Read: comScore

Look out Amazon: Here comes Microsoft's Cloud OS

Post ImageIf you’ve been following the news about Windows Live Core, also referred to as “Cloud OS”, then today’s article at News.com probably is nothing new. Still, it’s a good overview of what is known thus far:

In addition to making available its existing services, such as mail and instant messaging, Microsoft also will create core infrastructure services, such as storage and alerts, that developers can build on top of. It’s a set of capabilities that have been referred to as a “Cloud OS,” though it’s not a term Microsoft likes to use publicly.

It’s about time.

Just as Windows handles memory management, storage, and other “fundamentals” as Microsoft likes to call them, for your computer, Cloud OS would handle the fundamentals for distributed web apps. Developers can spend less time worrying about how the application will run, and more time building out what the application should do. That’s a win-win for everyone.

The most visible company doing this today is Amazon.com with their web services. Services like S3 for storage and EC2 for computing power are tremendously valuable for developers. As I’ve said before, S3 made a big difference for Podcast Spot, and we’d like to use more services if only they existed.

I know there’s going to be pushback, simply because it’s Microsoft, but I am happy to finally see more news on Cloud OS. I can’t wait until the services are available – competition will explode.

It’s a buzzword, and not a very meaningful one at that, but I think this guy has it right:

IMHO, the cloud is the true Web 3.0 – the distributed, ubiquitous web.

Let the Web 3.0 wars being! Microsoft, Google, Amazon, maybe even Yahoo, all competing to provide the best cloud infrastructure for developers to build amazing applications and experiences on top of.

Read: News.com