Couple days old, but too funny not to post:

The U.S. Embassy in Canada denied a newspaper story Wednesday that said Canadian Defense Minister Bill Graham had trouble boarding a plane because his name was on a U.S. “no fly” list designed to deter terrorists.

I guess that’s what you get for telling Bush to screw off.

Read: MSNBC

Seems like the sure-fire way to create a buzzword for 2005 is to append “casting” to the end of it. The latest such word, egocasting, is described in Regina Lynn’s latest article on Wired, “Comfortably Numb Relations“. So what is egocasting?

“We have moved beyond (broadcasting and) narrowcasting into ‘egocasting’ — a world where we exercise an unparalleled degree of control over what we watch and what we hear,” writes Christine Rosen in The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology and Society.

I’d add “and what we read” to that too. Of course, Lynn is the Sex Drive columnist on Wired, and so the article centers around that topic:

The real downside to egocasting, in my mind, is that it can numb us not just to the strangers around us, but to our lovers. It can create the expectation that our immediate surroundings will always reflect our own tastes, which is just plain selfish. And we too easily develop the habit of hiding behind distraction when we start to feel awkward or distressed, when we should instead be communicating with our partners.

Fortunately, Lynn does concede that egocasting may be a positive thing. And I don’t see it as anything but! I mean, if I have such complete control over what I am seeing and hearing, does that not mean that I can get rid of the clutter and focus on what’s important? You bet it does.

Blogs and RSS are allowing me to cut down the normal crap I’d have to sift through to find the news that is important to me. Podcasting and videoblogging, when they have matured a little, will allow me to cut out the audio/video that I don’t need to see, just as TiVo and similar devices let you select only what you want to watch, and then let you watch it when you’re good and ready. Future advances in software will do the same for all sorts of media and content. Don’t you feel an overwhelming sense of power?

Ten years ago, your choice of what to watch, hear, or read were much more limited. In another five years, you’ll have complete control. Seems to me egocasting is very aptly named indeed.

I just watched the trailer for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and it’s freaking awesome! Go watch it right now!

When will celebrities learn? Don’t videotape your wild-monkey-sex sessions!

Here’s the lawsuit, and here’s the reply. And here’s some comments from Gawker’s largest competitor. What the heck, while you’re at it, here’s the Fleshbot post.

It never fails. In Canada, it seems there is always someone willing to complain. Why can’t people just take a joke? The other day I posted about Richard Branson and his flashy Virgin Mobile launch in Toronto. Today, the Canadian Nurses Association is up in arms over the event:

Deborah Tamlyn, president of the Canadian Nurses Association, said her board of directors decided yesterday to formally express outrage at Virgin Mobile by writing to Branson and Canadian company officials demanding an apology, while also starting an aggressive communications strategy to counteract the image of nurses portrayed in the publicity stunt.

Read: Ottawa Sun

Last night I went to see Stewart Lemoine’s “The Salon of the Talking Turk” with Sharon at the Varscona Theatre. We didn’t have tickets, and so weren’t sure we’d be able to get in, but it turned out that I was right and Sharon was wrong, haha, it wasn’t sold out.

Here’s a little about the play:

Leona Brausen stars as Cornelia, an affable divorcee with a latent longing for scientific enlightenment, and Davina Stewart plays her best friend Dominica, a free-thinking flapper and serial fiancée whose uncharacteristic embrace of thrift will have far-reaching implications for everyone she knows. Lanky newcomer Andrew MacDonald-Smith plays Cornelia’s over-achieving layabout brother Wally, and Mark Meer is back with Teatro in a sensational turn as the mysteriously enlightened and frankly opinionated automaton, The Talking Turk.

I really enjoyed the show, probably a little more than Sharon did. It was full of excellent one-liners, like “faith is for the busy”. The only thing we noticed is that the actors made quite a few errors in their lines, somewhat surprising when you consider that they have performed the same stuff every day for the last two weeks.

We stopped at Starbucks on Whyte after for coffee. There are some things you only find on Whyte Avenue, and I am continually amazed. We saw four people in bright orange t-shirts with matching hair promoting a spa. We saw a group of four pirates walk past. An ambulance and a fire truck descended on the building next to us. Drunk people falling all over the place. A woman carrying a case of beer (is she crazy?). You name it!

Anyway, thanks Sharon!

As a Microsoft fan (and I tend to think I am quite knowledgable about their products and technologies too), I often find the articles describing the company as evil simply wrong or unfounded. Most times the author doesn’t make an adequate argument, or will argue something that is factually incorrect. Other times, the author neglects to point out something important that reflects positively on the company.

Also infuriating are the seemingly endless articles of praise written about Google and Apple. Lately there has been some comfort in the fact that bloggers have taken Google to task over it’s controversial AutoLink feature, but the vast majority of content written about Google is praise – sound or not. Apple is no different. The company behind the incredibly popular iPod is always placed on a pedestal. Recently though, things have begun to change.

People are now beginning to question whether Google really can do no wrong. AutoLink is a great example. Why is Google not being as harshly criticized as Microsoft was for its similar SmartTags feature from a few years ago? The blogosphere has been asking this question in huge numbers. With Google hiring everyone from operating system designers, to browser developers, to fibre optics experts, why are there no Microsoft-like conspiracy theories about Google taking over the world? Here too, bloggers are beginning to wonder.

Apple might be starting to fall off the praise train a bit too. People are finally starting to realize what a dead end the iPod platform is – one device, one store. Where’s the consumer choice there? And this excellent Forbes piece talks about Apple and their bullying of late. Perhaps the iPod success has inflated the egg-like head of Jobs even more?

Finally, Microsoft has begun to seem more human and friendly. With people like Robert Scoble assuming the role of public face for the company, Microsoft has begun to seem kinder, and more willing to work with others. I think people are starting to realize that the company isn’t so bad after all.

Combine these three developments and what do you get? A positive outlook for the already incredibly successful Microsoft, a potential crack in the strategy of Apple, and a more closely-watched Google. Who would have guessed such an outcome two years ago? Certainly not me.

Testing out the trackbacks to make sure they are working. Read about NASCAR coming to Canada at RacingBlogged.com.

I was reading some stuff at CNET News.com, and came across an article entitled “The coming crackdown on blogging“. Turns out the article doesn’t have THAT much to do with blogging after all.

Author Declan McCullagh talks about efforts to extend “a controversial 2002 campaign finance law to the Internet”. Such an extension would count hyperlinks to a candidate’s website as a contribution for example, and the impact on blogging is a question of whether or not blogs would be given press exemption. Bradley Smith, the gentleman interview by McCullagh, says the time is right to act because both Democrats and Republicans used the Internet to their advantage in the last campaign.

Here’s my question – how is this relevant? First of all, I don’t consider the Internet a form of media, like newspapers or radio for example. The Internet is more like another world, complete with it’s own newspapers, television, radio, etc. For that reason, I do not think the Internet should be treated the same as a form of “traditional media”. Secondly, the Internet does not equal the United States and the United States does not equal the Internet. What about people in other countries linking to a candidate’s website? Certainly the interest is there.

Trying to regulate the Internet is a bad idea. We’ve seen this many times over the last decade. When will the lawmakers learn?

Robert Scoble is always talking about the power of RSS, and even though it all sounds great, it’s just not the same until you experience it. And I just did. Yesterday I posted about pheedo and the changes they made that I didn’t like, or get notified about. I took the ad code out of my page and was generally just upset. I don’t like my page design being messed with.

Today, Adam Kalsey from pheedo left a comment on that post with an answer to my complaints and questions. He posted a link to a page describing how to customize the ad code. Wonderful move Adam, thanks so much! As a result, pheedo is back on my page, and just as Adam said it would in his comment, it looks better than ever! Thanks Adam.

That’s the power of RSS. Of conversational software. A better experience for customers, and the power to do better for companies.