Here are my weekly notes:

• Had fun celebrating a few friends’ birthdays yesterday – Happy Birthday to Janice, Andrew, and Jane! We started out at Laser Quest (I won the first round) and then nearly filled the Boston Pizza Lounge downtown. Good times!
• Al Gore thinks that Web 2.0 needs a purpose, and of course, that green should be the purpose. In a somewhat related story, Al Gore has joined Twitter!
• Sounds like the New York Times (NYT) is in financial trouble. It’ll be interesting to see how they cope with this situation.
• Told you netbooks were trendy – Walt Mossberg wrote about them this week. On Tuesday, the laptop turned 40 years old.
• One of my favorite apps now has a native app for the iPhone/iPod touch – Remember the Milk! So far I love it. You can find out more here.
• Flickr now has over 3 billion photos. Facebook is still the champ of course, with over 10 billion photos.
• Did you like the “hologram” that CNN debuted during their election night coverage? It apparently cost over $300,000. Don’t be fooled – it’s essentially a fancy green screen.

Here are my weekly notes:

• I did another guest review on Sharon’s blog, this time of Devlin’s.
• The controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) turned ten years old this week. Hard to believe it has been so long already.
• Earlier this week, many websites published news that Apple had rejected Opera Mini from the iPhone AppStore, apparently for competitive reasons. Turns out the truth is quite a bit different and more interesting than that.
• As a huge fan of the show, Sharon has been telling me about this for a quite a while: the parallels between the final two seasons of The West Wing and the current election are uncanny. Or maybe deliberate, depending on how you look at it. Let’s hope the result is the same also.
• Two major OpenID announcements were made this week. Windows Live is now an OpenID provider, as is Google.
• FriendFeed launched a new feature that I really don’t like – the ability to share your FriendFeed activity on Twitter.
• Lewis Hamilton became the youngest ever Formula 1 world champion this morning in an incredibly dramatic race. It literally came down to the last ten seconds of the season. Massa won the race and was so close to making the upset happen, but Glock inexplicably lost 18 seconds on the last lap which enabled Hamilton to pass him to secure the necessary points. Ferrari won the constructor’s championship.
• I can’t believe how close we are to the end of the US election (well, assuming we don’t have a repeat of 2000). If you’re an American reading this, please vote for Obama!

Here are my weekly notes:

• Everyone seems to be down on Yahoo lately, but Fortune has five reasons to buy Yahoo stock. I’d be wary.
• Justine Ezarik, better known as iJustine, received a write-up in the latest issue of MIT’s Technology Review. I can’t decide if that says something about her, or something about the publication.
• Google launched a US Voter Information site this week. We need something like this in Canada! I wonder what kind of impact it will have on voter turnout.
• Check out these incredible pictures and drawings of Dubai. Not sure if it’s all true or not, but I suspect it is.
• Lots of speculation in the last few days that Windows 7 will be released in the latter half of 2009. We should learn a lot more from Microsoft’s PDC, which starts tomorrow.
• Amazon’s Web Services division had a big week – EC2 is no longer in beta, there’s an SLA, and Windows/SQL Server support is now in beta. Keep it up AWS!
• I installed the latest “Windows Live” beta this weekend, and I like the look. Not so impressed with the performance thus far.

Here are my weekly notes:

• Apple launched new MacBook’s this week, featuring a large, all-glass trackpad. They are also made from a single block of metal, which is their new “brick” manufacturing process.
• Facebook recently hit a new milestone – more than 10 billion photos have been uploaded to the site. Another 2 TB of photos are uploaded every day. Incredible numbers!
• If you had any doubt that airport security is a farce, executed just for show, this article will erase it.
• Here’s the scariest thing for Halloween 2008.
• Daniel Lyons asks the question many people are wondering about: Why is Jerry Yang still in charge at Yahoo?
• I’m sure you’ve seen the photo of McCain from the third and final debate, sticking his tongue out as he turns away from Obama. Here are some thoughts on the photo from the man who captured it. And here’s a funny photoshop of the photo.
• It’s official – the Canadian government has declared that bisphenol-A is harmful to humans, and will ban plastic baby bottles containing the chemical.
• Who would the rest of the world vote for? Without a doubt, Obama.

Happy Thanksgiving! Here are my weekly notes:

• I had three Thanksgiving Dinners this weekend, two with turkey and one Asian-style. So much food! My photos here.
• Sharon and I went to Body Worlds yesterday. The first part was really hot and narrow, everyone was packed in like sardines. I thought it would take hours to get through, but once we got to the second room it wasn’t so bad. I thought Body Worlds was interesting, but I wasn’t seriously impacted or anything. The next major exhibit at the Telus World of Science is called The Art of Brick, featuring The Brick Artist, Nathan Sawaya. It opens December 20th. Yay Lego!
• My favorite task management app, Remember The Milk, just turned three years old! Happy Birthday RTM! Looking forward to many more great things (like an iPhone app maybe?).
• Uncov is back! Yes, Ted has decided to resume writing one of the most entertaining blogs on the Intertubes. Check out his newest post, A Bloggers Guide to Armchair Economics.
• Apple is launching something big tomorrow. Ryan Block wonders if, given the current economic situation, this is the best time for Apple to be launching new laptops. Mary Jo Foley wonders if a sub-$1000 Apple laptop would hurt Microsoft?
• Amazon S3 is now storing 29 billion objects. Very impressive.
• Sharon’s first article was published in Vue Weekly this week. I’m so proud of her! You can read her interview with Sebastian Lysz here.
• The last presidential debate takes place on Wednesday! Here’s a fun mage thread on Fark…what would you equate the candidates with?

Here are my weekly notes:

• Sharon and I went to see Bill Maher’s new movie Religulous today. I thought it was very funny and entertaining, but really he’s preaching to the choir, so to speak. Some have described the film as “atheist fundamentalism” and that comment isn’t far off the mark. Maher says his role is to doubt, and finishes with a relatively lengthy monologue arguing that for humanity to move forward, we must leave religion behind. He calls on atheists to come out of the closet.
• I bought new shoes today. That might seem like a mundane thing to mention, but I can’t remember the last time I bought new shoes so it’s a big deal for me!
• Did you miss the Vice Presidential Debate on Thursday? Check out the Sarah Palin Debate Flow Chart. I think Tina Fey is doing a fantastic job of portraying Palin on SNL, but I really hope she’s only at it for another month. Palin scares the crap out of me, for lots of reasons including the fact that she thinks dinosaurs and humans once coexisted.
• Here’s a really good article from the New York Times talking about the current financial crisis. It all boils down to trust vanishing.
• Google released an update to Google Blog Search this week that makes it more of a memetracker.
• Microsoft announced that Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 will be the next versions of both products. Should be lots of information on both coming out of PDC in a couple weeks!

September is nearly over, just like that. Here are my weekly notes:

• Thanks to everyone who came out to the housewarming party Kim and I hosted last night! Also major thanks to Sharon, who did most of the work and created a fantastic fall menu. Photos are here. Check out Sharon’s post for a full rundown.
• I’m definitely going to see Bill Maher’s new film, Religulous. Comes out October 3rd.
• I think my favorite part about election season is the humor and satire. The two best in the business are featured on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. Not just any old cover though, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have recreated the controversial New Yorker cover. Just pure awesome.
• Speaking of elections, I found a new site today that Canadians might be interested in – Barack Obama for Prime Minister!
• More on the American election…Twitter launched an Election 2008 site this week. Inspired by Politweets, undoubtedly. There’s more on the site in this post from VentureBeat.
• Technorati released their updated State of the Blogosphere this week. Some interesting statistics, but lots to read through.
• Nirvana’s iconic album Nevermind was released 17 years ago (Wednesday). One of my favorites.
• Here’s some speculation that Google reverse-engineered Windows in order to build Chrome.

Sharon and I were surprised to find the weather so nice today, so we went for a walk. Roughly four hours later, we finally made it back! Took lots of great photos though (I need to geotag them now). Fall really is a beautiful time of year.

Here are my weekly notes:

• Sharon and I walked probably more than 10km today, 5km of which was for the AIDS Walk For Life. She has done the walk before, but this was my first time. It was fun and for a good cause! My photos are here.
• We had a busy weekend actually. One of the things we did yesterday was check out the Refugee Camp in the Heart of the City, put on by Doctors Without Borders. Sharon wrote about it here.
• Twitter launched a redesign this week, and most comments I have seen have been positive (unlike the Facebook redesign). I like it, for the most part. Here are some recent Twitter traffic statistics.
• Looks like Google is getting a little more serious about indexing audio. They’ve launched a new service available at Google Labs.
• Here’s a funny blog I found via Darren: http://thingswithapproximatelyasmanypeopleaswasilla.com/
• Some fascinating photos (with commentary) of North Korea were published this week for the 60th anniversary of the state. Check it out here.

Here are my weekly notes:

• I think text messaging rates in Canada are probably much more reasonable than they are in the US, but I am glad to see the Senate Judiciary Committee asking for answers south of the border nonetheless.
• Here’s a great site I came across this week for coverage of the US election – FiveThirtyEight.com. Lots of maps and graphs, updated very frequently.
• The latter half of this Edmonton Sun article is well worth a read: Here’s reality: capital region is one big city.
• Google announced they are making complete newspaper archives available through Google News. Goodbye microfilm.
• Swype is a new, gesture-based input technology. Looks incredibly awesome. Too bad their name is so similar to Skype.
• NAIT will be participating in the Culinary Olympics again this year, and Sharon and I were invited to check out their practice event yesterday and today. I took quite a few photos, and will have more to write later this week.
• Tina Fey played Sarah Palin on SNL last night. Here’s the clip, in case you missed it.
• The Fitbit is a new gadget that is supposed to help you track your fitness and sleep. Looks interesting.
• Speaking of gadgets, here is the largest Swiss army knife ever! Sadly, no laser.
• I accompanied Sharon to the Hanson concert last night. I think that’s the first time I’ve gone deaf at a show not from the music, but from the screaming girls! The audience was fairly diverse though, with guys and girls, old people and children, and everyone in between. Another observation: everyone has a digital camera now, but most people seem to have no clue how to use them.

Here are my weekly notes:

• Hard to believe, but Google is just ten years old today (well, that’s our best guess). Here’s an interview with Google’s Marissa Mayer. Om has a good post on the anniversary too. Speaking of Google – fun with Chrome’s about pages.
• Ted Dziuba (uncov) rocks – so glad he’s posting again from time to time. His latest post dispels the myth that Google Chrome is a Web OS.
• Awards for Twitter messages – The Twitties. Looks dumb to me.
• The video for Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend has broken 100 million views on YouTube. Fairly impressive.
• Here’s a nice visualization of McCain and Obama’s tax proposals. And here’s the Republican Fail Whale. And why not, here’s the most accidentally inappropriate campaign photo ever.
• Went to see The House Bunny last night. Great to look at, has some funny moments, but perhaps wait for the DVD. Also went to Chop for dinner, which I’m sure Sharon will be reviewing soon.

Not looking forward to a five day work week!