Here are my weekly notes:

• Sharon and I hosted a dessert party today for a few friends. It was something that she had wanted to do for quite a long time, and it went really well! I’ll post more about it tomorrow (with pictures) – it was a lot more work than I anticipated!
• While preparing for the dessert party, I had my iPod plugged into the stereo system for some music. It was working fine for a while, then the next thing I knew, I had a paperweight on my hands 😦 Not sure what happened, but it won’t turn on at all now. Won’t even reset. I have filled out the service thing for Apple, so hopefully it’ll get replaced soon.
• You can find everything on the Internet: Porn for the Blind (SFW).
• If you live near Edmonton, you almost certainly heard about the terrible accident this past week with the semi truck. Here’s the initial Edmonton Journal article.
• It was bound to happen sooner or later – Apple has surpassed Wal-Mart to become the #1 music retailer (overall) in the United States.
• Here’s a couple of recent pieces on blogging from the New York Times. The first talks about bloggers getting book deals, and didn’t generate a lot of discussion that I saw. The second is about the toll blogging can take on a person, and it generated tons of discussion. My favorite response is this one from Marc Andreessen.
• In gaming news: 72% of the U.S. population plays video games, and EA has dropped the PC version of their best-selling game, Madden ’09.

Time to sleep – very tired!

Here are my weekly notes:

• Didn’t have the most productive day today, but it was nice and relaxing. Sharon and I had to get out of the house so we went on a photowalk downtown. Here are our pictures. I recently got a new battery for my Digital Rebel, so I took that.
• The Logos of Web2.0 – really interesting post on fonts and designs!
• There’s nothing new in this Wired article for Ray Kurzweil fans such as myself, but it’s still a decent read.
• Funniest article ever! From a 1995 issue of Newsweek – “Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn’t, and will never be, nirvana”. It has some great quotes like this one: “Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.”
• Both Sharon and Dickson have mentioned this blog to me: Stuff White People Like. Funny because it’s true!
• Apple wasn’t alone in it’s EULA snafu – Google also has strange terms. Techdirt has a good article on both stories.
• Save the Developers! Stop Using Internet Explorer 6!
• Another great article, this one from 1968 – What will life be like in the year 2008? This guy actually got some things right!

I don’t intentionally wait until Monday to post these on long weekends, but that’s what always seems to happen! Anyway, here are my weekly notes for this Easter long weekend:

• Sharon and I made buttermilk biscuits today and they turned out great! We used a Bobby Flay recipe and then turned them into mini sandwiches. Quite tasty, and the picture looks really good too.
• Here’s an interesting post from Michael Geoghegan that started a big discussion on podcasting this week.
• Dell is planning a follow-up model to their Latitude XT tablet PC, creatively called the XT2.
• I always assumed that Visa was a public company, but evidently not. They raised $17.9 billion this week in the largest U.S. IPO ever.
• Alberta now has the third-highest minimum wage among Canadian provinces. It was raised this week from $8.00 to $8.40.
• I finally made it to Transcend Coffee here in Edmonton this weekend. I’ve been meaning to go for so long. You can read about the trip here.
• Apparently Windows XP SP3 has been delayed. The main reason I want it soon is to reduce the number of updates you have to install after SP2 when doing a clean install.
• The Sirius-XM merger was approved today, and JPMorgan raised its offer for Bear Stearns from $2 per share to $10.

As much as I enjoyed my four day weekend, it’ll be good to get back to something resembling a normal schedule.

Here are my weekly notes:

• Calgary was fun! Ate a ton of food, and have quite a few photos to upload. Was good to see Tom and Bry on the way home too! I’ll post more about the trip tomorrow probably.
• From the Twitter blog: 17 ways to visualize the Twitter universe.
• YouTube unleashed some new features this week, specifically around the API. They’re becoming more of a platform now.
• Here’s an interview with the inventor of email. He says he didn’t foresee spam.
• Local philanthropist Harriet Winspear died this week at the age of 103. Her husband, Francis, died about eleven years ago, before the concert hall named after him was completed.
• Apparently there will be a beta of Flickr Video out in April. Not sure I want Flickr to do video, but I’ll wait to see how they integrate it. I hope it doesn’t ruin the experience for photos.
• The 2008 Formula 1 season started this weekend with the first race in Australia. Lewis Hamilton got the win, Ferrari had a bad weekend.
• Short week this week (and next) thanks to Easter.

Here are my weekly notes:

• Daylight saving time sucks. Robbed of another hour of sleep!
• My trip to Calgary with Megan was fun! Thanks Fel for your hospitality! The trip to Peter’s Drive-In was excellent. I’ll be in Calgary again this coming weekend for Dine-Out week with Sharon.
• Apple announced this week a bunch of enterprise features for the iPhone/iPod touch. I’m particularly excited for Exchange support! They also released the long-anticipated SDK. Oh and Kleiner Perkins announced a $100 million fund for iPhone applications. That’s ten times bigger than a similar fund for Facebook apps.
• Microsoft screws up big time, leaving Bungie to clean up their mess. I’m really glad things worked out for the gamer.
• I really enjoyed “The Long Tail” so I am definitely looking forward to Chris Anderson’s next book, “FREE”. His article in Wired will give you a taste of what it’s all about.
• I’ve been reading a bit about the “Vista Capable” debacle that’s in the news right now. Apparently Wal-Mart and most other retailers hate Vista Home Basic. The New York Times has a good overview of the story. I hope Microsoft doesn’t make the same mistake with Windows 7.
• I keep hearing about the Clover coffee maker. I’m going to try it out on the weekend at Phil & Sebastian’s in Calgary. Apparently Starbucks is testing out the $11,000 machine.
• This is pretty damn cool, even if it is somewhat impractical: an Etch-A-Sketch clock!

Since I am a bit late, and it’s officially March 3rd – Happy Birthday Mom! Hope you have a great day!

Here are my weekly notes:

• It’s either really sad or really amazing that Twitter has to prepare for SXSW.
• As a follow-up to my post on MindMeister the other day – it really shines when you use it with another person. I invited Dickson and we tested it out, it’s really amazing! They’ve definitely nailed the collaboration part.
• Hey, we already knew this: Music 1.0 is dead.
• Wired has a great article this month with the guys from 37signals. Definitely worth a read.
• This is my kind of article: 35 Ways to Stream Your Life.
• I have to agree with Michael Arrington – I hope Microsoft has something more on tap. I mean come on, give us something amazing!
• Tomorrow is voting day here in Alberta. Go vote! You can’t complain if you don’t. The Elections Alberta website has all the info you need to know.

Made it back to Edmonton this evening without any problems. Here are my weekly notes:

• Happy anniversary to my parents! And happy birthday to Kim! (in about an hour anyway…)
• Darren did a post about Northern Voice 2008, and included an interesting graph showing the growth in the number of photos posted at Flickr. Frankly, the growth seems rather unimpressive.
• Windows Live SkyDrive is now available in Canada. You get up to 5 GB of free storage space. In other Canadian Microsoft news, the Xbox 360 got another price cut of $50.
• It’s no Microsoft-Yahoo deal, but Electronic Arts (EA) has offered about $2 billion for fellow game publisher Take-Two.
• Four or five reasons why Starbucks is Losing its Mojo.
• Is the Alberta Oil Sands really the most destructive project on Earth? According to an Environmental Defence report, by 2020 the oil sands will release twice the amount of greenhouse gases currently produced by all the vehicles in Canada.
• Megan did an interesting post this weekend on the Oscars. She points out the disconnect between movies that win Best Picture, and movies that people actually see. It happened again this year, with No Country For Old Men winning the top prize.
• Interesting explanation for why the Microsoft Office file formats are so complicated.

It was Family Day today in Alberta, so a holiday for most people. It seems I always post my notes on the holiday…ah well…here they are:

• Haven’t been home much this weekend! Aimee was in town on Saturday, and last night was Jane’s party. Good times.
• Actually, you might say it was a weekend of Rock Band. That game is incredibly popular. They had it setup at the bar we went to on Saturday, and Andrew brought his for the party last night. It’s a great game for groups.
• Back in January of 2006, I blogged about Taco Del Mar coming to Edmonton. Friday night Sharon and I finally went to see what it was like. I had a quesadilla, and while it was really good, it was also quite expensive (about $7) considering it is more like Taco Bell than Earl’s.
• I’m still kind of surprised at how fast HD-DVD died. My Dad blogged about Netflix dropping HD-DVD, and not long after Wal-Mart decided they too would go Blu-ray only.
• Speaking of my Dad, it was his birthday on Saturday. Happy Birthday Dad! We got his blogs combined and converted to WordPress, so hopefully he’ll get back to posting more regularly 🙂
• Interesting story about how many big investors have an interest in both Microsoft and Yahoo. They can’t afford for the Microsoft bid to become too expensive.
• Amazon S3 experienced an outage on Friday. Nicholas Carr did a good job covering the story, and explained why it went down. Like SmugMug, we weren’t affected at Podcast Spot.
• As you all know, the writer’s strike ended this past week. Hasn’t made much of a difference for me, though I am really glad to see that Jay Leno has kept a few of his strike segments (like the one where he answers unscripted questions from the audience).
• Northern Voice 2008 is this weekend! I’m starting to get excited. For the uninitiated, Darren has posted some quick facts about the event.

Here are my weekly notes:

• XML is ten years old today! That strikes me as being not very long. Seems like XML has been around forever. Time flies when you’re having <fun>?
• Apparently Yahoo is talking to AOL. They must be really desperate to avoid Microsoft.
• Apple has updated their trademark to encompass gaming. Is an Apple console on the way?
• I ran into some problems with WordPress and email notifications again this week. I found the WP Mail SMTP plugin, and so far it was been working wonderfully. Give that a try if you’re hosting WP on IIS.
• An Economist piece on the cable cutting that happened recently.
• Valentine’s Day is this week! For my fellow coffee lovers: check out this open thread at the Starbucks Gossip blog. Love-related stories at Starbucks.
• Did some work on migrating my Dad’s two blogs to WordPress, and I’d say it’s going well. Should be done for the weekend.
• From the New York Times: Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC?
• Speaking of the election…Obama swept the weekend, prompting the Clinton campaign to make changes. Clinton still leads slightly in delegates, however.

Here are my weekly notes:

• I didn’t watch it, but the New York Giants defeated the New England Patriots tonight in Super Bowl XLII by a score of 17-14. It was a major upset for the undefeated Patriots.
• I volunteer at the Learning Centre here in Edmonton, and we’re updating our logo. We’ve narrowed it down to two choices, which you can see and vote on here. Thanks for your help!
• You may have heard that the Dell call centre here in Edmonton is being shutdown. That’s 900 people out of a job!
• You may also have heard that Apple is opening a 6000 square foot store in West Edmonton Mall on July 1st! Guess I know where I’ll be on Canada Day!
• Have you heard of jobkin.ca? It’s a job registry for students in Edmonton. I only came across it this week.
• WhatTheFont is a neat tool that will try to determine which fonts are used in a graphic that you upload. Works decently enough!
• Super Tuesday is this week! Finally!
• A few useful political sites: the Yahoo News Election Dashboard, Political Base, and techPresident.

Can you believe it’s already February? Don’t forget that 2008 is a leap year, so there are 29 days this month.