Here are my weekly notes:

• Went to see There Will Be Blood with Megan and Greg on Friday night. I didn’t really enjoy it, though Daniel Day-Lewis was incredible. It was too long, too crazy, and in some places too boring.
• Sharon and I decided we’d try to make dessert yesterday, and we settled on modifying this recipe for Rocky Road Pizza. We used Coffee Crisp instead of Toblerone, and added banana too. It turned out alright, but we need to work on the bread next time. Here are a few pictures.
• Here’s a really good post from Darren Rowse titled 9 Benefits of Twitter for Bloggers.
• Blizzard announced this week that the popular online game World of Warcraft hit the 10 million subscriber mark. Pretty impressive.
• Here’s one that’ll make you go "huh?!" – Might Google Buy the New York Times?
• Quite a few people sent me links to the story that Starbucks is testing $1 short drip coffee with free refills. Of course, I’m addicted to more than the coffee, and I had already read it (but still appreciate the thought everyone, thanks). Starbucks Gossip has a good roundup of reaction to the story.
• Back in August I posted that I really wanted to see the documentary Helvetica. I was really happy to find out this week that the film is finally coming to Edmonton! It’s playing at the Citadel on February 8th, 10th, and 11th, put on by Metro Cinema. I’ve RSVP’d for the 8th – very excited!
• Daryl Katz is definitely persistent. The Edmonton Journal reported today that his offer for the Oilers is apparently closer to $200 million now. It’s only a matter of time.

Here are my weekly notes:

• Last night Megan and I went to see Disney’s Beauty and the Beast at The Citadel. It was the very first night (a preview night, opening night is Tuesday) and while there were some technical difficulties, it was still a great show. It makes me want to crack out the old VHS and watch it! I especially enjoyed "Be Our Guest".
• Went out to Violino for Annie’s Birthday on Friday night…it was yummy! Oh and the U of A president was dining a few tables away from us. Some photos are here.
• I’ve been playing around with Buxfer this weekend, and I think it may be a winner! Buxfer is a personal finance app that helps you track your money. Just like Remember The Milk, I can access Buxfer in a variety of ways: on the web, via email, via Twitter, and on the iPhone/iPod touch. I think that’s what makes it extremely useful for me. Even better is this – I submitted a suggestion this afternoon, and received a personalized response a few hours later. Awesome customer service!
• Speaking of iPod/iPhone, you’ve gotta check this site out. It lets you use a custom image for adding bookmarks to the home screen in 1.1.3. Hat tip to darylcognito.
• Tried Fatburger on Tuesday evening. I noticed it in South Edmonton Common a few weeks ago and was curious. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t anything special either. Kinda cool how they call out the order like they do in Starbucks.
• For the .NET developers in the crowd – I’ve been using SubSonic a lot lately, and I just love it. Rob Conery has two posts up sharing some of what’s coming in the next version.
• Liveblogging of major events is becoming increasingly more common. Macworld was liveblogged by a ton of sites this past week. I guess it should be no surprise that people are developing software specifically for liveblogging, such as CoverItLive.

Some photos from the past week:

Here are my weekly notes:

• Went to see the movie Juno last night, and loved it! Ellen Page is such a great actress. Highly recommended.
• I picked up my new camera this week. I decided, once again, on the Canon SD870 IS. That 3 inch LCD is just so beautiful!
• Perhaps the biggest tech story of the week was Gizmodogate. Personally, I think what Gizmodo did was crap. That’s why I read Engadget 😉
• Torrent site Mininova has turned three years old! They had a heck of a year, and I can’t wait to see what they come up with next.
• A 41 year old blogger in China was beaten to death this week by government officials for attempting to film a confrontation with villagers using his cell phone. One official has been fired so far, and the investigation is ongoing.
• Via Larry Borsato I learned of the Facebook group started by some Tim Horton’s employees that attempts to teach customers the "rules" for ordering. Larry points out that Starbucks understands the importance of making every experience a great one. Just this week one of the two drinks I ordered during a trip to Starbucks was missed, so the barista gave me a coupon for a free one. At Tim Horton’s, would I have been berated for ordering incorrectly?
• There’s a good series of posts at River City Writer covering Reasons to Leave Edmonton. Definitely worth a read (and some thought). You may also be interested in my Why not move to Edmonton? post from July.
• Believe it or not, employees of Amazon.com currently work in offices scattered all around Seattle. It’ll be another two years before they are all in the same place, a new $1.5 billion complex the company is building.
• I really wish I could order coffee at Starbucks like this.

There has been a ton of discussion this week about podcasting, mostly as a result of this post at Mashable. I haven’t written anything about it yet, but I will. I’ve been collecting articles and giving it some thought.

Let me begin with a quote from The Matrix Reloaded. Neo uses the word "hope" just before exiting through the door on his left, prompting The Architect to say:

Hope, it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness.

Think about that when you get all excited for Barack Obama and his platform of hope.

Here are my weekly notes:

• I watched the Bill Gates keynote at CES tonight. It could very well be his last, unfortunately. I have to say it was kind of disappointing. Sure he had Slash come on stage to play guitar, but there were only a few announcements, and none of them were earth-shattering. Ah well, it’s still Bill, and he’ll be missed.
• One of the announcements was that starting this spring, the Zune will be sold in Canada! Another was that NBC and Microsoft have teamed up to build a Silverlight powered website for the Beijing Olympics.
• From Techvibes, the Alberta Start-up Index for January 2008. I’m happy to see that Podcast Spot made the list!
• Apparently in Times Square, NY there is one Starbucks for every 0.04 square miles, or one for every 1442 people. Incredible!
• Here’s a mostly complete list of Web/Technology Acquisitions for 2007.
• I meant to blog about this one before. The New York Times has an awesome feature available, titled 2007: The Year in Pictures. I know you’re probably sick of 2007 stuff, but do check it out.
• You probably heard that Warner Brothers have decided to drop HD DVD support and will focus exclusively on Blu-ray. It could mean the end for HD DVD, despite recent remarks from Toshiba to the contrary. Looks like the format war will be over a lot sooner than anyone expected.
• There’s just two days until the New Hampshire primary. I’m excited!

I haven’t done one of these posts in a while…too much travelling! I head back to Edmonton tomorrow. Here are my weekly notes:

• The mother of all 2007 lists from Fimoculous.
• A Slate piece arguing that Starbucks is a force for good. Haven’t read it yet.
• AOL has finally decided to end support for the Netscape browser. The main reason this is a good decision is security.
• Pingdom has compiled a list of the major incidents on the Internet in 2007.
• I am writing this on a Sony UMPC which I love (minus the shitty battery life). Is Apple going to start making UMPCs? That would be pretty cool.
• My Dad likes to say that minus 20 in Yellowknife is the same as minus 20 in Edmonton, but I beg to differ. It feels way colder here! It has been nice to spend some time with Mom and Dad though.

Here’s an excerpt from a post by Dave Winer that will definitely make you think:

With all possible humility, I’d like to tell you that a few days after I die my entire web presence will likely disappear. My servers require some attention from me from time to time. The first time that happens, poof, there goes 10-plus years of Scripting News, and all the docs for the OPML Editor and the OPML spec, the XML-RPC site, to name just a few. Anyway, within a couple of months it will all certainly disappear, unless someone pays my hosting and DSL bills. Maybe someone will, but isn’t it ridiculous that that’s what it depends on?

Rhetorical, but I’ll answer anyway. Yes, it is ridiculous. What do we do about it? Not sure, but it’s an interesting problem that many people will work on. And the solution probably won’t be easy.

Here are my weekly notes:

• I’m back from London. I think I have text messaging withdrawal.
• Your next Dell might not come direct…they are going to be selling at Best Buy starting next year.
• The IE team recently confirmed that the next version of the browser will be called Internet Explorer 8. That’s the only thing they’ve told us, however, and even Bill Gates is confused by the silence, commenting that he’ll "have to ask Dean what the hell is going on". Hopefully we’ll get some more IE8 details as a result.
• While on the plane, I read Andrew Keen‘s "the cult of the amateur: how today’s internet is killing our culture". Essentially he argues that sites like YouTube, and Web 2.0 in general, are killing culture. The book contains many errors, as Lawrence Lessig and others have pointed out, but the worst part is how it makes the word "amateur" seem like a bad thing. I kept reading, expecting Keen to write "just kidding" but it never happened.
• I also read Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres, and I really enjoyed it. The book was a bit dry in places, but on the whole, it was a similar read to Freakonomics (no surprise considering both the book and its co-author Steven Levitt are mentioned like a gazillion times).
• Here’s a really funny post by Fake Steve Jobs on the news that Apple has a $15 billion cash stash.
• Bon Jovi concert is on Wednesday! It’s gonna be great.

Here are my weekly notes:

• Happy Birthday Andrew and Jane and Ana!
• I really like the new Flickr Uploadr beta. Check it out here.
• Interesting article on how Apple’s iPod commercials are making stars out of new bands and artists. Apple is the new MTV.
• From the "copyright-laws-are-stupid" department: "We are living in the "infringement age," where it’s impossible not to infringe on copyrights every single day — yet many people still don’t understand why it makes sense to change copyright laws to make them more reasonable." Read about the research paper here.
• Who would have thought that simple typos could be such big business?
• Striking stagehands in NY resumed talks with producers today. I hope they come to an agreement soon – we have tickets for Wicked!
• December is going to be a crazy month for me. I’ll be in Edmonton for just a single week! On the 1st I fly to London, on the 16th I head to New York, and on the 23rd I am going home for Christmas to Yellowknife.

Here are my weekly notes:

• My Dad was in town this weekend, for some shopping and other stuff. We had the experience so many others have had – should we buy HD-DVD or Blu-ray? I’m looking forward to his post(s) on the topic (he ended up buying HD-DVD).
• In five years it may be common to think of Starbucks and McDonald’s as competitors. SBUX is adding sandwiches and other food items to their menu, and MCD is gearing up to add premium coffees to theirs.
• I haven’t read this article yet, but it looks fascinating – 23AndMe Will Decode Your DNA for $1000. Welcome to the Age of Genomics. Give it two years and this will cost a couple hundred bucks. I’d pay for that.
• Inuvik, the 3000 person town I used to live in, has passed a bylaw imposing a curfew for anyone under the age of 16. So glad that didn’t exist when I lived there!
• Is Blockbuster dead? I think the writing is on the wall. Digital distribution is the way movies are going…or rentals a la Netflix. Blockbuster isn’t going down without a fight, though. CEO James Keyes outlined his company’s vision recently, and it is all about embracing technology. Too little too late?
• One of the popular memes this week was the death of email. I say bring it on! I hate email. Scott Karp wrote a response, essentially arguing that email is not dead because everyone has it. He also says that spam demonstrates the power of email. To that I say: what a load of crap! This is 2007 not 1997…we can do better, and we will.

What I’m Listening To: Paramore
I’m addicted to Paramore! I first heard them on MTV Canada (which is funny, as the channel almost never shows music videos). They’re an extremely young group of four (age range is 17-22), fronted by the bright-orange-haired Hayley Williams. My favorite songs so far are "Crushcrushcrush" and "Misery Business" off their newest album Riot!. I also quite like "Emergency" off their first album, All We Know Is Falling. If you hear anything about them coming to Edmonton (or Canada, for that matter) let me know!

Here are my weekly notes, holiday Monday edition:

• I bought a new camera! I’ve wanted a point-and-shoot for a while, so I finally got one. I decided on the Canon SD870 IS. Very happy with it so far! I took some photos with it last night at Janice’s birthday dinner.
• Wondering how many more episodes of your favorite TV shows will air? The writers’ strike has put a kink in things, but TV Guide’s Mike Ausiello has a good overview of the impact. Most shows are listed there.
• This marketing comic made me laugh for a good five minutes! So did this map of Zune availability vs iPod availability.
• Al Gore can now add venture capitalist to his already impressive resume. A last-minute bid for the presidency in 2008 looks less likely with each passing day. We’re less than a year from the election, btw.
• Via my Mom! – my Atari 2600 has been inducted into the US National Toy Hall of Fame. Engadget has more.
• This is pretty cool…you can now add a Windows Live Messenger widget to your website! There are two options: one simply shows your status, the other includes an input window that visitors can use to chat with you.

Obviously, I didn’t get around to posting my weekly notes yesterday. I got home pretty late and was exhausted after a long day of office moving! Yes, we’re finally getting stuff out of the office. Yesterday we took apart all the furniture and loaded up the van we rented from Budget. Tonight we finally got everything put away in storage. All that remains is the stuff that used to be in the desks and on the shelves, which is quite a lot. The office looks like a disaster area right now! Hopefully it won’t take us long to clean up.

• In other news…I booked a trip to New York! A week long vacation, right before Xmas. I’m quite excited!
• I’m still planning to move this blog to WordPress at some point, and occasionally I look for related resources. That’s how I came across Rob Walling’s story about moving from Community Server to WordPress. Good to know that others have successfully made the transition!
• You might be able to get your very own @live.com address tomorrow!
• Great post by Anil on the worst thing about Apple.
• It’s official, Visual Studio 2008 will RTM later this month! I haven’t had a chance to try any of the betas yet, but I am looking forward to checking out the new version.
• Google has decided they want to be a mobile phone platform manufacturer with Android. Interesting that this was announced so close to the OpenSocial announcements.
• That did not take long at all! Lenovo has decided to drop the IBM brand a full two years ahead of schedule. Dell and HP had better be paying attention – Lenovo and Acer are becoming very well known, all over the world.