Tell us about Internet Explorer 8!

Post ImageThe 72-hour conversation that Microsoft likes to call Mix is over tomorrow, and so far, there has been absolutely no news about Internet Explorer 8. As I like to say, the silence has been deafening! Oh there’s been lots of news about Silverlight (Colin has a number of great posts), but nothing about IE8. A quick search shows that Miguel de Icaza (among others, undoubtedly) noticed this as well:

Someone mentioned (and I forget whom it was) that talk about IE8 was strangely missing from the whole conversation. There were no announcements about new upcoming features in IE, no mention of whether IE8 will support what-wg nor any future plans.

It makes sense that Silverlight should have its day to shine, but seriously, IE8 is important! Why not drop even a few tidbits about what to expect? Firefox 3 received a ton of press back in February when it became clear that the nextgen browser would support offline applications.

Maybe Microsoft is keeping quiet about IE8 to let the “we love all platforms and browsers” message permeate the blogosphere.

I should point out that the IE team posted this almost two weeks ago:

We will have more information to share about the next release in the future, but MIX07 is too early yet to discuss specifics.

All I want are tidbits, not specifics!

UPDATE: Mary Jo Foley has written a post describing what was mentioned about IE8 at Mix today. Mostly general stuff, like security being the top priority.

Read: IE Blog

New Pricing for Amazon S3

Post ImageLate last night Amazon sent an email to S3 customers announcing an upcoming pricing change. Storage costs will remain the same, but the price for bandwidth is going to change:

Current bandwidth price (through May 31, 2007)
$0.20 / GB – uploaded
$0.20 / GB – downloaded

New bandwidth price (effective June 1, 2007)
$0.10 per GB – all data uploaded

$0.18 per GB – first 10 TB / month data downloaded
$0.16 per GB – next 40 TB / month data downloaded
$0.13 per GB – data downloaded / month over 50 TB

$0.01 per 1,000 PUT or LIST requests
$0.01 per 10,000 GET and all other requests

They claim that if the pricing had been applied to usage for March 2007, about 75% of customers would have seen their bill decrease. In some cases however, the price change makes things significantly more expensive, as this thread points out:

Uploading 1GB of 4K files will cost $2.72 instead of $0.20

We haven’t yet figured out how Podcast Spot will be affected, but I suspect we’ll see a slight decrease. I’m also interested to hear from Don MacAskill on SmugMug.

UPDATE: Don talks about the new pricing model here and says they’ll save money.

Read: S3 Forums

Analyzing my posting habits

I have been blogging for about three and half years now, and lately I’ve been wondering about my posting habits. Do I tend to post at a certain time of day? How about a certain day of the week? I certainly don’t try to – I just post when I have something to share.

I ran the numbers tonight, and here’s what I found (click on a graph to enlarge). The percentage on the Y-axis means “percentage of my posts”. For days of the week:

Looks like my post frequency drops off on the weekend, but not as much as I thought it might. For hours of the day:

Looks like I am definitely a late-afternoon/evening blogger! This is quite a bit different than the blogosphere as a whole.

When I do these numbers again, I’ll have to figure out how many posts are made on days where I post more than once. I’d also like to find out what the average number of words/characters per post is, but that calculation is a little more involved.

Kind of a neat exercise, I have to say. It’ll be interesting to see how these statistics change in another three and a half years!

Why do we still teach cursive handwriting?

Post ImageI’m generally pretty happy whenever I get the opportunity to show off my Tablet PC, especially when my audience has never seen one before. It happened again Friday afternoon, and the expected “oohs” and “ahhs” filled the room. Usually I fold up my tablet so that the keyboard is hidden, and then I encourage onlookers to try writing in OneNote. Most people very quickly write “hello” or their name in block letters. On Friday however, someone wrote a sentence in cursive handwriting. I remarked that I simply can’t do cursive handwriting anymore, which led to a pretty interesting discussion.

Essentially we wondered aloud why cursive handwriting is still taught in elementary school. I remember learning it in grade three or so, but I simply can’t do it now. If I try, I really have to concentrate, and I just don’t remember what some of the letters are supposed to look like. The only thing I write in cursive these days is my name. The rest of the time I am either on the computer, or scribbling in my messy “print-writing” (where it’s mostly printing with a few letters connected). Why would anyone use cursive handwriting in this digital age? And if the answer to that is “pretty much no one,” then why do we still teach it?

The entry on Wikipedia provides just two reasons:

  • Cursive is easier and faster once mastered. There is no need to constantly pick up the pencil point and put it down again.
  • Cursive may be especially useful for certain students with learning disabilities such as dysgraphia because it has fewer letters that are mirror images of one another, such as the printed b and d, and so may be easier for students who are prone to mixing them up. In some schools, students with such learning challenges are taught cursive before print.

I think the first point is pretty much negated by typing, and the second point is only relevant for a relatively small number of individuals. I suppose another reason not mentioned on Wikipedia would be that cursive handwriting looks nice. My Mom’s handwriting, for example, is quite simply beautiful.

When you think about it, teaching cursive handwriting is really stupid. You generally can’t submit any assignments in junior high, high school, or post-secondary unless they are typed on a computer. What’s the point of learning it then?

Furthermore, I seem to recall that handwriting lessons took quite a bit of class time. Isn’t there something more useful we could be teaching children in place of handwriting?

Online advertising in Canada is booming

Post ImageThe numbers are in, and it appears that 2006 was an incredibly impressive year for online advertising in the great north. Forget about all the action happening south of the border, Canada is where it’s at! From 901am:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada (IAB) announced that 2006 Canadian Online Advertising Revenues surged to an unprecedented $1.01 billion dollars for the year. The 2006 actuals represent a 26% increase over the $801 million originally estimated by the IAB for 2006; and an 80% increase over the 2005 actuals of $562 million.

Projections for 2007 look really positive too. Mark Evans says:

Still, if you do some back-of-the-napkin calculations, the Canadian market is still only two-thirds that of the U.S. market if you use the traditional 10:1 ratio formula.

I assume by the “10:1 ratio formula” he is normalizing the two markets for comparison purposes. So it’s not as big as the US, but it’s getting damn close.

Read: 901am

Notes for 4/29/2007

It wasn’t planned, but it was kind of nice to take a break from blogging this past week (with the exception of my post on Wednesday of course). If you’re a blogger, it’s important to post frequently, but it’s also important to make sure you have the energy and desire to do so! I think I was lacking the energy a bit.

  • My Mom joined Facebook today, so both of my parents now have Facebook accounts. My friend Todd, who was a long-time holdout, also joined. For those of you who still don’t have an account…LAME! You’re increasingly in the minority. That said, I’m not advocating giving in to peer pressure, and I’d love to hear why you haven’t joined Facebook.
  • Kim made her delicious shrimp dip on Friday – it was excellent! Sharon and I made a margarhita pizza, which was also pretty yummy.
  • Looks like my prediction about the PS3 was dead on. The PS3 is doing so badly that it’s creator, Ken Kutaragi, is retiring.
  • Kryptonite is real – I knew it, haha!
  • It didn’t happen in 2006 like I thought it would, but Toyota is now officially the world’s largest automaker.
  • More Internet speed records were broken this week. Yawn…these sub-10 Gbps records are getting old…let’s see this new 100 Gbps network that is in the works!
  • What is Computer Science? This article does a fairly good job of explaining it.
  • I can’t believe it’ll be May 1st on Tuesday…time just flies! On the plus side, that means Spider-Man 3 will be here in no time.

5 Things Edmonton Should Invest In Before a New Arena

Post ImageRumors of a new hockey arena in Edmonton have been floating around since at least November of last year. The latest news, released yesterday, is that a new “arena feasibility” committee has been struck to determine whether such a project should go ahead, and if so, where, for how much, and who should foot the bill. Jerry Bouma, president of Northlands and a member of the new committee, said:

“You have to build a world-class facility. The Oilers have already said they need a new arena.”

I’m not sure there is anyone on the committee who is against the idea of a rink. So much for the word “feasibility” – it looks like we’ve moved past that. Seems also that most of the members are convinced it should be downtown. I’m all for revitalizing our city’s downtown core, as I’ve stated before, but I am not sure if a new arena is the best idea. There are good arguments on both sides of the debate. For some good discussion, read: here, here, here, here, and here.

Either way, I don’t think taxpayers should foot the entire bill. Certainly the city should contribute something if a new arena is built, but I think it should be the Oilers that pick up the bulk of the expenses. In my opinion, there are better things that Edmonton should be investing in (these are in no particular order):

  1. South Edmonton Common. Talk about congestion! Seriously, we need an overpass/underpass at 23rd avenue and Gateway Blvd. Especially once the new business park just to the south of SEC is built.
  2. LRT. Finish it faster! Or keep it on track, and add a West Edmonton Mall to Downtown line. I think an East-West line would be great for the city, especially if it were to go to WEM.
  3. Potholes. There are far too many of them around the city. What happened to that research with rubber/asphalt roads? Did it work or not? Let’s get the roads fixed!
  4. Startups. Alberta just isn’t the best place to start a company, oil & gas related or not. Everything I have learned suggests that Ontario, B.C., and other provinces ofter much better incentives for entrepreneurs. Certainly this is a provincial issue, but there’s no reason that Edmonton can’t get the ball rolling. Let’s help individuals take advantage of the hot economy.
  5. Housing. Speaking of our hot economy, how about more money for housing? You can’t turn on the news these days without hearing about the housing crunch in our city.

Or how about making our city cleaner? Five Canadian cities made this Forbes list, Edmonton was not one of them. And don’t forget about the ring-road project that continues. Obviously you could add new schools, hospitals, and other “usual suspects” to the list. I am tempted to mention city-wide wifi too, because I think it would have a positive impact.

The point is that a new arena benefits the Oilers first, and Edmonton second. Funding should follow that order. I’m not against a new arena (I have to admit I am a bit excited about the prospect) but I am against it being funded entirely (or even mostly) by taxpayers.

Final Exams

I’ve got my last two final exams tomorrow (ASTRO 122) and Wednesday (EAS 207), so things will be quiet around here for the next few days (as they were for the last few days). I’ll probably still update my status on Twitter and Facebook though…only so many addictions can be put on hold 😉

Notes for 4/22/2007

Here are my weekly notes:

  • Happy Earth Day! Forbes has a list of the world’s greenest billionaires. New York plans to add one million new trees to the city’s landscape by 2017. There’s lots more Earth Day news at Yahoo.
  • Mom and Dad left this evening…was good to see them this weekend! Congrats to Kim on graduating from MacEwan!
  • Just watched Detroit eliminate Calgary in game 6, which makes me happy. Unfortunately Tampa Bay lost today. Go Vancouver tomorrow!
  • So Windows XP is once again available on some Dell machines. It’s not as big a deal as the headlines would have you believe!
  • Finally saw Blood Diamond last night, and I liked it. The amazing thing is that there were so many storylines they could have followed!
  • I suppose I should do some studying…two finals this week!

How Google names products

Post ImageYesterday Google announced that they have renamed Froogle to Google Product Search. The change is explained on the official Google Blog:

Froogle offers a lot of great functionality and has helped many users find things to buy over the years, but the name caused confusion for some because it doesn’t clearly describe what the product does.

I don’t think that’s why they renamed it. I think Owen Thomas is right to point out that Google’s marketing is run by engineers. Froogle was/is simply a subset of search in general, so why not name it as such?

Think about it. They have Google, Google Image Search, Google Book Search, and Google Blog Search, so why not Google Product Search?

You could almost use the following rule for the way Google names products:

Is search the core feature of this product?
If yes then call it Google _____ Search
If no then call it Google _____

Obviously not all Google products fit into this rule, but most do.

Read: Google Blog