Small Business Week

Post ImageLast week was Small Business Week in Alberta, and indeed all across Canada. Here are some interesting statistics about small business in Alberta:

  • Small businesses (businesses that employ less than 10 employees) account for 74% (104,000) of all businesses with employees in Alberta. (Source: Alberta Economic Development, 2004 Alberta Business Monitor)
  • In 2004, women accounted for 34% of all self-employed individuals in Alberta; this was the same as the national average. (Source: Statistics Canada, Labour Force Survey 2004)
  • From 1999 to 2004, the number of people that were self-employed in Edmonton has increased by 3%. (Source: Statistics Canada, Labour Force Survey 2004)

I am included in that last number! Paramagnus incorporated here in Edmonton back in 2000. Speaking of Edmonton, our small business week runs this week, from the 24th to the 28th of October (had to be different I suppose!):

From every small business success story, there is an idea, which through initiative, tenacity and the entrepreneurial spirit, becomes reality. From this entrepreneurial spirit, innovative concepts and dynamic businesses are nurtured. Edmonton Small Business Week 2005 – October 24 –28, is an opportunity to celebrate the achievements and accomplishments of small business and the entrepreneurial spirit. Share the spirit and enjoy the week of activities planned!

Blaine Yamkovy
Chair, 2005 Small Business Week

You can see the list of events on their website. Dickson and I are attending the VenturePrize Seminar tomorrow evening (you had to register previously), but other than that I hadn’t really planned to attend anything. I think they need more events!

Happy Small Business Week to my fellow smallbiz owners in Edmonton!

Read: Edmonton SBW

Dare on Google

Post ImageLots of stuff out there on Google again lately, as is usual now I guess. John introduced us this morning to Google Base, and the Google Print debate has been roaring for weeks now. My favorite comments on the subject come from Dare Obasanjo though:

By any measure, Google is multi-billion dollar, multinational corporation. However whenever its executives speak, they do an excellent job of portraying the company as if it is the altruistic side project of a bunch of geeky college kids. I don’t just mean their corporate slogan of “Do No Evil” although it is one manifestation of this strategy.

More and more the opinion pieces compare Google to the Microsoft of old – the company that everyone in Silicon Valley (and elsewhere) loves to hate.

Read: Dare Obasanjo

Notes for 10/23/2005

I can’t believe it’s almost November! Here’s my weekly notes:

  • My Mom was in town on Saturday night! She was on her way to Toronto for some training for her new job, and she’ll be back here in two weeks on the way back. I hadn’t seen her in over a year, so it was great she could stop in Edmonton!
  • Tomorrow (or technically today – October 24th) is United Nations Day – the day the UN officially came into existence when it’s charter was ratified by the majority of signatories. This also happens to be the UN’s 60th anniversary.
  • I went to see A History of Violence tonight with Sharon and Megan. I can only describe it as deliciously violent.
  • Sharon’s sister asked me to sponsor her while I was there tonight too, so I did. I gave her $10 towards her run. They are raising money to build a school in Africa.
  • I really like the Hypnotiq Beach at Earl’s – so yummy!
  • When I was a kid, our family had an original Atari 2600. I never knew what happened to it until recently, when I found out my parents still had it. I was quite interested, so my Mom brought it down with her last night. There’s lots of games and controllers – only the power supply is missing. I won an auction for one on eBay a few hours ago though, so we’ll be playing Atari in the Paramagnus office soon enough!
  • I am tempted to listen to 96X this week just to see if anything came of the boycott. If you hear anything, leave a comment!

Flock Developer Preview

Post ImageAn application called Flock has been hyped and hyped again recently. Naturally, I had to see for myself if it lived up to the hype, so I went and downloaded the Flock Developer Preview this afternoon. What is Flock?

Flock is based on the open source Mozilla code base. All of our modifications to Mozilla code are released under the MPL, GPL and LGPL licenses. 100% of the Flock-created code to date is released under the GPL license. Going forward, we may incorporate some proprietary code from partners, or even created in-house, but our plan is for the vast majority if not all of our code to be open source for the foreseeable future.

I guess the idea is that Flock is a so-called “Web 2.0 browser” based on Firefox. So far it connects up to del.icio.us and Flickr. As others have noted, it’s still very early in the application’s development so I’ll try not to knock it too hard.

Let me get a few things out of the way first. Their website sucks. They don’t have any images (not even a logo!). The download is huge compared to Firefox. The browser itself runs incredibly slow compared to Firefox (who knows what they did – it’s supposedly based on the very quick Firefox). I don’t see how they are going to make money – their “roadmap” is kinda funny. Much of what Flock promises can be accomplished via extensions, and there’s reason to believe such features will be rolled into Firefox and featured in the next IE version anyway.

Never say never, but I don’t see myself using Flock in place of Firefox or IE anytime soon. I’m not sure that del.icio.us, blogging and Flickr integration would be enough to tempt me either!

Ah that feels better. The only thing worse than a hyped application is a hyped application that sorely disappoints. Keep in mind this is only the developer preview, but I’m not holding my breath. Mark Evans wrote about Flock today too.

Read: Flock

96X Boycott?

Post ImageToday I received a rather interesting email forward. The original email was from Matt Ashdown. I’ll let you read it first before I comment:

Between 9 and 10 am on boh October 12th, and 19th, 96X had on their station what they called the “ADHD HOUR.” During this hour, they only would play the first 90 seconds of each song, and between the songs they would have short vignettes that devalue people with ADHD through humiliation, embarassement, and slander. Essentially what these vignettes are implying is that people with ADHD are stupid. I am quite distressed that after so much human rights legislation, and work has been done, a main stream radio station thinks it is humerous to discriminate against a minority population and gets away with it.

I challenge you to boycott 96X until the “ADHD hour” is removed from the air. Write a letter to the program manager and submit it through either their web site or through me. I will be sending in massed letters next Wednesday October 26th. And finally, you can help through spreading the word to as many people as you can.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to email me at mattashdown@hotmail.com

Actually, they played it again this morning at 9 AM, and I am pretty sure it’s called the “ADD Hour” – the old acronym for the disorder. Regardless, I don’t think we need to take the show off the air (it’s kind of neat actually) but I would support a name change. It’s probably not the most appropriate name in the world, that’s for sure. You have to give them credit though for at least trying something new. Anyway, now I’ve done my part, by letting you know!

Read: 96X

The New Splog

Post ImageBack in April of 2004 I was posting about something I called “splogging“. Basically it was the repeated and never-ending activity of leaving comments on someone’s blog post, essentially, spam comments. At the time, it was funny, because I was using this against friends! Eventually spam comments became a real problem, and it was no longer funny. I first experienced huge amounts of spam on my blog in October of 2004, which forced me to introduce a Human Interaction Proof control, commonplace on the web now.

The term splog is changing though. No longer does it mean spam comments (which, fortunately have declined in numbers). Instead, it refers to fake blogs setup for the sole purpose of creating link farms. Here’s what the sploggers do:

The splogger executed a script that ran searches on blog search engines for specific keywords, said [PubSub’s Bob] Wyman, notably names of some of the A-list bloggers, like Dave Winer and Chris Pirillo. Then the splogger took the results, went to Blogger-BlogSpot and, using the service’s application programming interface, or API, automatically created tens of thousands of blogs that contained text from the bloggers’ real Web sites, Wyman said, along with links to the mortgage and other sites.

People querying the well-known bloggers’ names in blog search engines, and people who track these bloggers and their write-ups via services like PubSub, Technorati and Feedster, then received feeds to the fake blogs, jamming RSS readers with useless links, Wyman said.

I am by no means an A-list blogger, but I have noticed it happening to me too. If you search Google for mastermaq, the results are littered with results for fake blogs. Most of the ones that affect searches for me are not hosted at Blogspot, but some are. And that’s where most of the problem has originated from.

The problem has gotten really bad lately, as described in the CNET News.com article I quoted above. Who knows what will happen, but we need a resolution! To get things started, Chris Pirillo has posted Ten Suggestions for Google’s Blogspot. I particularly like suggestions two and six – no brainers in my opinion.

Read: CNET News.com

Average Joe Podcasting Revisited

Post ImageYou might remember that way back on August 18th, 2005 I wrote a post entitled Average Joe Podcasting. Let me highlight the main point of that post for you:

Not everyone who starts a podcast is going to want to make money from it, just like not everyone who blogs does so with the intention of making a living. I read a lot about podcasting – news articles, blog posts, etc., and I can’t help but feel that far too many individuals and organizations focus on the “making money from podcasting” idea.

As soon as starting and maintaining a podcast is as simple as starting and maintaining a blog, I think we’ll see the same breakdown in podcasting [as in blogging].

You should read the entire post to get the full argument in context, but that’s the main idea – that individuals will likely start to podcast for themselves, and that they’ll become a major segment of the podcasting world.

Almost exactly two months after I wrote that comes a post from Odeo’s Evan Williams, entitled Podcasting for Regular People. Here’s the main idea in his post:

While blogging can be about playing on a world stage to influence, gain audience, and, potentially, monetize (the same goals as most other media), there are millions of people who are happily pubishing daily without those motivations. For them, it’s more about expression, self-reflection, and communication.

I call these people “casual content creators.” It’s not just that they’re amateur or part of the great, unwashed, Long Tail. It’s that they’re playing a different game.

The idea of casual content creation in the realm of audio is a powerful one. And I think it’s a yet-to-be-duly-recognized segment of the (potential) podcasting world.

Sound familiar? I thought so.

Read: Odeo Blog

Wireless Cities

Post ImageTime for an update on wireless everywhere! Unfortunately Edmonton isn’t much closer to being covered in wonderful wireless Internet access, but many other cities are. What was once a side project in a few townships has become a big deal for some major locales:

Vendors that build and manage wireless networks report unprecedented municipal interest over the last couple of years, with requests for proposals streaming out of city halls everywhere.

“Overall, I’d say it’s very active,” said Lee Tsao, director of the global solutions group for Pronto Networks, a wireless provisioning company in Pleasanton, California. “In the last four months, we’ve signed up about 10 cities.” Todd Myers, founder and vice president of corporate development for AirPath Wireless, a provisioning firm based in Waltham, Massachusetts, put it more simply: “We’re swamped. There are just so many RFPs out now.”

Some of the newer technology like WiMax has been slow out of the gate, so most of the cities pursuing wireless networks are building so-called “mesh networks”, which essentially consist of daisy-chained Wi-Fi antennas. Apparently it’s pretty cost effective.

Wireless networks in cities show no sign of slowing down either:

In late September, research firm MuniWireless.com forecast that U.S. cities and counties will spend nearly $700 million over the next three years to build municipal wireless broadband networks.

Municipal wireless has also finally received support from politicians and lawmakers, notably FTC member Jon Leibowitz who “enorsed the concept of municipal broadband networks, comparing them to public schools and libraries.” (For a PDF of his endorsement, click here.)

Bring on the wireless cities!

Read: Wired

Waste Reduction Week in Canada

Post ImageDid you know that October 17th-23rd is Waste Reduction Week in Canada? I didn’t until yesterday when I happened to be walking through the Students’ Union Building on campus and came across a display. Municipalities can declare the week in their town or city, schools and businesses can register to participate, and of course we as individuals can do our part. Looks like Edmonton proclaimed the week last year.

There isn’t much on their website about the event or it’s history, so I don’t really know that much about it. You can however check the website for events and activities. They’ve also got some activities you can do yourself, like the Home Waste Audit and the Ecological Footprint Survey.

With almost perfect timing, an article in today’s Edmonton Journal gave an idea of where Canada ranks in the world on waste and energy use:

Canada’s environmental performance ranks almost dead last among major industrialized countries, according to a sweeping new study. The report, prepared by Simon Fraser University and published Tuesday by the David Suzuki Foundation, puts Canada 28th among 30 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries.

Researchers looked at 29 environmental indicators to make their determinations, placing Canada 26th or lower in 12 categories. It ranked Canada dead last in the production of nuclear waste, carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds. It was 29th in per-capita water consumption, sulphur oxide emissions and energy use.

Basically, we’re not doing that well in terms of reducing waste! The United States finished last, and Turkey finished first, with Switzerland and Denmark in second and third. Some other interesting things to note from the article:

  • Canada did not finish first in any environmental performance category and got failing grades in 24 of 29 indicators.
  • Its best ranking was second in the volume of timber harvested per square kilometre and fifth in the ratio of timber harvest to forest growth.
  • Canada has not improved its environmental performance relative to other OECD countries since 1992, when it was also 28th.

On that note, Happy Waste Reduction Week!

Read: Waste Reduction Week

Tamiflu Frenzy

Post ImageIf you turn on the TV to CNN or another news station, you’ll no doubt see something on Wilma and something on Tamiflu. All of a sudden there seems to be widespread fear of an outbreak of avian flu, and as a result demand for Roche’s Tamiflu has skyrocketed. eBay was even forced to take down sales of the drug:

A spokeswoman for eBay said the auction, for Roche Holding’s flu medicine, had been stopped because the sale of prescription drugs was not allowed under the e-commerce company’s rules.

Europe has seen a surge in demand for Tamiflu on the Internet, following the confirmation of cases of avian flu in Turkey and Romania, and a suspected case in Greece.

Bids for a single course of treatment, comprised of 10 capsules, had reached 104 pounds ($174.61) by midday Thursday before the auction was canceled. Some 28 bids were received for the drug, which was advertised as located in Birmingham, England.

There are lots of news articles out there on Tamiflu if you take a look. I saw a report on Global News last night here in Edmonton that said Alberta has taken the lead in Canada in terms of stockpiling the drug. We apparently have so much Tamiflu on hand, that our health department has started evaluating which provinces to share with first. Maybe we should be sharing with Europe too.

Read: CNET News.com