Of course the day of the conference is the day we have a problem with our database server. Thanks to Dickson for getting everything working! The BlogosphereRadio site is back up now, and I’ll hopefully start posting the shows around 5:30 PST.

Also, if you picked up a Podcast Wizard beta CD at the conference today, definitely give us your feedback! You can email us at info@paramagnus.com or leave a comment, or flag me down! We’ll do our best to get back to you immediately. And please remember, it’s a beta…so don’t be mad if it doesn’t work properly! Instead, help us fix it 🙂

Okay we’ve got the website all setup and ready to go! You can check out the episodes related to Northern Voice on BlogosphereRadio.com now. Be sure to check throughout tomorrow for updates.

I have now been awake for about 36 hours straight – time to sleep!

Megan and I arrived in Vancouver today without any problems, though it did take a while for our luggage to get off the plane. Or maybe we were just being impatient, that’s probably more likely! Anyway we got to the hotel, and found that we are on the floor marked “Executive Suites”, so we were happy to see that! Nice room so far too, high-speed wireless Internet that Megan has been having trouble connecting to, but it seems to work for me.

We decided to walk around downtown a bit today, so we of course stopped at Starbucks. There’s lots of them around too, you can’t go more than two or three blocks without seeing one. My kind of place! We also went to the UBC Downtown campus to check out the rooms for tomorrow’s conference. Looks like they have a nice house feed that we can tap into for the big theatre, and although we couldn’t get into the smaller room, it looks do-able too. Unfortunately we can only record one session at a time, so here’s our plan for podcasting Northern Voice:

• We’ll be podcasting both Tim Bray’s and Robert Scoble’s keynotes from the theatre.
• We are planning to podcast the Introduction to Audio Blogging and Podcasting session at 10:30 AM.
• We are planning to podcast the Introduction to Video Blogging session at 11:30 AM.
• We are planning to podcast the following panels: Promoting Your Blog and Building Traffic, Working with Multimedia Content.
• We’ll try to record some impromptu interviews with people during the coffee and lunch breaks, and because we’re not sure about the Lightning Tool Talks, not going to promise anything there.

Sometime tonight we’ll get the Northern Voice show setup on BlogosphereRadio so that you can subscribe JUST to those episodes if you want. Of course, all the audio will be included in the main feed as well. Still not exactly sure how the audio will sound, I am gonna try and set it up tonight so that we can podcast very quickly after each session. This probably means no Windows Media feeds, sorry about that.

Just about to leave the house for Vancouver. Megan and I are there for the Northern Voice conference this weekend. Stay tuned here and at BlogosphereRadio for updates!

Testing 1, 2, 3.

That’s right, today is my Dad’s birthday. If you get a chance, head over to his blog and wish him a happy day! He’s been writing up a storm lately too, so there’s lots of good stuff to read.

This is just pathetic. First, look at my dad’s blog at EclecticBlogs. See the design and everything? I am the one that designed it for him, and he has been adding stuff ever since, like the quote, poll, etc.

Now look at this blog. See anything familiar? He hasn’t even taken the time to replace the damn graphic at the top of the page! There are a few other things he has done that, quite frankly, piss me off. First of all, he didn’t ask permission. Secondly, he did not link back to the site (at least not as far as I can tell, it might be in a single post, but that is not good enough). He has not replaced the alternative location listed on the page, which still points to Martin’s RSS feed. And most importantly, he has linked the page to Copyscape! What nerve!

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but you have to draw the line somewhere. Had he simply used the layout and color scheme, that would have been one thing. But to leave elements of Martin’s site on his own? That’s just not right.

I guess we’ll find out tomorrow morning. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman sent a letter to NHLPA Executive Director Bob Goodenow today, saying:

We are increasing our offer of yesterday by increasing the maximum individual team cap to $44.7MM ($42.5MM in salary and $2.2MM in benefits)….If this offer is acceptable, please let me know by 11:00 A.M. tomorrow, in advance of my scheduled press conference. Hopefully, the press conference will not be necessary.

Read: TSN

I never thought I’d see the day:

Reversing a longstanding Microsoft policy, Bill Gates said Tuesday that the company will ship an update to its browser separately from the next major version of Windows. A beta, or test, version of Internet Explorer 7 will debut this summer, Microsoft’s chairman and chief software architect said in a keynote address at the RSA Conference 2005 here.

The way I see it, there are two main reasons for the change. First and foremost, Longhorn is taking too long. Service Pack 2 went a long way to fixing the security issues present in IE, but not far enough. The last thing Microsoft needs right before a Longhorn debut is a major security flaw with IE. Thus it makes sense to fix the security problems ahead of time – or at least try to.

The second reason is Firefox. There is no question that the browser has made significant inroads into IE’s market share, and so it only makes sense from a business perspective for Microsoft to respond. I just hope they don’t focus solely on security – it would be nice to have IE standards compliant.

Either way, this is good new for Windows users!

Read: CNET News.com

Lots of people have written about eliminating the last wire now that we have wireless mice, keyboards, and network connections – the power cord. I have often thought, “that would be cool”, but really, I haven’t ever found the power cord that much of a problem. Until now.

The transformer on my tablet’s power cord is dead. I went looking for a replacement today, only to find that almost every laptop power cord is proprietary! For an industry with pretty good standards, like IDE, USB, etc, I was surprised! And annoyed. Because of the fact that you must order replacements from the manufacturer, they charge insane prices. And because there are so many, stores do not carry them in stock, which means big delays for ordering the parts. I am going to try to find a universal one (from Targus perhaps) but who knows.

Which leads me to believe that we might always be tethered. Power cords have been around since probably electricity was invented, and yet we don’t have a standard for computers. How on earth are they going to settle on a standard for wireless power? Unlikely, and that’s unfortunate.