Here are my weekly notes:

• This is interesting: What makes a successful online dating photo? See also: The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures.
• What happened with the Internet in 2009? Pingdom attempts some answers in this round-up post.
• This is a pretty amazing story: “Alone in the darkness beneath layers of rubble, Dan Woolley felt blood streaming from his head and leg. Then he remembered — he had an app for that.”
• Apparently people have been trying to fix the English language’s illogical system of spelling for quite some time, without any success. Then came text messages.
• This probably should have happened sooner: CBC Radio’s live streams are now MP3 streams.
• New data from TeleGeography show that Skype is now the largest provider of cross border communications in the world.
• Apple was responsible for 99.4% of mobile app sales in 2009. Incredible. Can’t wait to see what they launch on Wednesday.

Here are my weekly notes:

• Good recap from Nieman Journalism Lab: Who’s responsible for local news, and Google plays hardball with China.
• CBC Television Strategy to Focus on Entertainment, Expands Feature Film Initiative.
• This is pretty interesting, but not altogether surprising I suppose: The US government has dozens of chicken farms producing eggs for the swine flu vaccine that are classified as part of the country’s critical infrastructure.
• Some pretty fascinating and scary information on Facebook in this interview.
• From Gene Smith: Five User Experience Trends I’ll be Watching in 2010.
• This is pretty interesting. There’s a new $1.8 billion eco city being planned on newly annexed land in St. Albert.

Here are my weekly notes:

• Sharon and I went to the Slow Food Edmonton Winter Solstice Supper on Saturday evening. It was yummy!
• How to brew a good cup of coffee.
• Very impressive: Apple’s App Store Downloads Top 3 Billion. See also: Building Apps People Need. And why not: Steve Jobs on Magazine Covers.
• Don’t miss this from Jason Kottke: The 100 best links of 2009. Another one: 100 things we didn’t know last year for 2009.
• What does it mean to “Like” a status update?
• Registration for Reboot Alberta 2.0 is now open. The event takes place in Kananaskis from February 26-28.

This is going to be a busy week! Should be some really cool announcements coming too.

Here are my weekly notes:

• Arrived back in Edmonton today, after spending the week in Yellowknife with Sharon. Thanks Mom and Dad for having us – it was great to see you and we had fun, even though it was cold as expected! I guess that means vacation is officially over.
• A couple of really great opinion pieces on the Apple Tablet: John Gruber and John Siracusa.
• From Techvibes: an update on Alberta’s Digital Media People to watch in 2009.
• Fantastic article on aviation security theatre by Bruce Schneier. Definitely give it a read. See also Nate Silver on the odds of airborne terror.
• Here are Telus Mobility’s top 5 trends for 2010.
• An unlikely culprit in wi-fi failures: chicken wire.
• David Carr on Why Twitter Will Endure.

Here are my weekly notes:

• Sharon and I arrived in Yellowknife today! We’re visiting my family for a week. And yes, we got stuck in major travel delays at the airport. Tomorrow should be fun – we’re going dog sledding!
• If you haven’t already checked it out, don’t miss the 2009 List of Lists. See also: the best of the decade lists.
• Another great post from Dave: premier stelmach’s problems are bigger than a cabinet shuffle.
• The Supreme Court of Canada: There are no journalists, only citizens.
• Interesting, hopeful piece on the state of the media industry from David Carr.
• Here’s why we should call the new year twenty-ten, not two-thousand-ten.

Here are my weekly notes:

• Had a great time at the Tweetup on Friday night! I’ve got to write about it this week. Also had a great time today at Tamara’s mini tweetup – thanks for having us!
• This movie is going to be awesome – Iron Man 2! Also check out the Valentine’s Day trailer.
• Also on the subject of movies – Avatar has been getting great reviews from critics and fans alike. I’m looking forward to checking it out.
• Interesting post from Darren on Project Honey Pot.
• The top Twitter Trends of 2009. As someone pointed out to me on Twitter, #followfriday is mysteriously missing from the top hashtags.
• From Michael Geist: Canada Dragging Its Feet on Open Data Initiatives.
• Is there anything as great as Wikipedia for documenting current events like the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference that wrapped up last week in Copenhagen?
• Twitter’s new “Contributors” feature is going to be great. And it’s another step toward revenue.
• Facebook Connect is now a year old! I love it, and can’t wait to see how it grows and changes in 2010.

Here are my weekly notes:

• A very cold weekend in Edmonton. On Friday night, the plug on my block heater cord snapped off. Tonight, I’m guessing a pipe burst because the garage under my apartment building flooded. I barely got my car out of harm’s way. We still don’t have water.
• We had another big release for my team at Questionmark!
• The good news from Amazon keeps coming – Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 are now available on EC2!
• Kristen is a 24-year-old stay-at-home mom with a gamerscore on Xbox Live of more than 165,000. She’s addicted to earning achievements.
• This garbage city outside of Cairo reminds me of Wall-E.
• Meetings: The practical alternative to work!
• Something I’ve been following for a while now – Microsoft Tag.
• Sharon and I went to see New Moon on Friday. Oddly, I enjoyed it more than she did! Well, she still enjoyed some parts more. Today we went to see Poster Boys at the Roxy – it was fantastic!

Here are my weekly notes:

• Interesting look at the big portals’ battle for local. I think MSN has the advantage at the moment (thanks in large part to its acquisition of EveryBlock).
• Google launched a public DNS service this week. I’ll be sticking with OpenDNS for now – here’s their take on the news.
• I hadn’t noticed the new TD Canada Trust banner ads, but Derek did: “They’re pretty run-of-the-mill bank ads, except for one thing: the couples in them are all men.” Incidentally VanCity Credit Union did the same thing back in 2003 – Poster Boys, on now in Edmonton, tells the story.
• A couple of very cool Amazon Web Services announcements recently: you can now boot EC2 instances from Elastic Block Store, and a new US-West region is now online.
• Google CEO Eric Schmidt in the Wall Street Journal: It’s the year 2015.
• Twitter turned some tweets red on Tuesday for World AIDS Day.
• The year isn’t quite over yet, but that hasn’t stopped Google from releasing its 2009 Year-End Zeitgeist. Also worth checking out – the 2009 List of Lists.

Here are my weekly notes:

• I stayed in Edmonton this weekend, but I had my eye on Red Deer where Reboot Alberta was taking place. I’ll have more on that soon, but it sounds like I missed a great time!
• On the other hand, I got to accompany Sharon to the Greens, Eggs & Ham farm on Saturday, and to the Slow Food Edmonton potluck today. So much fantastic, local food!
• The Matrix is one of my all-time favorite movies (toss up with The Dark Knight) so this stop-motion recreation of the first bullet-time scene, done entirely in Lego, is awesome.
• Must read: The reason WestJet keeps winning. They really care.
• Another awesome visualization: Is the H1N1 vaccine safe? No, I haven’t gotten the shot, nor do I plan to.
• Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species turned 150 years old on November 24th!

Here are my weekly notes:

• I picked up some eggnog today, and enjoyed my first rum & eggnog of the season!
• Local podcast The Unknown Studio got a new website and logo. I like!
• So many cool things were announced at PDC 09, which means I have lots of reading to do! Colin captured things well here.
• Twitter’s geotagging API is finally live.
• Some interesting data on the video game console market.
• Anil Dash of Six Apart has a new project.
• Just finished deploying a fairly significant update to ShareEdmonton. Not many new features, but lots of changes behind the scenes. Much more to do!