Here are my weekly notes:

• Sharon and I went to see Up in 3D this weekend. I really enjoyed it! Makes me want to watch G-Force (the guinea pig one) in 3D now too. Oh, and Toy Story 3!
• I’ve written about bit.ly before, so it was no surprise to me to hear that they’re working on some impressive things.
• From Darren: The First Ever Video on YouTube.
• Flickr announced integration with Twitter earlier this week. I like their short URL: http://www.flic.kr.
• The two top teams joined forces and have won the Netflix Prize! Cool!
• My favorite website monitoring service, Pingdom, has added a free account level!
• Must-read at BoingBoing: Michael Jackson and the “Zombieconomy”
• Twitter has finally applied for a trademark on the term “tweet”.

Here are my weekly notes:

• The big news this week was the death of Michael Jackson. I’ve always been a fan of his music.
• Went to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen last night. It was pretty much as I expected: over the top but enjoyable!
• This could be interesting: Microsoft Hohm. It’s energy management software for you house.
• Yes, yes, yes: Statistics Canada data should be freely available.
• Sharon and I cleaned the house pretty much top to bottom this weekend. We also finally turned the spare bedroom into an office. I want to put a few things up on the well then I’ll post some pictures!

Happy Father’s Day! Here are my weekly notes:

• Had a great dinner at my sister Kim’s house tonight. Her new puppy Kali is so cute!
• Happiness in Business.
• Microsoft’s BizSpark program has had 15,000 startups join so far. Not bad!
• Vancouver ChangeCamp took place yesterday. I’m curious to learn how it went. We need to get the ball rolling again here in Edmonton.
• Would we really be in trouble without the NYTimes Baghdad bureau? Jeff Jarvis thinks the current Iran debacle is making the answer a clear no. Speaking of Iran, Chris has some good thoughts on the Twitter-mania taking place.
• I was kinda hoping that Jenson Button could win his home race, the British Grand Prix, today. It wasn’t meant to be – instead, Red Bull are trying to make the season interesting! Good thing too, it might be F1’s last.

Busy weekend so I didn’t get around to posting this. Here are my weekly notes:

• Did you get your Facebook username on Friday? I am now mastermaq. Here are three smart things to read related to usernames on Facebook.
• In case you missed it: Jason Jones of the Daily Show at the New York Times.
• Yet another article explaining that location seems to matter more than ever in the digital world.
• According to an Ofcom study in the UK, 43% of adults who currently don’t have Internet access would choose to remain disconnected even if they were given a computer and broadband connection for free. A large portion of that group is old or retired, which might explain the stat. Still, it’s a little disturbing.

The rest of my London trip was good. I did make it to Noel’s place on Saturday, and had a great time playing Rock Band. On Sunday, I visited the British Museum, which was quite impressive. Like the museums we visited in Washington recently, the British Museum is free. Unlike those museums in DC, there is no security to go through, you simply walk in! I had dinner at Gourmet Burger Kitchen that night, and at Hamburger+ the following evening. The rest of my evenings were spent in the pub 🙂

My flight home was direct, thankfully, and was uneventful. I watched two movies: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (absolutely terrible) and Watchmen (not bad).

I enjoyed my time in London, but it’s good to be back. You can see the rest of my photos here.

Here are my weekly notes:

• While sitting in the airport last weekend, I read this article about Shanghai’s preparations for World Expo 2010. The city is spending $45 billion, more than Beijing spent on the Olympics.
• Opera is now the most popular mobile web browser in the world! I use it on my BlackBerry all the time.
• I think hating Bing was the expected default action, but it’s really quite good. And certainly people aren’t ignoring it.
• Great post: What the CBC can learn from NPR.
• I’ve been reading about the Bill 44 debacle in Alberta, though I haven’t said much about it. I think Chris sums it up nicely.
• It’s the little things like this – high-resolution, device-specific icons – that will make Windows 7 more than just “better than Vista”.
• Alberta Views Magazine was named Magazine of the Year at the National Magazine Awards. Also: Metro Edmonton is the largest free daily in the city.

I’m loving the tube here in London, though I’m a little concerned about the possible strike. Service would be affected starting Tuesday at 7pm for 48 hours – basically, the last part of my trip.

Today was my first full day in London, UK. Weather was great, and I thought it was a productive day in terms of work. I’m here until the 11th. Here are my weekly notes:

• One of the coolest things about Heathrow is seeing all the different types of airlines. Every plane seems to have a different logo and paint job. It was particularly interesting to see so many planes with the F1 logo, though the British Grand Prix isn’t until June 21st.
• I completely agree with these comments on Flickr’s current UI/implementation for Creative Commons. It could be much better.
• This was announced earlier in May, but I only recently had a chance to look at it – AWS Import/Export. Basically you can now send hard drives full of data to Amazon and they’ll upload them to S3. Very cool.
• The product I’ve been working on at Questionmark was recently released: Introducing Questionmark Live.
• Apparently the number of homeless people with laptops is on the rise. I guess I’m not entirely surprised at that, considering my experience at Homeless Connect (almost everyone was familiar with Facebook).
• Bing is now live. TechCrunch notes that Bing 411 also launched.
• As you’ve no doubt heard by now, General Motors filed for bankruptcy protection.

Fish & Chips, and Beer in London tonight. Oh yes.

Here are my weekly notes:

• We had an open house at the Questionmark office here in Edmonton on Friday, which went fairly well. Thanks to everyone who stopped by! I posted some photos here.
• Sharon wrote about our trip to the City Market this weekend. We ran into a few people while we were there, and evidently missed a whole bunch more who got there earlier than we did. Maybe we’ll have to do a City Market Tweetup one Saturday!
• Something I read and bookmarked last week in the Times: The American Press on Suicide Watch.
• A new “fact engine” called Wolfram Alpha is launching tomorrow (soft launching tonight). Here’s a search for “Edmonton”. Looks pretty interesting. Sadly, when I type in “mastermaq” it says “Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.” You can read more about the service at Search Engine Land.

Sharon and I leave for Washington D.C. bright and early tomorrow morning. We’re there for a quick vacation, returning late Saturday evening. I’ll be blogging this week, but it might all be trip-related, just to warn you! And of course, I’ll be tweeting our adventure (unless Sharon manages to steal and hide my BlackBerry, that is).

I’ve found that one of the best opportunities for me to read is while I’m on a plane. I’ve got two books with me on this trip: Elizabeth Kolbert’s Field Notes from a Catastrophe, and Judith Estrin’s Closing the Innovation Gap.

Happy Mother’s Day! Here are my weekly notes:

• Went to see Wolverine tonight with Megan and Tom, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The summer movie season is here! Next up for me: Star Trek, Terminator Salvation, and Transformers 2.
• Apparently Pixar is opening a new 20,000 square foot studio in downtown Vancouver in the fall. Very cool!
• Sharon and I tried the new Starbucks Breakfast Sandwiches the other day (well new for Edmonton) and though they weren’t bad, I’d rather have an Egg McMuffin every time.
• This is pretty awesome: when you initialize a Microsoft Surface computer for the first time, it says “I’m just a table right now, check back later”!
• Duke Nukem Forever is finally dead. Lots of additional great stuff here.
• Free does not mean no business model. Well said, at Techdirt as usual.
• In roughly a week, Sharon and I will be off to Washington, D.C. I’m excited!

Here are my weekly notes:

• Kim & Shane moved out this weekend. My apartment now looks pretty empty! I also realized how much kitchen stuff Kim had. Needless to say I did quite a bit of shopping and cleaning over the last two days.
• The cookie-cutter tech article (this one is about bit.ly): find a service that bloggers have written about recently, explain what it does in layman’s terms, throw out some statistics about growth, describe the business model or lack of one, cite either Google or Microsoft as companies that could destroy the service. Oh, and capitalize its name, even if the service itself never does.
• General Electric has apparently come up with a digital storage technology breakthrough that will allow standard-sized discs to hold the equivalent of 100 DVDs.
• This is kinda cool: The TV magic behind Hockey Night in Canada.
• Derek is right – taking photos doesn’t, and shouldn’t, make you a terrorist. He wrote about some very odd security ads in SkyTrain stations.
• Here’s something I could get behind: Reboot the university.
• Sharon and I went to see Ghosts of Girlfriends Past yesterday. It wasn’t bad, pretty much as expected. We were both surprised at how little Jennifer Garner was in the movie, however.
• I’ll be in Calgary on Tuesday covering the Web Strategy Summit.