Without An Apostrophe

While clearing out my spam folder (I always do a quick check for false positives) one actually caught my eye. It was addressed directly to me, using my correct name, not just my e-mail address. It was announcing some kind of new search engine, who will not be named as I do not wish to give them free publicity.

Anyway, upon open the e-mail, it even made reference to people I do know casually, so I thought perhaps this was something legitimate. Well, I went to the site and gave it a shot, was not impressed and went to delete the e-mail for good.

Then something caught my eye, they mentioned having received a positive write-up on TechCrunch. Now I was curious as to what had been written about them since the search was pretty lame and they seem to advertise via spam.

Head over to TechCrunch, punch in the company name and get: “No posts found. Try a different search?”

Who exactly do they think these people think they’re fooling? Do they seriously think no one’s going to check? I’d send them an e-mail admonishing this practice but that would probably only confirm to some bot that I’m a live person and get even more offers to have my equipment enlarged.

So, it seems all those folks who’ve been waiting a year with bated breath for Rogers to unleash Apple’s iPhone are not only disappointed, they’re downright angry.

Upon discovering that the base plan includes only 150 daytime minutes and 400 megabytes of monthly data on this data hungry monster, some have taken to protest at RuinediPhone.

As I type this, more than 20,000 people have “signed” a digital petition to say these rates are not good enough while others are calling for a boycott on the July 11th release date.

While these plans are pretty terrible, I can’t help but note that they’re probably the best Rogers has offered in the entire time they’ve been in the wireless phone industry. I mean, did anyone actually think the company that until a week ago offered a base Blackberry plan at 2 megabytes per month was actually going to provide an unlimited data buffet?

Also, where were these 20,000 angry voices when data plans started at 500 kilobytes per month?

Frankly, I’m going to have to agree with Ottawa Citizen reporter Vito Piliechi’s assessment that the iPhone isn’t meant for anyone whose going to have trouble paying $100 per month for usable plan anyway.

In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy my new 300 megabyte plan on Blackberry, while will be pretty much impossible to use up with Research In Motion’s Waterloo servers compressing all my data before I get it along with Opera Mini doing the same thing for my full-HTML browsing (seriously, Apple isn’t the only one who can pull that off on a mobile device.)

Really cool stuff is happening in Ottawa’s tech sector right now and this week’s big announcement is iotum’s launch of Calliflower, a web-based service for managing conference calls.

iotum has made in a name for itself in the voice-over-Internet-protocol space over the past year with their FREE Conference Calls app for Facebook, though CEO Alec Saunders  has mentioned on a few occasions that the original plan was to build a LinkedIn-style social network based entirely around conference calling. With Calliflower, that vision seems to have now been realized.

Calliflower’s launch is being celebrated tonight by using the service to host an interview with legendary Canadian actor William Shatner from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific time.

Wireless data has been an absolute joke in Canada for years with early plans starting at 500 kilobytes of data per month (what on earth can someone do with 500k?!?)

As time wore on, Canada’s wireless providers started to get with the program, very slowly, but still not giving us for $20 per month for unlimited downloads available in the United States. Rogers has been the slowest of all to change but it seems thanks to the iPhone’s arrival in Canada, they have finally had to relent.

Today I’ve switched from my $40/month for 7 megabytes (yes, you read that correctly) to $30/month for 300 megabytes. Still a far cry from $20 unlimited (though the iPhone rate on AT&T has now jumped to $30 anyway) it is a significant improvement and I can now actually USE my Blackberry! Sweet! 

I am now wondering just how much of a threat online video really is to Hollywood movies and television studios and whatnot. Yesterday, I got put on very sudden house-sitting duty as a friend of mine needed to leave and someone had to hang around her place to let an electrician in.

Well, as compensation, I got play around with a computer with a giant 20-something inch flat screen monitor and I figured I’d pass the time by watching videos on something that isn’t my little laptop. So, I load up some video and hit the full-screen button expecting this to look better than on my old TV.

Um, no. Stretching it out over that much screen space, all I could see what how grainy pixilated they were. Yuck.

It seems pretty far off from replacing going to a movie theatre or even renting something to watch on a proper TV since even the decades old television sets I usually use look better than this. Watching video in a tiny box is fine for clips or cats doing amusing things of babies laughing, but for anything else? Until we get proper broadband in North America so it’s possible to stream files big enough to hold all the detail, this isn’t a very good distribution method and I can’t imagine enough people are preferring grainy pirated videos to the real thing to be putting that big of a dent in revenues…

Another linked video since I’ve been too lazy to write anything in here…good stuff though:

If I may, I need to step away from my usual ramblings about technology and self-employment to rant about something that truly makes me sick.

Living in downtown Ottawa, the ByWard Market is frequent stop for me. Walking through, it’s hard not to notice Craazy Dave.

Dave’s “home” is a milk crate behind the Rideau Street Chapters store. There he supports himself by writing poetry on pieces of cardboard and selling it to passers-by. Maybe it’s because of my brief period as a musician that I still romanticize the image of the starving artist or whatever other reason, but I like him. His poetry in big black letters adds character to the area, I’ve yet to see him bother anyone and he’s rather pleasant given the fact that he’s homeless.

This week, some “tax-paying citizen” who was sick of Dave getting a “free ride” took it upon himself to steal what meagre possessions the man had and destroy them. Then in the ultimate act of cowardice, sent a letter bragging about this “accomplishment” to a local gallery owner who displays Dave’s poems signing it “R.F. Cartier.”

I really have no idea how sleeping on a sidewalk constitutes a “free ride”, especially since Dave refuses to go on welfare or take any other social assistance. The possessions that were disposed of mostly consisted of poems and a collection of newspaper articles that had been written about Dave.

One of the defining characteristics that’s supposed to separate human beings from the rest of the animal kingdom is compassion. Clearly this Cartier person is severely lacking in that department. I mean, it’s one thing to walk around yelling at panhandlers to get a job, but to dispose of someone’s property that only has sentimental value seems like a pretty low depth to sink to.

I just hope Cartier remember’s one important thing: Karma’s a bitch!

Xobni, a product I’ve been interested in for some time has finally been released to the public.

It’s a Microsoft Outlook extension that claims to find the “hidden social network” in your e-mails. It’s functions do look really cool. For example, when you click the profile of someone you e-mail regularly, it’ll show things like phone numbers that person has e-mailed you, which sounds insanely useful.

One slight problem for me, though: I deleted Outlook from my life months ago. Being a broke freelancer who can’t afford an Exchange server, I keep all my e-mail synchronized through IMAP and Outlook’s support for IMAP is well, pathetic.

There’s still hope, though. Xobni recently walked away from a Microsoft acquisition which means they’ll be free to work on this extension for other e-mail systems so hopefully a Thunderbird (which has killer IMAP support) won’t be far behind.

Posting has been light lately, especially since this game called Grand Theft Auto IV came out…

But I’ll digress briefly to write about coworking. It’s a nifty concept where freelancers and small companies gain a full-on office environment by sharing the cost of a workspace. It also helps deal with the isolation of being a lone gunman freelancer working from home.

Ottawa will soon have its first coworking space when consultant Ian Graham puts the final touches on The Code Factory.

I mention it now since the web version of an article I wrote on the construction is now up on the Scan web site.

Also, Graham has been providing regular updates (including pictures) on a blog set up to document The Code Factory. Should be pretty damn cool when it’s done.

Facebook is looking a little more like MySpace to me this week. In the past few days, I’ve been fending off “friend” requests from women in the U.S. I’ve never heard of. They also seem far more attractive than any woman that would be likely to want to randomly talk to me. So, Internet logic dictates that they’re probably trying to sell me Viagra. Blah.