Monthly Archive for February, 2008

My ironic purchase of the latest issue of Wired

Published on February 26, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , .

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I picked up the March issue of Wired today to read editor-in-chief Chris Anderson’s feature on the so-called “freeconomy” that’s been moving a long steadily as the Internet has become more popular: free music downloads, reading newspapers for free online, free e-mail from various web mail providers, et cetera.

The purchase was ironic since I had started reading the article for free online then realized just how long it was and couldn’t bring myself to go through that much text on a screen. So, I went out and paid $5.99 for a copy of the magazine…to read an article about free stuff that I could have read for free.

In a way, I may have made Anderson’s point though. Nothing is truly free. The companies who are giving away their products are making money some other way.

In the case of Wired, by putting the article up for free reading online, they ended up selling an extra copy of the magazine.

Green Party of Canada: You’ve spammed me for the last time

Published on February 23, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: .

In most areas, I have a tendency to support the underdogs.

Several years ago, that tendency led to me signing a petition to allow the Green Party of Canada to appear on the televised political debates.

I thought nothing of including my e-mail address on the petition but this turned out to be the big mistake.

It seems the party harvested this list for their newsletter, which they’ve been spamming me with since the last Federal election. I didn’t have a problem at first, but as time went on, their postings became more and more frequent…and annoying.

It’s gotten real bad lately, since for some reason they feel the need to e-mail me every few days to let me know that there’s a possible election coming (never mind the fact that none of the political commentators I read seem to think so) and ask for donations.

Enough is enough, I finally took the time to hit the unsubscribe button. Between press releases and other junk that ends up in my inbox, I don’t need digital panhandling as well.

So to the Green Party’s PR flaks: Please, do some research on social media marketing, sending out newsletters that weren’t requested to people who showed you a little bit a goodwill a few years ago just gets annoying.

I didn’t mind the monthly updates at first, I even read through them. But seriously, I don’t have time to go over these every few days especially since the e-mails rarely tell me anything new.

Eclipsed by the urban landscape

Published on February 21, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , .

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bigger3, originally uploaded by goldstardeputy.

Last night there was a beautiful lunar eclipse where the moon turned almost blood red.

Or so I heard.

My problem in getting to enjoy this phenomenon was two-fold. First off, being stuck at work.

Although there was a window visible from my tiny cubicle, all I could really see the glare from the unfiltered fluorescent lights.

The other obviously being the urban landscape itself: streetlights, the the lit-up signs from nearby stores and all that other junk.

Seems like a bit of a shame to have such killer ambiance killed off. That, and being stuck in a cubicle kind of prevented me from blaring Echo and the Bunnymen’s Under a Killing Moon.

Lots of work lately

Published on February 17, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: .

Wow, I realize once again that I really need to work on updating this site more.

That said, for once it hasn’t been out of laziness, but being busy.

To see what I’ve been up to, check out two articles I wrote up for Scan this month:

First there’s Unconferences getting geeks to congregate, in which I explored the growing number of tech-centred common interest groups with international ties that have been popping up around Ottawa lately.

And second, for my monthly column, Blogscanning, I looked at public relations uses for corporate blogs.

I’ve had a few other projects on the go, but they’ll be announced once they’re ready.

The Orange Box: How to kill a long weekend…

Published on February 17, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Hltob-win-cover Apparently it’s Sunday and I’m not sure where the rest of my weekend went. I think it has something to do with having purchased The Orange Box on Friday.

I’m pretty late to the part on this one (It came out mid-2007) but it’s mine now and it’s taken over.

See, The Orange Box contains five full games on two DVDs: Half Life 2, Half Life 2 Episode 1, Half Life 2 Episode 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal.

Now, Half Life 2 and Episode 1 had been released previously but not having played either, this DVD box of goodness is actually quite the value. Especially since Half Life 2 is one long bloody game.

I’ve never been a very big fan of first-person shooters. I remember when DOOM was all the rage and frankly found it rather boring. Running around shooting stuff just get repetitive and the early FPS games would make it worse by eventually degrading into maze games.

Half Life was the game that changed my mind on the genre. Most of the game does involve running around shooting stuff but it adds a fairly rich story, complete with plot twists to the mix, along with interaction with other characters. Plus, it’s long.

Plus, on top of Half Life and the other episodes, there’s Portal. A really nifty puzzle game that I’ll probably write more about at a later date (not that my commentary is necessary, there have been plenty of ravings about across the Internet since it was released.)

Simply put though, this new long weekend deal in Ontario will not result in boredom for me.

Been trying to ignore this MicroHoo business…

Published on February 5, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: .

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Flickr Resistance Against Microsoft Takeover, originally uploaded by sonicwalker.

But I’ve decided to stop that as I’ve pondered some of the implications.

Oh yeah, and users of the Yahoo-owned photo sharing site Flickr are pissed – as can be seen in the above image.

I guess I have to wonder, if Microsoft’s $44.6 billion deal to acquire Yahoo goes through, what happens next?

Most of what Yahoo does is mirrored by Microsoft products – e-mail, web portals, search, heck Microsoft even has their photo sharing platform (not that too many people use it.)

So, is Microsoft going to consolidate these services? Or are they going to run parallel, in a sense, competing with themselves?

I guess the reason I’ve been ignoring this massive news is because it really doesn’t affect me much. Most of my online data belongs to Google these days but I do still use a few of their services (mostly Flickr and del.icio.us.)

So is my Yahoo ID still going to work to get in? Or are we going to have switch to Microsoft’s passport deal? Or will both work? I guess the merger could leave some kind of weird (but controlled) version of the OpenID project with 2/3 of the major web players being accessible through one account.

At this point, I really don’t know. But those Flickr users, man, are they unhappy about it.