Without An Apostrophe

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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.

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musings, Ottawa

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.

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freelancing

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.

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help i'm a geek, video games

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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.

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business

Okay, this being reported as fact on several web sites, but I’m seriously hoping it’s someone’s clever joke and TechDirt and Engadget fell for it.

This is what I hope, anyway.

Apparently, someone has just obtained a patent for a smart phone, that’s a “mobile entertainment and communication device” and is now suing RIM, Nokia, HTC, Sony Erricson, Motorola and um, basically every cell phone and PDA maker you can think of…

Assuming this is true (I’m still clinging to hope that it’s a sick prank) I’m hoping this will be the proverbial straw the breaks the camel’s back and U.S. courts will finally put an end to this twisted practice of “patent trolling.”

If not, I may just have to go out and patent a “system for managing web site content that places posts chronologically on a web page.” That’s right, I’m gonna patent blogging and you’re ALL going to have to pay me! Mawhahahaha….

…sometimes I disgust myself.

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business, mobile

It seems it’s no longer possible to be taken seriously as a web site unless you’ve got some kind of social network attached. Case in point: I Can Has Cheezburger has launched a beta version of it’s own social network.

Now along with browsing pictures of cats with funny captions and commenting on them using atrocious spelling and grammar, readers can set up their own homepage on the site, create a friends list and tag photos as their favourites.

According to comments on the site, “It’s full of win,” despite a few bugs.

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help i'm a geek

So Kara Swisher of the Wall Street Journal has announced she’ll only be writing for the web from now since she’s tired of killing trees.

A noble sentiment, certainly, but it’s sparked some discussion as whether or not journalists should completely ditch paper and embrace new media.

I’ve liked the idea of online publishing since Salon launched more than a decade ago along with quirky zines that were posted in Usenet groups. But right now, there are several flaws in the system that are creating resistance among so-called "old media reporters."

The big one is money. I get job postings for writers delivered through my RSS reader from multiple sources and some of them are mind-blowing. The main one I see are blogs looking for writers to post 400 words per day, six days per week. The pay: $125 per month.

Um, excuse me?

I’ve met freelance journalists who consider one dollar per word to be a pittance, I wonder how they’d react if they knew there are some well-trafficked blogs out there that only for two dollars per article.

Now, Ms. Swisher can certainly do what she’s doing. She has had more than a decade of building up credibility and a loyal readership while receiving a steady pay-cheque. Those of us starting out now have to do things like work nights in call centres while researching and writing during the day.

This is one reason things are hard for new-comers like myself.

Another point of contention I’ve heard from some veteran reporters is the multi-media aspect of the Internet. Management is increasingly expecting their staff to not only file a text article, but they also want a video to throw up on YouTube as well - making the reporters drag handy-cams to their interviews with no extra compensation for the video work.

Never mind the fact that having to film can seriously cramp a journalists interview style - people tend to behave differently when there’s a camera pointed at them.

Finally, I have one more person beef with writing online: search engine optimization or SEO. Essentially, SEO involves writing an article in such a way that more people will come across it while searching on Google.

So rather than writing for the readers, you’re writing for an algorithm that indexes information. This usually means repeating keywords over and over instead of looking for creative synonyms and somehow working in Paris Hilton, no matter what the article is actually about.

Of course, all of this said, I tend to go where I can get monies - some print publications like to give them to me and some web sites and blogs give them to me, so I’m all over the place. I’m just not about give up on print media since, at the moment, they send more shiny pennies my way.

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freelancing, media, musings

In a few short hours, 2007 will be no more and it’s been years since I’ve written those good old top “whatever” of “insert year” lists. Since I’ve read, seen, heard and played maybe one book, movie, album and video game respectively this year and I’ve been focusing more and more on technology with this site, I’m going to list off just that…so here we go:

Google Everything: I’ve been a big fan of Google’s Gmail since the service was still invite-only but this year they took it even further, improving the contact feature, adding IMAP support and many other small improvements to the web interface.

On top of that, there’s Google Notebook which allows me to keep a unified repository of notes and can even access stuff I jotted down on my cell phone.

The improved Google Reader is probably the best RSS feed reader out there right now and finally, when I was seriously thinking of switching my e-mail and calendaring work to a service that would work better with my Blackberry, they made Google Sync, which automatically synchronizes Google Calendar to my Blackberry.

Oh, and on top of all that, there was also Google Gears, which allows some of these fancy web applications to accessed offline.

Plus an interesting third-party added a great to-do list to Gmail which brings me to…

Remember the Milk: Earlier this year, I decided to get more organized and at the same time was looking for ways to use my trusty computers make this easier.

Enter Remember the Milk, a web-based to-do list. At first, it simply had a cool interface and again, I was able to access it from my cell phone so I was never without my list of tasks. But it kept getting better. They added direct integration with Google Calendar giving it the much needed task management function…but the tipping point came earlier this month.

The RTM team created a Firefox extension that added a nice to-do list right in Gmail’s interface…and since I keep Gmail open in a separate at all times when I’m online, this means my task list is always open, too.

So, that’s it? A bunch of web services, you ask…pretty  much. The iPhone isn’t available in Canada without an excessive amount of effort and doesn’t hold much appeal to me anyway. Vista and Leopard? Please, I have no interest in bloated eye-candy.

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