Blogs by Deovitalis

Cuil

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:48:12 -0400

I know this is now considered “old news”, but I’d like to talk about Cuil (pronounced “Cool”) because of their claims of being “better than Google”. I tried entering the ultimate query into Cuil: My name. The result? My blogging profile came first, followed by some other social networks with my name — but there was no link to my own website. Google, on the other hand, lists my website first; then other social networks follow.

The second test was an easy one for Cuil, I typed the word “Toronto” and the results looked much more promising. I was given an drop-down menu on the right, which gave me more information about the city. But, I was still happier with Google’s results. I got a map, and all the relevant results I wanted — such as the government site and Wikipedia.

To be fair, Cuil is new and probably hasn’t had anywhere near as much time as Google has to index all of the Internet’s pages. Many publishers will optimise their sites for Google, which again might help Google receive better results. Cuil was started by ex-Google employees which may give it a helping hand to get going as they know a lot of inside info that they can use, sort of...It’d be hard to prove that the secret of web indexing was a stolen idea.

I’ve personally been a massive Google fan for several years. Prior to Google I used MetaCrawler and WebCrawler but eventually made the jump to Google. The main reason they are the leader is because they are one step ahead and have the most functionality all on one site. Google has maps, pictures, news, blogs, medical info, even free Wi-Fi. I’m actually happy to see some competition coming in for Google — because, one day, like the others above, something will be better than Google.

Windows 7

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:25:20 -0400

Remaining somewhat elusive thus far Microsoft engineering managers of the new Engineering Windows 7 (E7) are writing a blog to “open a line of two-way communication between the Windows 7 engineering team and Windows developers.” They are offering little bits and pieces of what we might expect in Windows 7, but to be expected; they aren’t willing to jump out on a limb and divulge to much information on the chance that what they advertise doesn’t come to fruition. (Something we’ve seen happen in the past from Microsoft).

However, in a blog post yesterday, Microsoft said it will finally give developers their first in-depth look at Windows 7 at its forthcoming Professional Developers Conference (PDC) which is held October 26-29, and the annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) the following week, both of which will be held in Los Angeles. The blog states that they will offer over the next two to three months “behind the scenes development” scoops of the release of E7, and will continue after the release. The expected availability of the OS at this point is slated for early 2010.

So far, what they have said about E7 is that it will have touch screen features, and it would have technology that would include linking its Windows Live services right to the OS. If they manage to include touch screen features it’ll be just like we see on the movies and in television shows; the limitation I see is that to enjoy those features everyone would be looking at major hardware upgrades in addition to the cost of the new operating system.

So far though, the blog site reads more like a users manual than an actual blog. It doesn’t seem written in any kind of personal “this is what we’re doing...this is what is working...this is what really didn’t” sort of way. Regardless, it may be interesting to keep an eye on it to see what is on the horizon for the new OS.

Recalll the Recalls

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 19:10:16 -0400

After hearing about all the recalls of products made in China being recalled it makes me wonder if anything will actually be done about it, or will it just fade away like all the previous product recalls?

It angers me that the most recent recalls are children’s toys with lead based paint. How are these products even being allowed to be brought into North America? Children are notorious for putting things in their mouths, so shouldn’t toys be the safest?

There are government agencies who are supposed to oversee product safety and manage recalls, but one would wonder if they are actually doing something about all of these recalls? Are the affected companies paying the government off? I’m just thinking past recalls they appear in the news so people are alerted to the recall but as soon as the news is out nothing happens; the error is corrected and the manufacturing continues in China. If anything is going to happen I think it’s going to be up to consumers to change this.

I’m a firm believer in “you get what you pay for” and realize that products made in North America will cost more to the consumer due to cost of labour; however us saving a few bucks is going to be at what cost to our lives / security?

Walk into any store anywhere in Canada and pick up the 1st item you see, I would put money on it that it was made in China. Items from toothpaste to peanut butter to clothes to toys are all made in China and have all had at least 1 recall in recent years. Led Paint on the most recent toy recall; and the peanut butter had salmonella bacteria found in it, how does a salmonella bacterium get in peanut butter anyways?

I guess what I’m saying is it’s a fact of life that our jobs will go overseas but it’s up to us, the consumer to slow the process down. The most we can do is watch our products as closely as possible and hope for the best.

Gaming Console Wars

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 09:35:58 -0400

Now that the new gaming consoles have been out for a while now who is winning the war. Well its hard to say who is winning because what is the battle over. Is it over Graphics, Innovation, content, design or just hype.

Well first we have to look at who is fighting in the war. First we have Sony Playstation 3 which has the biggest price tag of all the consoles. It has top of the line amazing graphics and great potential for content once they finish all the upgrades that were supposed to be shipped with it. In the innovation category it falls short it is pretty much the same console as the ps2 just better they haven’t really changed a thing as far as format. Where this machine gets its leg up is that it comes with a built in Blu-Ray player, which for a standalone player would be at least $900. This also helps support its large price tag.

Next we have the XBOX 360 this was the first of the new consoles to emerge. Again this console has great graphics and lots of content. The 360 would have done a little better if it shipped with its HD DVD player built in instead of standalone. This machine is everything the PS3 is minus the blu-ray and the big price tag.

Next is the Nintendo Wii the most innovative of all the consoles. The question with this console is has innovation taken all power out of the Wii. The wii have great Graphics but nowhere near the graphics of the PS3 or the 360. It does have the unique Wii-Mote which almost takes it out of the running with the other two consoles and makes it something different. I can say from personal experience this console can tire you out.

Everyone of these consoles has some form of internet capabilities and they all have their strengths and weaknesses, but the real question is which one wins the war. This can’t be measured by unit sales or how much money the corresponding company makes because of the difference in price and the things each console uniquely offers. This question can never be answered because it is a personal consumer war it is all about what you want and what works for you. SO take you pick and have fun

iPhone to Canada?

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 08:29:27 -0400

The Apple iPhone is probably the most advanced wireless device that has come onto the consumer market to date; it is a full featured touch screen smart phone no bigger than a current cell phone.

As usual Canada is behind in seeing the technology coming our way. Rogers’s communications (including Fido) is the only company capable of offering the iPhone as it is today as it’s the only GSM provider in Canada. They are staying very quiet about any negotiations between them and Apple and their plans to bring this technology to Canada. To me this indicates that they are doing something, but just not ready to talk about it yet.

I’ve read many articles that indicate that Apple wants a lot to do with the plans and pricing that companies offer for their device, even as far as getting a percentage of profits from the plans. An example of the basic plan with AT&T is only $59.99 and it includes more than the top plans in Canada even come close to (unlimited data, text messaging, and several hundred minutes with free evenings/weekends). Unlimited data is almost unheard of in Canada with TELUS offering an unlimited plan for just over one hundred dollars. I personally think that Rogers is afraid to do this, all wireless companies work together to make sure they are not undercutting the market and lowering their prices makes investors think that those services aren’t worth much. As consumers it would be great if they did this because it would force the other companies to follow suit and the prices for wireless communication would come down making it better for us.

Many studies have shown that wireless data is used more than wireless voice so if we start to see plans in the $50.00 mark making it affordable for pretty much everyone, I think it will spark a whole new generation of data devices coming on the market bringing the prices down further.

I’m a huge believer that consumers really do control the world but it’s only a matter of how well the consumers stick together.

Google

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 08:16:31 -0400

Google must be one of the most creative companies in the world. I don’t think I’ve gone a day in years without hearing the word Google at least once. What companies would pay millions for Google has for free, their name burned into everyone’s head. Even my 83 year old grandmother knows what Google is.

The Google idea started with university students who decided to make a new search engine; in early 1998 after a donation of $100,000 dollars it was official. I remember at first it was no different than the other search engines of the time (web crawler, Lycos, excite) but it very quickly grew beyond those. I think it must be creative minds that they have, however they are one of the best employers in the world with their own culture. They are constantly coming up with ideas and tools either on their own or through acquisitions such as picture sharing, translate, maps, news and much more. One of their biggest achievements was their Gmail service which offers practically unlimited storage which by comparison to other free email services such as hotmail.com and yahoo.com doesn’t even come close. Since then they have taken over youtube.com which has millions of visitors per day and they are vowing to keep it a free service all supported through advertising. There is now talk of Google creating a cell phone service which might possibly be a free services all supported by advertising. This is the type of creativity that I’m talking about, who in their right business mind would even think of it, let alone create a business plan to show it will work. Rumour has it that they are already building infrastructure in the United States and are in talks with Canadian carriers to piggy-back on their networks should they proceed with this service.

To me it’s amazing what this company which started out so small and with no money using open source software has turned into in only 8 years. They have engraved their name to people of all ages around the world so their services will get used, and somehow it’s all done at no cost to the end user. It’ll be interesting to see what they think of next, I’m sure it will be just as amazing as some of their latest ideas.

If anyone asks you how you found something, just remember to say “I Googled It”

Airline Regulations

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 09:51:36 -0400

I’ve always been surprised at the amount of old aircraft being permitted to fly. The recent plane crash in Thailand is another example of this; the budget airline One-Two-Go was flying a fleet of MD-82’s which are up to 27 years old. Many experts say there is no set lifespan of aircraft; A 20 year old plane that has been maintained properly with the proper maintenance schedules can be just as good as a new plane. I tend to disagree. There have been accidents in the past where the failure of the plane is actually the body itself not a part that has worn out. In 1998 Aloha airlines plane had a crack in the aluminum body just due to age and the stress of numerous take-off and landings. When the plane reached 19,000 FT the crack expanded and the roof of the plane ripped off killing one person. This to me looks like an age related accident as the plane involved was 19 years old at the time. In 2002 a 23 year old China Airlines plane broke into several pieces at 35,000 FT killing everyone board.

What I would like to see is other countries adopt the same regulations that we have in North America to help protect our citizens flying on airlines in other countries. In the incident this week only 1 Canadian was on the plane and she managed to get out safely.

Some countries have little to no regulation for airlines which see the highest accident rate, a good example is Cubana Airlines Cuba who has a 265% higher accident rate than Air Canada, simply because Transport Canada regulates how often planes are overhauled and how long they can fly before being taken out of service in Canada.

Unfortunately there is no international body that regulates our safety where all the same rules are followed. Many accidents are caused by airlines taking shortcuts to save time or the decision to save money. The most unfortunate thing is that nothing is done from some foreign accidents unlike North America and it’s possible the same thing could happen again, allowing more innocent people to be killed.

Facebook

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 10:08:11 -0400

A few years ago the big thing was the dot-com boom where it seemed that everyone wanted to start their own e-commerce website to try to make a quick buck. Of the millions of people who tried to start something only a few survived; and the dot-com boom has slowed down.

Recently it appears to be picking up again, again with Facebook; similar to Youtube and Google it was started by a young university student and his roommates as a project. The original plan was to create an intra-university website to see other students on the local campus of Harvard University. Facebook was launched in 2005 and was used for it’s original intent, the ability to see profiles and send messages to other users; due to it’s success in2005 it was expanded to other Ivy League universities by early 2006. It was just over 1 year ago in September 2006 that Facebook was opened up for the world to use. The original features included free profiles, free messaging between users and the ability to “poke” other users which alerts them that you were checking them out.

The part that amazes me is how fast it grew in the past year. In 12 months Facebook has added 34 million users which puts it in the one of the fastest growing websites in all time. To break it down it’s just over 93,000 people per day or 65 people per minute!

Like Youtube, Facebook stills offers its features free of charge to the users due to non-intrusive advertising with small banner messages on the main site. Other sources of their revenue include small pay per use services such as a gift service and advertising services for garage sales etc.

There have been many rumours about a sale of Facebook which would have a massive price tag of up to 1 billion dollars which would allow the 23 year old founder to live a happy life without the need to work another day. Mark Zuckerberg the founder of Facebook has killed these rumours by saying numerous times that he has no immediate intentions of selling his website. For now Mark and his two 23 year old roommates will continue to run the company and make millions of dollars doing so!

All Hype no Substance

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 12:02:22 -0400

So on September 25^th the biggest hyped game ever was released. If you don’t know what I’m talking about it is Halo 3. After the success of the first sequel Halo 2 everyone was expecting the world from Halo 3, especially since it was the first halo on XBOX 360. The things people were expecting was advanced graphics, more detailed Levels, longer single player campaign and great new Multiplayer advancements.

As far as advanced Graphics go Halo 3 has definitely missed the mark in a big way. If you look at halo 3 and Halo 2 side by side the graphics are only marginally better when they could be a lot better.

More detailed levels missed the mark as well. The levels and maps are different than Halo 2 and marginally more graphically detailed but the same concepts. They have added a couple new weapons but that’s pretty much it.

They didn’t really make the single player levels any longer or more in-depth, but they did add a great four player co-op option for the single player campaign. This is the one of the most interesting things they have done because before when you linked your XBOX with your friends and played multiplayer it was kind of boring if there were 4 or less of you, this way you can play through the story.

The biggest thing they added to Multiplayer is the map creation but I feel this could have been added to Halo 2 with an update and it would have been just as good. The worst thing about online multiplayer is all the little kids who won’t play properly and shouldn’t have XBOX Live because they are too young they ruin the game. Other than that again it is just like Halo 2, so my question is what is the point?

So when you decide to buy this game just know that it is a good game but it is not everything it has been hyped up to be.

Government e-Waste

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:11:36 -0400

The federal government of Canada is thinking about launching a program which will see electronic waste (computers, fax machines and crap like that) recycled instead of put in the dumps (most likely in Michigan). The Canadian Press reported that the government wants to curb the dumping of electronics as many of these products contain toxic elements such as lead, cadmium, and mercury.

While the above paragraph may leave you feeling all warm and fuzzy about Harper and his awesome plans to save our earth, there’s a few points that are beyond me.

1: The program will not be up and running until March 2010

Why would it take 2 years to figure out how to make a truck NOT drive to Michigan? I know it’s the government and everything takes time but, they could be out of office before then. How on earth can it take two years to figure out how to take a computer and put it in a blue bin instead of a garbage bag? I’m sure that there are a logistic issue like who is going to take the equipment and where they are going to put it, but 2 years to figure it out? Alberta already has a government run recycling program? And there are industry run programs in Saskatchewan, B.C., and Nova Scotia? And we are not leveraging the leanings and logistics from these why?

2: $35 Million over 5 years to do this?

This is probably more than they spend on new technology in the same period and this amount is ridiculous. Here's a thought, hire students. I don't think it takes much training to toss a computer in a box labelled “Old Computers”

3: The Canadian government doesn’t even know how much e-waste is being generating right now.

There is no documentation on the amount of waste created at this time. They have no idea other than to say that "...we do know that there is a high volume of electronic equipment generated from Canadian federal government operations". Do they even know how many computers they have? How many photo-copiers? The reason that this program will cost $35 mil and take 2 years is probably because half the money and time will be dedicated to an MBA sorting their trash.

Once again, thanks for nothing.

Reward Programs

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 09:09:47 -0400

I love loyalty reward programs that many stores and companies offer, however some of them are hardly tangible. Based on my personal history only 2 of the major Canadian reward programs have ever done anything for me; Airmiles and Canadian Tire ‘money’

Airmiles is a great program similar to the Airmiles program in the UK, you can collect ‘miles’ at a large number of stores / companies and then redeem your ‘miles’ for merchandise, gift cadrds, or travel. What makes this program better than others you ask? The program has reasonable targets, you can redeem for a free movie pass for as little as 50 ‘miles’ so the goal is attainable. Redeeming for Travel is what really makes the program worth it. A round-trip flight from Toronto to Montreal for example is 850 ‘miles’ and you only have to pay taxes (approx 60 dollars) and they will get you a round trip flight based on availability. The only stipulation is you are required to book with a minimum of 7 days in advance. Earning points is easy which makes getting to a free flight easy, in a typical year I earn enough points for a free round trip flight to go visit my family in Winnipeg which is 1150 ‘miles’. Most stores that offer airmiles give you 1 ‘mile’ for each $20 spent plus they all offer bonus ‘miles’ so for example if you buy 2 of a certain product you might get an additional 15 ‘miles’ so they can add up quickly.

The other program that I like is the Canadian Tire ‘money’. This one is the most attainable in small amounts. Each purchase made with Cash or Debit earns you Canadian Tire ‘money’ which can be used towards payment of any future purchase. The beauty of this program is you can use as little or as much as you want. If you buy a pack of light bulbs for 5 dollars you might earn 10 cents of Canadian Tire money. You can then turn around and buy a Coke and use that 10 cents towards your purchase. The only thing I dislike with this program is that you need to keep the Canadian Tire money until you need it and it ends up all over the place, car, bedroom, office etc. I would like to see it become a loyalty card vs. Paper money.

Unlike the 2 programs mentioned above; there are a bunch of other programs out there, but would require you to spend thousands of dollars before you are able to redeem your points for anything.

So go out and reward yourself

Bank Fees

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 08:32:00 -0400

My recent trip to the bank machine and all the attack ads for the upcoming election we’ve seen saying who’s broken promises got me thinking the other day about the plan to regulate bank fees. What happened to all the talk and hype about it? The last I heard is that the finance minister was going to send a letter asking the banks to justify their charges and that was it. Did the Canadian public get pacified from a letter?

Bank fees have been a hot topic in households across the country but again nothing is ever done about it. Sure if you keep minimum balance of five or ten thousand in your chequing account they will waive the fees; I don’t know about you but I’m not in a hurry to withdraw my money from investments where it’s working for me to put it in my account that’s paying me no interest for keeping my money there just to save these fees.

In a typical year you can spend thousands of dollars on banking fees; they start at 25 cents for using interact right up to 50 dollars for an NSF fee, on top of your monthly fee which can be between 4.95 a month right up to 25 dollars depending on what services you request from the bank.

The fee that gets most people is the one or two dollar charge incurred when you use a bank machine. It’s worse when you use another bank’s machine they charge you a fee and so does your bank. Jack Layton, leader of the NDP was the person who raised the issue with the government but shortly after doing so all the hype dropped off the face of the earth. It almost makes me thinks that they banks paid the government and media to make the issue disappear.

Unfortunately, like gas prices, in this situation the consumers are stuck! We need to use bank machines, they are a part of day-to-day life. The only hope we have is someone in power gets fed up enough with paying people up to 4 dollars to take $20.00 out of a machine and does something about it!

eBay

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 08:31:23 -0400

I’m not sure if any of you have ever used eBay to sell stuff but if you do you may have noticed that it’s gone downhill pretty quickly over the past year or so. I’ve been a registered member of eBay since 2003 and have used it to both sell and buy items. When I first got into it in mid 2004 I thought it was great. I listed an item for sale and had communication with potential buyers right up to the end when someone won my auction and I shipped the item off. The other person in your transaction is supposed to leave feedback about you so other people know what you are like to deal with.

I used eBay mainly to sell stuff from 2004 to late 2005 and had no problems; by 2006 I noticed that the personal touch of eBay had left and it had turned mostly into companies and con artists. My first encounter with a possible con was where someone had bid on and won the item I had listed, I then received an email appearing to come from pay-pal for the total amount due saying that it had been deposited to my account followed by an email from the buyer with their address asking that I ship it express ASAP. A few things tipped me off, firstly they sent the money without me sending a bill with the shipping charges, and the fact that they wanted me to ship it urgently; as it turns out that the email was fraudulent and just because it didn’t seem right I was able to protect myself. Obviously this con works because it’s a known thing on eBay. After the above incident I’ve tried a few other times and each time I’ve received some type of email from someone trying something fraudulent usually someone in Ethiopia who wants me to end the auction and send it to them using the most expensive shipping possible and they will wire transfer me money.

I guess what I’m getting at is eBay has turned from a wonder site that was to revolutionize the world and internet and it’s regressed to some website that I personally try to avoid. What went wrong here; did eBay allow the sellers to turn too commercial, or did they not take enough protection to protect against fraud? Either way due to the few nightmares I’ve almost encountered from this, I’ll take my local buy/sell magazine over eBay anytime.

Conditioning

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 22:54:14 -0400

The other day I was visiting family who have cable internet. I’ve always been the go-to-guy when it comes to computers within my family, and I found it amusing when they said “my internet is so slow”. I did some testing and yes it was slow, almost down to dial-up speeds of 56k after a few calls to tech support to address the issue it turns out is an area wide problem.

I guess the part I find amusing is how we a society have become conditioned to expect fast internet, dial-up speeds just won’t cut it anymore. If we look back 10-12 years when 56.6kbps was the normal (maybe even higher than your friends with a 33.6 or a 28.8K modem) we thought that was simply amazing, but now it just won’t do! Those were the times when a webpage would load then the pictures would work their way in, line by line and a song took three to five minutes to download yet we thought it was amazing to have that type of interconnectivity.

This I guess can be compared with almost anything; gas prices would be another example; 10 years ago we were paying 45-50 cents a litre and thought 55 cents was high; now we’ve been conditioned to believe 95-99 cents per litre is a bargain.

So now we’re conditioned to expecting 5-7mbps internet and 99 cents per litre for gas I just wonder what we’ll grow to expect in 10 years. At some speed the internet just can’t get any faster where it’s noticeable, 10mbps and 20mbps won’t make much of a difference to someone just doing online banking only for the people who are downloading large files. And hopefully in 10 years we won’t be relying on gas for our cars, but for those people who have the “oldies” I’m sure it will not be cheap, maybe 2 dollars a litre as the demand for it drops and gasoline becomes a specialty commodity. I guess it’s how we look it; is the glass half empty or half full?

Elections

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 23:10:11 -0400

The Ontario general election is coming up in just a few short days and the shear cost and organization of the election process amazes me. I have been hired on for the day to work at a polling station again; having worked both provincial and federal elections in the past I still haven’t gotten past the organization and cost it takes to hold an election.

Firstly there is the cost; the average person working at a polling station for the one day will make 250-350 dollars including their training, an average polling station in a urban centre will have 8-10 people and the polling centres are pretty much at every school and church making the cost just of the staff enormous, this doesn’t take into account the staff who work pre and post election preparing the documents, signage, advertising etc.

Part two is the organization of the whole event, an election basically a project with a deadline that absolutely must be met. The people running the election need to make sure that they have all the supplies, staff, advertising, and training ready to go for that one set day, which sometimes can only be a few weeks away. In Ontario the election was called with only 4 weeks’ notice giving elections staff only 19 working days to get everything into place.

The real kicker is how manual the election process still is; only a few municipal elections have gone to a computerized system which eliminates much of the paper material and manpower. Provincial and federal elections are still done all via paper, each ballot is counted and kept in an envelope that only a judge can open. In addition to the ballots there is signage and brochures that are printed that all end up in the recycling bin at the end of the one day.

I guess it’s easy to see how some of the Federal elections can reach past the $200 million mark. With technology in every aspect of our lives I’m surprised that it hasn’t shifted more towards technology, we even trust technology with our lives in the hospitals, but yet we haven’t progressed to moving our election to an electronic platform. Why are we so behind?

Global Warming

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 21:28:55 -0400

This weekend turns out to be one of the warmest thanksgivings I’ve experienced in a long time. Today the temperature reached 35 degrees with the humidex rating; the strange part is that it’s almost the middle of October.

The part that I find scary is that the signs of global warming around all around us; this weekend saw cold in the east and west parts of the country and extreme heat and severe weather in the central part of the country.

The government as well as other environmental groups are making it easy for people to change their ways and go green, from rebates and discounts on low emission cars, reducing your water and hydro consumption to free programs such as organics collections in many cities. The programs are there but I’m not sure that many people are taking advantage of them. I personally started slowly; it took incentive (not the changing weather but a rebate) for me to start. I started by changing all light bulbs in my house to the compact florescent bulbs which reduced my monthly hydro bill by about ten dollars a month. I then moved on to recycling more products, stuff that I would have simply thrown in the garbage (tv dinner boxes for example) I’m now putting in the recycling; I wonder to myself if it’s because my city has limited me to one bag, or is it me really trying to make a difference.

The critics say that Canada’s not doing its part with our current government saying they oppose the guidelines set out in the Kyoto protocol, I disagree. While the conservatives say they oppose the Kyoto, they are working on programs, like the rebates and incentives mentioned above, to help get people’s minds changed. I think as a society we can change our ways we just need a little push, I feel I’m a good example of that, starting thinking I can’t make a difference as a single person, but now with the incentives my mind has changed and I have started living a healthier life and doing little things that add up, all to help the problem.

Lower Prices?

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 20:22:09 -0400

The dollar is now over $1.04 USD but almost 3 weeks of our dollar being at parity Canadians are still paying higher prices than our neighbours south of the border. I do understand that maybe the cost of shipping and other expenses may be a little higher, but some products still have a 25-30% difference. As Canadian consumers, we need to negotiate on the prices we are facing, and apply pressure to the retailers to help resolve this issue.

Some retailers are moving towards rebates, discounts, and price cuts to prevent Canadian shoppers from buying the same items south of the border. Wal-Mart, Canadian Tire and HBC all announced that they will start to cut retail prices by between 5-15%; however it may take up to a year before we start to really see the difference.

I applaud Mr. Flaherty for applying some pressure to retail during the past few weeks, it needs to be done and Canadian retailers need to act fast. 80% of the Canadian population is only 200km from the US border which isn’t too far, especially if you are planning on big ticket items. What were to happen if all Canadians were to travel to the United States for their Christmas shopping? It sure wouldn’t be a pretty thing for Canadian retailers nor the economy - but as for consumers.. well it’d be more money in our pockets. It’s already hurting auto-sales where there are thousands of dollars difference between identical cars, the retailers located closer to the border will start to see the loss of sales volume first as people protest and drive across the border.

Again I’ve always said it’s up to consumers and I think the retailers are getting the message! I’ve noticed that they are starting the price reductions with big ticket / hot items such as the PS3 which has dropped almost $200.00 in the past two weeks. Lets keep the lower prices coming!

Condom Tester?

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 21:51:05 -0400

While flipping channels on the TV last week a news story caught my eye! They were doing a story on how a condom manufacturer, Durex, was looking for “sexual intercourse enthusiasts”; I don’t know about you but I’ve never seen that on a job board before. By this time I’m now giving the television my full attention because I just couldn’t understand if it was real or a joke. As they went a representative from the company explained that it’s “technically” not a job because getting paid for sex would make it prostitution however each application who’s selected will be entered into a draw for $1000 dollars making it more of a contest.

Durex plans to select a panel of people and send different products in the mail for them to try, once they have tried the product they are being asked to respond via a website to say what they liked or didn’t like about the product.

They are selecting their panel by how creative their answer to “why do you want to be a condom tester” is. I don’t know about you but when I think of products being tested I think of the hydraulic thing that IKEA has to test their chairs or floors not people having sex to win money. Apparently every product needs to be tested including adult products J When it comes to condoms being tested I would think they would be filled with fluids to see if they leak or with air pressure to see if they break similar to the youtube video; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvCI0MQUpSw but never actually “tested”

You have until November 4^th to apply for this dream job by going to durexcondomtester.ca and apply to become a condom tester; it’ll defiantly be a conversation piece for your resume and cover letter with future employers.

Interac Chip Cards

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 22:09:03 -0400

We’re all starting to see the newer debit pin pads that have a slot in the bottom for your card. Most retailers are using them as a handy way to hand your card back to you but starting this month that slot is no longer going to be a transport vehicle for your card. Interac is rolling out chip technology and is working towards a complete phase-out of magnetic stripe for banking and debit use by December 2012 across the country. The Canadian payments system will be utilizing an established chip standard which is proven technology currently in wide use around the world.

Complete migration to chip technology will take several years and the timetable for the introduction of chip will vary from one financial institution to another, given the vast number of Automated Banking Machines, point-of-sale terminals and banking cards across Canada which must be upgraded and distributed.

My concern is the durability of the chip cards, I live in a city where a pre-paid chip card called “Visa Cash” was used; we had to load a set value on the card at a loading machine and then we could use the “VISA Cash” card by popping the card into a machine accepting the amount and pulling it back out. It was used by many local residents during the initial testing phase followed by our transit service starting to use the cards for monthly passes. Aside from the time it took to load the cards they became very unreliable as one little scratch or a bit of moisture (from being in pocket) would sometimes prevent them from working properly. I’m sure that they have thought of all the concerns and that the technology has been fully tested prior to a national roll-out but it still makes me wonder.

Apparently the new cards will continue to have the magnetic stripe to allow full use of your debit card during the rollout phase (some places may use chip, some may use swipe) and also so cardholders can use their cards in other countries that do not use chip technology.

Google Street View

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 22:56:11 -0500

Google Maps recently came out with a new feature to their online map system called "street view." It allows anyone with a computer and an internet connection to see a street view, as the name suggests, as if they were standing at the exact location they have searched.

As you can imagine the tool has been the centre of controversy amongst those who are in the know on internet security, privacy and law. As these people begin to stir and complain about privacy issues people in the cities it’s allowed in are now starting to complain. As of now it’s only 5 american cities who have the street view system in place, but i’m sure if Google follows their business plan they will expand the system to other cities in North America. Google currently has street views in San Francisco, Las Vegas, Denver, Miami, and New York City.

I personally am intrigued about this technology as to how it’s done, that’s my next personal project! I need to figure it out for myself before I can really come up with my final opinion, for now it seems harmless. I don’t think that people should be scared of this new technology; it’s not a live image...yet. As I mentioned I’m sure Google would like to have every street in every city covered by this tool and ultimately have it be live, but there is just no infrastructure for this yet and I personally don’t believe there will be for a long long time.

For now you don’t need to worry about your boss checking Google to see you out shopping when you’ve called in sick, or someone being able to click your address on Google to see you sun tanning in your back yard, maybe we should all spend more time embracing this technology instead of fearing it. If you want to see this for yourself try going to http://maps.google.com and picking any address in one of the cities listed above. Happy spying J

More Price Drops

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 23:13:43 -0500

Last week Chrysler Canada announced they will boost cash incentives on vehicles to address concerns that we’re paying more for cars here than in the United States. They are only the 2^nd automaker behind BMW to date to adjust prices based on our rising Canadian dollar. By now we’ve all seen the stories of people who are going south of the border to buy big ticket items including cars. A good example of the price difference we’re used to would be the Toyota Corolla LE; in Canada its listed for $23,995 and the exact same car in the United States is sold for $15,615. If you factor in our dollar which is at a record high of $1.07 and buy the American car it would only $14,621 Canadian dollars which is a difference of almost ten thousand dollars!

Chrysler gave comparisons showing that many of their new prices are lower than the American list price which has put a good taste in many consumers’ mouths! Just as we’re starting to see the ripple effect of the price drops at retail stores I hope this move cascades to the other auto companies in Canada quickly.

The part that is making me angry is that for years Canadians have been gouged and now that the pressure from both consumers and our government is on the companies are using fancy excuses to cover up why they are not changing their prices so quickly; we’ve seen excuses from “we’ve already paid for that stock” to “the books and magazines need to be reprinted before we can use the lower price”. I personally want to stop the excuses and get on with it. Not saying that I expect lower prices than the states but defiantly some parity or close to it would be appreciated. Wal-Mart seems to be the unlikely leader, they just announced that starting Nov 1^st they would be selling magazines and books by the “American” list price. Way to go!

Ontario Speed Laws

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 23:39:57 -0500

Ontario recently passed a traffic law that allows police suspend a driver’s licence and to seize a vehicle that is stopped for going anything over 50 km/h over the posted speed limit. Keep in mind this is also after you’ve been given a hefty ticket with fines that can go up to ten thousand dollars!

Personally I often get in the middle lane of the Ontario 400 series highways and go the “flow of traffic” which I’ve seen as high as 140 km/h in bad weather! I’m all for this new law and have seen the majority of traffic slow so the average speed has dropped since the it came into effect. The only thing i’ve really noticed is that the people who are going over the speed limit REALLY stand out because 80% of people are going much closer to the posted limit of 100 km/h. They police are using more patrol cars and aircraft to enforce the situation and I think they are doing a great job with several hundred cars pulled off the road.

Recently the OPP commissioner Julian Fantino has started lobbying the government to modify the law to drop the suspension and vehicle seizure limit to 30 km/h over the posted limit. Again I fully agree with this idea, hopefully the government will think so as well. For now the message seems to be getting out to most of our fellow drivers but there’s still a few who are in such a rush to get somewhere 5 minutes faster than the rest of us that they are willing to risk their lives.

The only other thing that bothers me about speed on the roads is the people we pay to enforce it; I’m sure most would agree that “most” police officers drive like they are above the law and it really irritates me. I’ve seen on many occasions when I was going the “flow of traffic” had police cars pass me like I was standing still with no lights on, just on their way somewhere. Should they have their vehicle seized too?

Date Rape Drug?

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 21:50:48 -0500

So yet another recall out of China! Last week there was another massive toy recall from China which just blows my mind. You think after all the recalls we’ve seen over the past few months from Chinese manufactured products that they would be watching very carefully what products they are using to manufacture goods coming to North American Countries.

Previously the hype came from children’s toys that contained lead based paint; they must have thought they were doing better by removing the lead based paint and upgrading to use a chemical that converts itself to GHB commonly referred to as the “date rape drug”. I’m just baffled by the latest news; here we are just a few weeks before one of the busiest toy shopping periods of the year and we’re now finding out that Chinese toys are coming along with a free sample of the date rape drug. It can cause severe harm to adults let along children.

The toys are being sold as “AquaDots” in North American and another name in Australia. If they are eaten the chemical they are coated with has a reaction and basically becomes the date rape drug which can cause dizziness, unconsciousness, coma or even death. That sounds like a great Christmas peasant to me.

I really think that consumers need to pressure the government to ban all Chinese imports until they can prove to us, the North American countries, they Chinese exports are going to be safe for North American consumers and their families. Even if the governments don’t do it, one of the major retailers like Wal-Mart has enough power to make the manufacturing companies start acting responsibly and making safe toys. In the interest of saving a few dollars the retailers have managed to make the manufacturers overlook safety for profit.

Hippo Hype

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 22:05:06 -0500

Over the past few weeks there has been a huge fuss generated by the death of Hazina, a six year old hippo that died shortly after being moved from the Denver Zoo to the Calgary Zoo for breeding. I agree it’s unfortunate that the hippo died but my question is. Is it worth the fuss everyone is making on the news?

This Hippo is not the same hippo that made the news from Vancouver last year with the animal cruelty case over a cage and that was featured in the TELUS ad “I want a hippopotamus for Christmas” This Hazina is different.

Both zoo’s and the transportation company have lots of experience in relocating animals safely, the transportation company stopped every few hours to check on the live cargo to make sure she was ok, nothing seemed out of the ordinary at the time. Once she arrived in Calgary things were different, she couldn’t stand up and eventually died.

Vets have speculated that the hippo was probably laying in the same position too long causing muscle damage that released toxins into her bloodstream, but it’s not been determined. My only concern is the amount of airtime that this story took. It was on every news channel and every newspaper that I looked at.

No zoo or transportation company wants this kind of publicity and would take every effort to avoid it, if there was even a doubt that something would go wrong I’m willing to put money on it that they wouldn’t have done it, Zoos aren’t trying to cheerfully kill of their inventory.

People die or get injured every day and it doesn’t draw the attention this death did; it’s a hippo not a human! Sometimes even with the best of intentions and all the precautions in place bad things still happen.

Remberance Day Being Forgotten?

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 22:22:05 -0500

Is Remembrance Day being forgotten? I’ve noticed over the past few years that you see less and less poppies being worn by people. Not only are we seeing fewer of them being worn they are also becoming harder to buy. I remember back five to ten years they were at every cash register you went to as well as schools handing them out. The other thing I notice is that the moment of silence is just that, a moment.

Just yesterday there was a story published in one of our national news papers that had a poll result showing that fewer than 41 percent of Canadians have plans to attend a remembrance service which is down 8 percent from last year. If we’re dropping at that rate it could be completely forgotten within a few years.

I think the problem is that many Canadians now especially the younger generation don’t have anyone that they are directly related to (parent or grandparent) that fought in either of the world wars. Also is the education system failing at teaching kids the history behind our freedom? Very few people, myself included, could name any of Canada’s war heroes like Billy Bishop, the pilot from Ontario.

With Canada being involved in the war in Afghanistan it’s possible we could start to see a rise again with Remembrance day as there are children and spouses who’ve recently lost a loved one; but I don’t suspect we’ll see this effect for a few more years. The federal government has dabbled in the idea of making Remembrance Day a statutory holiday but I’m not sure that it will help. Making it a stat holiday will probably only make people look forward to having a long weekend similar to the Victoria Day holiday often referred to as May 24. A great way to honour a dead queen!

Future Shop and Best Buy

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 10:56:31 -0500

I started my Christmas shopping this week which I’m very proud of. Each year I say I’m going to start early but end up rushing around with crowds at the last minute!

I’m a frugal shopper so I always shop around for the best deal and one of the things tha frustrates me more than anything is companies who own more than one store to compete aginst each other. There are many of them, Rogers and Fido, Claire Accessories and Icing Accessories, Sobeys and IGA but the one that frustrates me the most is Future Shop and Best Buy. They weren’t created as a result of a merger or takeover, they were created for something to do. The stores sell basically the same products, have the same financing company, same web design company and even use the exact same fine print in their policies except they change the name.

Both Future Shop and Best Buy offer price matching where they will beat the competitor by 10% of the difference and I’ve only ever price matched between the two of them. To me this seems extremely stupid business practice; undercut your own company so you can give consumers who are smart enough to figure it out a 110% credit of the difference between the exact same product sold at the store they own down the street. They also both offer a store credit card which was originally backed by Wells Fargo Financial and this past summery was changed to HSBC Financial. The card has the exact same features and promotions and approval process, but it only works at the store it was set up for; eg. Future Shop card cannot be used at Best Buy or the other way around, another limitation of this weird organization. Let’s just say you have a Best Buy card and decide you’re in the market for a new Stove and want to finance it (both credit cards offer no payments for 1 year on major purchases). Appliances are the only thing that Future Shop carries that Best Buy doesn’t, because you don’t have a Future Shop card you would be forced to apply for another card from the same finance company. This for me would be reason enough to shop elsewhere so I don’t have 2 store credit cards with the same company.

Just strange that’s all, I would totally get it if one company was a furniture store and the other was electronics but they are exactly the same. I’m sure something is working for them otherwise they wouldn’t do it, but I just don’t get it!

Vancouver Taser Incident

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 12:29:03 -0500

Everyone is blaming the RCMP over the most recent taser incident at Vancouver International Airport; but should they be blamed?

I’m not sure if anyone has had a chance to watch the video yet, I watched it on CTV last night. The video starts out showing the man, who doesn’t speak English, walking back and forth yelling. He then picks up a table and throws it and breaks it then attempts to pick up a check-in computer by the gate to throw it through a glass window but people talk him out of it. A few minutes later the RCMP show up and walk up to him (within arm’s length) and within seconds of them showing up they hit im with the taser which knocks him to the ground. All of the officers then jump on the man (who’s already on the ground) and handcuff him. They then realize he’s unconscious and call for help.

In my opinion I think the police need to react quickly with any situation at an airport as airport security should be very important. This man has just come off an international plane and we don’t know really what the situation is so yes a quick reaction was needed. Taser I’m not sure, there was 3 or 4 officers all within arm’s reach of the man so I think maybe all of them could have grabbed him and handcuffed him rather than the taser. I’m not a police officer but the man wasn’t waiving a gun around or had a bomb strapped to him so that’s personally what I would have done. That’s the beginning so at this point I’m still on the side of the RCMP.

However here’s where my opinion changes; the man is now on the ground and not moving, does it really take all of the officers to jump on him with all their weight to put handcuffs on? The worst part is they don’t seem to be moving too quickly when they realize he’s unconscious; aren’t all police officers trained in CPR and first aid?

I guess it’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out during the course of the investigation. Maybe watch the video for yourself on CTV and draw your own opinion.

Google Gas Pumps

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 12:57:29 -0500

I bet all of you, at some time or another, have been lost and had to seek directions from random people, or people at gas stations. Well, Google has developed an answer to that, of course leave it to Google. You are probably aware of Google Maps and how they work. Using the same technology, Google plans to incorporate their maps at gas stations across the United States over the next few months.

They recently announced a deal with a company called Gilbarco Veeder-Root. This partnership allows Google to provide their Google Maps service on over four thousand internet enabled gasoline stations in the United States over the next year. These maps will allow users to search for driving directions, directions to hotels, shopping, food and other points of interest that they may want to go

Google also has said that the plan includes the option for the user to be able to print out these maps free of charge (so far). The maps won’t be ad-supported at launch but they will offer oddly enough, coupons; so both Google and the gas station are profiting from it somehow.

The attached picture is what it’s supposed to look like when it’s installed and ready. The only gas station that I know that’s ready for this technology in Canada is Petro-Canada as they have recently started to install television at the pumps.

This goes back to my many posts about Google and their creativity. It amazes me with the stuff they come out with and they manage to find a way to generate a profit while offering their services free of charge. Maybe other companies should get the Google team working for them, or maybe Google could open a retail store like Google-Mart? The longer you stand at the till and watch a commercial the cheaper your item will get?

Utah Taser

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 23:45:06 -0500

Last week I wrote about tasers and how police are using them and since then more and more stories are popping up all across North America about how they are being over used or used when not necessary.

Just today I watched a video of an officer pulling a family over for alleglidaly speeding, the driver was calm and asked questions about why he was pulled over and the officer, who was on a power trip, wouldnt tell him, then taserd him and arrested him. The man again asked “why am I being arrested” and the officer wouldnt tell him that either. When a backup unit arrived the officer then acted like he did everything he should have and he was told he did a good job.

I’m no police officer or lawyer but I know what I saw on that video was wrong. You should be told what you’ve been ticked for, and if arrested why you’re being arrested. The man even asked “what are my rights” and the officer wouldnt tell him. I’m just appauled at this officers actions, after you watch the video you definatly will be as well.

http://www.youtube.com/v/IMaMYL_shxc

The man involved has now sued the state police and as a result all the charges have been dropped except the speeding ticket, for now. I think this video will serve as perfect evidence that he was not treated fairly by that officer and I personally hope he gets a nice settlement for this harrassament and assult. The probelm is that even if this officer, who’s currently working, is found as doing something wrong it’s very unlikely that he would loose his job which is the part that makes me so angry with our justice system. Why do police forces back up their officers who’ve clearly acted wrong and assulted someone with a taser just because they were on a power trip?

Firefox 3

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 23:54:10 -0500

Are you still using Internet Explorer? Personally, I’ve moved on to Mozilla’s Firefox a long time ago but that doesn’t mean it’s been a bed of roses. So I AM looking forward to Firefox 3. However, as that’s still not available, I’ll settle for the beta version. That’s right, last Tuesday, Mozilla launched the first official beta version of FFox 3 and here’s some of the ‘new stuff’.

First off, it’s been a well-heard of complaint of users that Firefox has some memory leak and performance issues. So it’s nice to know that Mozilla is trying to address this on FFox 3. Installing it on my Pentium 4, 3.40 GHz, 2GB of RAM PC, it does seem that web page loads are quicker. I have yet to test things thoroughly (and use it on other systems) but I’ve read from the guys at Wired that they’ve noticed that Ajax-heavy sites like GMail refresh almost unnoticeably.

As for new features, FFox 3 sports a new one-click bookmarking system called ‘Places’, which features social bookmarking tools, and tags and ’starring’ options to organize your Favourites.

To get rid of your false sense of security on the Web, FFox 3 gets rid of the padlock symbol from the address bar since it can easily be used by scammers anyway. In its place, FFox 3 features a favicon you can click to view the site’s connection status and other info.

Compared to previous versions of the web browser I think it’s going to be a big step forward. Will it ever catch up with Internet Explorer? Probably not. The thing that Firefox doesn’t have is the deployment strategy that Microsoft has. They get to seamlessly put their software virtually every computer out there free of charge. As a result of that most sites are created for Internet Explorer and will probably always keep Firefox in the background.

Flickr

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 00:01:21 -0500

Flickr, one of the most popular social picture sharing sites on the Web, just launched a new geo-localization feature that will surely make you as happy as a pig in mud. While Flickerers (If I can call them that) are already able to use a world map to zoom in to a particular place and see some of the best pictures taken in its surrounding area, the new feature called “places” now allows them to see images from specific locations.

For instance, let’s say I want to see some shots that were taken in the region of Montreal, Canada. I only need to head over to the "places home page", enter “Montreal” in the search field on the top of the screen and press enter. This will take me to the “places” page dedicated to Montreal.

For now, around 100,000 locations are indexed in Flickr’s database, but I’m sure that with time, many more will appear.

Flickr now has up over 2 billion photos posted to their site which can cover pretty much any subject you can think of. That's a lot of photos. Its sheer magnitude illustrates the challenge that Microsoft and Google face in trying to reproduce what Flickr has built.

They are mostly personal pictures which doesn’t apply to anyone other than you, your family or friends. The new places features will allow us to tag our photos so they can be linked to that location so if someone searches your location or nearby they will see what pictures you’ve taken there. It’s like the Google street view but having the pictures being supported by up loaders like us J

Try it out! Who knows, you may even see a familiar face or two or even 2 billion faces or places or things about anything and at least you will know where they are located ;)

Return Policies

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 19:23:51 -0500

Most retailers do have some kind of return policy. Canadian Tire, being one of the largest national chains in Canada, and wanting to be as consumer friendly as possible, has a very generous return policy. They will take almost anything back, subject to a few very specific terms and conditions. The terms and conditions are printed quite clearly on each and every receipt issued and in giant letters on a six foot by six foot sign board behind the counter at the returns desk.

That sign says, in part, "if you do not have your original purchase receipt, we will refund you the lowest advertised selling price for that product over the last 90 days in the form of an in-store credit only." Seems clear enough for me; however, apparently it wasn’t clear enough to the person in front of me.

Some people seem to think that rules they expect everyone else in the world to follow don't apply to them? Regardless of the fact that she did not have her receipt, this woman wanted a full refund to her credit card anyway. Regardless of the fact that the store's official policy was staring her in the face in six inch tall letters, she wanted special treatment. She wanted the rules not to apply to her. A store credit just wasn't going to work for her. "I'll never use it," she protested. "I never shop here."
I felt like yelling at her “Um, helloooo? You bought the freaking thing here, didn't you? “

The girl behind the counter offered to call a manager over to talk to the woman, and I was able to step up to the counter. I gave the frazzled girl a big smile, and announced, in a very loud voice, "I would like to return this item. According to the clearly stated and prominently posted return policy, I understand that because I was irresponsible and lost my receipt, I will only be offered an in-store credit, and that's just fine with me." The girl behind the counter had a huge smile from ear to ear and continued to process my refund / exchange. I don’t know if the lady heard me but I hope she did.

Snow Squalls

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 20:55:37 -0500

I live in Barrie, Ontario which is about 45 minutes North of Toronto. We’re in an area due east of Lake Huron / Georgian Bay which is prone to large snowfalls and is referred to as a “Snow Belt”. Every time the wind blows across the lake and it’s not frozen yet, we get snow dumped on us.

Snow Squalls are much more dangerous than regular snow. Initially because they are defined as "a brief very intense snow storm with heavy winds and near whiteout conditions." All of those things together make this quite a treacherous condition. A squall also seems to come out of absolutely nowhere, whereas with a snow shower you can see it coming and also still see through the snow--visibility is not so limited. There may even still be blue sky during a snow squall, but because of the intensity of the wind and snow, you wouldn't ever know it.

The other reason that squalls are so dangerous is that once the snow starts falling, people freak out and forget how to drive, that there are other drivers on the road, and that they will loose control quickly and plow right into the snow bank. The thing that bothers me the most is how people around here freak out every time it happens. It’s a fact of life, its winter in Canada and it’s quite likely to snow. We had a squall come in off the lake and it dumped ½ foot overnight and the schools cancelled the busses, the college closed it’s courses. I’m hoping that it’s because it was the shock of the 1^st good amount of snow for the year but really we’ve seen way worse than that. It reminds me of Toronto freaking out when they got a little bit of snow and called in the army a few years ago. My message to them is to just deal with it, slow down, drive safe and deal with it.

Westjet vs Air Canada

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 22:33:52 -0500

I’ve been flying for quite some time and over that time I have seen many changes in the Airline industry. I remember the days when everyone was served peanuts, a hot meal, and a drink all as part of the basic service. There was 1^st class and economy and the only difference was they had bigger seats, concierge service, and a better meal. Obviously things have changed and the airlines aren’t able to afford to do these things without raising the price. Now you get a free drink, and depending on which airline you choose you may or may not get cookies or pretzels.

Canada is now down to two major airlines, the incumbent Air Canada and Westjet. These airlines provide the same basic service, to fly you from one place to another for a fee, but as far as their customer service this is where they are on opposite sides of the world. Air Canada hasn’t changed much over the past twenty years. From the moment you check in it’s just “ok” service, the flight attendants act like they don’t want to be there and god forbid you ask them for the “can” of pop. Westjet on the other hand amazes me every time. Check in is what it is, but when you step on that plane the atmosphere is 100 times better than Air Canada, they don’t have different classes everyone is treated the same, the flight attendants are like flying comedians and try to make being stuffed into a metal tube darting through the clouds fun. I’m pretty sure that they don’t get paid more than Air Canada so they must be happy for other reasons. Maybe the company is treating them so well they feel there is no need for a union and that they can work and be happy about it.

Both airlines are very close in fares, but because their staff tend to wow the guests, that’s what customers are called at Westjet, I personally would pay up to 25 dollars more each way to fly with them for the service they provide.

USB Gadgets

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 22:59:56 -0500

Every day I hear people in the office complain that it’s too cold or it’s too hot and that they find it difficult to work. Well browsing the net I’ve found a few technology advancements that might make it easier for people who can’t type because their hands are cold.

The first device is a pair of heated mittens that get their power from plugging into your computer’s USB port. There are 2 design versions: a man and a woman version. They have the finger cut-outs so you can type, but I’m not sure that it was well thought out as it arises a question: if your fingers are bare, and the palms are in warmth, is it enough? Actually our palms freeze so rarely, but fingers always really need some warmth. The maximum temperature is an impressive 53 degrees.

But if the gloves aren’t going to work because the wire will be in your way or the wool will make you itchy just buy yourself a USB heated keyboard to type on. It looks and feels like any run of the mill keyboard except it has one added bonus..It heats up within a minute or so. This is definitely more practical than the idea of heated gloves but again I’m not sure that just touching the tips of your fingers to something warm will help. Cold hands are something that everyone has experienced, and I’m sure you will probably agree with me not the most comfortable feeling. When your hands are cold you need to warm the entire hand until you’re comfortable. But for fewer than 50 dollars I’m sure it will help the situation so not totally useless.

All in all, if you find these gadgets useful for yourself - that will be great! Maybe the gloves will be very relevant for a kid that spends much time playing computer games in a cold room. But they can be also given as a funny gift, play a joke on your friends or co-workers!

HumanPets

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 23:26:30 -0500

I’ve spoken about Facebook before but I think one of the newer applications deserves a small revisit. It’s called HumanPets and the name pretty much sums it up. It’s an application where you earn points and you can buy and sell people for points and even make profit. Anyone who knows me knows how much I hate third party applications on Facebook but this one actually got me. I ended up adding it just because everyone I know was talking about it and I have spent hours on the stupid thing! Not sure if that makes me any happier about it or not LOL.

Every person who starts with the application is given start-up money and a value. In a way it’s like Monopoly, let’s say you buy your best friend for 50 points you can “pet” your friend or dress them up or give them treats or just do nothing with them. If another friend sees you have someone worth 50 points they can buy them from you for 60 points giving you a 10 point profit. If you want them back you need to re-buy for 70 points etc. It’s basically selling your friends for money which in some people’s eyes may make you a pimp :P Really if you develop a strategy with it you can end up making money quite quickly. I for example have been buying people I don’t even know, and because they are new people take them back from me but I’m taking the profit from the deal.

Even funnier is that I’ve now seen videos on YouTube about this application where some people have taken it so far that they are actually getting upset and crying about things that are happening on this application. This one girl I saw was in tears because her best friend got bought up by someone else and she didn’t have enough points left to buy her back. Maybe the “game” should come with a warning similar to what’s written on slot machines to help people with addictions. Check it out...Just know that I have my price if you’re interested :P

Christmas Shopping

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 23:27:14 -0500

Now that we are now down to ten days until Christmas the last minute crunch can really begin. Unfortunately for me this is one of the most frustrating things about the holiday season. Dealing with the crowds at the stores drives me crazy, nothing worse than trying to go to Wal-Mart this month. Step one would be trying to find parking in the sea of cars outside, you get parked and start your hike through the sloppy mess to the store. You get into the store and you are behind a bunch of people in a rush to buy stuff but they don’t know what so they are constantly stopping and turning around and just in your way. It doesn’t stop there, so you finally get to the shelf where your item should be and you find out it’s been sold out! You end up buying some other stuff so you didn’t waste your time and work your way to the checkout and get yourself in line, to find the lines moving incredibly slowly because most stores refused to open all their checkouts and only have a few people working. When you finally get closer you realize you’re behind an elderly person who’s bank issued them a debit card! So it takes them five tries to pay using their card and then you’ve finally done it.

Unfortunately it’s not over yet, still have to make your way back to your car to find out that someone has scratched it because they are too lazy to put the cart back or the felt like hitting your car with their door because they didn’t care. I really enjoy the holiday season but the insanity that it causes in the general public drives me crazy, people aren’t like this any other time of the year. I guess everyone just needs to take it easy, plan your tips accordingly and just relax. The holidays are supposed to be fun!

Nova Scotia Smoking Ban

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 23:42:22 -0500

Nova Scotia became the first Canadian province to ban smoking in cars where anyone under the age of 19 is present. I applaud this new ruling, other cities have done this but this is the first province who’s taken the initiative that will come into effect in early 2008.

The province has taken many steps to cut down on the number of it’s citizens who smoke which include higher taxes on cigarettes and cigarette products, banning point of sale advertising and special promotions like two for twenty dollars etc. This move they insist was not to help cut down on smokers or make it more difficult for them, it was a move made to protect the health of young people who may not have a choice. Many parents I’ve seen interviewed on the news claim that they wouldn’t do it but obviously people are doing it or these laws wouldn’t need to be created and put into place.

Nova Scotia said that the law will be enforced through the ticket system and will carry fines in an escalating manner based on number of offences and may even include children protection investigations to be started. The only concern that I have with this is that the police may have a hard time enforcing this law. Unlike seat belts it will make it much harder for an officer to see if someone is smoking in the car unless they are starting at each person in every car. When people smoke they don’t hold the cigarette to their mouth the entire time, might be in the ash tray or their hand out of sight. I suppose there will be the dead give away of the cars we’ve all seen with the tar colour film smeared all over the back windows or the cigarette being thrown out the window of the car in front of you which would be reason for an officer to look if there are children in the car. Either way I still applaud their move. Other provinces are right behind Nova Scotia.

Santa Letters

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 23:54:08 -0500

Some Ottawa children have been receiving nasty letters from one of Santa's elves this week. Postal workers and the Ottawa police have been trying to find the "rogue elf" who has been the sending insulting letters to children on behalf of Santa Clause.

According to reports, at least ten nasty letters had been delivered to little girls and boys in the city. The letters are a standard form letter that the “elves” send to kids who write to North Pole via Canada Post. Many of the volunteer Canada Post elves hand write a PS at the bottom which usually has something to do with the kids originally requested. In these cases the letters have said stuff along the lines of “you’ve asked for stupid stuff” and “your dad is g***amp;rdquo; just stuff that would offend any child. The scary part is that most parents would simply see the letter come from the North Pole and let their children open it knowing what it is.

The children's wish lists were sent to a special 'North Pole' address, and received and responded to by employees of the Canadian postal force, as well as volunteers.

In response to the nasty notes a spokeswoman for Canada Post said: "We firmly believe there is just one rogue elf out there." She has also indicated that they will be able to track the person down who faces disciplinary action up to and including termination. In addition to being terminated the Ottawa police are also waiting for the elf to be identified so he can be charged with public mischief.

As a result of the incident the popular "Write to Santa" program has been suspended in Eastern Canada until the offending elf has been identified and dealt with. The program receives over a million requests each year and it’s unfortunate that one person can do something so stupid that would ruin it for kids waiting for Santa to write back.

Holiday Shopping

Sun, 30 Dec 2007 17:54:13 -0500

I hope everyone had a good holiday, mine was good but the holiday season reminded me about the commercialism involved in the Christmas season. As a kid I remember when Christmas was more about spending time with family and relaxing; now the holiday has turned into a cash grab for retailers in a mini-competition to see what their fourth quarter numbers will be. This has been compounded by the parity with the US dollar where Canadian retailers are now competition with the US retailers for the same consumers. Considering that over 80 percent of Canadians live within two hundred kilometres of the US border this threat is a real one.

We have online shopping which is exclusive to the Canadian retailers but with the shipping charges that they have all started this can be a deterrent to many shoppers. The only real advantage of online shopping is that you can avoid the traffic, lines and dumb people when you have to go the store.

This holiday season wasn’t as bad as recent years, maybe it’s partly to due with the holiday being on a Tuesday, it didn’t seem to be the big “last minute rush” that we’ve come to know. I think the last minute shopping was spread out over a bigger period which helped relieve the worst of it; however, I still found myself coming across the long lines, crowded isles and dumb people.

When I refer to dumb people I’m referring to the people who push a cart around but they don’t really know what they want and when they see something interesting they leave their cart blocking the isle while they look at something acting completely oblivious to the fact that they are not the only person in the store.

Each year I keep telling myself that I will start shopping earlier to avoid all this madness but I never seem to do it because somehow I end up being out on the 24^th looking for those last few things. Well I think I might be off to a good start this year as I made it out on Boxing Day and started for Christmas 2008!

Highway Drivers

Sun, 30 Dec 2007 17:56:19 -0500

I just recently travelled from Toronto to Montreal to visit some family for the holidays and it just reminded me how unsafe many other drivers are! With Ontario’s new speeding laws that are now in place the average speed of the highway flow defiantly has slowed but there are still some people who haven’t got the message.

My adventure started in two phases with the first phase being unsuccessful. On the first attempt we were trying to beat a winter storm with snow, ice pellets and freezing rain but we lost that battle and decided to turn around after only twenty kilometres due to the poor driving conditions. I was happy to see that most of the other cars stuck in the bad weather made the responsible decision to slow down to a safe speed, which at the point I decided to turn around was twenty kilometres per hour. The part of this night that I remember was the people who thought they could still drive at the posted speed limit or even higher because they have an SUV. They all have a false sense of security with their trucks and they don’t realize that having a four wheel drive doesn’t improve your driving skills and the only thing they are really good for is traction to get started if you’re stuck. They don’t seem to realize that they have the same brakes that every other car has but much more weight. People were flying by, trying to squeeze between the other cars who were going much slower to make their own lane (by this time the three lane highway was reduced to a set of tire tracks).

Phase two was the next morning after the salt trucks had a chance to catch up with Mother Nature and the roads were bare and dry. The general flow of the highway was approximately 120 km/h but there were people who insisted in driving much faster. The part that bothered me the most was the people who would intimidate you by tailgating. I was near Kingston, Ontario and was in the left lane passing someone at my set speed of 120 when a guy in a truck came flying up on me and was probably less than 2 feet from my car. I passed a police car who was looking for people going above the flow of traffic when this was happening. The police car instantly pulled out and pulled him over. In all reality he would have avoided his ticket if he would have just stayed back a bit and waited until I was able to move over to let him pass. His loss J

Public Wi-Fi

Sun, 30 Dec 2007 17:58:01 -0500

A few years ago was the big boom about public wi-fi and hotspots with everyone believing that we could go anywhere and have wi-fi for our laptop computers and other portable devices. Here we are nearly 8 years later with wi-fi not really being any further advanced.

It started with the home wireless network which many of us have and was eventually adapted to coffee-shops. The home network has grown at a crazy rate with pretty much every house on every street having its own network. It’s hard to find a street in any city that doesn’t have some sort of wi-fi signal that your computer can pick up but as far as hotspot growth it’s not much more impressive than it’s start and they can only be found in coffee shops, libraries, hotels, and some airports.

There has been talk of some cities introducing their own city-wide network so for a small monthly fee you can pick up an internet signal anywhere within the coverage area similar to a cell phone but this issue seems to keep disappearing from the headlines; almost makes me think that cable and telephone companies like Shaw, Rogers, Bell and Telus might be trying to stop it for fear of losing customers subscribing to their 45 dollar service. The advantage of a city-wide service would be wi-max technology where you can make a VOIP phone call anywhere your portable wi-fi phone can get a signal allowing people to use the technology to further save money, but for some reason I just don’t see it coming in the soon future.

The only other development in portable internet is from Rogers Cable and Bell Canada who are now offering “portable internet” which relys on a cell phone signal within a specific area. This is similar to Air-Card service which is available from many of the cell phone companies where the Air-Card plugs into the side of the computer to provide the connection rather than an external modem that works like your home modem. The problem with this portable internet is that’s close to $100 per month it’s out of reach for most consumers.

I guess we’ll have to make do for now and just keep waiting for the technology to catch up. At least it’s catching up with us rather than catching up with it.

GST Cut

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 18:56:37 -0500

In 2006 Steven Harper and the Conservative government announced they would be dropping the Goods and Services (GST) tax gradually over the next few years which was a campaign promise used during the election. At first I personally thought that it was a good idea and that it would help keep money in my pocket but after the first phase was implemented I realized it was more of a nuisance than a gift.

In January 2007 everyone lowered the GST as promised and it made routine items such as coffee and newspapers weird meaning instead of paying a dollar and a quarter for a coffee we were now paying 1.23 making our pockets full of pennies.

In retrospect I think I would have rather had a reduction to my personal income tax which would be more noticeable as the GST cut of one percent has only saved me a few dollars this year.

In less than 3 hours the GST will be cut an additional percent to 5% which will again make all items we’ve been conditioned to paying for even more awkward and allow retailers to raise their prices 1% which basically takes away from any potential savings that we’d end up getting.

These cuts in the GST are only really helpful for big-ticket items that most low-income to middle-income families make very rarely such as new houses and high end cars. Someone who is waiting to buy a new Land Rover is probably happy because if they wait 3 hours they will save a nice chunk of money but if they can afford a high end car like that a few hundred dollars probably isn’t a big deal.

I guess it’s a nice tactic if you want votes in the next election but to save me a few cents per day I’m not going to complain too much but if we have such a surplus lets put it where it’s needed and if they still see a surplus then give it to us in the form of personal tax breaks or mail a cheque to each of us the week before the election, that’ll get a vote for them !

HD War

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 17:58:16 -0500

The war between HD DVD and Blu-ray could be nearing an end and it looks like HD DVD might end up keeping Beta company in the graveyard of failed formats.

The writing's been on the wall for a few months now: Availability of movies on Blu-ray disc continues to outpace HD DVD offerings. Blu-ray penetration has a solid leg up on HD DVD thanks to the Play Station 3's ability to play Blu-ray movies, and prices on stand-alone Blu-ray players are falling rapidly, so much so that the PS3 will soon no longer be the cheapest Blu-ray player on the market.

But the final nail in the HD DVD coffin could well be Blockbuster's announcement that they will limit their selection of high definition DVD rentals to Blu-ray format. The news was speaking only of the U.S. stores, but it's safe to assume Canadian outlets will follow in the New Year. To me when the continent's biggest video rental chain backs one format over the other, I think it's the beginning of the end.

This is good news for just about everyone except Toshiba, Microsoft and the handful of other companies that were backing HD DVD. Sony bet the success of the PS3 on Blu-ray becoming the standard, and if it had failed, it would have been a serious blow to the PS3's long-term appeal. Most consumers don’t want to have two competing formats; it makes it confusing and difficult when certain movie companies are backing one and not the other. It means you might not be able to see a specific movie if it’s not made in your format. The sooner one goes away, the better.

This doesn't mean your HD DVD player is suddenly obsolete. But to me this signals that the wind is strongly blowing in Blu-ray's sails, and I think it's only a matter of time before the last couple of HD DVD holdout studios like Universal start releasing movies in Blu-ray too. If I were planning to take the high-def DVD plunge any time soon, I'd be heading into the Blu.

Google Knol

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 19:09:26 -0500

Google will soon be launching “Google Knol” which is a new a knowledge archive similar to Wikipedia with the exception being that authors of content will be tracked more closely and ads will optionally be allowed to run on listings with authors getting a share of the profits. It seems without a doubt that this will be a successful venture because authors will get paid to post content. Nobody complains about getting paid for their work, or atleast I don’t!

While it is logical for Google to have such a service it is obvious that as services like Wikipedia and others grow in size, they dominate search results. Already Wikipedia dominates top spots for so many search keywordd It is only a matter of time before the top six results on a page are from Knol, Wikipedia and Yahoo! Answers.

While it is difficult to fault Google for wanting to get into the search repository business I find it tough to believe that such a service is needed. Wikipedia does a fine job as is, I personally almost always do a search for wiki as I know the format is consistant (eg. Airport Security, Wiki) and I will always get the search results that I want.

However, if people know they will receive cash incentive to provide content it may make the results of Knol more accurate than Wikipedia. From this prospective, Knol could be beneficial to the greater internet community.

Still, this move just means it will be that much more difficult for smaller players to show up on search results. Keep in mind these companies will be forced to buy more and more Google ads as this happens. So for Google this is truly a win/win scenario. These facts just further back up my thoughts that Google knows what they are doing. For a company to provide services to consumers free of charge and still make millions of dollars in profit they must be doing something right.

Seasons

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 21:16:54 -0500

Most of us have a favourite season of the year but if we had the same weather for all 12 months, even if it was the weather we like the best, I don't think anyone would like it.

The island of Jamaica is supposed to have some of the best weather in the world for 12 months of the year but you couldn't pay me to live in Jamaica. There's just so much beautiful warm weather I can take. I like a little of this but then I'd want a change.

I think if we had a vote, fall would probably be most people's favorite season. Some people who like fall call it autumn. I never use the word "autumn." It sounds pretentious.

The down side to fall is it's the beginning of the end of everything. Flowers die, the leaves dry up and come off the trees, water in the lake gets too cold to swim in and vacation's are over. First thing you know someone's trying to sell you a Christmas tree.

I love a good cold winter! Nothing disrupts our lives in a better way than a really heavy snowstorm. It can be hard work but shovelling snow is fun and satisfying. There's nothing that gives you a better sense of accomplishment than shovelling a path through the snow to your front door.

Cold snowy weather is better in every way than hot, dry weather. Snow makes the whole world beautiful too. I feel sorry for the people who live in Florida all year round or kids who never owned a Flexible Flyer or rolled snowballs to make snowmen.

Winter clothes are more satisfying. There's just so much clothing you can take off when it's hot. People reach the boundaries of decency very quickly disrobing in hot weather. Winter clothes, on the other hand, give you the feeling you're defeating the elements, like a tent in the rain.

The worst thing that can happen to weather is when one season intrudes on the other. We don't want summer in the winter and that's what we've had in Ontario since Christmas. There's been too much hot weather and I'm tired of wearing my summer clothes this winter.

Cell Phone Chaos

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 21:29:11 -0500

Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876 and that changed everyone's life. People could exchange information instantly, even when they were a long way from each other.

The cell phone is not an invention. It’s an improvement on Bell's invention, and nothing in my lifetime has changed the way we live in an unimportant way more than the cell phone has. There are now more cell phones in use in the Canada than there are landline telephones.

It's amazing how often people want someone else to hear what they have to say. They carry this tiny radio broadcast unit with them everywhere they go. It's as if we all had something important to say to each other.

The public telephone booths that used to be on every big city street corner are rapidly disappearing, and the ones that are left the rates are going up, just over double.

People behave strangely talking on the phone too. They might be 1,000 miles away, but the callers always act as though the people they're talking to can see them. They emphasize their words with gestures, not everyone has a video phone yet so I’m not sure what they are doing.

We must be getting more done than we used to, because a lot of people do two things at once now. They walk and talk, tyey carry things and talk, smoke and talk, and drink and talk on the telephone..

We all used to sit down when we were on the telephone. Not anymore. People just keep going.

Even young kids all have phones. When they are finished school, they all call home, asking for money, I suppose.

It seems possible that we might all be just as happy if they had never invented some things we have. If Alexander Graham Bell hadn't invented the telephone, we could spend more time thinking about something important and less time talking to each other about nothing.

iPod Tax

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 22:18:02 -0500

Last week the Canadian Supreme Court announced they won’t hear a case involving extra fees for iPods and other MP3 players across country, ending a dispute over a so-called iPod tax, but rekindling debate over the legality of file swapping. With this new proposed tax by the Copyright Board of Canada, said in late 2003 that iPods and other hard-drive players were being used to copy music as well, and imposed a fee of up to $25 on the devices.

I’m glad to see that they have decided to throw the case out as it’s another cash grab for the music industry which already receives more than they should. I realize that artists have lost money due to the digital age but they are still making several million more than you and I. Personally I’ve seen many artists who simply don’t care that they didn’t make an extra hundred thousand this past year. It seems to be the music companies and associations who wants more money, probably so they can buy up other companies to try to own the world.

A MP3 player tax would be just one of many taxes that have been proposed in recent months. The Toronto bottled water tax hasn’t gained any ground either. It seems that the consumers aren’t willing to pay any more money in taxes and fees. If anything adding additional fees and taxes makes people work hard to avoid them which may even include not buying them from Canadian retailers and start shopping from the United States. These companies need to be very careful at what they are doing. I think the need to realize that file sharing is here and it’s not going anywhere anytime in the soon future. They’ve proved this point over and over as soon as one company gets shut down 5 others open, they just cant keep up with the consumer demand.

MacBook Air

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 22:37:50 -0500

The Apple Macworld Conference and Expo officially kicked off last week and Apple CEO Steve Jobs took center stage and unveiled two new products, including an ultrathin laptop called the MacBook Air, and a few software updates to its existing products, including the iPhone.

Holding a manila envelope, Steve Jobs pulled out a tiny wafer-thin MacBook Air. This is "the world's thinnest notebook," he said. It measures a mere quarter to 3/4 inches thick and weighs only 3 pounds. Even at the laptop's thickest area of 3/4 inches, the MacBook Air is thinner than today's slimmest laptops such as Sony's TZ series, which measure one and a half inches thick, according to Apple

Part of what makes the MacBook Air so thin is that the components used inside are smaller than those in other notebooks. The Intel Core Duo processor, for example, is 60 percent smaller than Intel's current Core Duo chips. The MacBook Air's CPU sports the width of a dime and it's as thick as a nickel, said Intel CEO Paul Otellini.

Another reason the MacBook Air maintains its svelte figure is the lack of an optical disc drive. However, users will be able to buy an optional USB-connectable SuperDrive (CD- and DVD-burner) for an extra one hundred dollars. However lately with online streaming and wireless network devices being so popular I cant think of the last time I needed my dvd drive so it might not be that bad.

The MacBook Air has an estimated battery life of five to six hours and the new notebook will be available at the end of January for $1800.00 for the base model. The price for the 1.8-GHz or the 64-gigabyte solid state drive (in place of an 80-GB hard drive) versions have not been announced. Again Apple has taken the lead and we just need to wait for PC to catch up and start using smaller components. Soon it will feel like our computers aren’t even with us when they really are J

A-Channel News

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 22:49:00 -0500

I’m getting frustrated with our local TV station, CKVR (A Channel Barrie) and the Six O’Clock News. I’ve mentioned in the past that we are prone to snow squalls that come off the lake and cause horrible driving conditions and whiteouts.

The problem I have is that this station is obsessed with the weather, it’s Canada in a snow belt and if it snows it’s not really news. Today we’ve been having snow squalls coming off of lake Huron on and off all day dumping almost a foot of new snow and creating temporary white out conditions but like I said, this is not new news.

An example of this would be the 30 minute news cast from this evening; they started out by talking about the one hundred car pile up on highway 400 between Barrie and Toronto. I agree this is news, but then they start to flog the story over and over. The first report was over and they then cut to another reporter who was at a rest stop interviewing people who were displaced from the accident. I was thinking I’d get some other news and they then cut to the weather to talk about why it happened. I gave up! I ended up watching for another twenty five minutes to see that there was really no other news except 2 clips about other things.

This isn’t the first time they have done this, there was an accident in the summer on the same strech of highway that killed a truck driver from Innisfil Ontario, they then mentioned his name in every news story that involved an accident for the rest of the summer and we just recently, around Christmas, stopped hearing his name. I honestly thought that the pile-up today would jog their memory and they could start talking about it again.

I hope they read this and realize that they can repeat themselves so much… Maybe they should cut their 1 hour news down to a 30 minute. Make it painless for everyone!

Apple TV

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 22:57:44 -0500

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple also announced that Apple TV, a box that connects your TV to the net for streaming clips and tv will now start to rent movies without the need to go to the store (basically PPV)

One of the big news items in the past few weeks was that Blu-ray appeared to have finally won the high-definition disc war. But it may have been a brief victory.

The problem is that Blu-Ray players are still very expensive and still lack support from two major studios. Apple TV is starting small with just a few hundred clips at launch; but all the major studios—Fox, Warner, Disney, Paramount, Universal and Sony (plus several minors)—have already signed on (ironic, since Sony Pictures’ parent company created the Blu-ray format). If it catches on, it could grow very fast. Remember, Apple transformed the digital music download business and could very well do the same for movies. They have also mentioned that they are seeking support from television networks to have streaming of their network shows (with commercials) but on-demand which would make time-shifting a thing of the past.

There are other movie download services, but Apple TV offers more. Unlike CinemaNow, it doesn’t require a computer—which few want in the livng room, no matter how well companies build Media Center PCs. Apple TV also provides provides access to other online content like YouTube and Flickr photos. One of the beauties is that Apple TV doesn’t lock the content to just one medium. You can move it between your TV, computer, ipod, iPhone and others.

And all of these features are way better than what you get with a Blu-ray player, which is just a one-trick disc-playing box. The appeal of Apple TV goes beyond just watching movies and plants another flag in the soil of the connected living room that electronics companies have been trying to conquer for years.

Google Jet

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 23:38:53 -0500

It's now confirmed that NASA has granted Google's cofounders landing rights for their private jet at Moffett Field. That's a NASA-run airport practically next door to Google, now making the founders the envy of other Silicon Valley execs who could only dream of the same.

The fifteen billion dollar aircraft was bought from Quantas Airlines in late 2005 by a holding company called Blue City Holdings (partly owned by one of Google’s Founders) and is flown by private pilots, even though one of Google’s founders can fly jet aircraft. At least 10 billion dollars was spent on refurbishment and reconfiguration of the aircraft reports say.

The Boeing 767 can normally carry approximately 180 passengers under normal configuration but reports say that they aircraft has been changed to include a lounge, 2 bedrooms with king beds, full washroom facilities, dining room, kitchen and first class seating for up to fifty people.

Planes are one of the worst polluters and with Google being very environmentally conscious company it doesn’t seem to make much sense to me. They do say they buy carbon offset credits to help, but no proof of that.

A lot of people have complained that it’s not necessary to spend fifteen billion dollars on such a huge aircraft but in the long run it will actually save them money and the environment. The plane is bigger so they can carry more people without the need to make 2 trips or use more aircraft so that will save on gas and emissions so there’s the environmental factor. As far as cost savings because they have bought a mainstream aircraft the parts and maintence staff are more readily available so they don’t need to spend money on specialty parts and staff.

In closing personally I don’t care that they have this plane, a lot of people are complaining about it, but if I had an extra 15 billion dollars I’d probably have my own private jet too!

Google Health

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 22:20:03 -0500

Google has published the landing page for a new service called Google Health currently under codename “weaver”. The page has been going up and down for the past few days and even folks with Google accounts can't log in yet, but the landing page summarizes the site's initial offerings:

With Google Health, you can:

* Build online health profiles that belong to you
* Download medical records from doctors and pharmacies
* Get personalized health guidance and relevant news
* Find qualified doctors and connect to time-saving services
* Share selected information with family or caregivers

It will store you information such as vaccinations, family medical history, and current medications all in one place.

I can understand why some people would be nervous about putting all that medical data online, but a central repository for personal health information could be incredibly valuable. I think it’s a neat idea but it’s very time consuming. It’s like using Microsoft Money; I always think it’s neat to have everything on one program but I never have the time to enter my entire day into the system.

Any doctor who sees you should be able to review ALL OF YOUR MEDICAL RECORDS SINCE BIRTH, but most of them can hardly be bothered to keep track of your history with them; let alone be able get all your records from every other doctor you've seen.

People who enter all their own data on a site like Google Health could at least present a comprehensive records to every doctor they visit. Plus, assuming Google finds ways to organize that data well, the site will be far easier for your doctor to scan and comprehend that years of barely legible notes scribbled on papers at medical offices.

There has been some discussion that they will work with leading pharmacies so you will be able to access your records in one place. It’s just another way that Google is a leader with innovation; somehow they can continue to offer these services free of charge to end users while making profit.

End of Smoking?

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 22:59:42 -0500

Health Canada released another of its regular Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey results and the data collected between February and June last year, the survey shows fewer than one in five Canadians over age 15 now smokes.

That translates into 19 per cent of Canadians and the percentage of smokers falls to 15 per cent amongst teenagers between 15 and 19. Having any percentage of our kids pulling poison into their still-pink lungs is unfortunate, but the figure represents a dramatic improvement since 1999, when almost 30 per cent of the 15-19 groups classified themselves as current smokers.

First came education, tied to medical research followed by the harsher effects.

The workplace was the first to go followed by airplanes, restaurants, bars, until recently smoking is banned in almost all public, enclosed spaces in Canada. They have also just started to stop smoking in private places such as cars with minors as shown in Nova Scotia.

At the same time, the anti-smoking lobby won a fight to put graphic pictures of cigarette-related diseases on packages — things like blackened lungs and ulcerated gums. It sure takes the cool factor out of a deck of smokes like a full-colour image of cancerous tumours.

Not everyone is getting the message, drive by any workplace or schoolyard and you’ll see smokers huddled by the exits, getting their fix in rain, sleet and snow. Even these huddles need to move further away, all schools and hospitals in Ontario have banned smoking on their property and other places the smokers need to be at least 25 feet from the nearest door.

The government spends tones of money on smoking such as health care, advertising and education but they still won’t make it illegal. The answer to this is because they still make profit from the taxes they are charging over and above their costs.

News Travels Fast

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 21:28:23 -0500

Another reminder of how many people are plugged into their digital data wherever they are is just how rapidly news can travel.

The news of Heath Ledger's death appears to have had its origins online so perhaps the way people shared it is only appropriate. It was announced on several news and entertainment websites within minutes and the information started to spread like Web wildfire.

Ledger's biography entry on Wikipedia was changed in astonishingly quick fashion to reflect his death. (It never ceases to amaze me how fast a celebrity death is noted on Wikipedia.) The story rapidly bubbled up to the main page of the Internet-pulse site Digg.com. Users of Facebook (including me) had changed their personal status to reflect a knowing of the news. And of course every major news organization was issuing their own online alerts.

To dig a little further, one wonders why the death of Heath Ledger generated so much buzz online so fast. Sure, he's a celebrity and respected actor but not on the level with Brad Pitt or Julia Roberts. It could be because it seems so shocking since he appeared to have no major substance abuse issues and often seemed on an even keel. What do we really know about anybody, but in a world of high-profile troubled celebrities (need I name names?) Ledger defiantly wasn't on anyone’s radar.

I wonder if perhaps it could also be because he was quite well known to the generation that's tapped into the Web and grown up with his films and other work. Many of us know where to find our friends and loved ones online at any time of the day or night, and it's often human nature to want to share certain news or gossip. Plus there's usually a compulsion to be the first to connect with as many people as possible. Either way we seem to all have a built in instinct to turn to our high-tech communication before we pick up the phone.

Moment of Truth

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 21:42:06 -0500

The Fox show called Moment of Truth offers scandal and the opportunity to watch people squirm as they answer questions "in front of America" (or at least, in front of the small portion of America that cares) But the most important question is this: Is it any fun to watch?

Well, I personally find the pacing we get the answers kind of irritating: Some robotic lady's voice says "That answer is...." and then pauses for way too long before saying "True" or "False." And some of the questions, especially early on, are pretty silly: Have you ever checked out another guy's junk in the shower at the gym? Duh. I mean, you can't exactly avoid it.

Still, it's an awful lot of fun. And for the first contestant, an ex-football player who made it even worse. The banter between questions is pretty good: "So, you're from a small town, huh? Small town guy with small town values, right? So.... (music ratchets up) Question 3: You ever hit a car and not leave a note?" Of course we all knew the answer it is yes, and more than once. This is only one of the early questions... things get tougher later.

They continued on to ask "Have you ever had sexual relations with someone on the day you met them?" (Hint: He's a professional athlete) and the answer isn't that big a deal anyways. But ask him in front of his increasingly enraged wife? That's entertainment! I particularly love the way that anyone caught in a lie goes home with nothing but angry friends and family. And yes, people do get caught in lies. Oh, yes they do.

Aside from the show dragging it on it bothers me because this is pointless, lets just say they ask a question such as “is your spouse not attractive to you” If you say “no” and the robot lady says false your spouse knows what the answer is, if you say yes and the robot says true they still know. And lastly the other option is to walk way with the money you have, so if you walk away your spouse will know you didn’t want to answer so they will still know…. So why do people lie, if you’ve committed to go on this show just go for it the harm is already done.

I’ve given up on this I just cant bare to waste any more time and that’s the truth!

Canadian Passport Process

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 22:26:07 -0500

Since January 2007, a new American law requires everyone entering the United States by air to have a valid passport. For the past year Canadians have been able to continue to use such documents as their birth certificates and drivers’ license to cross the Canada-U.S. border by land and sea but that deadline is up. I was watching a news story and they were interviewing someone from the US government and they said they were not going to extend it any further since it’s been announced for over 2 years and that if they keep extending it it’ll never become useful. I have to agree with them. I don’t agree with the policy but I do agree with their thought process

Personally I think it's a good idea to have your Canadian passport ready even if you don't plan to travel soon. Just in case you have to travel to the USA, you will have to get in the long line ups to get your Canadian Passport plus it’s a great form of ID

I recently applied for a new passport and the new guidelines in place to get once are so much easier, anyone who holds a passport and has known you for 2 years or more can sign as a guarantor for you meaning you don’t need to find a police officer or doctor to sign your documents. There’s also a trick I learned and it’s called passport online where you need to sign in with epass Canada (if you have one) and do it online which skips the line.

When you go to the passport website you can get the forms online and fill them out and print them or you can click “passport online” and fill the form out line, print it and then it makes you save it. The difference between the 2 methods is one prints a bar code on the top of your form. I went down and got into one line to have all your documents and photos checked, once you pass this line this is where the difference is. If you did passport online you go to one line and if you did any other method you go to another. The passport online line-up had 1 other person in front of me and the other method had a one hour wait. It’s because the online method you’ve already entered all your information so all they do is take your payment and pictures.

Two weeks later my new passport came in the mail no problems at all, so if you get a passport look hard on their site for their non advertised “passport online” service.

Money Transfers

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 10:16:11 -0500

Hate driving to the bank to deposit checks? A US-based company called Fiserv has developed software that will let bank customers scan and deposit checks from home.

Individuals, no matter how enthusiastic about the technology, can't buy directly and start using CheckFree Remote Deposit Capture for Consumers. Fiserv plans to sell the technology to banks, which will then turn around and offer it to customers, either as a premium service or a free perk.

The idea by offering consumer capture is that financial institutions can quickly provide an online product that will attract new customers without regard to geographic territory; accelerating expansion beyond their brick and mortar branches.

USAA, the financial services company that serves the military, has offered deposits through scanners for two years and apparently it's popular. But still sounds outdated to me.

Scanning checks is, no doubt, easier than depositing them manually, but it would be easier still to simply abandon checks for some entirely electronic system? Here in Canada the major banks have offered e-mail money transfer for a few years now. We can send money by assigning a password and it is debited from our account sent to Certa Pay (a middle man) and waits there for the recipient to claim the money.

Perhaps each bank could offer a "Pay me money" widget that people could download and install on personal Web pages. People who owed you cash would click on the widget, fill out the payment info and the money would hit your bank account instantly.

Other services have been around for a few years as well, one of the bigger ones being Paypal which is owned by eBay. If someone sends you money via Paypal it will show up in your online account instantly however if you want to have it moved to your personal bank account it can take a few days and cost you 2 dollars.

The next big thing is chip technology and RFID and I thin that’s where our focus should be going for home use equipment.

RFID PayPass - Who's Making Money

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 10:33:58 -0500

Our friends at MasterCard are working on the purchase transporter using technology from Star Trek but until that is ready to release we’ll just have to live with the new PayPass card.
I now have one of these little gems in my wallet; my bank sent it to me without asking. I’m not sure what to make of that except the banks must fee the new contactless PayPass cards are going to generate more cash for them, probably in the form of transaction fees. Banks don’t do anything for free. But then again, MasterCard did say on their site “The statistics provided below are based on MasterCard transaction data and case studies conducted with participating PayPass issuing banks.”

MasterCard research has found that:

• Cardholders spend more with their PayPass card - Increased overall usage of 24% per PayPass account. Taking the effect of reactivation into account in the issuer case studies analyzed, increases grew between 28%-42%.
• Cardholders use their PayPass card more often ñ Increased transaction frequency per account of 32%. Taking the effect of reactivation into account in the issuer case studies analyzed, increases grew between 33%-52%.
• Cardholders use PayPass for smaller purchases ñ Average ticket for PayPass transactions is just under $19; close to 80% are for purchases $25 or less, a sign that PayPass is increasingly displacing cash.
• Cardholders use PayPass at merchants that mostly accept cash. Consumers get what they want when not limited to cash on hand.
• PayPass expands where cardholders use their card ñ As more consumers carry PayPass, acceptance at new merchants is growing in step. While cash remains more popular at these merchant types, PayPass is clearly gaining ground, and fast.
• Close to 80% of PayPass Transactions are under $25. Consumer preference for PayPass over cash continues to grow the card industry’s share of low value payments.
• Cardholders that tap with PayPass show the most significant growth. PayPass cardholders showed more significant growth in spend, transaction frequency than other segments of issuers’ portfolios.
• A MasterCard PayPass case study shows that 30% of the issuer’s portfolio of active PayPass cardholders drove 71% of the change in total dollar volume after being reissued with PayPass.
• MasterCard sees a direct correlation between portfolio profitability and cardholder awareness of MasterCard PayPass. Following marketing and communications best practices helps maximize PayPass issuers’ profitability and shows markedly different results from those that did not.

So for me, since I avoid debt, the card might be easier to use and make getting out of the store less of a hassle.
But for unconscious spenders or people with financial issues or underlying issues that lead them to spend, the card could exacerbate debt.
As always, you should try to be as consciously aware of why you are buying something so you have the best chance to make an educated choice if you really want to make that purchase and spend that money.

Pay Your Bills

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 09:31:05 -0500

Ideally, and in the perfect world, you would never have to miss a credit card payment. Knowing that’s not the case for most families though, if you absolutely have to miss a credit card payment, there are things you can do to minimize the financial effects missing a payment will cause.

First- make sure you really have to miss it! Sometimes money is tight but you could steal sneak out the minimum payment for your credit card. Sending the minimum on time is better than nothing at all and will keep you from getting a late fee or interest rate hike. Credit cars have a “preferred” rate which is the one they advertise and give to everyone at the start. If you are late a few times your rate goes up, if you miss a payment your rate goes up...Its all in the fine print they send along with the card.

If sending the minimum is just not possible, then call your credit card company immediately to ask if there is something they can do to help you. They want you to work with them, working in credit myself I see it daily! The people who call and are wanting to work it out will get it easier than those who just don’t do anything and hope it will sort itself out in the end.

If you feel it’s only going to be a problem for one month, they may be able to waive the late fee and let you make a larger payment the following month. If on the other hand, you feel your money situation is going to be tight for awhile, they may work with you to make your payment more manageable- perhaps by lowering your interest rate so your payments are lower and more of your money is going to pay off the principal balance.

Whatever you do, don’t just skip the payment. You will see a late fee and probably an interest rate increase the following month. What’s more- often an interest rate increase will occur on ALL OF YOUR credit cards, not just the one you were late on because they all review each other’s markings on your credit file stored with Equifax or Trans Union.

Apple Gaming Console?

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 23:38:21 -0500

Apple has filed for an extension in its trademark to include portable gaming and consoles; Remember Applie once tried it’s hand at gaming with the failed Pippin console. While the Pippin did not sell well, it was Apple's attempt at console gaming. Could it have been, like the Apple Newton, ahead of its time?

The Newton was like a Palm Pilot or Treo before those devices existed. While the Palm Pilot and Treo achieved success, the Newton did not. It did however, lead to the development of great products and things like handwriting recognition. Now that the iPhone has been such a success, it is easy to see how marketing such an amazing product made a difference. Apple TV is another great example of a super product; Unfortunately, I have not seen much in the way of advertising for Apple TV. Apple recently has done well with all the new toys and sleek designs so maybe it’s time?

So, back to the original thought, does this mean that we should be seeing a console or handheld from Apple? The market has shown that it can handle THREE console platforms (four if you count the still selling PS2) and that it can handle 2 handhelds. Why not add a 3rd handheld? Will Apple merely expand its offerings for the iPod, iPhone and iPod Touch? They have the basic idea down maybe just allow gaming on it but with all the ideas taken by the PSP and Nintendo DS I’m not sure what innovative idea could be put in without it being just another handheld console.

If you were designing a new handheld or console, what features would you put in place to differentiate yourself from the competition? Where would you price your unit? How would you market it?

We have not heard from Apple regarding this, but thought it might be fun to speculate as to what this trademark extension may or may not mean. What do you think?

Blu-Ray Won.

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 23:55:15 -0500

The news has been all over the net that Toshiba is finally throwing in the towel for HD-DVD. This isn't a terrible surprise given the number of studios that have jumped ship in 2008, and the cancellation of their CES press conference.

I certainly am very glad that the world is moving towards a single format. This certainly will hasten the price drop of the technology, and help ensure that your Hi Def disc collection won't be suddenly a pile of useless plastic. The issue now is if people will bother upgrading at all, DVDs look quite good on most HD screens. HD content does look better, but I doubt that the general public really cares about having the best quality possible. DVD had lots of benefits over VHS, over and above the picture quality, so it was an easy change to argue for. HD movies, are not as easy to argue. Many sores flyers this week had HD-DVD players and dics on sale for insane discounts, one as low as 79.99 in Ontario, guess they don’t want them sitting around much longer.

Personally, I think that downloadable content will be the ultimate winner. There are no stores that make the argument easy that are around these days, too few people have Set top boxes that can download content, and the boxes that people do have, only allow you to rent HD movies, not buy. Once purchasing becomes available, and people have set top boxes, like the Xbox 360 or Apple TV, I really think that the convenience of getting movies instantly, and having all of your purchases readily available to you will be an argument that is hard to pass up.

Only time will tell to see what truly comes out on top. But one thing is abundantly clear. HD-DVD is definitely not the winner here.

Xbox 360 Tv Downloads

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:05:53 -0500

My DVR betrayed me and failed to record the new episode of Lost last Thursday, not sure if it was the DVR or the operator, but either way I didn’t get it.

Soon we’ll be able to fired up my XBox 360 the next day, head over to the Video Marketplace and get our favourite shows.

Microsoft had announced last month that ABC was now offering its content on the United States Marketplace, including new episodes of Lost 24 hours after airing on TV. The shows are available in both standard definition ($2 per show) and high-def ($3).
Within minutes of your purchase the show will be able to start while it continues to download in the background.

I have to say, while I don't think video downloads are ready for prime time just yet, the idea of it is on the right track. While Xbox Live high definiation videos will be shown only in 720p, compared to 1080i on television, you wont be able to detect a difference in visual quality.
The lack of commercials are also a sweet treat. Even though I normally fast forward through ads when watching a recorded show on my DVR, I still have to play "test your reflexes" to see if I can hit play before I've fast forwarded into the program I want to watch. Then I have to dance back and forth with the rewind and fast forward buttons until I find my spot.

So, no commercials = better.

Once this comes to Canada I doubt that I’ll become a full-time video downloader until two things happen: 1) every prime-time show is available online and, 2), I can simply pay a monthly subscription for all-you-can-eat access to every video.

Fortunately, those aren't technical problems. And I don't think it will be long before those problems get solved.

Lets hope Microsoft follows suit and starts it up here.

Shooting Down a Satellite

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:29:03 -0500

One shot was all it took for the Pentagon to decommission with extreme prejudice a spy satellite that first failed to operate and then started on a steady descent toward Mother Earth.

A missile went skyward from the USS Lake Erie last week and whacked the satellite while it was still 250 or so kilometers up in space--and whizzing along at 25,000 km per hour.

The United States defense department officials quickly pronounced the mission a success, not just in hitting the satellite at all, but also in apparently rupturing its fuel tank. The rationale for the target shoot was the possibility that the satellite's 1,000 pounds of hydrazine, a hazardous substance, might be dispersed by a crash-landing in a populated area.

To me I’m not sure what all the hype was about, I honestly think it may have been a way for them to “practice” their shooting skills or testing their equipment. The satellite apparently wasn’t that big and it most likely would have burned up on re-entry, and whatever didn’t they were predicting anything that made it through the burn-up would have most likely landed in an unpopulated area.

The next day in a press conference, Gen. James Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cited three pieces of evidence: a fireball, a vapor cloud, and results from spectral analysis. "We're very confident that we hit the satellite. We also have a high degree of confidence that we got the tank,"

They have released a video showing the rocket and the explosion showing that it actually did happen, pretty fascinating that they can hit such a small target so far away. Either way I don’t think it’s really a big deal. I know that some people have been worried that the United States is trying to show off that this is part of missile defense but really…I think they just wanted to play with their toys with a little justification.

The video is located at: http://dodvclips.mil/index.jsp?auto_band=x&rf=sv&fr_story=FRdamp250959&rf

New Retail Scams

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 22:58:00 -0400

I've seen several stories in recent months about gadget buyers who take their new shrink-wrapped doodad home, tear open the box, and discover to their horror that the expensive electronic item has been replaced with a brick, phone book or, most recently, three bags of dried beans.

There are three different ways this scam can work.

One, a customer buys the item, say, a hard drive, takes it home, removes the drive, fills the box with beans to approximate the weight of the departed drive, seals the box back up using a shrink-wrap machine, and then returns the box/beans for a full refund.
Voila! The thief ends up with a working hard drive at no cost.

Scam number two: an employee at the store removes the drive, inserts the beans and just walks out at the end of his shift with the drive stuffed in his underwear. (Is that a thumb drive in your pants or are you just happy to see me?)

Scam the third: similar to number one, but instead of sealing the box and requesting a refund on an unopened purchase, the perpetrator removes the drive, stuffs in the beans, and then marches back to the retailer in faux outrage, insisting the store provide them a second drive or a refund because, instead of paying $300 bucks for a drive, they ended up with a useless bag of beans! The benefit of this version of the scam versus scenario one is that this method doesn't require you to buy (or steal) a shrink-wrapping machine.

Unfortunately for the retailer, they have no way to verify that the person brandishing the beans is in fact a victim and not the perpetrator of the scam.

So the retailer often says it's not their problem, which infuriates customers who were actually victimized.

The only real solution is to open the box right there at the cash register after you've paid. That way there's a witness who can verify that you didn't make the old switcheroo yourself.
Yeah, it's a pain.

But much less of a pain than trying to plug a USB cable into a bag of beans

Bye Bye Netscape

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 23:15:39 -0400

Like many early Internet users, I started using Netscape in the very early-1990s after it split off from Mosaic. I have some fond memories of those early days when graphics were the exception rather than the norm, and banner ads and spam were unheard of. So, it was with a certain element of sadness that I read about the demise of the Netscape browsers.

Effective March 1st, 2008, AOL has discontinued support for the Netscape browser. One of the earliest graphical web browsers, Netscape appeared on the scene in 1994, evolving from Mosaic, which is the browser many consider to have led to the Internet boom of the 1990s.

Version 0.9, released in October 1994 supported all the basic HTML 2 elements and also supported some HTML 3. Version 1.1 was released in April 1995 and added support for <table> tags along with some new Netscape-specific HTML tags. By the summer of 1995, something like 80% of Internet users were using Netscape to surf the ‘net.

Netscape (the company) was acquired by America Online (AOL) in November 1998 and finally declared dead on July 15th, 2003 after massive layoffs at Netscape. In the mean time, the browser spawned Mozilla in 1998 (named after the internal codename for the Netscape browser), which is known today as Firefox.

It morphed into an Internet Service provider in January 2004, though new releases of the Netscape browser continue to appear on the scene, culminating in the release of Netscape 9 in October 2007.

On December 28, 2007, AOL announced that development of the browser would cease on February 1, 2008.

All that’s left today is an Internet portal bearing the name of one of the earliest graphical web browsers in the history of the Internet. Kind of sad, almost like getting rid of your 1st car; I switched to Internet Explorer years ago but still sad to see such a major icon disappear just like that.

Wi-Fi Memory Cards

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 23:28:43 -0400

While browsing the Internet the other day I came across something called "Eye-Fi". Apparently, you can now buy an SD card that can connect via WiFi and upload its pictures to various online services, including a number of photo gallery packages, and social networking sites like Facebook. When you’re out shooting pictures, it behaves like a normal 2 Gb SD card.
When you return home to your WiFi network, it automatically connects to the network and starts transferring the pictures when you turn on the camera. Assuming your camera uses SD cards, you don’t need to do anything other than pop it into your camera and start shooting.
In theory, you can probably use it with any open access point, too, but many WiFi hotspots require you to login with a browser before you can use the access point. According to the Eye-Fi website, you can’t use it with those types of access points at this time. It supports the various levels of security that exist for WiFi such as WEP, WPA and so on.

The Eye-Fi seems to cost about $100 from various online retailers, which is about four times what a 2 Gb SD seems quite reasonable to me.

This is a very cool sounding piece of kit. Check out www.eye.fi to see for yourself. Unfortunately it’s not sold anywhere in Canada yet however I’m sure you could get someone to ship it to you, and it’s only SD so if your camera takes anything else it just wont work for you. I’m curious to see if the technology will evolve further, I certainly hope it does because my new Canon Digital SLR takes Compact Flash cards. I hope to see more technology that will “check in” when you get home become more mainstream, such as your PDA or your MP3 player checking in with your computer for updates without the need to be tethered. Only time will tell.

HD War #2???

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 08:26:49 -0400

Hey, everyone--are you ready for another DVD format war? Straight from London comes HD VMD (that's for "versatile multilayer disc"), another high-def disc format vying for our love. Like HD DVD, HD VMD's main selling point is that its media has a lower price point than Blu-ray media. However, the cost savings is a result of the fact that, while HD VMD claims to offer similar video quality to Sony's format, it uses a red laser rather than blue--that's the same color used on standard DVD players. A standard VMD player costs around $199, compared to Blu-ray players' prices of $300 and above.

New Medium Enterprises, however, is making it clear that its intention is not to take on Blu-ray, but rather to find its own niche in the market. A quote from one of the executives of New Medium Enterprises is “We do not intend to take on Blu-ray, We see VMD as a natural extension of mass market DVD product enhanced to HD capabilities. We shall not rekindle the format war."

HD VMD is set to be available through Amazon in five weeks or so. So far they don’t have any similar distribution deals with North American retailers, such as Best Buy, Futureshop or Wal-Mart. At the moment, customers can pick up only 17 movies on the format in the States, many of which will be largely unrecognized by moviegoers.

Rather, the company sees China, India and Spain, Australia, China, India, Central Europe, Russia, and Scandinavia as more likely potential markets, citing the low cost of the technology, which lets New Medium Enterprises market players for under $90. I don’t think that anyone this small be able to ever go up against Sony....It didn’t quite work for Toshiba and Microsoft and if they can’t I don’t think anyone can.

Tainted Meat

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 21:59:16 -0400

CTV Toronto is reporting that Maple Leaf Consumer Foods has released an expanded list of recalled products from its Bartor Road processing facility. The list does not yet appear on the Maple Leaf web site, but can be found in the CTV report.

The list of products includes all Schneiders, Burns, Sure Slice and other cold cuts – beef, pork and poultry – identified as coming from Establishment No. 97B, in addition to Shopsy's sandwiches labelled with Best Before dates up to and including AU 22 and AU 24.

The recalled products were distributed to food service operators, nursing homes, retirement homes, hospitals, and deli counters across Canada. The company has not released a list of recipients of the recalled meat.

4 people have died from eating cold cuts all in Ontario and most of them over age 50. Primer Dalton McGuinty says that the outbreak was identified quickly due to an early warning system which was put in place in Ontario after the SARS epidemic.

Listeriosis is a bacterial infection that affects all types of meats and being kept cool in the fridge won’t kill it. Symptoms can take up to 4 months to show up after eating tainted meat and include headache, dizziness, cramps, fever etc. The federal health minister said that the full extent of the outbreak may take several months as this is the largest tainted meat recall in Canadian history.

People should avoid eating cold cuts unless they can establish with certainty the source of the meat. Especially, the elderly, young children, immune-compromised individuals and pregnant women should not eat cold cuts until this outbreak is over. Personally I plan to just avoid cold cuts from all companies for the next few weeks until this all passes over. There’s lots of other things in the grocery stores to eat!

Earth Hour

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 22:42:44 -0400

Watching the stars and getting "busy" with someone special are among Canada's top picks for what they will be doing during Earth Hour tomorrow night, according to an online survey.

Earth Hour is a global lights-out initiative, organized by the World Wildlife Fund, that's encouraging people to turn off their lights for one hour at 8 p.m. on March 29 to show their support for action on climate change. I personally didn’t know about this energy saving initiative until just recently when I saw a banner ad on some website, maybe Facebook.

Apparently many major cities worldwide, including dozens in Canada, are participating. The City of Barrie is turning off lights in all city buildings, safety permitting. It’s only 1 hour but if everyone makes an attempt to turn of most lights it can actually make a difference.

I read somewhere that more than 50 per cent of people interviewed said the event has made them more energy conscious, and they will help by going green in the future. The survey says that many of the people who plan to sit in the dark for 1 hour are going to get ‘busy” with their significant other or simply watch the stars outside, which may be a problem in many parts of the country considering there’s no sign of spring anywhere.

In addition, a whopping 85 per cent of Canadians surveyed said Ottawa should be doing more to reduce Canada's carbon emissions, the Conservative party isn’t super interested in the environment so that leaves no government option, if they wont it’s up to the consumers to do it ourselves. Consumers are a strong body when they stand up together but that’s almost impossible to do is it will hit everyone’s pocket book which we don’t like to do voluntarily. The problem is most people need a kick in the butt to get going and without the government doing it we’re sitting waiting.

Saul Itzhayek Free

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 22:56:18 -0400

A Montreal businessman, Saul Itzhayek, had been in Nepal on business when he was arrested in May 2007, and accused of entering India on an expired visa. He was sentenced to three years in prison in October in spite of his claim that he was entrapped by Indian police at the border. Apparently he sent his driver into India to pick up some money that was being wired to him, the police apparently stopped the driver at the border and seized documents that included Itzhayek's passport and visa. When he was called to India to pick up his documents he claims he was asked to pay a bribe to get his documents back and freedom, when he refused they arrested him because his documents were outdated.

Personally I don’t think it’s a great choice for anyone to travel to areas of the world so far from home without the necessary documentation, for our government to have to spend time and money to deal with this shouldn’t be necessary, all it takes is to take the necessary precautions and follow the laws of the countries you plan to go to. I agree the situation is wrong, India could have simply deported him back out but some reason they wanted a fight.

The Indian justice department said they would not drop the charges, but with the pressure from the Canadian government they changed his sentence to the time he’s already served and allowed him to leave and get out of the country as quickly as possible. He’s due home in Montreal over the weekend. I’m glad to hear it’s over, but it should serve as a warning to everyone…. Spend the 87 Canadian dollars and get an up-to-date passport, find out the travel requirements for any country you plan to visit including friendly ones such as UK, France, or even the United States, who knows what could happen.

Airport Madness

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 23:56:50 -0400

I swear someone (or group of someones) are sitting in a small room somewhere laughing their asses off each time they watch travellers go trough the crazy stuff they keep thinking up for us to do at airports. We are like circus animals.

We used to be able to carry on two bags. Then it became 1 bag which was nothing short of disaster for women who have to carry a handbag and a laptop. Now we are back to two bags. Thank goodness that nonsense is over

It has also been decided by these buggy eyed staff members that we no longer need to unpack our laptops to send them through the xray machines. Not sure what that was all about. Or it depends on what time of day it is? I’ve flown 5 times in the past month and sometimes they say leave it in the bag, then when I do, they ask for it to be taken out…. Bad luck I guess.

We still have to put all of our liquids into little tiny bottles and then into a separate plastic bag. They have those screeners ahead of security asking if you have liquids and people say no and walk by, and when they get to the x-ray machine they find it… I just want to hit them for not paying attention and slowing everyone down.

I am, however, very impressed with the advance of technology. I sit here in the airport terminal with laptop using the airport WiFi bringing all the latest news to you as it happens. How cool it that? OK, I know I am a techy geek by some standards but not according to others.

Airports are the best people watching place. Well, Toronto airport is anyway. The diversity of the travellers is always shocking. Every size, shape, age, class, colour, hue can be found struggling with their luggage and searching out their departure gate. Someone people read, someone people visit, some people drink, other people just watch other people watching other people.

Well that’s just my observations from my latest trip, well see what the latest security measure will be.

Jott

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 22:23:45 -0400

So I’ve come across Jott.com which is a great little FREE web tool that works in connection with your cell phone to help you take the thumbs out of text messaging. When I first discovered Jott.com a few months ago, I found the service to be excellent for enabling me to call a toll-free number, dictate a message and have it sent to the requested recipient either via text message or via email without the need to hope for a red light so I can send a text message or email.

I’m amazed how they are doing this for free, speech detection technology is amazing and it’s still quite primitive. Most home based speech detection programs require you to train them so it gets to know your voice and even then there are still errors. The software Jott uses doesn’t require training and seems to be pretty accurate which is even more amazing. People who use this have all different voices and accents and it manages to get through it quickly with no human intervention.

It’s very helpful when you have to send a message, but you’re stuck in traffic, or just want to get it done much quicker than typing a long email all by text. Of course with all the new laws popping up about use of cell phones in cars it might make it a tad harder to send a message, but that’s another blog

Jott is a free service that continues to add new features. You will be charged by your cell provider for text messages and airtime, but there is no actual fee to use Jott.com. I encourage everyone to take a moment to set up your very own Jott.com account and start using it to connect with your family, friends and clients right away.

Simulcasting

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 23:10:13 -0400

Simultaneous substitution has been part of cable TV for over 30 years. Put simply, it’s the rule that when a Canadian and American channel are showing the same show, the cable company has to replace the American signal with the Canadian one, including all Canadian commercials. So when you’re watching House on Fox, you’re actually watching the Global feed instead of the Fox feed.

The reasoning behind this is so Canadian advertising gets preference over American advertising. Advertising revenue stays in Canada and supports our networks instead of American ones.

There are minor annoyances with this rule:

Shows are not synchronized to the second, so you end up watching the beginning of an episode and then two minutes later have to re-watch it from the beginning and we don’t get to watch the way-cool Super Bowl commercials in Canada.
Though the CRTC requirement provides for replacement only when signals are of “equal or better quality,” in practice the quality is never better and in many cases worse, though not enough for the cable companies to want to fight over it.

But the big problem with simultaneous substitution is an economic one. Unlike CRTC rules that encourage the development of original Canadian programming, this does the opposite. It encourages CTV and Global to buy Canadian rights to American programming at a tenth of the price it would cost them to produce their own, and simply rebroadcast it with their own commercials. As a result, both networks try their best to max out on American simulcasts, to the benefit of Canadian programming.

Getting rid of simsub would force Canadian networks to compete with American ones. If they continue to simply simulcast the programming, and lose half their audience (assuming people just randomly select the Canadian or American channel), or maybe it would force them to simply create their own programming which is what the CRTC was originally trying to improve.

Simultaneous substitution is nothing but easy money for Canadian broadcasters. It is a cancer on Canadian broadcasting and it needs to be stopped. So we’ll see what the CRTC comes up with in their spring hearings.

Passing HIV

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 23:24:10 -0400

A 32 year old Windsor man, Carl Leone, plead guilty on Friday for spreading knowingly HIV and he was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Carl was informed that he was HIV positive in 1997. In June 2004, seven years after he discovered he has HIV, he was arrested because he failed to inform his partners he had the virus. Five of his 15 sexual partners are infected with HIV, and they are unsure about the last ten.

The Superior Court Justice gave Carl 15 consecutive sentences that totalled 49 years, but after debates by Judge Joseph Quinn he reduced it to 18 years to better reflect sentencing guidelines that are set in Canada's Criminal Code. The Judge told the court that because Carl pleaded guilty to spare his victims the trauma of testifying were key elements that helped reduce his sentence. Joseph did not declare Carl as a dangerous sex offender, which will make him eligible for parole in the next six years, but he will be added to Ontario's sex offender registry. Carl Lenoe apologized for his actions and said that he hopes that he can be forgiven and return to his community in the future.

It just sickens me to think that he would not tell his partners that he had this virus, and that he had 15 partners that put their health on the line. HIV/AIDS is the number one killer in Africa, but they are making huge efforts to stop the virus. The disease is a major problem in developing countries where education of the disease is not well known and medicine is too expensive. It is scary to hear about there being problems with this virus in a well developed country, Canada. It’s good that there are punishing the man, but I believe that the sentence was not fair. I think he should have been sentenced much longer for his carelessness and selfishness.

Air Safety

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:40:51 -0400

Yesterday American Airlines received clearance from federal aviation officials to return all of its 300 grounded jets to service.

After an additional 200 cancellations Saturday morning, American was running a full schedule by the afternoon with no cancellations

Starting last Tuesday, the United States largest airline cancelled nearly 3,300 flights, as it grounded 300 MD-80 jets to wrap wiring bundles to meet federal safety standards and prevent fires. They had 226 of the planes back in service by Friday with full clearance approved yesterday

This was a surprise to everyone, and the cancellations stranded hundreds of thousands of people during the week.

The costs of the cancellations to American will run into the tens of millions of dollars including vouchers to reimburse stranded customers, overtime for maintenance crews and lost revenue. Some news articles estimated it could easily top $30 million.

While American flies the 2nd oldest fleet in North America they keep them in good shape. I agree airline safety is important but the FAA could have considered the public as well. If they would have given American Airlines a strict time frame so they were not completely shut down for 5 days may have had a win-win situation

American Airlines just announced last week that they had plans to accelerate the phase out of the MD-80’s. They claim it had nothing to do with this issue and said it was all about fuel charges and that other planes could do better. Going forward I hope that all airlines learn the lesson here. Air safety is very important and cutting corners will end up costing in the long run

In Canada we have Air Canada and Westjet who operate one of the newest fleets in North America. Both have an amazing safety rating lets hope they continue to keep the safety ahead of the bottom line.

PS3 Letdown

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:51:04 -0400

I don’t know about the rest of you but I am a little disappointed with the fact that i shelled out $400 for my PS3 and it is still void of some of the features that were promised to me and with no real date set to when they are coming.

If you don’t know what I am talking about it is the Online community HOME. Apparently you will be able to create an avatar similar to second life or the sims and you will be able to hang out in a virtual world with your friends and other online gamers. I have seen Videos of it in use and it does look pretty amazing but when is it coming to a PS3 near you? No one knows! I have checked everywhere including the website for the North American Beta and it really has no info.

If you remember when the PS3 was launched that was one of the features they were pushing. Not only that we are still waiting for some real quality games on the PS3. What angers me the most is by the time PS3 Home does hit your PS3 the price will have probably dropped again and more original, quality games will be released which means you paid more money for less stuff then someone who walks into the store and buys one today.

I guess what I am trying to say is a company that put out products and boast features need to be clearer on their advertizing. For instance Sony should have said “Home, Free online community. But you may have to wait 2 years for it” It’s not false advertising, or not to me as I bought the system based on the games, and features not it’s online content but it definitely is misleading. I guess time will tell when we see our new online features come out and compete with Xbox.

Mortgage Insurance Problems

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:59:50 -0400

I just watched marketplace episode on mortgage insurance and it was a very dramatic presentation. It profiled 2 families who thought they were getting a deal with the bank’s mortgage insurance policies and were subsequently denied the pay out at claim time. These policies are underwritten at claim time and are very dangerous things to have.

The people featured in the episode both signed up for mortgage insurance through a major bank. The policies issued with your mortgage are cheap and easy to fill out. The problem is that the company determines your eligibility for the insurance payout when you make the claim.

This is a problem for a few reasons including:

First: You are healthy now - who knows what your condition will be at claim time.

Second: The questionnaire is tricky: they ask questions that are a paragraph long and require a single “Yes” or “No” answer.

Third: The person selling it to you is not a licensed broker - licensed brokers go through extensive training and continuing education to ensure that you get the most expert advice (not just how to sell the product).

Fourth: You get what you pay for - If it sounds too good- it usually is.

Finally: Medical Underwriting should be done at the onset - As opposed to the bank’s application, the application for insurance that you fill out with a broker is much more detailed and you will usually have to pass a medical to be offered a contract - Know if you qualify right from the start so that you still have options.

The program was geared towards consumer education with a significant bias towards brokers.

In the end, you will have to make your choice that fits your budget - try to shop around. Don’t be forced to buy something over the phone - life insurance and critical illness insurance are vital overages that cannot be applied for when needed: Chose Wisely.

Phreak615

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:40:59 -0400

This evening I was catching up on my DVR and was watching MuchMusic when all of a sudden the signal gets distorted and this guy in a weird mask and hat comes on the screen not making any sense and then it flashes to a screen saying “Phreak615.com”

Both of us watching looked at each other in disbelief and almost instantly debunked the thought that someone was able to hack / hijack the broadcast. Because Chum broadcasts all digital and many of which directly to satellite which leaves the option it’s an inside job or since its MuchMusic which was impacted it could be a teaser for an upcoming show or event. With the broadcast being digital the way the interference looks wouldn’t be correct. It’s all warped with static and weird audio sounds which don’t occur on digital, so someone has edited the video to be like this

Historically, the number of documented cases of TV broadcast hijacking can be counted on one hand. And even these were only on a very limited local basis. The reason for this is simple: To hijack a broadcast, you either have to have direct access to the distribution centre or Master Control of the station, or you have to have an antenna big and strong enough to overpower the regular broadcast signal. Of the two, the last one is the only feasible alternative unless you actually work at the station you wish to hijack.

During the show I watched there were 2 interruptions which lasted maybe 15 seconds each. Upon researching this occurrence I’ve found many forums about this and pretty much everyone agrees that they are either a disgruntled employee, or it’s an elaborate promo for something upcoming. Everyone who’s see this has reported similar sightings during peak times which further backs up my thought that is no hack, peak times is when master control is fully staffed at any network and more people would start investigating.

I’m sure well hear more about this shortly.

WiMax Challenges

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:53:10 -0400

Anyone who's got an 802.11g Wi-Fi network in his or her home along with 2.4-GHz cordless phones and leaky microwave ovens knows about radio interference. You've experienced it when your phone rings and your Internet connection dies.

A group devoted to making sure the spectrum devoted to satellite communications doesn't experience a similar fate is warning against WiMax which is considered by some to be the next-generation wireless Internet access protocol. According a study indicates WiMax can "disrupt satellite reception up to 20 kilometres away from a base station"

However, before you start worrying about whether your future high-speed wireless surfing opportunities could be a threat to either national security or your TV signal, read the comments on this BroadbandReports.com item on the story. The interference happens in a frequency range known as C-Band, the type of satellite communications used by large satellite dishes -- the "Big Ugly Dish" that used to be common in the early days of satellite TV in North America. They are still common, according the industry group's report, in developing countries, and that's where the major interference problem exists

In the North America, the FCC and Industry Canada have already restricted the use of WiMax away from areas with large clusters of C-Band base stations. And WiMax's primary U.S. licensees, Sprint and Clearwire, will use the 2.5-GHz band, while C-Band uses 3.5-GHz.

As this is new technology the industry has conflicts out the wazoo, so consider the study's relevancy in light of that. But given that WiMax has had a very slow rollout, the report doesn't help the cause of those who really want to see, ubiquitous, robust wireless Internet connectivity.

I personally think that these activist groups need to allow the testing and development to continue and lets not shoot it down before we get to see the ultimate benefit. Who knows maybe the pros will outway the cons.

Chumby

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:12:07 -0400

Chumby is a tiny Linux-based computer stuffed into a soft, leather-like case that resembles a beanbag. It uses Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet, from which it downloads widgets from their website that put bits of information to its 3.5-inch touchscreen.

The Chumby comes in a burlap bag, nestled in an inner pouch. This is packaging as marketing -- it prepares you for technology that's soft and cuddly, rather than angular and austere. You even get a power adapter and some "charms" to hang off the metal rivet on right side.

You can then select widgets to add to the device, which are displayed in rotation on your Chumby. The widgets range from useful to silly to fun.

Similar to a digital photo frame you can select how long each widget displays. You may want traffic updates to appear for longer than, the weather or news..

There are some downsides, though, that make Chumby frustrating. Even though opening a slit on the bottom reveals a plug for a nine-volt battery, Chumby requires its AC power adapter to work. Hopefully, the presence of the connection means Chumby Industries will enable battery power in the future.

The touchscreen can be a little flaky -- Chumby owners are advised to use a fingernail or just a fingertip on it. It can take several taps before the device reacts as it should.

Chumby also relies too heavily on its control panel. For example, to turn down the volume while listening to radio requires pushing the top of the device, then two taps to get to the onscreen volume slider. A thumbwheel on the case would be better, or at least putting the slider right out on the main control panel screen.

Chumby costs $179, and I'd say it's worth the price if you've got the coin to spend on what amounts to an information frivolity.

TTC Views

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 22:29:07 -0400

This is kind of old news now, especially since I just read that they're being ordered back to work, but I was so upset about this that I didn't think I could write any kind of eloquent post here until now.

The threat of a TTC strike had been looming for a week, and on Friday night at approximately 11pm or thereabouts, they made the announcement that they would be on strike, effective as of 12:00am on Saturday

They gave less than an hour's notice on a Friday night in Toronto that they were stopping all public transit services?! What happened to the 48 hours notice that they had previously promised? And on a Friday night? With thousands of people out and about in the city - at movies, restaurants, clubs, etc? Those people left their homes taking TTC downtown when they tried to get home, many of them were left stranded, because of the TTC's selfishness.

They say that they had to strike right away like this because they feared for the safety of their drivers and workers if they gave 48 hours notice (as they had earlier in the week). Well, what about the safety of the people left downtown with no way to get home? People who may have gone downtown with nothing but their metropass... people who had been drinking and were counting on the TTC as their way home...

The next issue would be the all the people who would need to take the TTC to get to work in the morning. Toronto is very much a city that operates 24/7 and people work at all times of day, every day of the week. Many of these people have no other choice than to take the TTC to get to work. So by striking, they either have to risk losing their jobs by not showing up to work, or they have to spend a day's wage to take a taxi to work.

They have been ordered back to work by the government which I’m glad to see. The trains, busses and streetcars slowly started running this evening and will be at full operation by Monday morning. They have now screwed themselves as they’ve lost their leverage to negotiate…serves them right!

Air Canada Bag Fees

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 23:08:58 -0400

Let's face it, pretty soon every airline will charge for a second checked bag, and then they'll probably all raise the fee.

Air Canada will be charging $25 (is that US or Canadian? We're not sure, but the two currencies are about the same now) for a second checked bag, but only for Tango and Tango Plus class flyers. Travelers purchasing more expensive Latitude and business class tickets are not affected. The new policy kicks in on July 15, and again, no word on whether tickets bought before then will be affected

Many people are complaining about this and this is where I have to come to Air Canada’s defence. They have stated that only a small percentage of the Tango clients actually check a 2nd bag and this only applies to domestic flights. People flying international aren’t impacted. We also need to remember that this airline is the one who gives you a discount if you don’t check any bag.

The way I see it is why should everyone, people like me, have to pay higher fares to subsidize people who can’t figure out how to travel light or buy a bigger suitcase? When I fly and need to check a bag I tend to use my big suitcase so I will have enough space just in case I end up bringing something home with me. If the airlines want to add this fee to people who need it and leave the rest of us alone I’m fine with that.

Air Canada is the 1st Canadian carrier to start such a fee. The others, for now, say they will leave things status quo, but with the rising fuel prices I’m sure it’s just a matter of time. I’ve heard rumours that airlines in the states that they may start to charge for some specific window and aisle seats (close to front, washroom, etc.) so we really need to think, is the fee for a 2nd bag really so bad?

Windows Visa Done?

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 23:20:00 -0400

While Microsoft is officially repudiating ruminations on giving Windows XP a stay of execution, the writing is clearly on the wall for Vista.

Let me say upfront that I think Vista is a perfectly serviceable, visually attractive and reasonably secure operating system and anyone out shopping for a new computer with decent hardware should feel comfortable about buying a PC with Vista pre-installed.

But that doesn't matter. Vista has been so poorly received, for reasons real and manufactured, that Microsoft simply has no choice but to get its next OS on the market as soon as possible. If corporate customers aren't upgrading from XP to Vista, then Microsoft's fabled incoming river of cash slows to a trickle, and shareholders will not be pleased. I know many corporations are not switching due to the amount of problems and lack of support home edition users are finding. I’ve encountered many small problems with workaround’s but nevertheless frustrating and something you don’t expect when you’re purchasing a Microsoft product. The most astonishing part is, there is virtually no support for problems that are reported

So before Vista mutates into an outright debacle, Microsoft will certainly get its successor on the market by 2010 at the latest. This would allow Vista to retreat from the battlefield with some semblance of honor, while Windows 7 can be billed as the revolutionary OS you've been waiting for: sleeker, leaner, faster, re-built from the ground up and unburdened by ancient legacy code.

Windows Vista is nowhere near the technological flop that Windows ME was. But it's rapidly garnering the same reputation and, with Google breathing down Microsoft's back, there's no way Microsoft can afford to let a negative public perception turn into a financial catastrophe. So I think we can bank on Windows 7 within the next 2 years at the most.

Brenda Martin Expensive

Sun, 04 May 2008 21:13:05 -0400

Brenda Martin is back home and predictions are that she will not be behind bars in Waterloo very long before she is paroled.

She was held without trial for more than two years in a Mexican jail on fraud charges. Intervention from our politicians because of an outcry from Martin’s family, friends, supporters and the media finally lit a fire under the Mexican judicial system and her case was heard.

It wasn’t the outcome some had hoped for though; She was found guilty of either aiding or knowing about a massive internet scam carried out by her former boss, who is now serving a 10-year term in a U.S. prison. Martin has always maintained her innocence and her ex-boss even delivered a sworn statement that she was not involved. The Mexican judge seemed to think Martin, who was working as a cook, knowingly took money from the proceeds of fraud.

So for all intents and purposes Martin is a convicted criminal. The law has said so, even though it’s Mexican law…its still law. She continues to protest, but a lot of convicted criminals say they’re innocent. In the eyes of the law, she is guilty.

Our government brought Brenda Martin back to Canada last night. They chartered a private jet for the pick-up. This is where I don’t quite understand things. Whether she’s guilty or innocent, Brenda Martin is not a violent woman. She is not a danger to anyone. Why in the world would our government feel the need to spend big bucks on a jet to bring her home? She could have been flown on the next commercial flight; even in first class it would have been less expensive. Keep in mind this is in addition to the fine that we also paid on her behalf as well.

There was no need to segregate her from everyone in this wholly expensive manner. She still could have been brought back in virtual secret and once the plane was in the air, there was no way media or anyone else could get to her as she flew with Corrections officers.

Just a huge waste of money if you ask me.

GM VOLT

Sun, 04 May 2008 21:46:42 -0400

General Motors has “growing confidence” that the VOLT will indeed be produced in 30 months. GM executive Bob Lutz says Volt is a “must-win” project for GM. He is quoted as saying, “At this point, we don’t know how important the Volt is going to be,” and that one reason for the project is to “eliminate this perception of GM as the environmental antichrist.”

Other statements from Lutz, reported on the GM-Volt.com website, mention that GM is actually considering building a pure-EV Volt without fancy features and necessary associated controls and hardware and greater range. Lutz acknowledges that producing 100,000 Volts getting more than 100 mpg each will go along way to helping GM meet future environmental regulations.

There is no confirmation that GM would actually build two different versions of the VOLT, but the good news is that the VOLT will be built in one form or another. This may be somewhat confirmed by President Bush’s speech last week on the environment where he said, “We’re transitioning to a new era, by the way. A new era where we’re gonna have batteries in our cars that will power, you know, enable people to drive 40 miles on electricity.” A definite hint about the GM (Chevy) VOLT which is projected to have a 60 KM all-electric range before the gas motor kicks in to extend that range.

The way this car works is 100% pure electric motor. Most current hybrids run on a combination of gas and eclectic drive motors. This car will be all electric with only a gasoline generator that will turn on and charge the batteries giving it a 500 KM total range

Now that gasoline has reached $1.20 per litre, even for the cheap stuff in many areas, don’t you wish there was a VOLT plugged in to your garage right now?

Faster Internet in Montreal

Sun, 04 May 2008 23:49:55 -0400

Montreal cable system Videotron is now delivering speedy broadband Internet to 112,000 cable households in Quebec after a successful year-long test of channel-bonding technology from Cisco Systems.

Early this year, the company announced two new residential services that deliver download speeds of 30 Megabits per second and 50 Mbps, respectively.

The high-speed services don’t come cheap. Ultimate Speed 30 costs $64.95 per month and Ultimate Speed 50 is $79.95 per month. They have also placed firm download caps on the offerings 30 Gigabytes and 50 Gigabytes per month, respectively to discourage bandwidth hogs. If you go over the limit it’ll be $1.50 per GB

For increasingly plugged-in customers, the new products will make downloading content much faster; At 30 Mbps, a song takes two seconds to arrive and a 2-Gigabyte movie takes eight minutes while at 50 Mpbs, a full music compact disc takes 10 seconds to download, and the movie needs five minutes.

The services are currently limited to subscribers in Laval, Quebec, but the company plans to make them available to all its 933,000 Internet customers soon.

I think the pricing is about right if we compare it to the average of 45 dollars per month for 5-7 Mpbs services. People in Canada are getting used to the idea of paying a higher cost for more bandwidth.

The use of Cisco’s wideband technology has given the company and potentially other cable companies a chance to compete with pure fiber competitors, like Verizon FiOS (in the states), which offers service at 15 Mbps to most of its customers, and 50 Mbps to a select few. The system can attain speeds of 100 Mbps, and Videotron was even able to push it a bit further, but the company decided against offering that much bandwidth.

It’s just a matter of time before this technology makes it across the country to other internet providers to allow everything to speed up.

Life Vests Gone

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 21:45:41 -0400

The race by airlines to shave weight and save fuel is now reaching safety equipment.

Jazz Airlines, Air Canada's regional affiliate, recently removed life vests from all of its planes - including those that fly over water - to reduce fuel consumption and save money.

Transport Canada regulations allow carriers that fly within 50 nautical miles of shore to use flotation devices instead of vests. Safety cards in seat pockets will now direct passengers to use the seat cushions, which float...

How much you ask could this save.... Tom Hinton, at Canada's Transportation Safety Board. "When you're trying to save every bit of money you can to make the airline more productive, every bit counts." At the most, the various changes add up to 2 per cent of fuel costs.

Personally I don’t see an issue with this. Your chances of surviving a plane crass are small, and if you are unfortunate enough that your plane goes down into water your chances are even smaller. So in the extremely unlikely event you happen to need these you’ll just have to figure out some other way of floating.

This is only affecting Jazz flights which are mostly domestic and there’s not a lot of water they fly over anyways. Let’s say for example you’re flying from Toronto to Winnipeg, you will be over Lake Superior but if your plane had problems they’d be able to get to land either to the south or to the north quite easily just do to the relatively small size of the lake when comparing to the altitude you fly at.

For the people who are going to complain about this, you need to think, would you rather remove a life vest, which probably won’t work, or pay extra to have a life vest that probably won’t work?

Brenda Martin Suing?

Sun, 11 May 2008 22:48:04 -0400

Unfortunately it looks like this Brenda Martin saga will continue. I had thought that the news story would have come to a merciful conclusion once she was released on parole, but I was wrong.

I was watching CTV last night and saw an interview with Brenda at her mother’s house. The interviewer asked twice if she was planning to sue the federal government. She wouldn’t get a yes or no but just replied saying that she’s not ruling anything out.

I cant even believe that she will even think of suing the federal government, especially since they were responsible for paying her fine, expediting her transfer from Mexico to Canada and flying her home aboard a government jet at considerable expense to Canadian taxpayers. She has been in Canada for more than a week and she has yet to even say a simple thank you to the Canadian government. We’ve spent thousands of dollars on her case and to have even the thought of suing the government is unthinkable.

Just to recap, the predicament that Brenda Martin found herself in, while in Mexico was of her own doing. Nobody forced her to leave the safety of Canada to live illegally in Mexico. Nobody forced her to become involved with a con man and a fraud artist. Nobody forced her to accept large deposits of money that was not hers in her bank account and to transfer it into other bank accounts on behalf of her ex-employer.

If any other person had accepted ill-gotten gains into their own bank account and transferred it to other accounts on behalf of a con man involved in a scheme, it would have been called money laundering.

She was not a baby or a teenager when she went to Mexico, she was a grown woman and she knew what she was doing.

Fuel Surcharge

Sun, 11 May 2008 23:01:26 -0400

Last week Air Canada has imposed fuel charges that will add extra money to domestic flights amounting up to an extra $120 per round-trip ticket.

The price increases, imposed Friday, would add a round-trip surcharge of $120 for flights of more than 1600 kilometers, each way. Smaller surcharges of anywhere from $40 to $80 would be slapped on tickets for shorter trips.

The biggest increase would apply to most trips between Western and Eastern Canada due to the distance.

Canada’s largest airline applied the surcharge to international flights Thursday, matching similar moves by American Airlines. It added the surcharge to domestic trips Friday.

This is in addition to their new 2nd bag surcharge they announced earlier last month. I at first was in defence of Air Canada, even though I’m a Westjet supporter. But now with this fuel surcharge I’m beginning to wonder if it’s a cash grab.

I’m not going to dispute that gas is at an all time high but I think the airlines can do better to cut their costs in other places. It’s just interesting that Air Canada just reported a loss of over 12 million dollars in Q1 and now the charges.

Now Westjet on the other hand hasn’t added any fees, yet, and they are still declaring a profit every year. They fly smaller planes and fill them to capacity rather than flying 50 people on a plane meant for 200. I’m wondering if Westjet will hold off on the fees and steal any potential Air Canada business. If you have a choice of flying from Toronto to Vancouver for 300 and for 450 which one would you choose? It may help them get their load factor even higher and flying with completely full planes. Westjet has it right they don’t have any frills, sit down, shut up, and fly.

Apple Credits

Sun, 11 May 2008 23:17:07 -0400

Apple has agreed to settle two class-action lawsuits in Canada alleging it misled customers about the staying power of iPods, the latest settlement over the dwindling battery life of early iPods, 1st or 2nd generation.

Apple is offering credits for its online store of about $45 to people who live in Canada and bought certain iPods there on or before June 24, 2004.

To be eligible, the battery life of their iPods - while continuously playing music - needs to have dropped to five hours or less for the first and second generation of the device and four hours or less for the third generation.

The lead plaintiffs in the lawsuits - iPod owners Ines Lenzi and Bradley Waddell - claimed Apple misrepresented iPods' battery life by claiming they were capable of eight to 10 hours of continual music playback. After recharging, however, the iPods' battery life began declining.

This isn’t the 1st time Apple has offered credits due to misleading sales information. They have a similar credit in place for their MacBook computers which loose their charge quite quickly. My MacBook battery only lasted for 8 months and then it was done; unfortunately I wasn’t eligible for a credit.

In 2005, the company settled a separate class-action lawsuit in the US over similar claims about iPod battery life. In that case, Apple agreed to give some iPod owners $50 in store credit or $25 in cash if the battery life in their early-generation iPods dropped below certain levels.

Don’t get me wrong, Apple makes an amazing and innovative products. They are always leaders with personal technology with the most recent example being the iPhone which is now being copied by pretty much every cell phone manufacturer. I think they need to spend time working on their battery life, or quite simply don’t make it sound better than it actually is.

Skater in Jail

Thu, 15 May 2008 21:53:15 -0400

Skateboarder Lee Breen is preparing to spend five days in jail after refusing to pay a fine for skateboarding on the streets of Fredericton. Lee Breen is 25 and was fined last summer after receiving several warnings about the nuisance by-law

The fine was recently increased to $100 and last month a judge ordered him to pay the fine or be sent to jail for five days. Breen opted not to pay the fine to Fredericton bylaw S-9, which is to "prevent nuisances" and prohibits people from using a sled, toboggan, wagon or skateboard on city streets.

He turned himself in at the Fredericton provincial courthouse yesterday, where a judge signed a warrant for his arrest, and he was taken to jail. The amazing thing was the support he had while on his way to turn himself in. About 80 protesters had skateboarded and walked around a city block to show their support for him

The city stands behind their by-law saying it’s a safety issue. They say that by allowing skateboarding on the streets can cause traffic problems. Lee said he takes precautions while skateboarding by wearing a helmet, avoiding sidewalks and making hand signals. No more dangerous than riding a bike really.

Riding a skateboard is also an environmentally friendly way to commute, he said, adding he strives to maintain a green lifestyle. His green lifestyle is what the city of Fredericton promotes.

Other news reports are saying that he’ll probably be released from jail within a few hours due to the harmless act of his crime and the media attention his story is getting. Sounds like a complete waste of time and money that the city is spending. Even 1 day in jail will cost the taxpayers well over the one hundred dollars he was supposed to be fined.

Nintendo Patent Costs

Thu, 15 May 2008 22:13:24 -0400

Nintendo of America was hit with a judgment for $21 million in a patent-infringement case brought by a company that claims to be a small Texas game developer. A jury found that Nintendo's designs for its Wii, WaveBird and GameCube controllers infringed on patents held by Anascape Ltd.

A Nintendo spokesman said the company will appeal the decision and expects the award to be "significantly" reduced.

Anascape also sued over the motion-sensing technology that has made the Wii such a hit, enabling "active games" such as tennis and boxing, but the jury found no infringement on that technology.

The company also sued Microsoft for infringements on game-controller patents, but Microsoft settled on May 1, just before trial. The terms of the settlement are confidential.

The jury found that Nintendo violated 12 Anascape patents filed in 2000. The patents had names like "Remote Controller with Analog Button," "3D Controller With Vibration," and "Game Controller with Analog Pressure Sensor."

Many game fans were outraged by the verdict. I’m just amazed by how vague the descriptions were. I think anyone could come up with anything and patent it. Just buy patents on anything and everything and then when someone comes up with something even close then you can sue them.

A "patent troll" -- a company that buys up intellectual property for the sole purpose of extracting licensing fees or suing big companies. This sounds exactly like this company has been defined perfectly.

This company sounds so shady that they don’t even have a Web site at Anascape.com, and a Google search of the company's name turned up only references to its suits against Nintendo and Microsoft.

I’m off to sue Sony because I have a patent for a plastic box that holds batteries and has 14 buttons and they developed a remote control….or so they say :)

Packet Monitoring

Thu, 15 May 2008 22:34:21 -0400

We’ve seen all sorts of arguments against ISPs who engage in traffic shaping, but now some are trying to make a privacy argument against traffic shaping as well.

A few months ago, the news came out that Bell Canada was engaging in traffic shaping, even for its wholesale ISP partners who promised customers open internet access. As a couple folks have submitted today, the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa is claiming that in addition to other questions raised about this, traffic shaping may be a privacy violation, in that it uses deep packet inspection to determine what type of packets are being sent to figure out what to traffic shape.

Bell Canada responds that it is only determining what type of packet it is, rather than what’s in it — but even that information could potentially be a privacy violation. While it seems unlikely that this argument will stick, if traffic shaping starts being seen as a privacy issue, it could put even more pressure on ISPs to stop doing it. Even seeing what type of packet it is lets them know what you’re doing with your connection, tv, email, voice, video, chat it’s really none of their business.

I’m curious to know this will all play out. I personally don’t have anything to hide so I don’t really care, but it still can end up becoming a huge privacy rights issue.

Anyone gathering information on you should have your consent. Nielsen research gathers survey data from peoples TV viewing habits but they need to install equipment and have the consent of the household to gather the info and they also reward their panels. They don’t know exactly what they watched but they can see what “type” of show they were watching; this is no different than knowing what “type” of packet is going across in my mind.

Bell can pay me to watch my packets if they want, I’m all for it

Canada Election

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 21:07:13 -0400

The Prime Minister’s Office announced on Friday it plans to summon the Liberals to a meeting, where they will be asked to approve in advance everything the government wants done this fall. If the answer is no, Stephen Harper will call an election.

Two election trigger theories are now circulating around the parliamentary precinct. (The third possibility - waiting for the fixed election date, in October, 2009 - now appears dead.) Scenario A has it that after three more weeks of PMO-ordered committee mayhem, Mr. Harper will stroll across Sussex Drive next month to inform the Governor-General that Canada’s cantankerous Parliament needs a vote to reincarnate itself into something functional.

That theory got a major credibility boost on Friday after PMO staff said Mr. Harper would meet with Mr. Dion in the next two weeks, lay out his agenda and, if the Official Opposition leader refuses to support it, drop the writ.

The second, less-likely scenario is that the government will load up the first week of its September agenda with all manner of confidence-testing measures, including some legislative stinkbombs the Liberals cannot possibly support, to induce its own demise for a late October vote.

Election call highly likely, Conservative official says

A CBC story says a senior Conservative says Prime Minister Stephen Harper could call a federal election as early as Sept. 2.

The well-placed party official said Friday that no decision has been made but an election call is highly likely sometime within the next two-to-four weeks.

According to the official, Harper could pull the plug on his minority government immediately after the Labour Day weekend, or wait until shortly after Parliament resumes on Sept. 15. The calculation would place Election Day at the end of October, coinciding with the final excitement of the U.S. election. Surely, most of us will be glued to the U.S. elections for most of the Canadian campaign – which could be either good or bad?