Sunday, March 19, 2006

Bliss x 5/3

by alec on March 19, 2006

A while back I linked to Chris Bliss, juggling.  This fellow has one-upped Bliss.  Bliss juggles with three balls, and this guy with five.  Same music, same routine, five balls. 

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Ottawa Tech is Back

by alec on March 19, 2006

The latest OCRI (Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation) Ottawa Facts email hit my inbox last week while I was taking time off.  They provided some great statistics, and it certainly looks as if tech is back in Ottawa. Unemployment is down, and below the national average.  Between June 2006 and January 2006, high tech employment rose from 71,000 to 76,200, and the number of technology companies increased from 1740 to 1811.  Best of all, Ottawa is still one of the lowest cost places to live and do business in the country.  The average resale price of a home in January 2006 was just C$244,000.

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Cell Phones Are Changing Cultural Norms

March 19, 2006

This piece on how cell phones are changing society is fabulous.  First published in the San Francisco Chronicle on March 6th, my Google News subscription on "Cellphone Etiquette" dropped it into my mailbox last week while I was vacationing.  There are all kinds of interesting facts, such as that the average American talks 13 hours [...]

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What is Defamation? The Rise of Internet Libel Cases in Canada

March 19, 2006

Friday’s Ottawa Citizen carried a story on the rise of libel cases in Canada, due to the rising popularity of blogging.  No doubt bloggers are increasingly being attacked for perceived defamation.  So what is defamation?  That’s a tricky question, made doubly difficult by the fact that it is treated differently in US courts than in Canada.    I am not a [...]

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The Intention Economy

March 19, 2006

Doc Searls has a great piece on the Intention Economy vs. the Attention Economy. The basic thesis is that you, the user, ought to be able to express your intent to purchase goods, rather than devote your attention to the vendors advertising.  It’s a user controlled world, rather than a vendor controlled world. Interestingly, it [...]

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Turner on Presence

March 19, 2006

I missed Brough Turner’s talk at VON on IM / Presence and Mobile Phones, but boy I wish I had seen it.   His slide deck is available through his blog entry.  Two important points he makes: With a few exceptions, most VoIP service providers are still thinking like telecom engineers, not focusing what the user [...]

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Templeton on Network Neutrality

March 19, 2006

Brad Templeton has published a piece on network neutrality and the "internet contract" which is worth reading.  He generalizes the issue to all kinds of packets and business models, and then points out the folly of various payment schemes, concluding: The contract is worth defending not just because it gives us cheap internet or flat [...]

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Offline RSS Reader Wanted

March 19, 2006

I am looking for an offline RSS reader, which synchronizes with Bloglines.  The operative word here is synchronize.  I’ve looked at both FeedDemon and GreatNews which can download feeds, but not synchronize.  I want a synchronization experience similar to the way Exchange or an IMAP server handles email — full offline access, with a synchronized [...]

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SPIT: Is It Just Telemarketing?

March 19, 2006

Dan York asks whether SPIT is any different from telemarketing, because if it isn’t, then why differentiate?  My take is that IP telephony can lower the costs of telemarketing, which potentially makes it a more attractive medium for advertisers.  More importantly, though, the potential exists for rampant abuse with IP based "auto-dialers" and recorded messages.  [...]

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