Category: Technology

Fire in the sky & day 2 of mesh07

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Ummm…what the hell is going on over there? And what’s going on with the moon?

.:.

Today was day 2 of mesh, led off by keynotes Richard Edelman (consensus: kind of boring, but eminently quotable…which is about right since he runs a huge PR firm) and Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist (consensus: half of the people in the room thought this dude was an alien, since he seems to care little for the profit motive, and a lot about the ways his company runs is antithetical to established business doctrine. Me, I wanted to hug him.).

My optional sessions for the afternoon — “New Media – Teaching Old Markets New Tricks”, “Building a Community – How and Why it Matters” and “Is Fake the New Real? Transparency and Trust” — were all okay, but all kind of ran together for me. Good thing I took notes; I can’t remember anything specific about any of them.

Right after the conference finished many of us went to a pub just down the street, which a) was already packed, b) wasn’t expecting us, c) seems disorganized at the best of times and d) had malfunctioning draft taps. As a result I stayed for only one drink, with the eminently delightful Amy Rae who is beyond any doubt the coolest, most interesting, most fantabulous living being ever to inhabit the earth. She’s smarter than you (whoever you are), she can juggle swords and I believe she invented the monkey. She also goes by the name LiquorPig; look her up.

I’m not sure if I’d go again next year. I’m not learning a whole lot of new stuff and, given my introversion, I’m not meeting a lot of new people. What I am getting is a lot of quotes that I can use to persuade my company to get on this bus, so maybe that’s reason enough to keep going. It doesn’t hurt to be re-energized once a year, being surrounded by people who get it.

[tags]mesh07[/tags]

"Coupons…you want coupons, don't you?"

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Today was day 1 of the mesh conference here in Toronto. I met up with Colin, cursed the caterers for only having bagels to eat, drank as much water as I could and found a seat before the proceedings got underway.

The first (and best) part of today’s schedule was TechCrunch‘s Mike Arrington. He’s a pretty frank guy, and when he lambasted Ted Murphy from PayPerPost — calling him “the most evil person in the room” — things got fun. He also spoke frankly about how silicone valley is in need of another meltdown, to get all the PR and money-grabbing types out and let the real revolutionaries take over again.

Tom Williams and Austin Hill were also good, giving their perspectives as two guys who got very rich very young, and have devoted their time to effecting social change. Hill talked about an interesting new distributed computing power saving tool; think SETI@home for saving electricity. Check it out at DarkGreenPC.org.

After a sad lunch (strike 2 against the caterers: only vegetarian options were ceasar salad and pasta salad) I saw a very funny panel with Rachel Sklar, Loren Feldman and Cynthia Brumfield about whether or not old media should be scared shitless of new media. The consensus: maybe a little. New media won’t kill old media, but it’ll scare it into reacting.

I also watched panels entitled “Digital Blinders – Are We an Inch Wide and a Mile Deep?” and “The Always-On Generation – What Do Youth Do with the Web?”; the former was more like a university lecture or radio show than panel discussion, while the latter was amusing for how old it made most of the participants feel. A sample snippet:

[panelist] Erica Sum: “How many people in here have been to YTMND?”

[I raise my hand, as do maybe 4 or 5 other people in a room of about 100. Erica then starts talking about how cool it is in a screwy kind of way.]

Confused audience member #1: “Umm, could you maybe describe what that is for people who don’t know?”

Confused audience member #2: “Yeah, like how it’s different than Facebook or MySpace?”

Erica [trying to stifle laughter]: “Oh, it’s not at all.”

You can’t fault the audience members for not knowing what YTMND is, or for thinking it has something to do with social networking, since it’d been the dominant theme of the day. It was just a funny exchange.

Looking forward to tomorrow. Note to self: bring a nutrigrain bar.

.:.

Obviously, if I’m at home writing this, I wasn’t able to attend the free screening of Severance that I won passes to earlier this week. I was feeling too wonky, and have too much to do tonight. As soon as I finish writing this I plan to do an hour or two of work while I watch the hockey game. Dagnabbit…I wanted to see that movie too.

.:.

Things I’ve learned in the last 36 hours: never wear a white dress shirt to the dentist (that pink shit they polish your teeth with sprays) and screens for balcony doors are outrageously expensive (we’ve been quoted >$400 each).

.:.

An instructional video: how to break up with advertisers.

[tags]mesh07, severance, dentist, balcony screen doors, bring the love back[/tags]

Hard cell

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

For about five years now I’ve gone without a cell phone. I don’t miss having one; I can usually do what I need using my Blackberry (which doesn’t have voice enabled). Lately, though, I’ve been thinking I should get another.

So I spent some time poking about cell phone provider’s websites, and I’ve forgotten how freaking expensive they are. The newer phones are $300-400 unless I opt for a long-term contract, and only the oldest few are free, even if I sign for 3 years. Signing up subjects me to all kinds of charges…at least $25/month, plus a “system access fee” which is in the neighbourhood of $8-9/month. What the hell is a system access fee? How is it any different than the $25 I’d already be paying? It’s not, of course, but it’s a way for the phone companies to hide costs and increase the customer’s perceived value.

Now Magazine took a swing at mobile providers this past week, and Tom Purves pointed out last month how much our mobile data access costs. I’m just not sure I want to play along with this little scheme the carriers are running.

[tags]mobile phones, mobile data coverage, bell, rogers, fido[/tags]

Umm, so…when can I get a 40 exabyte Zen?

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

It’s been a beeeeezy day. I was up at 6:30; never really got back to sleep. We got a lot done with the condo today, actually; I cleaned up the den and collapsed a bunch of boxes, and we did even more once Nellie got home. Took a pile of stuff down to our (very small…grrr) storage locker and recycled piles of old cardboard & newspaper. We also set up most of the stereo (no surround speakers yet as we have to buy stands). Somewhere in there Nellie went for brunch and a wine & cheese tasting; I had time to knock off a ton of errands, set up my new Zen, watch a hockey game and a football match (Toronto FC: 3 goals (!) and a win) and get my mother hooked on a web 2.0 geneology site.

.:.

Go watch this. I wouldn’t say it’s the world’s best presentation, but it’s informative.

[tags]moving in, unpacking, zen vision m, geni.com, shift happens[/tags]

PeanutAllergy Inc.

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If the Globe and Mail weren’t such dicks about their online content, you could read this interesting article by Russell Smith about the recent spate of anti-religion books, Christopher Hitchens’ (which I talked about here) being the latest. Smith made the point that, even if it’s not dressed up as a cult/religion, slavish devotion is still hard to take. He even comments about how allergies that never used to exist suddenly afflict half the population: his example was half the population of Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood claiming to be allergic to wheat gluten; I’d suggest that the current generation of children all seemingly being allergic to peanuts is another good one.

Update from the comments: Joe dropped this great quote from the recent Lou Dobbs interview with Hitchens: “Religion ends and philosophy begins, just as alchemy ends and chemistry begins and astrology ends, and astronomy begins.”

.:.

Google Analytics has revamped their reporting engine. Holy crap. Magnifique. I’ll never use StatCounter again.

.:.

Walking home from the grocery store tonight we noticed that a bakery is going in on the ground floor. Sweet. Dangerous, but sweet.

[tags]globe and mail, russell smith, christopher hitchens, google analytics, bakery[/tags]

"Life all comes down to a few moments. This is one of them."

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

There will be a sequel to Wall Street. This will either be very cool, or just hilariously awful. That movie worked in the 80s for a reason; I don’t know if it can still be pulled off.

.:.

I took my new Zen out of the box last night, fondled it for a minute and then put it back. This weekend, my lovely, I promise. The time will be right. The stars are aligned. Get ready…my 39GB of music is on the way. “It is at this point that I will fill your hard drive to the break of dawn.”

[UPDATE] I just re-read the last paragraph. I sound like Smoove B.

[tags]wall street sequel, nomad zen vision:m[/tags]

The replacements

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I am now the proud owner of a Creative Zen Vision:M, the black 60GB model. However, I won’t have a chance to play with it tonight (!) as I’m busy taking care of other shit. I have to get up very early tomorrow for a flight to Montreal. I’ll return too late tomorrow night to play with it then either. Dan == sad.

I also got a replacement Roomba; no word on whether it’s intact or if I’ll have to return it as well. On top of that we got a replacement bathtub today. It’s a day of substitutions.

.:.

From the Globe and Mail: Bring pro hockey back to Winnipeg: Manitoba Tories

From me: Bring economic lessons to the Manitoba legislature.

[tags]creative zen vision m, roomba, winnipeg, hockey[/tags]

One host serving music, another serving veggie burgers

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Another busy day: we read newspapers, got a snack at Starbucks, went back to Canadian Tire to pick up a Roomba (which, upon opening, we found had already been used and was all scratched up and dirty…so that’ll be going back) and some other condo-y stuff, cleaned up, finally cleaned out my suitcase from last week, did some laundry, did some work, put together the other desk in the den and crossed a bunch of stuff of the to-do list.

.:.

Last night we went over to CBGB’s place, where GB cooked up some of his famous veggie burgers. These are the type that aren’t trying to simulate meat, but rather have a flavour all their own and just happen to sit between a bun. They were spicy and thick and I had three of them. Yum.

.:.

I just ordered one of these. I’m very excited. Not only does it do pictures & video and give me more room for music, but it also has a USB host feature, so I can download pictures to it directly from our camera without having to carry a laptop around or buy a gigantic memory card.

[tags]roomba, canadian tire, veggie burgers, creative zen vision m[/tags]

25.574%

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

My blackberry just forced me to change my password. I don’t like mandatory password changes, so I chose to make “fuckyou” my new password. I am raging against the machine. Security restrictions suxorz.

.:.

Day 2 is now done. I have a little work to do before Heroes comes on, and then I’ll meet with my group to figure out what needs to be done for our Thursday presentation.

[tags]blackberry password, heroes[/tags]