CRTC Launches Online Consultation on Net Neutrality

As I discovered on Michael Geist's blog, the CRTC is offering Canadians the opportunity speak out on Net Neutrality in advance of their hearings on ISP network management practices.

I had this to say, in the Impact on User Experience section:

To me the internet is an infrastructure service. I don't expect my provider to give preferential treatment to any type of traffic based on the source, content, or destination. Just as I don't expect the city to regulate my water pressure based on whether I'm watering the lawn or taking a shower.

But to continue the water analogy I understand there's a difference when I run a bath (i.e.: bit torrent) and when I wash my hands (i.e.: e-mail). The bandwidth consumed by bit torrent can have a negative impact on my internet neighbours unless the total bandwidth is sufficiently high. Especially if we're all torrenting at the same time.

I'd love to see over-building of the network, but it's only a short-term solution until more people get on the net and use up all the over-capacity. Traffic management is unfortunately a necessary tool to ensure consistent service for all subscribers as-is continuous re-building of the network.

But the management should not require deep packet inspection - a simple high level valve that adjusts the pressure regardless of what is going through should be sufficient and would keep the ISPs neutral regarding how we use the internet.

It certainly is a concern to me that some ISPs have conflicting interests (they run multiple distribution channels, ex.: Cable-TV vs. Internet) and might specifically block or limit my access to their competitors in order to artificially increase the viewership of their material.

It would be like the water company cutting of my water if I didn't use their brand of soap!

See the full thread of my discussion...

Cross-posted on 2FatDads at CRTC Launches Online Consultation on Net Neutrality

GMail cheat sheet is now on CheatSheets.org

Inspired by the vi/vim graphical cheat sheet I wrote a GMail Keyboard Shortcut graphical cheat sheet for Google's GMail (using Google Docs of course).

A few days ago a stumbled across CheatSheets.org and I submitted it to their directory. It's now listed in the GMail section!

Cross-posted on 2FatDads at GMail cheat sheet is now on CheatSheets.org

NOT Getting Things Done

As many of you surely know, I'm a big fan of David Allen's time/task management principles known as Getting Things Done. Well, I've fallen off the wagon somewhat a while back and, being a geek, I've been looking for something new and shiny to motivate me to get back on the horse. But a post from a GTD coach Kelly Forester got me going, however...

Kelly's post discussed how some people implemented GTD on their Mac's, PC's and on the web. Since my PC is company issue (and I can't really use Outlook because of the way our network is setup) I tend to put a lot of stuff on the web (in the cloud as Web 3.0 people put it).

The two most popular choices seemed to be Remember the Milk and Nozbe.

We all know Remember the Milk because it has such a cool name it must be good and deserves a lot viral publicity. There's three problems with RTM as far as I'm concerned:

One: Their tabby-looking interface doesn't survive as you increase the number of lists (or contexts in GTD terms). It pretty quickly looks butt-ugly (sorry, RTM, but that's how I feel). And if it doesn't look as cool or cooler than the competition it better make up for it somewhere else!

Two: Their Overview page is based purely on when a Task is due. There's no way to filter by list (Context) or by Next Actions (a GTD term identifying the next task required to move a more complex objective forward).

And finally three: Their iGoogle gadget suffers from similar short-comings: you can't limit the list to the context you're currently in (so I can't hide my At home tasks while I'm At work and vice-versa) - which is a major part of GTD.

Nozbe has two major short-comings although it is designed from the start to be used by people for GTD so it's a great solution otherwise.

One: The free account is severely limited and the web is about getting things for free!!!

and Two: The iGoogle gadget doesn't work in Google's Chrome browser!!!

Finally, that leaves Google's recently added Task manager. There's an iGoogle version and integration with GMail so it's available where I spend a lot of time online. It's free (as in beer, but not yet as in speech). And I can view my tasks by list so I can narrow them down to my current Context.

All-in-all I'd say it's almost perfect, except that I can't synchronize it with Blackberry - yet, I hope Google is working on it though!

Cross-posted on 2FatDads at NOT Getting things Done

GMail Keyboard Shortcut graphical cheat sheet

I've updated my GMail Keyboard Shortcut graphical cheat sheet to reflect GMail latest changes. Four new keystrokes are now available: v Move, l Label, T Tasks, and gW Docs.

Rest of post goes here...

Blogspot vs Wordpress

So, will I really do it? Will I really give-up on my beloved Google and move some of my content over to WordPress.com?! Of course I have to pay to get is free from Google but if the end result is more to my liking it might be worth it (and it's not really that much more than free).

Of course the ultimate solution is to roll my own using the hosting services of my registrar (netfirms.ca) but I have an issue their with their e-mail management tools (it's pretty much just inboxes - no domain aliasing, no lists, etc. that I have using Google Apps for my Domain).

Pownce shuts down

Pownce announced today that they were closing their doors and taking their technology to Six Apart. I had an account there, but rarely used it - it was essentially like Twitter for file sharing.

It's tempting to say this the recession affecting the web. And it's probably true that the usual rationalization and consolidation is happening now that valuations are down and some people think they can make some good investments and others think they should take the money and get out before things get worse.

On the other hand, there's a lot of duplicate services out there - for alternatives to Twitter checkout Jaiku or Identi.ca to name others where I'm a lurker. It's not surprising that some of the minds behind ideas (business and technology) want to opening cooperate (and compete internally) rather than compete openly.

And the consolidation is good for the end-users too. Platform developers can concentrate their efforts and there will be a lot less jumping around trying to follow friends on one web site or another.

Who made VB the language of macros anyways?!

I've recently gotten onto the kick of moving a lot of my documents and spreadsheets into the cloud - Google Docs in particular.

The basic motivation is the failure of my portable hard drive. A NetGear ReadyNAS Duo solved the storage problems for things like digital photos and videos. But sometimes you just want to make a quick update to a spreadsheet and you don't feel like waiting until you get home.

My NAS is turned off, as is my router and modem, when I'm not using it so remote access is not option. Windows sync is a pain in the butt that makes shutting down take forever. So my solution was to put some of those documents in the cloud - accessible from any internet connection.

But why-oh-why won't Google support JavaScript macros in their documents and spreadsheets (presentations too but I don't use those).

Having the macros stored with the document (and with the template) would avoid any cross-site scripting issues, would harness the power of the browser, and would make all the world's javascript libraries accessible!

I know Zoho spreadsheets support VB macros but not in the same way that Excel does - I can't add in references to other libraries to extend the power of the native system.

And who made VB the language of macros anyways!? If you want to program in VB then fine - use Excel (or Zoho). If you want to live in the cloud then use JavaScript!!!

Copyright law reform in Canada

There's a great article over the Globe and Mail about copyright reform in Canada.

The article brings up a couple points that I think are essential. Namely that public consultations in Canada a more geared towards hearing organizations (i.e.: corporations and lobby groups) than individual citizens; and that the copyright holder is rarely the artist but a distribution company.

To the first point the solution is some obvious: join an organization that reflects your values, there is strength in numbers. Of course finding the perfect group is not always easy or possible. At a minimum, write a letter or e-mail to your MP so they know how feel about Bill C-61 (the copyright reform legislation currently being discussed).

One of the points you should definitely bring up with your MP (and any organization you join) is that law needs to be able to evolve with technology and at a minimum be representative of the technology's current state. As the article says, when the current round of reform began things like iTunes and YouTube and Google Booksearch were almost non-existant.

To the second point I'm not sure what we can do. Most artists are bound by contracts, and even in the internet age the distribution companies do provide the artists a valuable service. Sticking it to the man by illegally downloading or sharing music and movies is not the way to go either.

One thing is certain in my mind though: this is a siege war. The one who can hold out the longest will win. If consumers cave to the music & movie industry demands then they will have won. But if we refuse to spend our hard earned money until we get what we want (and to me that means no DRM) then we will win.

Rock on!

Update: (Thanks JF)
Your MP's e-mail address can be found on the Members of Parliament page. And this is Bill C-61's page.

Add Pavatar to the picture

As an update to my post below on Gravatar and Openvatar I want to add Pavatar to the list of ways to consolidate your profile.

Pavatar is a specification as opposed to a service like Gravatar, but the objective is the same - one consistent avatar.

Since it's a developing specification I felt the need to add my two cents, here's what I posted in their forum:

Good afternoon...

First of all, I'd like to submit my vote to stick with term "avatar" rather than pavatar (or gravatar or favatar or whatever). So in my humble and naive opinion it should be:
X-avatar
link rel="avatar"
avatar.png

Furthermore, I think it would be cool if the Pavatar spec supported Gravatar! Since Pavatar is a spec and Gravatar is a service the two should be complimentary.

It's already possible since Gravatar generates a consistent URL for your avatar you could always use that in the X-avatar header or link href attribute.

But I would take it one step further: the URL could be mailto:... and then the consumer would need to convert that to a Gravatar URL (their algorithm is published, it's an MD5 sum).

One could even take this another step further, and add base and method attributes to link that would identify the base of the URL and the hash method to convert a mailto: href. Although in the HTTP headers we would then need X-avatar-url, x-avatar-base, and X-avatar-method.

For example, for Gravatar you'd have something like:
<link rel="avatar" href="mailto:me@mail.com" base="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar" method="md5" />

I hope you don't mind my jumping in like this, I sure hope Pavatars work out 'cuz I'm in favour of anything that consolidates my profiles.

Hopefully this all leads to something soon!

Google user profile's expands

In a recent post on the Official Google Blog: New Google Help Forums one of the new features mentioned was

expanded user profiles that highlight your forum activity

Does this mean that Google is moving to consolidate user profiles across their services?! I've got at least three:

• GMail
• Reader/Shared Stuff (S2)
• PicasaWeb
• Blogger

Oh wait, that's four! Having only one profile will be nice! Especially since I like the real internet (as opposed to the Farcebook internet) so can't wait for some of these social aspects Google is working on to come together.

Another thing that would be nice is Gravatar.com integration or an equivalent service (perhaps leveraging PicasaWeb - designate an album to store your avatars and be able to easily select one). The URL to avatar has to be exposed though and more services will need to integrate Google's avatar service, take a URL as the avatar source, or there will need to be a tie-in with Google's OpenID implementation.

Blogspot on a Blackberry

This is my blog on a Blackberry:

Thanks JF!

Gravatar and Openvatar

I've just discovered two interesting services: gravatar.com and openvatar.com.

Gravatar has been around longer and Openvatar might be kind of redundant but the concept sounds pretty cool to me. Note that WeeWorld (and others too I'm sure) have offered a similar service for even longer than Gravatar, but there's some key differences.

Gravatar lets you upload or link to images you want to use as an avatar and then associates them with your e-mail address (you can specify multiple e-mail addresses and use the same or different avatars for each one). So now sites that display your avatar can request the appropriate image from Gravatar based on the e-mail address you used at the original site! And you manage your avatars in one place: Gravatar.com.

If the site doesn't have Gravatar integration but supports linking to an off-site image then you can get the image URL for e-mail address(es) post them to the site.

This latter feature works just like Wee World's live linking to your Wee Mee. As you change your gravatar (or WeeMee) the image generated by the link will update.

As for Openvatar, the service is redundant since OpenID allows transferring an avatar (or profile image) but since there are a number of OpenID providers the chore of managing your avatar at each provider could be simplified by a service like Openvatar (or by Gravatar extending their service to include your OpenID's). I realise the promise of OpenID is that you need only ONE but the reality is you're going to have several.

The wonderful thing about the internet is all the standards you have to choose from!

X-treme Luge

So not only did three geeks take their kids sledding, but when we got home we pulled out the beers and the mac book and put together this little video. iMovie was sweet but what about Microsoft Movie Maker? Well for one thing, it can't read video files from a Blackberry (3GP format, which Quick Time reads natively - Firefox on a PC uses the QT plugin to play them). So this is what I came up with on my ThinkPad.
At least I remembered to add some credits!

ThinkGeek :: Wi-Fi Detector Shirt

This is insane! This is the kind of technology that I love - totally useless but brilliant application of basic, commodity parts.