Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

I was watching an informercial the other day called Shortcuts to Internet Millions and I wrote a post about it. I looked them up on the web and didn't find too much about them. But thanks to Google my post is now the top hit on the subject and that enabled a number of people to find a common place in the comments section to discuss the subject, enlightening others on issues surrounding the products described in the informercial.

We all see this kind of discussion everyday in blog postings, but it jumped out at me this time as a bunch of people who don't know each other at all spontaneously jumping in to help others.

Even if I do occasionally find the internet boring, it is that kind of interaction that demonstrates how valuable the internet has become as a way for people to make their voices heard.

I've written a couple of times about the problems I am having with the delivery of a newspaper I don't want from the company that delivers my New York Times. So I looked at the New York Times page and found this:

HOME OR OFFICE DELIVERY/CUSTOMER CARE

Place orders, temporarily stop service or inquire about billing or service by calling 1-800-NYTIMES or by visiting homedelivery.nytimes.com.

To write Sr. V.P., Circulation, send to:
circulation@nytimes.com.

So I wrote to circulation@nytimes.com explaining my problem.A day and a half later I received this response:

Good Afternoon,

Thank you for your communication with The New York Times. In response to your email, we certainly do appologize for any inconvience, however, for better assistance with your questions and concerns, please call the Canadian Customer Service Department at 416-585-5222, once again thank you for contacting the New York Times.

have a great day

Sincerely
xxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxx@pcfcorp.com
Problem Resolution Specialist
New York Times

So the Senior VP of Circulation seems to work at pfccorp.com, otherwise known as Publishers Circulation Fulfillment Inc.So the New York Times lies to me about who I am writing to, immediately giving me the impression that they just don't care about me, the customer.

And their solution? I should solve the problem by calling - for the fifth time - the company that caused the problem and refuses to rectify the problem.

Boy do I feel special.

David Pogue doesn't see the point of LinkedIn:

What I don’t understand is: If somebody knows me well enough to e-mail me with an invitation to join, why doesn’t he just e-mail me directly with whatever his problem or offer is?

I use LinkedIn as a kind of address book, keeping me updated with the goings on of people I know and have worked with.But beyond that, I just don't see the point.

Mark Cuban thinks that the internet is dead and boring:

Every generation has its defining breakthrough. Cars, TV, Radio, Planes,highways, the wheel, the printing press, the list goes on forever. I'm sure in each generation to whom the invention was a breakthrough it may have been heretical to consider those inventions "dead and boring". The reality is that at some point they stop changing. They stop evolving. They become utilities or utilitarian and are taken for granted.

Some of you may not want to admit it, but that's exactly what the net has become. A utility. It has stopped evolving. Your Internet experience today is not much different than it was 5 years ago.

Fred Wilson disagrees:

If it ended with "my Internet experience today is not much different than it was 5 years ago", I'd be nodding my head in agreement. Clearly Mark's not using the Internet the way I am.

My delicious toolbar records my most visited web services. Typepad, Google Finance, Techmeme, Delicious, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, last.fm, hypemachine, yottamusic. I did not use one of those services 5 years ago. Not one of them!

Those services may be new, but I was using Blogger, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Photos, chat rooms, directories and the like five years ago. These services aren't that new or novel. YouTube may be new, but video on the web isn't either.

Mark Evans feels pretty much the same way:

Personally, the Internet and what’s available never ceases to amaze. I spent a good hour last weekend using StumbleUpon, and discovered a whack of great Web sites that immediately went on my del.ici.us account. I also spent some time watching videos, including a bunch of Wordpress tutorials - something that was difficult to easily do a couple of years ago.

Yes there is a lot of stuff out there.There are a lot of new TV shows every year too, but rarely is there anything all that different on. And yes we're doing a lot of stuff with the internet. But the internet has become kind of boring.

I've had 5 Mbps service for over five years without an increase. And now if you actually use that unlimited bandwidth you've always been promised your service just may get cut off. If we can't maintain net neutrality the carriers will pick and choose what happens in the future.

I'm waiting to see the next big leap forward.

As the demand for music on CD falls through the floor, HMV, Canada's largest music retailer, is reducing prices:

"It's a slowly dying market," said Curtis Blondin, who works at the HMV store at the Bayshore Shopping Centre.

"CD sales are going down, hardcore. Everyone is downloading now and we're selling video games and we're pushing movies," Mr. Blondin said yesterday, after spending most of the day reducing CDs that had been $19.99 to $14.99

They seem to reducing the list price on the CD, as opposed to the sale price. After all, when was the last time you actually paid anything close to $20 for a regular CD. And they are competing with deep discounting companies like Wal-Mart and Future Shop (a division of Best Buy), where we buy our CDs.

I still enjoy getting the physical CD, but the truth is, it just gets ripped right into iTunes and then stored away. The day of physical media is nearly gone. I still miss the cover real estate and liner notes that came with records though. I still remember The Runaways first album (Joan Jett's first band). Laid flat, the cover depicted a head to toe picture of five very attractive teenage girls, just the kind of thing a teenage boy might enjoy. And their music wasn't bad either.

I'm sorry that my grandchildren will never know that pleasure.

I've noticed a disturbing trend in customer service. When I feel that I've exhausted all the avenues in a customer service problem, I ask for the name of the VP or Director or Customer Care. These are the typical responses:

• We don't have one.
• I don't know who that is.
• I can't give out their name.
• They don't have email.

Guess what folks. These are all lies told by $8 an hour customer service people so that the person actually responsible for making sure that customers are satisfied doesn't actually have to deal with customers.

The other day I mentioned that a newspaper company had started sending me their paper while I was on vacation.In the three irate calls it took to make them stop I told them I NEVER wanted to receive their paper. A couple of days ago they started sending it again.

They only have my address because they deliver my New York Times in Canada, so I thought I'd contact the Times. Surprise! You can't call the Senior VP of Circulation (who apparently has no name), but you can email them. I emailed them at 9:00 am yesterday with my problem.

I'm still waiting for a response.

The truth is, as long as I pay my bill, these people don't give a damn about me. They certainly don't care about any problems I may be having with their service, or how much they inconvenience me. And in the case of The Globe and Mail, they don't care that I don't want their paper.

Honestly, if you have someone on your payroll who is supposed to care about customers but won't take a call from one, then what are you paying them for? Just fire them and save the money. Clearly it won't make any difference at all.

If you are a Comcast customer and you use too much bandwidth you could lose service for 12 months.

How much bandwidth is too much? That's for them to know and you to find out.

Wal-Mart moved into the world of Facebook with their Roommate Style Match, a seemingly decent attempt to provide a service that students can use.

Yet much as every other form of media, it has become a place to bash Wal-Mart in the wall posts section, with the grammar and writing skill of a six year old. For example:

...Plus don’t look at history as a liner progression of progress that’s incredibly stupid things go backwards and forwards...

And of course anyone who dares support Wal-Mart must be a paid shill.

These comments seem to center around the fact that Wal-Mart is not unionized, given that unions have done so much for their members recently.There are also comments about the fact that Wal-Mart products are made in China. Shop much? Every retail company sells products that are made in China.

In becoming incredibly successful in an extremely tight retail market Wal-Mart has managed to lower prices for everybody, and they have made themselves a target. Putting a union in Wal-Mart will do one thing and one thing only - make the union rich.

My friend Mack D. Male wrote that Windows Media Center was Microsoft success story. The post made it to digg, and he commented on that:

Essentially my post demonstrates that Windows Media Center has become very successful. I don't really attempt to explain the reasons for the success, aside from glossing over the features and that sort of thing. It seems most people think that WMC is only successful because it is installed by default on many new computers. Even if that's the case, does it matter? I don't think it does.

I'm going to politely disagree. While Windows Media Center may be a success in terms of units sold, that is basically because Microsoft has the monopoly power to force computer manufacturers to pre-install it. That doesn't make it a success.

The statistics are interesting:

Back in 2004, Windows eHome Division General Manager Joe Belfiore noted that 27% of Media Center buyers used the machines in their living rooms, 23% used them in bedrooms, and almost 50% used them in dens, studies, or home offices. Some people use their Media Center PC primarily as an everyday computer, others use it strictly as a home entertainment device.

But they neglect to tell you one important thing. How many people actually use it as a media center? How many even have TV tuner cards installed in their PCs? How many have replaced their TiVo with Windows Media Center?

I did find these statistics, but I'm not sure how credible they are:

58 percent of Media Center users watch TV on their PCs, while 27 percent have their Media Center PC connected directly to a TV set.

So some people may have decided to buy a computer with TV functionality instead of a new TV. They may watch DVDs or listen to music on it. I could do that with any PC - in fact I do it with my Macbook. But I'm not sure that constitutes a success for Windows Media Center.

Craig Burton mentions a scary proposed rule:

In a series of recent publications in the Federal Register, the Department of Homeland Security is proposing a comprehensive new system of surveillance and, perhaps more important, control of both domestic and international travelers.

The proposed new rules, which are currently open for public comments, would require that:

1. All would be international travellers to or from the USA (even US citizens crossing the U.S.-Canada border on foot) would have to have government-issued ID credentials
2. All would-be passengers on international or domestic flights to, from, over, via, or within the U.S. would have to have both government-issued ID credentials and explicit case-by-case prior permission from the DHS to the airline to allow each passenger to board a plane.

Shades of Rick's Cafe Americain in Casablanca where people were prepared to kill for the letters of transit.

When I followed the links they didn't seem to tell the correct story, but this one does:

Conversion of the Advance Passenger Information system (API or APIS) for international ship and plane travel into an advance permission system

The link is a PDF of the response to the proposal by the Identity Project. I'm surprised that I haven't seen a thing about this in any newspapers.

I'm watching an infomercial called Shortcuts to Internet Millions. Two attractive women in low cut cleavage-exposing tops sitting on a couch discussing how great this system is, interspersed with testimonials from people making up to $130,000 per month - with the standard disclaimer "Unique experience. Individual results may vary".

Sounds great. Except for one thing. The informercial has a toll-free number but no website.

Now how much would you trust someone who tells you that you can make money on the internet but doesn't use it themselves?

Via Google, I can find a website for the product.Maybe I'll buy it just to see how I too can make millions on the internet. I'll let you know what happens.

Oh yeah. Like I'll still be blogging after I become a multi-millionaire.Okay, I still would. Sad, huh? But I'll have a solid gold Macbook.

From BoingBoing:

A survey on 809 parents and 444 children aged between nine and 16, revealed that 44% of the adults questioned were worried about the safety of small children and 59% showed interest in satellite microchips incorporated in uniforms to track students with ease.

No longer just helicopter parents,apparently 59% have gone completely off the deep end in wanting to track their kids via satellite. Where is the ACLU when you need them?

As I watch a report on television about more deaths of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan it occurs to me that the only time there is a news report about Afghanistan it is about the deaths of Canadian soldiers.

There isn't once success story to mention?

It's nice to see Russ Beattie back:

The story also notes there's only "tens of millions" of searches done each day on Google mobile, as compared to the billions done via PC. That's definitely a good reality check, and actually it's also probably a good litmus test for the definition of the "year of the mobile web" which has been proclaimed every year since, oh, 2000 at least. Some day, without question, the number of searches done via mobile will eclipse those done via the PC - and when it finally does, *that* will be the year of the mobile Internet, and not moment sooner.

Of course here in Canada, where the cost of monthly data service could actually exceed the cost of an iPhone, the mobile web just ain't coming anytime soon.

Time off for good behavior apparently has a completely different meaning in Los Angeles:

Nicole Richie was released from jail Thursday after serving 82 minutes of a four-day sentence for driving under the influence of drugs.

The reality show star, who checked into jail in this Los Angeles suburb at 3:15 p.m., was released at 4:37 p.m. "based on her sentence and federal guidelines," Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Maribel Rizo said without elaborating.

There is some precedent:

Under a federal court mandate to manage jail overcrowding, arrestees sentenced to 30 days or less for a nonviolent offense are usually released within 12 hours, the sheriff's department said in a statement.

And she was certainly released witin 12 hours.

Lindsay Lohan is no better:

Just hours before Richie did her time, Lindsay Lohan was charged with seven misdemeanor drunken-driving and cocaine charges for two arrests in the last four months. Attorney Blair Berk arranged a plea bargain and Lohan was sentenced to one day in jail, 10 days of community service and the mandatory completion of a drug treatment program. She was also fined and placed on 36 months probation.

One whole day?Based on Nicole Ritchie's experience, Lindsay should be out in about 20 minutes.

Kinda makes a joke of the Los Angeles prison system, doesn't it? I guess these people are just special. I wonder just how many times you have to be caught drunk driving or with cocaine before you actually get punished?

I saw the term "food miles" for the first time today:

"Food miles" is a term which refers to the distance food travels from the time of its production until it reaches the consumer or end-user. It is one dimension used in assessing the environmental impact of food.

The concept of food miles is part of a broader issue of sustainability which deals with a large range of issues, including local food. The term was coined by Tim Lang (now Professor of Food Policy, City University, London) who says: "The point was to highlight the hidden ecological, social and economic consequences of food production to consumers in a simple way, one which had objective reality but also connotations."

I also learned the term "locavore":

Also, many trips by personal cars to external shopping centres would have a negative environmental impact compared to a few truck loads to neighbourhood stores that can be easily accessed by walking or cycling. A locavore endeavors to eat food from within a foodshed having a radius of 100 miles.

It's like a whole new language. I live in Canada so we have about a four monthe season for local fruits and vegetable within my 100 mile foodshed. So I'm a summer locavore.

But come October or November those fruits and vegetables are coming from Florida or California. So for the other three seasons I guess I'm a faravore.

Once we start playing this kind of game then we also need to take into account every other factor, such as how much heat and electricity were required in a greenhouse setting, or how much energy was required to create the fertilizer or pesticide, and how far it had to travel.

It's the same thing as saying that a Toyota Prius is energy efficient but ignoring the massive travel required by the battery components, and the fact that it must be disposed of in a particular way.

Long time reader and fan Will Daggart (hey he said he was, I swear) sent me this link to a YouTube video for Camp Okutta, a summer camp that offers military training - like grenades and minefields - for children.

It turns out that the video is actually part of what seems to be a campaign by War Child Canada to inform the public of the unfortunate lives of children in war torn areas:

War Child Canada is a registered Canadian charity dedicated to providing urgently needed humanitarian assistance to war-affected children around the world. War Child Canada helps generate awareness, support and advocacy for children's rights everywhere.

Unfortunately some people think that it is all too real:

Some Torontonians didn't realize the blue, tree-motif posters were a hoax. Sarah Heywood told CBC News that she flew into a rage when she saw the ads on Queen Street West.

"It just brought up so much anger in me," Heywood said. "I immediately thought, wow, this is real, this is happening, people are now actually providing these kinds of services and opportunities for people who actually allow their children to go and experience something like that here in Canada."

Perhaps this campaign is better played out on the web rather than on a poster.

Dr. Brian Day, new head of the Canadian Medical Association, wants to change the way hospitals in Canada are funded:

Dramatically altering how hospitals are financed to eliminate block funding and replace it, at least in part, by "patient-focused funding" in which the hospital would get money based on the number patients treated, as well as the quality and timeliness of care.

In Canada, hospitals receive a block of funding for the year based on the anticipated number of patients they see and procedures they perform. There is no correction if those numbers change.

So the goal of a hospital administrator becomes to spend less - to see fewer patients and to perform fewer procedures, a direct contradiction to the way a health system should perform. There is also no incentive to invest in any new equipment.

A couple of nights ago my wife had a mammogram, which showed a clip in her breast to mark where a calcification deposit had been removed when we lived in Boston. The technician was surprised that the machine saw this. Apparently in her previous two mammograms in Canada the machines had not been powerful enough to detect the clip. What else might this older equipment be missing?

Hospital should certainly be funded based on actual patient and procedure numbers.This might also lead to some competition among hospitals, leading to an improved patient experience.

It is ridiculous to think, as some do, that everything is perfect with Canadian healthcare system as it is:

Mary Ferguson-Paré, president of the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario, said the suggestion that the Canada Health Act needs be "modernized" and "revised" is smoke and mirrors, and the reality is Dr. Day wants to promote private, for-profit medicine.

She said the ingenuity and the capacity already exists within the publicly funded health-care system to deliver effective and efficient care.

That ingenuity and capacity may already exist, but it will take some serious discussion and a big push to unlock it. Claiming that everything is wonderful as is does gives people a false sense of security and does nothing to make that happen.

A copy of the Crackle Newsletter arrived in my email inbox this week announcing that the former video site Grouper was now called Crackle. So I clicked on a link to see what it was about only to find out that I needed to download the newest Flash player plugin. This happened in both Camino and Firefox, even though I'm reasonably sure that I have already downloaded the latest player.

Sites like Google and YouTube have raised the bar for video sites in general. Every video just plays.

Unless you can articulate some great new benefit for me - and Crackle doesn't - then telling me I need new software just means that I won't be using your site until I get around to downloading the new software. And by then I'll probably have forgotten, so you blew your chance to make a good impression.

The lesson? Don't make me work harder than the market leaders do.Make my life easy.

Ok, that's intended to be a philosophical question. For the past few months I've been trying to figure out what to do with my life. I've read a whole bunch of books and gone through a whole bunch of exercises. Stuff like this:

• If you had a million dollars in the bank, what would you do?
• What are your strengths?
• What is your passion?

Ok, if you actually had a million dollars then you could do anything you want. That doesn't help you figure out what you want. I've also found that I, like most people, am terrible at figuring out what my strengths are. And what the heck is my passion?

All of the things I've read start out like that and then magically jump to the point where you have figured out what your passion is and are happily living it. But it just isn't that easy.

As well, all of the personal development blogs I've read do roughly the same thing. The give excellent suggestions, but they don't help you actually get there. It's easy to say "think positive", but how do you actually get there.

So I'm considering starting a personal development blog that actually walks through the process of self-discovery as I go through it. There are days when you can't bring yourself to get out of bed, or when you have absolutely no self-confidence. It happens, and rather than pretend it doesn't we can explore ways to get over it or through it.

And we'll try to help to see the wonderful little nuggets that we miss when we are down - those small successes that we all have. While I've been on this quest - that's probably the right name - some great things have happened to me. Being able to see and enjoy them made the ride that much better. I've even gained some great friends along the way.

Sounds a bit too "new age" for you? Don't worry; I'm just trying to make it an easy path for the average person - like me. I'm searching for my strengths and my passion, just like you.

"Bacn" is the new term for a certain class of email:

Email you receive that isn't spam... And isn't personal mail. It's the middle class of email. It's notifications of a new post to your Facebook wall or a new follower on Twitter. It's the Google alert for your name and the newsletter from your favorite company.

If the email comes from a Canadian company does that make it "Canadian Bacn"? Seriously, doesn't Hormel make any other meat-like products with four letter names?

Via Lifehacker.

Lifehacker points to an excellent guide for getting any stain out of your carpet. Never let it be said that this blog is not well-rounded.

And not a moment too soon as I was just having a discussion with my friend about getting cat umm... byproducts... out of her carpets. I loaned her a blacklight so that she could locate the stains in her basement.

Another household hint? Do not use a blacklight in rooms where you would rather be blissfully unaware of their current state of cleanliness.

My local paper has the following headline:

Province reclaims costs of some services

Move will save local taxpayers $22M a year

The National Post also has a similar Toronto-focused story (my local paper is not blog-friendly).

Now I understand that in the fantasy world of government accounting, it certainly seems that somebody will save money.But actually, unless they raise taxes - which Dalton McGuinty says he won't do, and he means it this time - then they are just taking the money from somewhere else.

And I highly doubt that Waterloo is going to cut my taxes, given that they've increased about 25% in the last four years.

So where exactly is this fantasy $22 million savings? And how do I see my piece of it?

Have kids? You might be a hero:

Asked to name their heroes, young Americans surveyed by The Associated Press and MTV make their parents the collective top pick. Twenty-nine percent choose their mothers, 21 percent name their fathers and 16 percent pick their parents without specifying which one. Allowed to choose as many heroes as they'd like, nearly half mention at least one of their folks.

The Social Graph is everywhere today. Ok, Wikipedia calls it the social network.

You and I might call it "contacts" or "friends" but I guess you don't get millions of dollars of funding if you keep it that simple.

Now it is a little more complicated than that. There are relationships between these people and you, and perhaps between each other.

It's also wrong to suggest that you have a single social graph. I think that you actually have multiple social graphs, in the same way that you might have a different set of contacts in your email address book (probably including work contacts) than you do in Facebook (who are probably actual friends).

There are even different levels of friends - people I've met, people I drink with, people I volunteer with, people I grew up with, etcetera. How do you classify the level of "friendness"?

This thing just feels like it is going to spread like wildfire. Hey, if you classify people based your past interactions, would they be "content generated users"?

My pet peeve with Facebook is that when somebody sends me a message, Facebook sends me an email. But that email doesn't contain the message. It contains a link that I can click on that forces me to log on to Facebook to read the actual message.

Incredibly stupid, right?

So they are fixing the problem, but only for people that don't use Facebook!

If you're like most people, you may have a few stubborn friends who haven't joined Facebook…yet. This can make reaching friends complicated—there are some friends you can send a Facebook message, and others you have to email. Not anymore. Now, when you're writing messages, you can send the message to people on Facebook, and to people not on Facebook.

Now you can enter a friend's email address into the To: line when you send a message or share an album, and Facebook will email them the message. Your friends will be able to reply without signing up, and they will be able to see content you share with them.

A good reason NOT to be a Facebook user.

CBC comments on the high cost of US healthcare:

Shipping a Calgary woman to Montana to have her quadruplets because of a shortage of neonatal staff in her hometown could cost the Calgary Health Region more than $200,000.

Karen Jepp, 35, gave birth to four identical girls in Great Falls, Mont. on Aug. 12 after the Foothills Hospital's high-risk ward was over-capacity and no hospitals in western Canada could take the woman.

[...]

Toni MacDonald, director of child health for the health region, said the same delivery in Canada would have only cost $66,000.

But that isn't true. The cost would only be $66,000 is the operation could be performed in Canada. But since there was no capacity in Canada that was impossible.

If you can't actually provide the service then the cost is essentially meaningless. Someone willing to pay $1,000,000 for the birth still couldn't have gotten it. The extra cost in the US system is what ensures that a hospital in Great Falls, Montana (population 56,690) can provide better service than Calgary, Alberta, the fourth largest city in Canada with a population of almost 1,000,000 people.

Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com commenting on Microsoft's CRM product:

Claiming Microsoft customers had picked Salesforce.com rather than Microsoft CRM during the quarter, Benioff finished: "Microsoft's strategy of an inferior product at an inferior price promises to do for on-demand what Zune has done for music players."

I've long been concerned that free speech is disappearing in Canada, but Kathy Shaidle has more concrete evidence:

"Just consider the words of one 'hate-repressor' who works for the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Dean Steacy is a top investigator for the CHRC, and here's what he said about freedom of speech in an exchange with Barbara Kulaszka, a lawyer representing a website owner:

MS KULASZKA: Mr. Steacy, you were talking before about context and how important it is when you do your investigation. What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate one of these complaints?

MR. STEACY: Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value.

While the words "freedom of speech" certainly do appear in an American document, I wasn't aware that the concept of freedom of speech was limited to a particular country. In fact I though that it was one of the freedoms that Canadian soldiers fought for in World Wars, or in places like Afghanistan.

I live about an hour west of Toronto - when there's no traffic that is. On a normal morning it could take up to two hours to get from my house to downtown Toronto where I'm headed today to visit the nice folks at b5media. I do not find that to be a pleasant drive.

So I decided to take the train - Via Rail. Just under $50 for the round trip including tax. About an hour and a half travel time while I relax with a paper and my Macbook. And you can get coffee and food (and drinks on the way home) right at your seat. The train drops you at Union Station right downtown where you can also just hop right on to the subway if need be.

I got pretty excited when the Macbook detected a ViaTrain WiFi hub, which turned out to be pay for play. Unfortunately I couldn't even get to the Rates page so I couldn't sign up. There's one place where free WiFi would be great.

The schedules unfortunately force me to stay in Toronto all day long, but I can't imagine or recommend a more pleasant trip to the city.

Update: I triedthe WiFi on the way home as well. No luck. I couldn't get to the sign up page. Perhaps somebody at Via Rail should take a look at it.

Kent Newsome hits the nail on the head:

Nobody, and I mean N-O-B-O-D-Y, in the real business world has the slightest idea what Twitter is, and if you tried to tell them, they wouldn't be the slightest bit interested. Oh, unless they were in some corporate IT department- they'd be interested then, but only because they'd have to remember to block Twitter along with the free email and porn sites. And even if they didn't, heavy use of Twitter at work would be about the same as heavy eBay use. Not a career enhancing move.

I live in Waterloo, Canada, in Canada's Technology Triangle, and winner of the Intelligent City award. Yet if I mention Twitter (or heaven forbid Jaiku of something else like that) I get blank stares even from diehard technology folks. The most frequent response is "why would you want to tell people everything you are doing?" followed by "why would someone care what you are doing?".

Business people would be looking for the business reason to do something like this. You could argue for "increase business communication" but seriously that's a bit of a thin argument unless you are somebody like a startup where time is extremely critical and you want to capture every interjection.

Twitter is actually a lot like standing on the street corner and yelling at passersby.Some may choose to stop and listen, while many will walk on by and ignore you. And of the ones who stop, you may choose to listen to some and ignore others. That isn't communication.

While no perfect solution, at least blogging allows me to comment on your thoughts (if you allow comments) or building on them through trackbacks.Blogging also encapsulates it's own history which I can generally search to find nuggets. Tweets, by nature of their short messages, would likely return more hits but less useful information, and probably few links to other sources of information.

Blogging has actually helped me to meet people and to forge relationships with them. I just can't see that happening through Twitter. It seems more like a tool to extend and maintain existing relationships. And Facebook is kind of nice, but I just can't be bothered to deal with an increasing backlog of Vampire, Zombie, Drink requests and the like. It isn't really a communication medium; it is becoming the equivalent of forwarded jokes via email.

Like Fred Wilson, I also want to use Twitter to update my Facebook status:

So while I am thrilled that I can now get my Facebook status message into Twitter and subscribe to my friend's Facebook posts in Google Reader, that's not enough for my taste.

I want to use Twitter to update my Facebook status. I don't update my Facebook status. I twitter it to my blog, my friends phones, and countless other places on the web. I hope that Facebook will be another of those places soon.

Actually, I want to write a single application to update my status everywhere from one single point. I don't care that ever app wants to own me - that doesn't work for me.

If Facebook wants to be truly open - which they probably don't - then they'll fix that and give me a simple UpdateFacebookStatus() API call.

The province of Ontario, Canada, today announced a website that lets parents know about public inspection results for daycare centres:

Ontario parents can now turn to the Internet to learn more about the conditions inside their children's daycare centres as the province has posted provincial inspection results online.

While the move is being hailed by some child-care experts, others say the website doesn't contain enough vital information to help parents make good choices, such as staff training levels and specifics on occurrences.

I decided to try the site out but unfortunately there are no licensed daycare centres in Waterloo, Ontario, where we live. This will come as a bit of a shock to my wife, who works in a daycare centre in Waterloo.

When announcing a brand new service, always make sure that it actually works.

Perhaps it's just me, but I've lost track of whether Microsoft actually creates anything new anymore, or if they just rename stuff.

Imagine if you picked up your phone and there was no dialtone. Imagine the phone company telling you that there was a problem and it would be fixed in 12 to 24 hours. How pleased would you be?

In fact, if there was an outage of your local phone service for a little over 5 minutes, there would be potential fines levied by the FCC.

But if a VOIP provider like Skype has a problem, things are different:

UPDATED 14:02 GMT: Some of you may be having problems logging into Skype. Our engineering team has determined that it’s a software issue. We expect this to be resolved within 12 to 24 hours. Meanwhile, you can simply leave your Skype client running and as soon as the issue is resolved, you will be logged in. We apologize for the inconvenience.

This is not to pick on Skype. Their service is pretty good in general. But I've mentioned before that this kind of problem is why VOIP is not a perfect replacement for Plain Old Telephone Service. It just isn't dependable enough, and it doesn't provide five nines of reliability.

Om Malik points out that this may also indicate a huge potential problem with P2P applications, which also include things like Joost and Babelgum.

I'm number 51 on the list of the Top 100 Canadian political blogs.

And people said I'd never amount to anything. Ok, they didn't actually say that. But look just how far you can get with a willingness to say pretty much exactly what you are thinking.

From Rush Limbaugh:

A British clown has had the smile wiped off his face after being told he couldn't use balloons in his act because children might be allergic to latex." Have you heard anything more ridiculous than this? The children -- the little children -- might be allergic to latex? Meanwhile, in every damn school in the country we're urging them to wear condoms, for crying out loud! Well, what the hell is a condom made of? Give 'em condoms for every damn thing in the world that's wrong with them, and then they can't go to a circus and be around a clown with a bunch of balloons?

You know what? This stuff from the European Union is going to end up here, because it always does. The circus is going to be a problem -- not because the lions and