Finally Ebay Succumbs to Loonie Pressure - Adjusts Exchange Rates

In December I noted the evil game that Ebay and Paypal were playing with the exchange differences between the Canadian and US dollars.
Today Ebay decides to reflect parity between the two currencies, and will display prices with more accuracy.
Wow!
The Ebay forums have been rife with folks questioning and complaining, and now, almost 4 months after the Canadial loonie has gained muscle, they are going to update the systems.

Now if only PayPal will follow suit! :-)

Telecom News - The Week's Highlights

What an interesting week! Holy Cats - there's no limit to the adventures!


The announcement of the potential sale of Toronto Hydro Telecom.
Everyone loves something spicy to heat up their mid-winter blahs.  This is almost better than a trip down south.

AT&T's Announcement of Free Wifi.
After so much odd press, it's good to see AT&T doing something consumer-friendly.

Rogers Set to Launch Unlimited Data Plans in Preparation for iPhone?
Speculation that the high cost of the Rogers data plans has been the reason for the iPhone delays - looks like Rogers is doing something to remedy the baggage the iPhone comes with.

Canadian ISPs Asked to Agree to Mandated Copywrite Filtering.
Internet service providers are supposed to be agnostic, content neutral providers. Just like the electrical company doesn't care and can't tell if you've got a grow-op in your basement, the ISP shouldn't be any more obligated to manage or filter content.

Motion Picture Association of America Admits Screw Up in Study on Movie Piracy.
Yeow - all the Canadian hoolpa over the past few months of Canada being a haven for copywrited materials, and the subsequent governmental activity to try and draft an evil bill to keep the US at bay.... Maybe activity that was simply an over reaction? Did someone say knee jerk?

US Spectrum Auction Get off to Busy Start.
I had no idea spectrum could be so expensive, but so far, the FCC has garnered over $3B in bids for the 700MHz spectrums available... Funny - I had no idea that the bidding on the auction would be anonymous.

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What The Hell Is In The Freezer!?!?!

As seen this morning:

The wiz comes downstairs.
Goes directly to the freezer in the kitchen.
Sneakily takes out a ziplock bag and deposits it in the garbage.

Me: What the heck was that?
Wiz: I wanted to make sure he was dead.
Me: WHO!?!?!?
Wiz: The mouse that was caught in a trap last night.
Me: Oh. Thanks for putting him in a ziplock. And thanks for just not putting him in the fridge.
Wiz: Yup. Not taking any chances. See how much I love you?

Wiz walks away giggling.

That's when it occured to me - I've come a long way, baby. At one point in my life, there was a MOTH (man of the house) who couldn't even stand to have the same silverware used between dog and human. And now, here I am, sharing space in the freezer with a mouse-sicle. It's a slippery slope. What's next? I'm afraid to ask.

Podcasting - Is it Easier to Listen than to Read?

For the past year or so I've been contemplating podcasts, the value and the growing popularity of them.  I've never been a podcast listener, not really, unless it was something really neat. I've listened to Jon Arnold's Podcasts (But that's because he has interviews some really neat people!!) :-) Normally I bypass the podcast for the actual text of the story...

But now, with my iTouch, it's becoming easier and easier to pack up a few podcasts, especially those free ones on iTunes.... and bring them with me when I'm travelling, as an alternative to music. I am beginnging to find that the creative time available to write my blogging bits is continuing to decline, yet I've got more and more time to sit and think and speak potential blog *monologues*.  I can walk through an entire article that I want to write in my head [yes, i admit, i talk to myself frequently] while i'm sitting in traffic. 

With the right recorder, I'm thinking that I could do a podcast, as opposed to writing everything. Alas - I'm not terribly convinced about the popularity of them. 

I'm not a good listener of podcasts as a rule - I'm a better reader. But is is easier to listen than to read for most people?  Am I abnormal? ;-) I suppose the only way to find out is to give it a whirl. It's a shame my current blackberry doesn't have a voice recording function ;-)
 


Technorati Tags: Jon Arnold, podcasting, iTouch, iTunes

Toronto Hydro Telecom For Sale?

I suppose the news is leaking faster than an old washing machine…. that Toronto Hydro Telecom is looking for a new beau. But I’ve always been confused between the relationship between Toronto Hydro Telecom, and Hydro One Telecom. What makes it even more confusing, is that both companies seem to share the same sales team, and VP of Sales - which makes me think that it’s really one company, just with different sales channels? Or two companies with 1 sales channel?

Sure - THT has the Toronto Wifi Service. Do they also have the new data centre in Toronto?  Or is that HOT? Neither site has data centre information (that’s easily found).

Aha!  I found that it really is THT that has a new data centre, despite the fact that they don’t really mention it on their site…. A news release from the Seaboard Group has the details…

Oh - what a tangled electrical web we weave.


Technorati Tags: Toronto Hydro Telecom, Hydro One Telecom

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Building Competitive Differences in the Telecom Industry

It's a tricky business, differentiation in the telecom industry. Some organizations work on fantastic services, some work on geographic location, some rely on beavers. Differentiation can be found in income trust rebirths, or private sales.

Imagine how neat it would be if one of the big 3 were to dive in to what Mark Goldberg discusses.....the possible sale of Toronto Hydro Telecom.....

Telecom Trends

Technorati Tags: Mark Goldberg, TELUS, Bell, Rogers

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Post Vacation Backlog

Methinks this may be an entire month of being *behind*. I've been back for 3 days, and am still hip deep in email and actions that deserve action.
 
Not to worry - before I get too caught up, next week is another week of limited working potential, what with 5 days of conference and meetings.

I'm optimistic about February, so far.

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Light Postings - Off to Puerto Rico

Aha!

January is a good month. This year I’m off to Puerto Rico. Leaving this morning. It’s going to be my first time having to switch airplanes in mid-stream, and I have little confidence in the whole procedure. I’ve only got 40 minutes in Miami to find my way. A wee lost Canadian gurl. Aie.

For your reading pleasure - see where I spent last January. 

See you next week! 

Dreams for a Wireless Photo Future

Ever since reading about the develipment of wireless memory cards, both SD and CF, I've been dreaming about the possibilities.

Now, of course, I want one *right now*, and they are hard to come by in Canada [read: Impossible].

Still, a girl can dream.  I'm going to be in Miami for about an hour on Tuesday, maybe I can get one there?

SanDisk's Wireless SD Card Has Memory

Canadian Telecom News Bits - Sunday, Jan 13th 2008

• Telus Is Considering Switch to GSM Network Bloomberg.com: Canada
  
• Shaw moving into Thunder Bay- Shaw Communications launched its digital phone service in Thunder Bay.  Shaw's goal is to claim 25 percent of Thunder Bay's home phone market.  The entry of the Western Canadian giant into the city has been at the center of a massive marketing campaign over the last few months and Shaw is hoping to capitalize on what it sees as a market ready for a new option. This is the first real competition municipally-owned TBay Tel has ever faced.  www.shaw.ca www.tbaytel.net
  
• Telus gets competition approval to acquire Emergis - Telus Corp. says it has received Competition Bureau approval for the company's friendly $766 million takeover of Montreal-based Emergis Inc., an information technology company that provides software and data management services to the health care and financial services sectors. Telus said Tuesday the Commissioner of Competition has advised the company that she does not intend to challenge the transaction under the merger provisions of the Competition Act. www2.telus.com
  
• Kenora Municipal Telephone System sold to Bell Aliant  - The City of Kenora and Bell Aliant announced  that they have entered into an agreement under which Bell Aliant will purchase the assets and business of Kenora Municipal Telephone System (KMTS). Bell Aliant says the acquisition is a natural fit since Aliant already serves customers in Jaffray Melick and other neighbouring areas of Kenora in Northern Ontario. The proposed transaction is subject to final approval by Kenora's City Council following a public information meeting which will be held in Kenora on January 15, 2008.  www.aliant.ca

Check out The Fox Group for additional details.

Dealing with Images in Multiple Buckets on the Internet

What do folks do with the plethora of online images that they have, that may be strewn about the internet? Am I the only loser who's got images with Flickr, with Picasa Web Albums and with Facebook?


I use the different buckets to help differentiate usergroup permission, and to deal with the fact that some folks aren't using some applications, and to also simply simplify some of the Picasa things that I do.

Some may say that it's ok to have multiple copies of the same photos on multiple image applications. Me, I think that's just adding digital litter to the internet. In a perfect world, there would be one bucket, and I could choose which apps to dole out images to. Images would reside in one place, and be *pulled* as needed into the various apps that would become a vehicle for delivery, as opposed to being a vehicle for storage.

What do *you* do with your images? Are you disciplined enough to have only one image application?

Digital Ghosts Remain When Folks Pass Away

In this era of digital personas, profiles, accounts, applications and media, how does one keep track of all the online lives they have, so that in the event of a terrible, unfortunate incident, these digital accounts can be closed off and taken care of. This morning, i bumped up against a scrap of digital ghost-iness from one such lovely lady.

I re-read her out of office message in Instant Messenger, and it brought back the proverbial flood of rememberies and goodness. And then it made me think.Do we need to have digital estate executors? Someone to tidy up after us, after we’ve gone on to new adventures?

Do *you* know all of your on-line accounts? Your Linked-In, Flickr, eBay, iTunes, online banking, PayPal and Facebook accounts can keep going for a *long* time.  Would a loved one be able to housekeep for you? Do you have a file saved with all your on-line accounts and passwords? Does it really matter? Likely it matters, if only to keep those folks still in the analog world from rubbing up against your digital personalities in the future. Me, I’m going to set up a digital estate executor.

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Tags: digitalexecutor

TELUS announces competition approval in connection with acquisition of Emergis

TELUS announces competition approval in connection with acquisition of Emergis Yes - this is newsworthy, the fact that it looks like TELUS will be able to move forward with the Emergis purchase.  But the wee bit that sparked my interest was that Fox Business News picked up the news story from Canada Newswire.It's atypical that a US news conglomerate would take on a press release like this. Curious.:-)

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Alibris: The Best Book Selling Application

I’ve been an Alibris customer for about a year now. I was looking for a specific book., “The Last Canadian” - one of those books you have to read in elementary school. It’s about one last Canadian man who manages to survive a global plague.  I’m a post-apocalyptic fiction geek. It was easily obtained on Alibris, and for a song. OF course, I can’t find the book again anywhere ;-)

Over the Christmas holidays, I decided to take a hard look at my library, and realized that I needed to cull, in order to allow for room for more books :-)  I joined the Alibris Seller hub, and enlisted the assistance from the chickadees to read out ISBN numbers, which i then plugged into Alibris to create my inventory. 184 books later, and I’m about 1/2 done.  The Alibris Sellers Hub matches what you’ve got to sell with what other folks are looking for, and voila! Already I’ve made one sale! You can set your prices, choose the quality characteristics of your materials and the ISBN number takes care of the rest of the details! I only had a handful of books where the ISBN number couldn’t be found, and Alibris still lets you add to your collection, it’s just a bit more manual.

I think I’m addicted - I check the Hub every morning to see if anything has sold, and I am also adding more and more books to the wishlist, to fill in the soon-to-be empty shelves in the library! If you are falling out of love with Chapters or Amazon, I HIGHLY recommend giving Alibris a read. You never know what you might find!!!

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Tags: alibris, chapters, The Last Canadian

A Roundup of Neat Technical Discoveries

So - it’s the last official day of vacation for me, and I think I’ve soaked up as much napping and reading and playing as a body officially should. :-)I’ve discovered a few nifty things this week, while playing with some of the new toys: The LL.Bean WeatherfinderThis little beauty is amazing. One neat point of note - it’s designed to synchronize it’s clock automatically with a clock signal. Wait for it…. the clock signal is a WWVB-60 signal - and if you are within 200 miles of the clock with the signal - it’s in Fort Collins Colorado, this feature will work. I giggled, thinking that Toronto, Ontario is much farther than 200 miles from anywhere in Colorado, and manually set the clock. The documentation suggests that it could take anywhere from 12 hours to 5 days for the Weatherfinder to find the signal from Fort Collins. Imagine my surprise - today the little devil found it. Turns out, it’s only 1520 miles to Fort Collins….Amazing!!!

The next amazing tidbit: Using Your Wii to wirelessly stream music from your PC. That’s right. What *can’t* that Wii do?In buying Winamp Pro, I realized it came with Winamp Remote, an outstanding little application that lets you stream music from your PC to anywhere in the world, including to your Wii!! This comes in handy when a significant other has just upgraded the TV sound system, and you want to impress them with quality audio playing ;-)The only thing you need to do is purchase the Internet Channel on your Wii - likely a worthy purchase for 500 Wii Points. Using the Opera Browser, you log into Winamp Remote, and voila, you can see your entire audio connection. You could even stream movies! :-) Right now, I’m sitting in my little library, but I can see all the music on my home laptop. This is going to completely fill the gap that Pandora left behind. :-)

The last bit of interest: I just finished reading *The World Without Us* by Alan Weisman. One of the amazing pieces in this book discusses information that was sent in a *time capsule* into outerspace with Voyager. Carl Sagan and Jon Lomberg put together images and music in hopes that interstellar intelligence would be suitably impressed enough to not blast us into another dimension.  You can listen to the complete 26 song recording that was shot into outerspace, on a golden record no less. You can also do a bit of reading on what was sent into space.Happy Weekend!

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Has Guitar Hero Changed My Ears?

I happily include myself in the thousands of Canadians who got Guitar Hero III for the Wii this Christmas. The Wii came back in July (thanks Keri and David!!!!), theoretically we were one of the early Wii adopters north of the 48th parallel. :-)Now, after playing off and on for the pask week, both the Wiz and I are suffering from GH Ear. GH Ear happens when you are *not* playing Guitar Hero - you're doing normal, everyday things, and you happen to hear a song, a commercial, a tune, something off the radio and all of a sudden you are analyzing the song for it's Guitar Hero Play-ability. Songs sound different now. The guitar components have moved to the front and centre of the action. Lyrics are secondary. Your hands move on the imaginary frets, trying to determine the complexity of the notes and the strumming required. You wonder if you can capture enough notes in a row to qualify for *Star Power*.Hey.... did you just hear that?  Wouldn't that song be excellent on Guitar Hero?

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Technical Training As an Employee Incentive?

I wonder how many folks consider training as table stakes when considering employment. 13 years ago, I had the honour of being shipped to San Jose California for 3 weeks for training with Netcom Communication. It was spectacular, but I’m not entirely convinced of how much I learned, aside from how to use xwindows in Unix :-) I was a bit of an anomaly though, and telnetted back to my old job to pop into IRC and say hi to the guys and give them updates on the good and the bad of San Jose :-)

Training has come *a long way* since those days. This week I had to write 3 tests to prove my IP Leadership abilities. Not easy tests, by *any* stretch of the imagination. And to think that the only part I was worried about was subnetting IP addresses. Sheesh.

I know of a few past employers who talk training, but can’t *walk the walk* when it comes to providing knowledge and development for employees. Budgets come, budgets go, and if you are interested in learning, it’s something that you’ve got to pursue on your own time, and your own dime. I am thrilled when companies are recognized for walking the walk.

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Tags: Training, TELUS, Netcom

Will GrandCentral Ever Come to Canada?

Funny that I should ask about a phone 2.0 service, all things considered ;-)
That being said, in the past 3 days, every where I turn around, someone, somewhere is writing about how terrifically awesome Grand Central is. What is it, you ask?

It’s a universal phone number. It goes anywhere, does pretty much anything. One number to rule your world. It’s also a recent acquisition by Google (summer 2007), which is pretty darned neat, considering the last time I poked around at it (early-2007), it was just a wee innovation.

You can route your number to various phones, mailboxes and applications. You can route based on originating number, you can assign different ring tones, you can prompt the caller to *explain themselves* before you decide to answer the phone - this would be hilarious with telemarketers. You can have different voice mail greetings depending on the caller (this would be *really* helpful for me, considering I’m using the same VoIP system for work and for pleasure.

Alas, Grand Central’s still only allowing folks to reserve numbers in America.
Grand Central folks - give me a call - I can help set you up in Canada!!!  It’s easy!!! :-)

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Picnik: Best On-line Photo Editor

I’m a bit of a geek when it comes to photo editors.  A lazy geek. I don’t want to spend hours with PhotoShop, and I don’t have a Mac (yet) to be able to play with Aperture. That being said, I’m pretty picky about post production work on photos.

I’ve been a hard core Picasa gurl. I’m addicted to the *glow* enhancement in Picasa. I’ve also been pretty hot on paint.net… but for some reason, I don’t have enough reserve memory to make it run smoothly on all my machines. (My fault, not Paint.net’s fault). Paint.net has got some outstanding plugins for softening portrait pictures.

Before Christmas, I stumbled on Picnik. I’m in love. So much so that I’m using it almost as much as I use Picasa. So much so that I even opted for the uber-membership. Picnik integrates itself nicely with Flickr, Facebook, your Picasa Web Albums, and any other on-line photo infrastructure you might have adoped.

Picnik’s got features, flexibility and some really neat creative tools. Think Lomo-styling, or Holga, or the Infrared filter I’ve been trying to recreate. Utterly goof proof. Now that I’ve shared the secrets, I’m sure amost everyone who thinks I’m a reasonable photographer will begin second guessing my so-called skills.  Really, it’s all about the tools ;-)

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Jules' Predictions for 2008

2008 is only 9 hours old so far - just old enough to start thinking about what it wants to be when it grows up.


Predicting the future, always a party favourite.  With my fingers and thumbs in assorted interesting pies, how about these predictions for 2008:

1. Facebook will merge with a VoIP provider, making an all-in-one phone service with your friends.
2. A new iTunes competitor will hit the iPod wireless mp3 screens, offering a different choice for *media on the go*.
3. Rim and Google will partner together to buy wireless spectrum in Canada. *Grim Wireless*?
4. Smaller Canadian cable companies will begin to band together/merge to create a force to better compete with Shaw, Rogers and Cogeco.
   
5. The Ministry of Transportation will build wi-fi towers along commuter roads. Commuters will be able to download and drive on the Don Valley Parkway.
6. Telecom Providers without their own *owned* infrastructure will partner with wireless providers for last-mile access to business and consumer customers.
7. Despite AT&T knee-jerk reaction to pull back on telecommuters, remote workers will continue to thrive, and employees will make flexibility a mandatory requirement for employers. Gasoline shortages will continue to drive home the teleworking requirement.
   
8. Skype will come to market with a TV set-top box that allows for easy video conferencing for grandparents. Likely will only work for folks who have cable and cable internet service. :-)
9. Consumers will demand more interactive technologies from their grocery stores, and Canadian food producers will be held more accountable for transparency in the production of *Canadian* foods.
10. Likely the percentage of accuracy of these predictions doesn’t surpass 2%.

Happy New Year!!!
:-)

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