Life is What Happens When Other Things Get in the Way

Already it’s the end of the month, and despite being able to keep a tenuous hold on the *Picture a Day* project, the blogging a day project has quietly slid to the sidelines….

Perhaps it’s because January has been a quiet month on the technology front? CES was a bit of a bummer? Apple and RIM haven’t done anything exciting?

The CRTC took a vacation?

No - it’s more like life and work have seriously begun to encroach on each other. Morning time has shrunk to a state where there’s only time for news, two coffees and FB before the work day begins.

This is going to be a crazy year. It’s finally the year of VoIP, and i’m not talking about your sketchy Vonage type of VoIP… It’s the year when TDM and IP collide. It’s the year of outsourcing everying. It’s the year of the data centre. It’s the year of dragging toll free into the 21st century.

It’s a wonder I still have time t sleep!

:-D

Rogers Increases Broadband Pricing, and I'm OK with That...

Hrm… I just got a notification in the mail. My internet pricing is going up by $2.00/month…

I’m actually not sure how I feel about that. Sure, the price is going up, but some of the features are improving, as are the speeds and data transfer limits….That being said, I’ve been happy with my *Express* package, which gave me 60 GB of data transfer and speeds of up to 24 Mbps/ 1Mbps…. I’ve had a Rogers discount, so my totaly price, all in was $57/month (including the cable modem)…..

I don’t have Netflix (yet), but I’m wondering what streaming TV would do to my data transfers… I work from home 90% of the time, so reliable and speedy internet is important to me. 

The one thing that Rogers has done that I’ve been waiting almost 10 years for someone to do is offer a dashboard where you can jack up your bandwidth requirements on demand….Is that wirth $2.00? That’s hard to say as well. I guess time will tell….

Do I begrudge Rogers a $2.00 price increase? No. Rogers employs about 30,000 Canadians, and has 11 Canadian Call Centres.

That’s 30,000 people who are (generally) making a very good wage and make up a very good tax base for Canada. I want those people to keep happily chugging along. 

Without a large tax base of people with good jobs, Canada would quite quickly and easily slide into the problems that the US is facing with debt and social services. A huge component of the US middle class —- you know, those people who actually paid a lot of taxes, disappeared over the past few years. It’s doubtful that they’re ever going to come back (which is why the US is now eyeballing the uber-wealthy). 

I want to keep all the Canadian companies healthy, and if $2 is the cost of that, that’s OK with me.

If This Then That

Another wicked little tool hit my radar this morning…compliments of Robert Scoble.

If This Then That is almost beyond description, but I’ll give it a try. It’s all about creating automated tasks, based on different inputs and having different triggers. There are endless combinations of activities that you can create tasks for, that have a different result.

For example, if you want to get an email if the temperature in your neighbourhood gets to a certain high, you can do that!

If you want to slurp a copy of a picture that you’ve posted to Facebook to your DropBox account, you can! How about getting a phone call based on a text message with a specific codeword in it for the times when you need to be rescued from a trying situation?

I’ve made five recipes already based on interesting little bits of activities. I think I’m in love. Now I’m going to experiment more on wider internet inputs. Who knows what you can make? The options are endless! Who knew the internet could be so handy? Automate, automate, automate!!!

I'm Not Good in Public

A wise friend once said “It’s not that I’m not good  being in public, it’s that the public isn’t good at being in public”

People today have absolutely no concept of the world around them, they aren’t paying attention, and they aren’t thinking about what they’re doing.

People stop their cars, their carts, their walking —— right in the middle of their actitivity, lose their train of thought with no awareness whatsoever of the people and activities going on around them.

There’s no common sense, there’s no consideration, there’s no forethought.

Maybe we *have* been around too long, and the Mayans were right. We need a good cleansing of the earth.

Netflix First Month Free - Crack for Moviephiles?

It came in the mail today. That little red envelope. So innocuous…. so deadly.  I’m afraid. There’s an addictive personality inside me, wanting to test out Netflix. Despite the rational side of me having the largest voice (and control of the credit card), the little me wants to try Netflix for 30 Days…

I know it’s going to be crack. Maybe even worse than that.

30 Days is just long enough to get hooked. Before I know it, I will be upgrading my internet package, and I’ll be ignoring my PVR. I’ll be wanting to stream to the iPad and then God knows where else.

And why? After all this time? After turning my nose up at others who have fallen prey to the ‘Flix before me? I was smugly warming my hands on the heat of my superiority fire. How slippery the slope.

It’s because Blockbuster is gone. No more trip to the video store for a little *something special*. Sure, I’ve got 3800 channels, but when you want something specific, and you want it n-o-w, there’s no good alternative. (No, downloading something off the torrents is not a good alternative)

So…… I’m thinking — what’s the harm? I can cancel whenever I want. Lot’s of other people are doing it. I’m just going to give it a try. 

Path --> The Way Facebook Should Have Been

My heart soared today.

I stumbled across Path. Some have touted it as the anti-social network, and I can tend to agree. 150 friend limit makes sure you choose your friends wisely. It’s been described as an intimate bbq with your closest buddies… and indeed, that’s exactly what it is.

You won’t find arduous privacy settings, games or advertising. It’s not a web app, it’s a mobile app only —- iOS and Android. Pundits are loving it. Amber MacArthur likes it. Gizmodo has a wickedly delightful review, and that’s what tweaked my interest.

I’m the sort of person who has a dozen different friend lists on Facebook. On Path —- that’s irrelevant. It’s just your friends. Your *close* friends. Not the obscure people you haven’t seen in 20 years but thought it would be a kick to add them to your Facebook. Real friends… full stop.

The biggest question will be whether or not the people I actually like keeping in contract with regularly have room for another app in their social world.

I hope so.

Oil of Oregano: Placebo or Panacea

As of Jan 16th, 2012 it will have been a year since my last *illness*. No colds, no flu, nothing worse than a headache has darkened my door in a year. Sure, I can have a evening of pre-cold - you know the feeling, throat scratchy, eyes not up to par, body is cold; but the next morning, I’m right as rain again.

The source to this health: Oil of Oregano. Religious and liberal usage. 

When in doubt, OoO.

Numerous university studies have shown that Oil of Oregano is a highly potent purifier that provides many benefits for human health. It is a natural substance that is extracted from wild oregano plants, and two key compounds found in it are carvacrol and thymol. Studies have shown that both of these compounds have significant effects on harmful micro-organisms that cause many illnesses in humans. 

The ancient Greeks were one of the first people to recognize this oil for its health benefits and medicinal qualities. It is known to be a potent antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal, and antiparasitic oil that can reduce pain and inflammation and effectively fight off infections. 

Some of the specific benefits of Oil of Oregano are:

• Destroying organisms that contribute to skin infections and digestive problems.
• Strengthening the immune system.
• Increasing joint and muscle flexibility.
• Improving respiratory health.

—- Excerpt from Home Remedies Web

Or course, there are various sites scattered throughout the internet espousing both criticism and praise for the oil, and neither camp really seems to have a definitive answer as to the medicinal effects. Science Based Pharmacy is a fairly right-wing site with a bend towards anything anti-homeopathy.

Unfortunately there are many more sites that praise the effects of Oil of Oregano, and suggest it can cure everything from colitis to warts. I’m not even going to suggest that it’s the magical cure-all for everything, but I *have* been cold free for a year now, and I *have* been taking OoO regularly. Maybe there’s a relationship, maybe there’s not. Maybe it *is* a placebo for me. And if that’s the case, I’m still thrilled. It’s tricky to find scientific, non-biased research on the actual effectiveness of the oil, but there are a few citations below:

The Toronto Star has a fairly non-biased account, but it’s from 2007.

Positive *trials* have been documented by Science Daily, but those published results were from 2001.

Livestrong.com has reasonable research citations of both positive and negative, with an emphasis on more research being required.

Reading through the swathes of internet documentation, with an eye towards critical thought, one thought ocurred to me. Oil of Oregano (or some sites that are praising the properties) has be heralded as a cure for virtually anything, and improves your overall health, well being, weight and happiness. Huh, that sort of sounds like something else. All that for only $25 a bottle, and no multi-level marketing pyramid scheme attached.

Are you an Oil of Oregano convert? I am :-D

Smartphones, CRTC and Foreign Ownership

This weekend there was an interesting article in the Globe and Mail about smartphones driving Canadian wireless data usage. The article then dove into the black hole of spectrum auctions in 2012.

The article was speculative, but laid out various tidbits related to the 700 Mhz auction planned in the coming months to increase wireless data capabilitities. 

As innocuous as the article was, there were two pages of comments from the great unwashed masses complaining about the Canadian wireless industry and urging the government action a handfull of idiotic activities to *support the Canadian public*. It never ceases to amaze me how uninformed and short sighted the general public is. (I can’t even read comments on the CBC site any more)

Foreign Ownership: Yes, a little foreign ownership is good, and the CRTC has made some innovative recommendations regarding the opening up of ownership regulations. The expectation is that if a Canadian company has less than 10% marketshare, they may be capable of obtaining foreign ownership greater than 50% . This would apply to all the new wireless startups, Allstream, (mostly) regionalized players like Cogeco, Distributel, Primus Canada, and Xplorenet to name a few….

Foreign ownership of the Big 3 is a BAD thing. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The Canadian Telecom industry now employs over half a million Canadians. 

Canada’s telecommunications industry makes up 3.3 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product, generating $40-billion of revenue annually.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize all that great Canadian goodness will disappear in a heartbeat if the Canadian government opens the flood gates for foreign ownership, with no terms and conditions. 

People want unlimited voice and data plans for less than $40/month. My question to that: is it worth that much to you, that the end result is 2-3 friends and family members being laid off because their job is now redundant to someone working for (insert US/Global Carrier Name here) in a call centre around the world? 

Of the two pages of commentary, there were 2 intelligent posts: 

• Discussion of reasonable and worthwhile changes to the current offers (per second billing is a smart suggestion)
• The idea of a nationalized network backbone is creative (but I don’t know if Canada is smart enough to organize an initiative of that magnitude, we can’t even really figure out how to reasonably use the Deferral Account)

The rest of the garbage made my head hurt thinking that these people somehow survived their adolescence and are now pro-creating.

I’m looking forward to the next few years and the evolution of the Canadian Wireless/Communications Industry:

• deeper national penetration of services and providers
• new handsets that allow for more ubiquitous applications
• Canadian innovations

What do you want for the future of Canadian telecommunications?

2012 ---- Bucket List

Agreed, it’s not a very creative title, but considering the date, it’s fairly apropos. One of my best mentors suggested “people don’t plan to fail, they simply fail to plan”. Writing things down seems to be the catalyst for action.

• travel at least once to someplace interesting
• repaint a room
• grow something complicated
• exercise every day
• blog every day
• paint a large canvas
• upcycle a piece of furniture
• take a photo every day
• do monthly *anonymous niceties*
• read the ingredients on packaging more often

It may not be a *stretch*, but it certainly should be attainable. I’ve got 12 months, after all.

:-D