Need a personal assistant? BMO has a fantastic idea: deal with the company who understands what you are: your bank. This story (rewritten from this press release) talks of new “concierge services” offered to the filthy rich, such as doing laundry and groceries.
What happened to the good ol’ days of Mexican domestic workers?
In other business “news”, Domtar Inc. has changed its name to Domtar Corporation. The CBC is among many to rewrite their press release.
via Stony Curtis (in turn via Metafilter): You Don’t Know Jack, the hilarious smart-assed trivia computer game, is now playable online.
There’s only one seven-question game up so far. The other challenges are Dis or Dat, where you are given a name and have to guess between two categories. The ones they have there are refreshingly amusing, like: Crayola crayon colour or porn movie? Open-source software or part of a woman’s reproductive organs? Software or member of the Justice League of America (or both)? Basketball team or dish made with animal testicles? Surprisingly, some of these are very difficult to figure out.
I’ve always been a big fan of YDKJ for two reasons: it’s well-written, entertaining and very funny. It’s also well coded, with smooth graphics, seamless gameplay and hundreds of questions recorded in audio form that still fit on a CD. I still think that’s very impressive.
Hats off to you, Cookie.
Yesterday I went out to watch the latest episode of Tivijournal. One of their organizers spotted me with a pen and notepad and came over to chat. I guess that means I should write about them. Especially after that other guy bought me a beer (I didn’t accept).
Tonight, I’m off to Yulblog, where I can tell everyone about my new blog and feel part of the group for a change.
Pierrefonds/Roxboro (among the remaining Montreal boroughs west of the 13) is getting West Island’s first Eco-Quartier.
I thought they were joking. They were. And Conrad Black even fell for it.
It’s voting time for the Vlog Deathmatch air guitaress challenge, a hilarious competition between some female video-bloggers, including Montreal’s Casey McKinnon of Galacticast (her entry). According to the official rules, the contestants have to perform 30-60 seconds of silent air guitar with no edits or cuts. That makes for some strange-looking videos, reminding us that air guitar without music just looks weird.
Speaking of Galacticast, who can now count Kevin Smith as a fan, there’s video online of them being interviewed on Global’s This Morning Live by resident interviewerbabe Gelareh Darabi. I still think my interview with them was better.
Meanwhile, their latest episode is a funny mashup of Super Mario Bros. and the Sopranos. Watch it.
Heather Munroe-Blum will be a candidate for election this April to Alcan’s board of directors.
While having university administrators on corporate boards is nothing new (university administration in Canada is an incestuous cesspool of corporate connections), I still find it odd.
When you read stuff like this:
We’re allowing candidates to use [Facebook] on a very limited extent…
Among my many RSS feeds (about 300) I have a few set to scour the Internet for any new mentions of “Montreal”. While this alerts me to press releases from companies based here, news about the city and news from abroad that has some connection to here, it also picks up on a few things regularly that aren’t quite what I’m looking for:
1. The Montreal Canadiens. The last major sports team in the city. NHL digests, standings, briefs, game reports and other information are all over the place online, and so a single AP story will generate hundreds of hits all about the same game that I just watched on TV.
2. The band “Of Montreal”, who are not actually from Montreal. Tour date announcements (they’re playing here next week), reviews, and random MySpace rants for and against the band, or diaries of people going to see the band.
3. My favourite: The Montreal Screwjob. Of all events that have happened in this city, from the Richard Riots to Expo 67, none has so little relevance to people who live there and yet so much relevance to a worldwide niche as when Vince McMahon double-crossed Bret “the Hit Man” Hart at the Molson Centre. The Wikipedia article is extensive, as are articles still being written about it a decade later. The story is a fascinating look at the politics of professional wrestling, and an interesting spin on the idea that “professional wrestling is fixed.”
The CBC is running a weekly podcast of news in the run-up to the Quebec provincial election. It’s short (about 10 minutes) and seems to be just a series of radio news stories strung together by Laurent Lavigne’s very news-like introductions.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Getting the week’s election news digested into 10 minutes should find an audience.
Remember Rebecca Aldworth, former CSU president, now champion of animal rights?
Yeah, I don’t either.
But apparently she is anti-schooling and likes to pull seals out of the water and wait for them to die.
Looks like I missed this article from my former classmate Jonathan Montpetit on blogs in the Quebec election campaign.
Will blogs change the election? No, not by themselves. But if some blog-discovered dirt gets picked up by the mainstream media, that could make a difference in some ridings. Let’s see if something like that happens.
Remember when the buses ran on time?
Yeah, that’s going to stop soon. STM maintenance workers are going on strike again.
I went out this evening to try to catch the lunar eclipse. My first stop was the Planetarium, which I heard had special plans for it. Though others must have also gotten that news (including a CTV cameraman), there was no organization outside the building as advertised. It’s just as well, since the cloud cover and tall downtown buildings prevented anyone from seeing anything.
I decided to head up to the mountain to check it out from the Camilien Houde lookout. By the time I got up there (taking the 11 bus through a narrow road with cars double-parking snowbanks on both sides was excruciatingly slow), the moon was well in the sky and the eclipse was on its way out.
At the lookout I found two amateur astronomers who were taking pictures through their telescopes. They were kind enough to let me look through one, but all I could see was a blurry white circle. The clouds prevented any good photography, and they weren’t too crazy about that.
Though the moon did disappoint somewhat, the view of the city at night from that lookout is always worth going
Now I’m headed out for the Nuit Blanche.
In today’s paper:
Kate Lunau and Vincenzo D’Alto have an interesting feature series on fair trade coffee in Nicaragua, and the economic impacts of this producer-friendly system.
Meanwhile, Roberto Rocha’s tech blog is live, renamed “TechnoCité” and with a cute mug shot.
Freelancer Christopher DeWolf has a long feature on the STM’s smart card payment system, which is supposed to go live next year.
This Financial Post story is hilarious, quoting RBC’s chief over ATM fees:
“There are areas of concern [for Canada] such as the accelerating growth in public spending, a tax structure that is biased against investment, a fragmented and expensive regulatory structure, and the deterioration in [Canada’s] competitive position,” Mr. Nixon said.
Exactly. Why focus on issues real Canadians care about? They’re small change. We need to focus on those poor investors who are only getting 6.5% annual return instead of 7%. Those are the people in crisis here.
Not to say I’m all in favour of eliminating ATM fees. After all, that’s what’s given us those white-label ATMs all over the place, which are so expensively convenient. ATMs are the future.