Monthly Archives: May 2009

| Montreal, Opinion, Photos

What part of “bicycle path” don’t you understand?

joggers

Dear jogger douchebags,

I know it’s a beautiful day and you want to take a nice jog around the park, but you must have realized by now that you’re jogging in the middle of a bicycle path. For various reasons, most notably the speed difference between you and the cyclists who would pass you, it is dangerous for you and those cyclists for you to be jogging in our path. Acknowledging this by shifting to the side when you see us coming doesn’t mitigate that, if only because you don’t see us coming behind you.

It’s not like there aren’t enough places to jog in this city. Most streets have sidewalks on both sides, but even with this city’s stellar reputation as a bike-friendly town, the bicycle path network is a patchy, disconnected mess. This is one of the few isolated bike paths in town, and you’re standing in the middle of it.

I know there’s something about the asphalt winding through the grass that is just so irresistible. If we could give you your own asphalt path to walk on we could.

Oh wait, there’s one ten feet to your left. Your own special lane. There are even little icons painted onto the ground at regular intervals to make clear that there’s a walking path and a bicycle path. Using our path when you have one of your own, that’s just being a douchebag.

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| Media

Globe settles with freelancers

Heather Robertson’s 13-year legal battle has finally come to an end.

More than two years after the former Globe and Mail freelancer won her class-action case at the Supreme Court of Canada in a nuanced and split decision, the paper and its pursuers agreed to an $11-million settlement to her and other former freelancers for the Globe’s illegal use of their works in a searchable electronic database.

This case is similar to that of a group of freelancers who are suing The Gazette and Canwest.

The court’s ruling essentially said that the Globe could reproduce copies of the paper in other media (microfiche, digital editions, CD-ROM, etc.), but that piecemeal repurposing of content (like in electronic databases) was not allowed unless permission was sought from the writer.

The Globe says this issue is “primarily a historical matter from the days before The Globe and Mail entered into written contracts with our freelance contributors.”

What that means is that the Globe (and other large Canadian newspaper publishers) now have strongly-worded freelance contracts that give blanket permission to the publisher to do whatever they see fit with a submitted piece – including putting it into a database or transmitting it through any media (even if it doesn’t yet exist).

UPDATE: Reaction in the blogosphere from freelancers Giancarlo La Giorgia and Mary Soderstrom.

| Radio, Technology

CBC’s Search Engine moves to TVO

Jesse Brown, the host of CBC Radio’s Search Engine, found out that his show was among the ones the Mother Corp. decided it would cancel blame the Conservative government for forcing it to cancel.

Search Engine, a show about the Internet, its culture and its laws (à la Geist) was created as a weekly show on CBC Radio One in September 2007, and lasted a year before getting cancelled for the first time. But a geek campaign by the Cory Doctorow Army got CBC to change its mind and bring Search Engine back, retooled (read: simpler and cheaper) as a podcast-only project for its second season. There it gained a cult-like status as a must-subscribe for Canadian podcast geeks.

But this sad story has another happy ending. Search Engine, which is described as CBC’s most popular podcast (though I couldn’t find numbers to back this up) got picked up by TVOntario, where it gets a home near Steve Paikin and … we assume there’s other stuff at TVO. The show will be produced biweekly until the fall, when it returns to a weekly schedule.

NOW Toronto has some back story. Torontoist also interviews Brown.

| Montreal, Public transit

AMT to study full electrification of commuter trains

Not only are the AMT's diesel locomotives old and noisy, but they pollute.

Not only are the AMT's diesel locomotives old and noisy, but they pollute.

The Agence métropolitaine de transport on Tuesday launched a call for tenders on a feasibility study for full electrification of the commuter train network. So far only the Deux-Montagnes line uses electric power (and it uses it exclusively).

CJAD (who I guess read La Presse this morning) quotes the AMT’s Joel Gauthier saying the process would take 15 years to complete. This is a decade faster than he predicted last year in an interview with the Hudson Gazette. The Gazette gets a figure of $300 million from an AMT document submitted in December.

The AMT is acquiring 20 dual-mode (diesel/electric) trains which will serve on its Train de l’Est. That route uses the Mount Royal tunnel, which prohibits diesel locomotion because it is not ventilated and everyone would, you know, die.

Electrifying the other four routes would cut down on pollution, cost and noise, which would no doubt satisfy this family who apparently have just realized that they live next to a century-old railway.

Of course, since AMT doesn’t actually own those tracks (they’re owned by CN and CP), this process certainly still has a way to go before anyone starts putting up wires.

| Movies, Opinion

But I want interstellar diplomacy to be debated in endless detail


Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As ‘Fun, Watchable’

You know, as funny as this is, it’s also kind of why I’m not crazy about this Star Trek movie. If I wanted to watch Armageddon, I’d … well, that wouldn’t happen.

I’m just not crazy about some hot shot coming into a universe and rewriting its history for a couple of hours of entertainment.

Kind of like in 24, where by Hour 18 they just assume you’ve forgotten everything that happened at the beginning of the day and why the actions of Good-Guy-Suddenly-Gone-Bad make absolutely no sense.

Still, I’m willing to look past that in 24, let’s hope I can do the same for Star Trek.

| Technology

Rogers follows the leaders

Hey, remember last year when Bell and Telus said they were going to start charging for incoming text messages (in addition to outgoing text messages), and Rogers countered that they had “no plans” to do the same, especially because that move encouraged people to switch to Rogers?

Apparently plans take less than a year. Rogers now says it’s going to go ahead and start charging for incoming text messages.

Uncoincidentally, this news comes on the same day Rogers announces that it’s going to integrate with Twitter, allowing the microblogging service to send updates to users’ phones.

Of course, like Bell and Telus, Rogers says this won’t change anything for most customers who have text messaging included in their plans, and they assure us that charges will be cancelled on spam messages (customers just have to fill out Form 18459-B in quadruplicate and have it signed by a notary, waiting 6-8 months for a credit on their bill).

Isn’t it great that our telecom universe is a three-player oligopoly where each company sets policies to mimic the others, for good or bad?

Insert brand here

Oh, and a side note to that Twitter thing: Rogers released separate press releases for Rogers Wireless and Fido saying just about the same thing. A quote from Twitter changes only the name of the brand:

Rogers:

“We’re thrilled to be working with Canada’s largest wireless provider,” said Kevin Thau, Twitter’s Director of Mobile Business Development. “Twitter is a real-time messaging service for sharing and discovering what’s happening – right now. By partnering with Rogers Wireless, customers using Twitter can now view, post and reply to messages, ensuring the application stays affordable and true to its real-time nature.”

Fido:

“We’re thrilled to be working with Fido,” said Kevin Thau, Twitter’s Director of Mobile Business Development. “Twitter is a real-time messaging service for sharing and discovering what’s happening – right now. By partnering with Fido, customers using Twitter can now view, post and reply to messages within their text messaging plans, ensuring the application stays affordable and true to its real-time nature.”

I’m not up on press-release ethics, but I can only conclude two things here: Either the release is lying to us, or Rogers made Kevin Thau say the exact same text twice, changing only the name of the brand.

| Montreal, Photos, Pop quiz

Montreal Geography Trivia No. 34

mgt34-1

In the unlikely event that this bridge were to suddenly collapse, which Montreal-adjacent island’s residents would be cut off from the rest of society?

mgt34-2

UPDATE: Wow, got dozens of guesses on this one, most of which were right or almost right without giving the name of the island.

It is, indeed, Île Verte, a tiny island with two streets that forms part of les Îles Laval just east of Île Bizard. The bridge connects it to Île Bigras, which is more known for its commuter train station.

Île Verte isn’t labelled on Google Maps (which is why most people described it without naming it). It does show up on Mapquest though. Take that, Google!

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| Media

Newspapers think newspapers have bright future ahead

In case you missed it (you ungrateful non-newspaper-readers), the Financial Post and Canwest News Service ran a series this week on the future of newspapers, which unless you’ve been living under a rock recently you’ve noticed are in a bit of business trouble. But these writers know newspapers are better than those other media.

The series is in five parts:

  1. David Akin on the general state of the newspaper industry (which, in case you’re wondering, does talk a bit about Canwest and its debt crisis)
  2. Akin on how advertisers are best served by the print medium and by newspaper publishers
  3. Akin on the difference between Canadian and U.S. newspapers (though you could just say we’re a few years behind them on the death spiral)
  4. Randy Boswell on how newspapers are a trustworthy medium that other media rely on
  5. Kirk Lapointe with a very optimistic look at how newspapers are repositioning themselves as online destinations.

As part of the series, Canwest’s newspapers were also encouraged to write about their individual histories and connections with their communities. The Gazette got young reporter Jason Magder to do a piece on the paper’s connection with its community.

Other Canwest papers also wrote self-congratulatory pieces:

The National Post also asked its “opinion-makers” about their thoughts on newspapers:

As if underscoring how far newspapers have to go, in neither of the three above cases could I find one page linking all these related stories together.

Finally, unrelated to any of the above, Stuart McLean writes in the Globe and Mail about why he loves newspapers.

| Montreal, Radio, Video

Victoria Bridge: The 8th Wonder

From the National Film Board’s archives, a cute little 1987 film by Michel Choquette about the history of the Victoria Bridge, starring the voices of Terry DiMonte and Patti Lorange on a pretend radio show for a fictional Montreal station.

And as a special related bonus, the 1972 Barrie Howells film Trafficopter, which follows CJAD traffic reporter Len Rowcliffe high above the city.

There, isn’t it good to learn something?

| Montreal, TV

Canwest argues for changes to Montreal TV stations

Appearing before the CRTC on Thursday, Canwest (my employer, you’ll recall) made the case for license amendments at its two Montreal television stations, CKMI-TV (Global Quebec, which is actually licensed out of Quebec City but operates out of Montreal) and CJNT-TV (a former ethnic programming station which has since become half ethnic programming and half E! entertainment shows).

Here are some highlights from the transcript.

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