In today’s paper comes the second in my three-part blogger-author series, about Lucie le chien (which is on hiatus in blog form) and its author Sophie Bienvenu (whose personal blog is still running).
Meanwhile, please don’t blame me for this laudatory piece about Geek Squad. I know all about Geek Squad’s many many many many many (alleged) problems, including this piece I read last night.
Montreal Tech Watch points out the stupidity of a group giving website awards to companies like Bell, Videotron and Desjardins. These are big companies with complex websites, but are they really all award-worthy?
A theory:
The answer lies on the “experts” who choose the winner. There was SECOR Conseil, s2i web, Conseil Action and CogniLab. If I could make a hall of shame, I would put them on the list. These companies have Videotron, and all other companies on their customer lists. They are obviously praising these companies in order to get lucrative contracts; because you have to recognize their websites are not a model of excellence, accessibility and user experience.
Doesn’t that sound a tad fishy to anyone else?
I’ll add that in their press release announcing the winners, they don’t bother linking to the websites they mention. I know “A HREF” is a difficult tag to understand, but you’d think these people would get basic HTML down before judging websites for usability.
I’m not quite sure what to make of this, but M.C. Turgeon is Twittering her trips to the bathroom. It’s (I hope) a clever critique of Twitter’s microblogging concept and the idea that everyone needs to be so updated on what everyone else is doing.
I, for one, won’t be subscribing to that feed.
For those who haven’t heard about it on the local blogs, DemoCampMontreal2 is tonight, 6:30pm at SAT. Be there, or be woefully uninformed about local technology entrepreneurs.
Montreal Tech Watch points out that RDS has launched its new video portal. Though Heri makes some pointed criticisms (like not being able to link directly to videos), I’m still impressed by it. I quickly looked for their highlight reel clips (30 images/seconde), which are all there for easy viewing. Unfortunately, either because of my computer’s processing speed or the bandwidth I was getting, the video is a bit choppy, and the fast-moving pace of top 10 hockey goals makes it difficult to follow on low-resolution, choppy online video.
According to Sony, Sony is going to win the HD DVD war, thanks to Sony’s PS3, which is outselling the Wii and XBox 360 and can’t be found on store shelves because it’s selling so fast.
Exactly how do people with such delusions run a big company effectively?
And why are there so many press-release-regurgitation organizations not asking even the simplest of questions about this?
Nice to see some people still do things the way our forefathers did.
The Ottawa Citizen has an opinion piece which makes a lot of sense. It says schools shouldn’t put blanket bans on cellphones, digital audio players, digital cameras and anything else electronic and handheld, because these devices have legitimate uses.
When I was in high school, they had a lot of rules that either were unenforceable or just didn’t make sense. They banned public displays of affection. They banned visitors. They banned name-calling (a lot of good that did). They banned gossip. They banned fire. They banned juniors buying things during lunch.
The most annoying rule they had in place when I was a student was the rule that said you couldn’t go to your locker during lunch. It was a stupid rule. It meant any lunch I ate either had to be completely disposable, or I’d have to carry it around everywhere – to the library, to lunchtime activities – until the bell sounded ending lunch.
And this was before they started coming up with the really stupid stuff…
I want this lens.
(via Francis Vachon)
Chef Nick of MontrealFoodBlog has a refreshingly realistic post on why HD isn’t quite ready for prime-time yet. It mentions the lack of available channels (besides the major networks, TSN and Discovery – and even those have very little in HD outside of prime time), the confusing technobabble (there’s TV, digital TV, 720p, 1080i, 1080p HDTV, UHDV — try reading this article without drawing a diagram), and the ongoing HD DVD format war.
The thing that bothers me most beyond this is the rather unsmooth transition from regular television. For example, my parents recently got an HD-ready television with its 16:9 aspect ratio, but they’re still connected to standard-definition cable. The result when watching prime-time programming is that the TV centres the cable signal, leaving black bars on the sides. The network, meanwhile, centres the HD programming, leaving black bars on the top. So on a 21″ HD television, the picture is only about 17 inches wide.
Ironically, the TV has a “zoom” feature, which expands a standard-definition signal horizontally to fill the TV, but there’s no option to do the same vertically when there’s an HD-filmed program on. The result is big black bars on the top and bottom, and a very stretched picture which makes everyone look about twice their weight.
Not that I’m bitter. But I think I’ll keep my trusty 13″ CRT and standard-definition cable box for the time being.
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.
Some bloggers are buzzing about Bell Canada’s new unlimited plan which allows two local Bell customers (landline or cellphone) to talk as long as they want for just $10 over what they pay now.
Of course, this may have something to do with the fact that wireless number portability is only two weeks away. Starting March 14th, the big providers (Bell, Rogers, Telus) will be forced to allow customers to change providers and carry their phone number with them.
All of this is only about five years behind the rest of the developed world, which has had unlimited plans and number portability for quite a while. Now many of them offer unlimited use regardless of provider.
Now all we have to do is get rid of those ridiculous three-year contracts most of them force us to sign.
Proving once again that information cannot protect itself, HD-DVD has been hacked, which will make copying them possible.
BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow makes the point eloquently: When will these companies stop trying to fight a battle that will only get harder for them?
