By Mark Evans As an enthusiastic supporter of Canada’s high-tech community, I’m hoping RIM can somehow find a way to revive its flagging fortunes. But the terrible debut of the PlayBook, the modest reception to the BlackBerry 9900, and October’s global network outage has not only put RIM on its heels but caused some industry […]
Science and Tech
Letter to Steve Jobs
by Eric Pettifor Dear Mr. Jobs: I write to you on the occasion of your death to congratulate you on making a difference. As more of a technology visionary and businessman than a true geek (that was your erstwhile partner Steve Wozniak, or “Woz”), you may not recall that this was the concern of a […]
Designer Worms
by Eric Pettifor Remember all those episodes of the various Star Treks where characters were genetically altered, either willingly or unwillingly, by some means or other? It would happen within the course of a single episode and be neatly fixed at the end, with a hypo from the lovely Dr. Crusher. In reality, of course, […]
Adobe Previews Adobe Flash Killer
By Eric Pettifor Back in March, I criticized Apple for not including support for Adobe Flash in their iPad tablet. Their reasoning seemed to be, at least in part, that Flash was going away, to be replaced by HTML 5 with support from javascript and CSS, to which I responded that may very well be, […]
Canada’s startups get the flag
By Mark Evans Canada’s startup landscape is healthier than ever, as evidenced by the recent International Startup Festival in Montreal. Putting aside the ambitious name (I would have selected something like the Canadian Startup Festival), the fact that it was well-organized and well-attended suggests there might just be some real traction within the startup community. […]
No WikiLove for Canada Day
Wikipedia is working on a new feature to allow visitors to express appreciation for its poor beleaguered editors by clicking on a Wikilove icon (a heart) and sending a message of appreciation. Seems that editors get a lot of negative criticism for some reason — perhaps for assuming authority even over experts by virtue of […]
RIM chaos overestimated, but . . .
By Mark Evans With all the talk about Research in Motion’s financial and marketshare struggles, many people tend to overlook the fact that it is still a wireless behemoth, albeit one with intense and growing competition. It’s not just another Nortel. Nevertheless, RIM needs to make some major moves to jump-start and revitalize its prospects. […]
Antimatter contained for 17 minutes; hello Vulcans
by Eric Pettifor Canadian researchers (and others, but we’ll focus on lauding our countrypersons) at CERN near North Battleford, Saskatchewan (ok, CERN is really in Switzerland, but it should be in Saskatchewan) have managed to capture and contain antimatter for a whopping 17 minutes (layperson friendly description here). You realize, of course, that this means […]
Canada AWOL at eG8
By Frank Moher PARIS – It is a curious thing, to host the lions of the digital world in a series of tents in a public park. But that is what French President Nicolas Sarkozy did this week in Paris, for the so-called eG8 forum, a prelude to the G8 forum 173 km to the […]
iKnow Where You Were Last Summer
by Eric Pettifor So, it turns out that phones running the iOS 4 update of June, 2010 log date and location wherever their owners take them. The data sits there on the phone. It is not transmitted to Apple, so the charge cannot be made that Apple is actively spying on its customers. But do […]
