By guest blogger Catherine Nutter Tuesday July 29 — “Black Tuesday” to the half a million or so active daily users of Facebook’s monster popular application known as Scrabulous. Office workers and computer nerds all over North America sat quivering and bewildered staring at a screen bearing the error message “Scrabulous is disabled for US […]
internet
Lockdown
By Frank Moher The recent Supreme Court of Canada decision in favour of Vancouver broadcaster Rafe Mair was a big step forward for Canadian journalists and their readers. Mair had been sued by a “Christian-values advocate” who thought he’d defamed her, but the Court ruled 9-0 that “an overly solicitous regard for personal reputation” should […]
Don’t let the music play
By Frank Moher Until I attended the recent CRTC hearing in Vancouver, I had no idea how much time is spent deciding which sort of music serves the greater public good: Triple A, smooth jazz, adult urban, or alternative rock. Or world beat, or indie, or oldies, or R&B;, or active AC, or traditional AC, […]
The XO Laptop: Not for you
My One Laptop per Child (OLPC) XO laptop arrived last week, and I have been playing with it since. For those who haven’t heard of this little beasty, intended to be given to children in the Third World, here is a video introduction by David Pogue of the New York Times. The Give One Get […]
None for you, Mr. Canadian
By Frank Moher I have lately begun to feel that I am ten again, and living in Edmonton in 1965. In those days, we had two TV stations, CFRN and the local CBC outlet. It was also in that year that I first travelled to California with my family to visit our American cousins. Besides […]
Facing up to Facebook
Several months ago, following in the reluctant but curious footsteps of my significant other, I hopped on the Facebook bandwagon. Explained to me as “. . . a bulletin board that all your friends can leave notes on” and “. . . a yearbook and a scrapbook and a diary all crammed into one,” the […]
Wormholes on the web
Recently an exploit was discovered on the web that allowed bad web sites to hijack the accounts of clueless Second Life users via a script that would grab the user’s login info from wherever it’s stored in Internet Explorer. I refer to the victims as clueless not only because they use Internet Explorer, but also […]
TelevisionWithoutAnOffButton
By Frank Moher The news that Disney had snapped up the Kelowna-based website Club Penguin in a deal worth $700 million US (which, if I’m not mistaken, would be enough to buy the city of Kelowna itself) diverted attention from another Canadian internet-success buy-out story this year: the sale of televisionwithoutpity.com to the US Cable […]
Sweet weed of music, play on
In this part of the world, the Pacific North West of North America, there is a non-indigenous plant which many would like to get rid of, the Himalayan Blackberry. It has a delicious fruit, and is extremely difficult to exterminate, since it has an extensive root system and seems to pop up everywhere. allofmp3.com appears […]
All me, all the time
By Dave Carpenter Consider the hour you’re in the middle of right now. Do these 3600 seconds overflow with experiences demanding an impassioned report from the nearest available rooftop? Pretty run-of-the-mill hour, yeah? And you probably don’t need another digital distraction — say one that requires you to stop doing whatever has you occupied and […]
