Generation Why

Can't change the desktop background in Windows 7?

2013-05-30T10:48:00.002-07:00

If you've experienced this problem in Windows 7 as well, then you're no doubt as frustrated as I was. There's some issue in Windows 7 that makes it impossible to change your desktop background, but luckily, the fix is extremely simple.

To be able to change your desktop image, follow these steps:

Click Start, Click Control Panel
Click Folder Options
Click the View tab
Ensure "Hide extensions for known file types" is UNCHECKED
Click Start, paste the following text into the search box, and then press Enter
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\
Right-click the TranscodedWallpaper.jpg file, and then click Rename.
Change the file name to TranscodedWallpaper.old, and then click Yes when you are prompted.
If slideshow.ini is listed, double-click this file. Slideshow.ini should open in Notepad. Select all the text in slideshow.ini if any exists, and then press Delete on the keyboard.
On the File menu, click Save.
Close Notepad.
Close the Windows Explorer window, and then browse to the picture that will be set as the background image.
Try to apply a background picture again.

Enjoy your personalized wallpapers!

Tags: Wallpaper error, Windows 7, customize wallpaper, custom, can't change wallpaper.

The Green Glossary - Some insight into the world of ecolabeling

2013-05-08T16:07:00.000-07:00

It's almost as if the inside of supermarkets, grocery stores, and almost every kind of consumer packaged good distributor is more of a sea of green than the ocean, a forest, or any other green location on earth. The proliferation of labels and claims about how natural, organic, or "...-free" something is has gotten a little out of control over the past few years.

As part of my regular day-job, I've had to come up with a bit of a glossary-meets-resource for people who are looking to get the straight goods on what all this stuff means.

Here are a few key definitions and explanations along with (in some cases) a nod to the actual benefit or lack thereof for many of the most common labels, accreditations and claims. Please note that these pertain primarily to Canada and/or the US:

Certifications	Definition
B Corporation	The following is the ‘Declaration of Independence’ as stated by B Lab - a non-profit organization dedicated to using the power of business to solve social and environmental problems. “We envision a new sector of the economy which harnesses the power of private enterprise to create public benefit. This sector is comprised of a new type of corporation —the B Corporation — which is purpose-driven, and creates benefit for all stakeholders, not just shareholders. As members of this emerging sector and as entrepreneurs and investors in B Corporations, we hold these truths to be self-evident: That we must be the change we seek in the world. That all business ought to be conducted as if people and place mattered. That, through their products, practices, and profits, businesses should aspire to do no harm and benefit all. To do so, requires that we act with the understanding that we are each dependent upon another and thus responsible for each other and future generations.” Source: B Lab http://www.bcorporation.net/
Fair Trade	Fair trade is a way of doing business that strives to ensure that the farmers and artisans that produce the products we use are treated fairly and get a good deal for the work they do. Often this means ensuring that they receive good compensation for their work, but it also includes the formation of longer and more stable contracts and relationships which provide added security for producers. For businesses and consumers, the idea of fair trade, and the Fairtrade certification system itself are about providing information on which products are brought to market in line with these important values; ensuring that the choices we make about the things we buy have a positive impact on the world. Source: Fair Trade Canada http://fairtrade.ca/

Leaping Bunny	The Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics’ (CCIC) Leaping Bunny Program administers a cruelty-free standard and the internationally recognized Leaping Bunny Logo for companies producing cosmetic, personal care, and household products. The Leaping Bunny Program provides the best assurance that no new animal testing is used in any phase of product development by the company, its laboratories, or suppliers. Source: http://www.leapingbunny.org/
PETA	People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is the largest animal rights organization in the world, with more than 3 million members and supporters. PETA focuses its attention on the four areas in which the largest numbers of animals suffer the most intensely for the longest periods of time: on factory farms, in the clothing trade, in laboratories, and in the entertainment industry. We also work on a variety of other issues, including the cruel killing of beavers, birds, and other "pests" as well as cruelty to domesticated animals. PETA works through public education, cruelty investigations, research, animal rescue, legislation, special events, celebrity involvement, and protest campaigns. Source: PETA http://www.peta.org/
USDA Organic	The US Department of Agriculture defines and certifies products as organic using the following definition: Organic is a labeling term that indicates that the food or other agricultural product has been produced through approved methods that integrate cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity. Synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, irradiation (exposure to radiation), and genetic engineering may not be used. Specifics: Products sold, labeled, or represented as “100 percent organic.” A raw or processed agricultural product sold, labeled, or represented as “100 percent organic” must contain (by weight or fluid volume, excluding water and salt) 100 percent organically produced ingredients. Products sold, labeled, or represented as “organic.” A raw or processed agricultural product sold, labeled, or represented as “organic” must contain (by weight or fluid volume, excluding water and salt) not less than 95 percent organically produced raw or processed agricultural products. Products sold, labeled, or represented as “made with organic (specified ingredients or food group(s)).” Multi-ingredient agricultural product sold, labeled, or represented as “made with organic (specified ingredients or food group(s))” must contain (by weight or fluid volume, excluding water and salt) at least 70 percent organically produced ingredients. Source: US Department of Agriculture For more information: http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/nop
Cradle to Cradle	Where many certifications in the market address one aspect of a product or its production, the Cradle to Cradle Certified^CM Product Standard addresses five categories relating to human and environmental health. In order to achieve certification, a product must meet the requirements for a given level (Basic, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum) in all five of the following categories: Material Health - Making products out of materials that are safe and healthy for humans and the environment Material Reutilization - Designing products so all materials can be re-used by nature or industry Renewable Energy and Carbon Management - Assembling and manufacturing products with renewable, non-polluting energy Water Stewardship - Making products in ways that protect and enrich water supplies Social Fairness - Treating all the people involved in the product manufacturing process in socially responsible ways Source: Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute http://www.c2ccertified.org/
Design for the environment	The US Environmental Protection Agency’s Design for the Environment program works with industry, environmental groups, and academia to place the DfE logo on products, which means that the DfE scientific review team has screened each ingredient for potential human health and environmental effects and that—based on currently available information, EPA predictive models, and expert judgment—the product contains only those ingredients that pose the least concern among chemicals in their class. The program is designed to empower consumers to choose products that are safer for themselves and the environment. Source: US Environmental Protection Agency http://www.epa.gov/dfe/index.htm
Forest Stewardship council	The Forest Stewardship Council’s (FSC ) label guarantees that the wood and paper products bearing the mark come from responsible sources and have been verified to meet FSC’s strict environmental and social standards. There are three types of label that help identify various levels of virgin fibre and recycled material within products. FSC 100% labels identify products which are made of 100% virgin material from FSC-certified forests. FSC MIX labels identify products which are made with a combination of FSC virgin fibre, and/or recycled materials with Controlled virgin fibre. The mobius loop represents the total pre and post-consumer recycled fibre. FSC Recycled labels identify products which are made with 100% recycled fiber. The mobius loop represents the total pre and post-consumer recycled fibre. Buying products that feature the FSC labels ensures that the wood used in making the products complies with the FSC’s strict standards on land use and management, indigenous peoples’ rights, community and workers’ rights, environmental impact, and other important considerations. By choosing to buy products bearing the labels, customers set important expectations about these standards for forestry companies who manage Canadian forests. Source: Forest Stewardship Council of Canada https://ca.fsc.org/index.htm
WaterSense	WaterSense is a US Environmental Protection Agency program that strives to help consumers save water by purchasing products, homes, and services that meet the programs requirements. Certified products: Perform as well or better than their less efficient counterparts Are 20 percent more water efficient than average products in that category Realize water savings on a national level Provide measurable water savings results Achieve water efficiency through several technology options Are effectively differentiated by the WaterSense label Obtain independent, third-party certification Source: US Environmental Protection Agency http://www.epa.gov/watersense/
Energy Star	Products can earn the ENERGY STAR label by meeting the energy efficiency requirements set forth in ENERGY STAR product specifications. EPA establishes these specifications based on the following set of key guiding principles: Product categories must contribute significant energy savings nationwide. Qualified products must deliver the features and performance demanded by consumers, in addition to increased energy efficiency. If the qualified product costs more than a conventional, less-efficient counterpart, purchasers will recover their investment in increased energy efficiency through utility bill savings, within a reasonable period of time. Energy efficiency can be achieved through broadly available, non-proprietary technologies offered by more than one manufacturer. Product energy consumption and performance can be measured and verified with testing. Labeling would effectively differentiate products and be visible for purchasers. Source: http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=products.pr_how_earn
Claims/Terms
Biodegradable	Biodegradable refers to a product or packaging’s ability to break down over time after being exposed to the natural decomposing agents typically found in soil, but is often used quite generally to refer to photodegradable (after exposure to light) and degradable (after exposure to air) as well. Product labels should tell you whether or not it is the product itself or the packaging (or both) that are biodegradable. Note: To be biodegradable, degradable, or photodegradable, most substances need either light or oxygen, neither of which is available if the product is placed in a landfill. If a technically biodegradable or degradable product and/or package ends up in a landfill or in disposal facilities that are deprived of the conditions necessary to the degradation process, the claim of biodegradability or degradability could be false or misleading. Source: Canadian Standards Association
Recyclable	Describes a product, packaging or associated component that can be diverted from the waste stream through available processes and programmes and can be collected, processed and returned to use in the form of raw materials or products. Recyclable products will typically bear the mark of the ‘Mobius Loop’, three twisted chasing arrows forming a triangle symbolizing the three main methods of waste diversion; recycle, reduce, and reuse. Note: Different cities and regions have their own recycling standards and facilities that will have an impact on which items are actually recyclable in a given area. Customers should ensure that the infrastructure in their area can support the recycling of a given product before it’s disposed. Source: Canadian Standards Association
BPA Free	BPA, or bisphenol A, is a compound found in plastic food and drink containers, CDs, electronics and car parts, and in the lining of some metal cans. Research has linked its consumption to a number of health issues such as infertility, cardiovascular problems, diabetes and feminization of developing male infants. Typically, the claim of “BPA-Free” is applied to non-polycarbonate plastic bottles as polycarbonate plastic bottles are known to contain BPA. A Health Canada study concluded that at high temperature, migration of trace levels of BPA from some non-polycarbonate baby bottles and bottle liners was observed. However, the tests were designed to represent a "worst case" scenario, and were significantly harsher than would be found in normal use. In addition, the amounts of BPA detected were in “trace amounts”, most of them in the range of parts per trillion. One part per trillion, as an example, is equivalent to one cent in $10 billion. Based on Health Canada's screening assessment of BPA, the trace levels detected in the study are much lower than those that could cause negative health effects. Health has no concerns with respect to the safety of baby bottles or bottle liners made from non-polycarbonate plastic. Source: Health Canada
Compostable	A characteristic of a product or its packaging (or both) that allows it to biodegrade quickly, eventually turning into soil. Source: Canadian Standards Association
Cruelty-Free	Cruelty-free typically means that the product was developed or produced without inhumane testing on animals, though there is no official definition of this claim for use in product labelling. Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary Notes: Some cosmetic companies promote their products with claims such as "CRUELTY-FREE" or "NOT TESTED ON ANIMALS" in their labeling or advertising. The unrestricted use of these phrases by cosmetic companies is possible because there are no legal definitions for these terms. Some companies may apply such claims solely to their finished cosmetic products. However, these companies may rely on raw material suppliers or contract laboratories to perform any animal testing necessary to substantiate product or ingredient safety. Other cosmetic companies may rely on combinations of scientific literature, non-animal testing, raw material safety testing, or controlled human-use testing to substantiate their product safety. Many raw materials, used in cosmetics, were tested on animals years ago when they were first introduced. A cosmetic manufacturer might only use those raw materials and base their "cruelty-free" claims on the fact that the materials or products are not "currently" tested on animals. Source: US Food and Drug Administration
Gluten-Free	A product could be considered gluten-free if the food contains no gluten protein or modified gluten protein, including any gluten protein fraction, referred to in the definition "gluten”. ‘Gluten’ means any gluten protein or modified gluten protein from the grain of any of the following cereals or the grain of a hybridized strain created from at least one of the following cereals: (i) barley, (ii) oats, (iii) rye, (iv) triticale, or (v) wheat; khorasan or spelt Source: Health Canada
GMO-Free	GMO-Freedescribes products that have been made without the use of genetically modified organisms. Since genetic manipulation is a relatively new technology, there is little known about the long-term health risks it could pose. For this reason, many consumers choose to avoid products containing GMOs. Notes: Due to background levels in the environment and the potential for contamination at all phases of production;technically, no product should be labelled as “GMO-free” according to the Canadian General Standards Board. The board does however recognize the claim that food can be “not a product of genetic engineering.” Specifically: Claims that a food or an ingredient in food is not a product of genetic engineering can be made only ifobtained from sourcesof which less than 5% are products of genetic engineering. The claim cannot be made if the food or ingredient is obtained from sources to which food that is a product of genetic engineering has been intentionally added (e.g. to meet the maximum permitted allowance of 5%). The claim cannot be made for a food or ingredient of which no genetically engineered strains have been offered for sale, unless accompanied by an explanatory statement (e.g. “like all other oranges, these oranges are not a product of genetic engineering.”) Specifically for Multi-Ingredient Food: Claims implying that a multi-ingredient food is made solely or completely from ingredients that are not products of genetic engineering a) Shall not be made when ingredients, including enzymes, that are products of genetic engineering that have been added to the multi-ingredient food; and b) Shall not be made when ingredients, including components of ingredients, that are of unverifiable origin. Source: Canadian General Standards Board
Paraben-free	Parabens are the most common preservatives used in cosmetics, and have received much scrutiny over the past number of years due to a research paper that detected parabens in breast tumors and noted the estrogen-like attributes of parabens. This study however did not actually show that parabens cause cancer, and the study also neglected to compare paraben levels in normal tissue. The Cosmetic Ingredient Review (CIR) has since concluded that methylparaben, propylparaben, and butylparaben, the three most commonly used forms of parabens, are safe for use at levels up to 25% in products. Typically, products contain parabens at levels ranging from 0.01 to 0.3%. Many products now feature the claim “paraben-free” as a response to changing perceptions in the marketplace; however the studies have shown that there is no health risk directly linked to their use. Source: David Suzuki Foundation/US Food and Drug Administration
Product of Canada	A product is considered to be a ‘Product of Canada’ if it meets the following two requirements: a) the last substantial transformation of the good occurred in Canada; and b) all or virtually all (at least 98%) of the total direct costs of producing or manufacturing the good have been incurred in Canada. Source: Competition Board of Canada
Made in Canada	A product is considered to be ‘Made in Canada’ if it meets the following three requirements: a) the last substantial transformation of the good occurred in Canada; b) at least 51% of the total direct costs of producing or manufacturing the good have been incurred in Canada; and c) the "Made in Canada" representation is accompanied by an appropriate qualifying statement, such as "Made in Canada with imported parts" or "Made in Canada with domestic and imported parts". This could also include more specific information such as "Made in Canada with 60% Canadian content and 40% imported content". Source: Competition Board of Canada
Natural	There is no official government definition for how the claim of ‘natural’ can be used in labeling, however there is consensus that products making this claim must not contain any artificial flavoring, color ingredients, chemical preservatives, or artificial or synthetic ingredients, and are only “minimally processed”, which the USDA defines as a process that does not fundamentally alter the raw product. Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary/US Department of Agriculture
Organic	As of June 30, 2009, any product with an organic claim must comply with the requirements of the Canadian Organic Products Regulations: Only products with organic content that is greater than or equal to 95% may be labeled as: "Organic" or bear the organic logo. Multi-ingredient products with 70-95% organic content may have the declaration: "contains x% organic ingredients." These products may not use the organic logo and/or the claim "Organic". Multi-ingredient products with less than 70% organic content may only contain organic claims in the product's ingredient list. These products may not use the organic logo. Certified organic products must also bear the name of the certification body that has certified the product as organic. List of Accredited Certification Bodies Source: Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Vegan	Though there is no governing body regulating the use of vegan claims, the term vegan generally refers to a lifestyle choice which focusses on avoiding any products, materials, or processes that use animals, animal by-products, or animal testing. In modern times this is a truly difficult thing to accomplish when the supply chain for goods we use every day is long and complicated. The term vegan is also often attributed to a dietary regime that avoids animal products. A vegan eating pattern is based on grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes (dried beans, peas and lentils), seeds and nuts. It excludes meat, fish, poultry, dairy and eggs or products containing these foods and any other animal products. The benefit of a vegan lifestyle or diet is that avoiding using animals for food or in the production of goods avoids the complicated and largely unknown effects of modern industrialized agricultural and production methods. Source: Dietitians of Canada
Made of sustainable materials	This claim speaks to a method of harvesting or use of a resource so that it’s not depleted or permanently damaged. If a product is made of sustainable materials, this typically means that it was made using resources that are renewable, and using techniques that will not deplete the resource faster than it can replenish its self. Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Reusable	A characteristic of a product or packaging that has been conceived and designed to accomplish within its life cycle a certain number of trips, rotations or uses for the same purpose for which it was conceived. Source: Canadian Standards Association
Refillable	A characteristic of a product or packaging that can be filled with the same or similar product more than once, in its original form and without additional processing except for specified requirements such as cleaning or washing. Source: Canadian Standards Association
Powered by Renewable Energy	Renewable energy is energy obtained from natural resources that can be naturally replenished or renewed within a human lifespan, that is, the resource is a sustainable source of energy. Some natural resources, such as moving water, wind and sunshine, are not at risk of depletion from their use for energy production. Biomass, however, is a renewable resource only if its rate of consumption does not exceed its rate of regeneration. Source: Natural Resources Canada
Reduced energy consumption	Reduction in the amount of energy associated with the use of a product performing the function for which it was conceived when compared with the energy used by other products performing an equivalent function. Note: Claims of reduced energy consumption are commonly expressed as energy-efficient, energy conserving or energy-saving. Source: Canadian Standards Association
Water Efficient (Reduced water consumption)	Reduction in the consumption of water associated with the use of a product performing the function for which it was conceived when compared with the amount of water used by other products performing an equivalent function. Note: Claims of reduced water usage are commonly expressed as water-efficient, water-conserving or water saving. Source: Canadian Standards Association
Designed to remove toxins	Toxins are found in many of the things we’re exposed to daily. Pesticides in our food, contaminated water, cigarettes, and air pollution are just a few of the contributing factors to toxicity in our bodies. Some natural substances can actually help the body get rid of these toxins when they’re ingested. Vitamin C, foods that are high in fibre, and clean water will help your body stimulate the breakdown of toxins and transport them from your liver to your digestive tract where they can be flushed out. Products claiming they are designed to remove toxins may indeed do so, though it’s worth noting that they are usually designed to promote the body’s natural processes of detoxification.

Switching from iOS to Android

2012-03-08T14:36:00.002-08:00

Recently I've made the switch from an iPhone 4 to the Samsung Galaxy S2, and I wanted to provide some information on my experience as well as list out some of what I would consider to be the pros and cons of said transition.

Firstly, I've been the proud owner of every iPhone model since the 3G launched in August of 2008, and it was a very difficult decision to switch, but here are a few of my main reasons:

- slow performance (granted, I didn't have the '4S')
- small screen
- I felt stifled by the closed architecture of iOS
- I wanted a change (yes, this is me wanting to be different)

When people ask me what I think the main difference is between iOS and Android, I tend to fall back on this handy travel metaphor:

iOS is like going to an all-inclusive resort where your food, your drinks and your fun are all carefully hand-picked and presented to you within the four walls of the branded experience. There's a certain consistency of service and reliability, yet with this consistency comes a stark lack of personalization and tailored experiences. In contrast, Android OS is more like the 'choose your own adventure' approach where you book your own transportation, find your own lodging and take part in activities that may not exist anywhere else in the world. By its very nature, Android OS caters to people who actively engage with their devices and their features; folks who like to make their device their own instead of having the exact same experience as every other user.

In reality though, the dichotomy is much more complex than that. There are a whole slough of differences between iOS and Android that really boil down to how you use your mobile devices. No post or article will ever be able to tell you which to choose, so instead, I've listed a number of things I love about the switch, and also a couple of things I miss from iOS.

Things I love about the Galaxy S2 running Android
- The screen is big and gorgeous
- The phone is a lot lighter and slimmer
- I can customize the look and feel of the home screens
- I have direct access to files stored on the device
- I can share any file from my device in a multitude of ways
- Having everything linked to my Google account for seamless syncing (especially because I already use Google for so many things)
- the phone is blisteringly fast
- developers have far more access to the device's API (they can make the phone do more with what it's got, e.g. remote downloading/launching of apps)
- it's basically a fully functioning computer in my pocket

Things I miss from iOS
- much better battery life
- settings for the device and apps are centrally located
- using my friends' speakers and accessories due to the ubiquity of the 30-pin connector
- (currently) there are more apps for iOS
- apps are vetted by Apple and thus, are pretty much guaranteed to do what they say
- iPhone is designed to work seamlessly with other Apple products (which I have a lot of)
- Apple's flare for effective design (quality of engineering, seamless meld of form/function)

One final thing to consider is the development cycle for each company. Google has a habit of rolling out brand new technology and features as soon as they're available to the consumer market. Apple however seems to have a corporate strategy of only releasing a new device or technology once it's been fully researched and tested, and once the kinks have been worked out entirely. A good example of this is 4G LTE technology. Android device OEMs started launching phones with this capability as soon as the first networks were in place. This is great for early adopters, for whom having the newest gear and tech is the top priority, but they soon realized that you can't just bump up the data speeds without doing something drastic to the battery life.
Apple on the other hand has waited until yesterday (March 7th 2012)--a good year or more after 4G LTE networks were in place--to launch a 4G LTE device; the third generation iPad. Apple also doubled the battery power compared to the 3G model, allowing the new iPad to boast the same battery life as it's second generation predecessor.

So are you an early adopter? or a bandwagon jumper? Haha, just kidding. But there's a lot of truth said in jest. Consider your usage habits and what features are important to you, but remember that different devices are being produced that all have very similar features and hardware, so the extra products and services companies create to support the devices will become increasingly important when making a decision about your next phone.

Happy nerding.

TFS

iTunes Match - An Average User's Review

2011-12-19T15:32:00.000-08:00

Today I was finally successful in getting iTunes Match up and running on my MacBook Pro and my iPhone 4--allowing me to access my 13,000+ songs that are held within my iTunes library from anywhere on my iPhone.

For a user like myself who has a pretty large and eclectic library of music and only 32 GB of storage on my iPhone, the $27.99/yr(CAD) iTunes Match service is one that I've been waiting to get my hands on for some time now.

For those that don't know, iTunes Match is a service that works hand-in-hand with iCloud to allow you to access all of your music anywhere you can connect to the internet on your iDevice. The beauty of the service is that it utilizes the vast amount of music content that's already stored on Apple's servers within the iTunes Store. In this way, you don't have to upload all of your music to the cloud before you can access it like some other cloud services. With iTunes Match, only songs that Apple doesn't have in their vaults will be uploaded, saving you and your ISP a great deal of bandwidth. As you listen to your music on your device, if you choose to listen to a song that isn't stored locally, your device will simultaneously buffer, play and download the track to your device and will store it until you run out of space or you choose to delete it. Of course, 'deleting' doesn't mean it's gone, it's just not on your iPhone anymore, and it will always be available from the cloud. It's important to note that this isn't the same as streaming. Your iDevice is actually downloading the full track from the cloud so the next time you press play on it, it'll be there ready and waiting.

You can see here that once iTunes Match is turned on, you've got all your music at your fingertips.

As with most things Apple, the set up and implementation of the service is very easy and straightforward, though there are a few things that any user may run into and that everyone should be aware of.

1. If you've got a lot of tunes that are not mainstream or simply aren't already in the iiTunes Store, it's going to take a LONG time for the songs to upload to Apple's servers. I actually tried 3 times at home before giving up and bringing my laptop to the office to complete the upload. (thank you corporate data plan :) (this will obviously also depend on your own bandwidth, if you've got lots of upload room, you're in business)

2. Before you turn on iTunes Match, if you've filled your device up with tunes by using the 'Fill empty space with music" option, once you turn on the service your device will probably be over capacity. Fear not though, Apple's algorithms have been designed to delete songs that aren't being used frequently and to leave about 200-400mb of space on the device at all times so you can always take pictures and video while on the go without your device running out of space. This is awesome because if you think about it, if you're away from your computer and can't re-sync, your iPhone will automatically make room on your device once it's filled up!

3. Songs that are uploaded to Apple's servers are stored as 256kbps. If you've got an ear for quality and your music is mostly stored at a higher bit-rate (like 320kbps), then you're going to notice some reduction in quality when you listen to music downloaded from the cloud.

4. If you've got songs that are coded at less than 256kbps and Apple has them in the iTunes Store, then Apple will make the higher bit-rate version available to you. For some, this may mean a $30 library overhaul on top of the improved access to your tunes. Not bad if you can appreciate the difference in quality (I totally can, especially when listening to BASSNECTAR!! WOMP).

5. While on the go, a good quality connection (whether 3G or Wi-Fi) is a must. I was sitting in the Vancouver airport and though I had full bars, I think the sheer number of people in the area on their phones was reducing the available bandwidth from nearby towers; causing the song to stop and buffer before continuing. Once I switched to the airport's Wi-Fi connection, everything was seamless. Only about a 1-2 second delay after pushing play on a song that was stored in the cloud.

6. One thing that only just occurred to me, by using iTunes Match, we now have the ability to delete songs right off your phone! Before this wasn't even possible (pffft. I know, right?)

I hope you've found these tidbits useful. If you've got any other tips or how-to's for iTunes Match, pelase leave them in the comments below so eveyone can benefit.

Thanks! And happy listening!

TFS

PS. a great list of articles on various aspects of iTunes Match and iCloud is available from our good friends at Mashable

iOS 5 – An Average User’s Review

2011-10-13T13:54:00.000-07:00

Things I love:

Notification Center
I always hated how one notification would cancel out another and if you were gaming or watching a video it would interrupt the whole process. Now you're able to choose whether iPhone shows you a little banner when you get a notification instead of a huge badge that takes up the whole screen. Dragging the status bar down reveals the Notification Centre and you can see lots of great info there about calendar events, weather, new emails and SMS and missed call info among other things.

iCloud

This service replaces MobileMe as the cloud server that syncs all your contacts, emails, calendars, and other information to your Mac and other devices. it's pretty cool, but I really haven't spent a good amount of time with it.

Improved Camera

The camera has had a number of improvements, namely; it opens faster, captures images faster, allows you to auto-enhance the image and remove red-eye. You can also post images to Twitter and send them over iMessages. You can also take a picture by pressing the volume-up button.

Oct 14th - Edit -
iMessages
This new iteration of the 'Messages' app now automatically detects if your SMS recipients have an iPhone running iOS 5 and will switch from sending the message as a normal SMS and will instead send it as an 'iMessage'. This is great because iMessages don't cound against your Text Message plan with your carrier and are sent for free. You can even send MMS messages too that contain images, location, video and contact information. Here's an image that shows you a conversation that started as SMS and then after my recipient upgraded to iOS 5, the conversation switched in-line to an iMessage conversation. note that the text bubbles for SMS are green, and for iMessages they're blue. iMessages also allows delivery and read receipts to be turned on so users can see when their messages have been received and read. When iOS is installed the default setting is NOT to send read-receipts back to the sender. This can be changed in Settings > Messages.

iPod Improvements

- Artist Names and tracks scroll in ‘Now Playing Screen’ – another thing I suggested in Feedback that took many years to implement
- When browsing songs, you can hold your finger on a track to display the full song and artist information in a small pop-up box

Miscellaneous Improvements

- Text message ringtones! You can finally customize your text message sounds!

- Separated music from other media - Music videos and movies are now contained in the seperate 'Videos' app
- Created ‘Reminders’ app - this is a great way to keep track of stuff you have to do, and it's a lot faster to use than the Notes app, plus it allows you to 'check off' items you've completed.

- Created a "Find My Friends" app that allows iPhone users to share their information with each other on an ongoing basis. Users can also push their location to their friends during a specific time frame only if they'd like.
- Importing Twitter pictures for contacts – since your Twitter account can now be linked directly to your iPhone, you can assign your contacts' images that are taken directly from their Twitter profiles. This is great because it finally makes good use of the fact that iPhones show pictures when people call.

- LED notification light - you can set your iPhone to blink the LED flash when receiving notifications

- Rich-text formatting - highlighting text brings up the contextual menu for copy/paste and now includes the option to format the selected text as bold, italics and underlined

Things they missed/goofed:

- You still can't have HTML signatures in Mail (Rich text is now supported)
- They didn't create many standard widgets for the notification centre (e.g. iPod widget)
- Newsstand app can’t be placed in a folder (because it’s a folder in and of itself?)
- In the reminders app, you should be able to create groups of reminders
- There should be a long-touch shortcut for adding songs to a playlist on the go

- When creating a playlist on the iPhone, the song list is un-scrollable and it takes a huge amount of time to find tracks you want to add.
- You can't combine iCloud and iTunes Store accounts

Despite these shortcomings, iOS 5 is a great step forward in the development of the platform and is indicative of the large-scale UI changes that we can likely expect in the coming year(s). It's important to remember though that in many ways this update only brings iOS up to par with Android and other mobile operating systems, but Apple has always offered a more secure, 'closed' environment, vs. the open alternative that allows for a great deal more risk to security and puts the user experience in jeopardy.

What do you think about iOS 5? Let us know in the comments below.

Why Google+ Trumps all other Social Media

2011-08-13T13:42:00.000-07:00

The interweb is full of social media sites--all of which claim to offer some feature or functionality that the others don't--but anyone who's signed into Facebook or Twitter in the last half decade is well aware of the 'overshare' phenomenon that has resulted from the innumerable social media sites and the ubiquity of 'share', 'like' and 'Tweet' buttons across all manner of web pages that allow us to share everything we do, think, eat, and see.
The underlying issue with oversharing is one that now seems present in a slough of digitized media, not just social. Consider music. A decade or so ago, if you asked anyone what their favourite kind of music was, they'd probably be able to give you one, two or maybe three genres that they preferred. Nowadays, any time you ask someone what their favourite type of music is, they're hard pressed to limit the list to 10 genres they enjoy, and in most cases folks will simply revert to choosing music they don't like instead of those that they do enjoy in order to save their breath and precious tweeting time.
The issue here is ubiquity. Gone are the days of lengthy searches for anything we may need. Music, photos, news, help, random facts; they're all available instantly and in most cases, right on the first page of a Google search. This staggering groundswell of information and access has left people in a position of electronic plenty; one that allows them the ability to dispense with the need to simplify and make hard choices about the stuff they consume on-line. People don't download single tracks any more--not when artists's entire discographies are available in the same number of clicks and storage gets cheaper faster than even gas prices can climb.

The same seems to go for sharing within social media. People have so many choices for where, how and when to share that more often than not their thumbs can be found whirring away in a blur of bird anger and txtese, producing a seamless stream of updates that let no cables sleep.

The solution? Well, just maybe it's Google+.
The beauty of Google+ isn't that instant mountain-top scream to everyone you know--though you do still have that ability--it's the idea that you may only want to blitz certain friends at one time, and save some of that thumb strength for other stuff you do, like buttoning shirts... or hitch-hiking. The ability to choose which 'circles' of your friends on Google+ you'd like to share things with is a boon for those of us that only want certain friends to know certain things. Much like real life, you can choose to only tell your college buddies that you just drank your height in beer, while only your family gets to hear that you just bought new pillows for the guest bed. So in reality, it's not that you'll be sharing less, it's just that to everyone else it'll appear that you'e sharing less because they're not getting every single post you squeeze out in a fit of anger on the subway or waiting in line for a coffee. The result: happier friends and peace of mind knowing that even your most random, cryptic and politically incorrect musings will find a home on the vast expanse that is the digital

The advent of this ability to select who you want to share with will mean a couple things for those who choose to jump on to Google+. People who have become much better at filtering what they share on Facebook or other mass-sharing platforms will inevitably lose a lot of that inner censorship as previously 'unsharable' items are now totally fair game as long as you click the right circles. Also, it will be interesting to see if the classic mantra still holds true that "secrets don't make friends". Will people start to lose friends because of the lack of updates they're sending? All of those items shared en-mass that populated people's feeds and reminded them you still cared will now come to a halt, but is this necessarily a bad thing? Studies show that we can only really keep meaningful close friendly contact with around 50 people, any more than that and those relationships start to exist solely in cyberspace and in turn, degrade to mere acquaintances.

Perhaps Google+ is the answer to our 'overshare' problem, or it could just as easily be a smack in the face to those of us who smile proudly at our giant friend counts on Facebook. Only time will tell if Google has pumped out just another carbon copy of a tried and tested model, or if they continue to put the G in Genius.

What do you think?
Try out Google+ here
Leave your comments or thoughts below.

TS

The Joie de Vivre

2011-06-13T10:48:00.000-07:00

The link I'm going to share below is a wikihow piece on 'Joie-de-Vivre', the iconic French phrase that strolls hand-in-hand with true happiness down the banks of the Seine and gives us a simple and elegant lens through-which to view the world around us. Despite it's pollyannish and often rosy-coloured rap, Joie-de-Vivre (or the 'joy of living') speaks to a way of finding simple pleasure in the things, people and places around us--a skill that's becoming ever more difficult in a world where we only realize the beauty of 3 dimensions when that third one is added to our TV sets. Am I the only one who sees the irony in adding this type of 'depth' to our lives?

I've sort of always followed these tenants and and lived my life in this way because it seemed like the sensible thing to do in order to be happy, but seeing it written down kind of reaffirms it--and to an extent cheapens it I must say--but I wanted to share this take on a classic philosophy of happiness.

I've been trying to follow through on these sorts of things recently; like sending someone a message when I think about them. I think it's nice to let someone know you're thinking about them, whatever the reason. Many great conversations have been had because of a random text, email or wall post that arrives at just the right time. In this way we can use technology to tease the simple pleasures out of life and share them with others while at the same time being careful not to "over-share"; a classic and insidious result of the global connected consciousness.

Coincidence and immaculate timing are some of my favourite things in the world, so when I have a chance, I play a serendipity card and see what happens! Give it a try and see if your hand is a winner, you just might be pleasantly surprised.

Joie-De-Vivre

App Review: Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock for iPhone

2011-02-11T10:34:00.000-08:00

"Good morning!"
To me, on most days, that simple phrase is the most oxymoronic way for someone to greet me. I'm certainly not a morning person. In fact, often the hardest part of my day is getting out of bed on time. Granted, part of the blame should fall to me because I frequently stay up later than I should on 'school nights', but mostly I blame my bed for being so darn comfy. I should preface this review by saying that I typically set 3 alarms every morning and usually only get up after the third. On many occasions where I've only had a few hours of sleep before I have to get up again, my brain will decide all on it's own not to consciously register the sound of the alarm, but rather turn the alarm off and continue sleeping. This presents me with a rather obvious problem, and so to deal with the issue I of course opted to find a technological solution to my problem versus just going to bed a littler bit earlier because after all, even Nas knows that sleep is the cousin of death.
Sufficed to say, I need all the help I can get in the morning to get out of bed, so when I heard about this app I was very excited to try it out.

Before getting into the app, there are a few things you should know about sleep cycles. This is a little excerpt from a study by Applied Cognitive Studies.
"For our purposes, it suffices to say that one sleep cycle lasts an average of 90 minutes: 65 minutes of normal, or non-REM (rapid eye movement), sleep; 20 minutes of REM sleep (in which we dream); and a final 5 minutes of non-REM sleep. The REM sleep phases are shorter during earlier cycles (less than 20 minutes) and longer during later ones (more than 20 minutes). If we were to sleep completely naturally, with no alarm clocks or other sleep disturbances, we would wake up, on the average, after a multiple of 90 minutes–for example, after 4 1/2 hours, 6 hours, 7 1/2 hours, or 9 hours, but not after 7 or 8 hours, which are not multiples of 90 minutes."

Essentially, what this tells us is that it's actually better (will leave you feeling more well rested) to get LESS sleep provided you're asleep for a multiple of 90 minutes and that the key to being well rested is not how much you sleep, but how many complete sleep cycles you complete.

Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock is a really nifty app that unlike most other apps on the market, has only one main purpose; to get you up on time. Though simple in premise, the way this app accomplishes the task is a bit more interesting than simply buzzing away incessantly when the time comes. After setting a 'wake-up window', Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock monitors your sleep patterns all night long as you move between lighter and more deep sleep cycles and will wake you up when you reach a point of light sleep within your target 'wake-up window'. The benefit of this system is that you're never startled out of a deep sleep by your alarm; leaving you feeling better rested right when you wake up and allowing you to get up out of bed after the first alarm.

How does it do this you ask? Sleep Cycle doesn't attach to your body in any way, nor does it scan your brain with some sort of patented Apple mind ray. The app works by tracking your movement as you sleep by way of the accelerometers built into your iPhone. Simply plug in your iPhone's power adapter and place it face-down on the corner of your mattress (not under your pillow or mattress). Plugging the phone in before bed is a must in this case as the app is constantly monitoring your movements, and consequently, using up battery power. As you move into a period of light sleep, you tend to toss and turn more than when you're in a period of deeper sleep. The app records these movements and over the course of the night, builds a graph of your sleep patterns and wakes you up when you reach a point of light sleep within your target time. If you don't reach a period of light sleep within your target window, the app will sound the alarm automatically at the end of the window. The developers recommend a period of at least 30 minutes to ensure you'll be at a point of light sleep when the alarm goes off.

Sleep Cycle lets you choose from the app's list of calming and soothing alarm sounds, or you can customize your sound by choosing a song from your iPhone's library. Recently I've been waking up to the sultry sounds of Phoenix's "North" but the possibilities are endless and half the fun of setting the alarm is choosing what song you think will serenade you out of sleep the best. The app will also track your sleep patterns and you can view daily graphs that show you how your sleep patterns change throughout the night.

It's very interesting to have a look at what you were up to while you were asleep. As you can see from the screenshot above, I had a much more restless sleep on Wednesday compared to Tuesday and I can remember feeling much more well rested on Wednesday morning than I did on Thursday morning. When using this app, it almost feels as though you're already awake by the time the alarm goes off, and it's much easier to get out of bed.

I highly recommend this app to anyone who has trouble getting up in the morning or to those of you who tend to feel tired throughout the day even though you're putting in the hours under the sheets. The app is available from th iTunes App Store for $0.99, and in my mind is quite the bargain.

Have a look at the developer's site here for more info.

Sweet dreams!

TS

Location wars - The Battle for your check-ins

2011-02-01T12:23:00.000-08:00

2010 saw Foursquare, the location-based social media network, sweep across the mobile landscape dropping little digital signposts across the map as it went. Near the end of the year, social media mogul Facebook introduced an addition to it's mobile platform by adding 'Facebook Places'; a strikingly similar iteration of Foursquare's check-in system that was linked directly to a user's Facebook account; an attractive point of differentiation for Gen Y'ers already paralyzed by the virus-like proliferation of new social networks.

In mid-November 2010, former Facebook employee Dave Morin launched 'Path'; yet another entry into the world of location-based social media. Path featured an iPhone app and a web portal and was positioned as more of a personal network that featured two major divergences from traditional social media; exclusivity and intimacy.

Both of these aspects of Path are interesting because as far as social networks go, none have really linked any of their developments to actual sociological or anthropological data or theories. Path on the other hand, under Morin's direction, saw fit to incorporate ideas pioneered by prominent social thinkers to create a more personal network based on the sharing of intimate snapshots of one's path through life with only the closest of friends. The idea of exclusivity is rooted in anthropologist Robin Ian MacDonald Dunbar's work with primates. By studying the neocortex region of the brain, Dunbar found that it's size actually limits the number of meaningful social interactions one can have to around 150; "Dunbar's number". From this, Morin chose 50 as the maximum number of connections available in Path based on a theory he developed while at Facebook that says that people's social circles ripple outwards by factors of three. A close group of friends and family consisting of about 5 people leads to an extended group of around 15 people which then multiplies by three again to get to 45. This rough outline lead Morin to his eventual limit of 50 friends and a network composed of people close enough to the user that updates are viewed as valuable vs. spam.

The intimacy factor was spurred on by Morin's interest in the work of Nobel prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman. Morin saw Kahneman speak at a TED conference earlier in the year, and was attracted to his ideas about memories and how they were tied to happiness. For Morin, memories in the social network sense of the word meant photos, and this was to be the sole method of communication for users in Path. By uploading photos of where they are and what they're doing, users share the intimate 'moments' of their day with their 'favored 50' and let the relationships between the users themselves determine how the recipients' understanding, connection and shared happiness is affected. Essentially, because you're so close to your favored 50, simply receiving images of the things that matter most to you will easily convey how you're feeling to those who know you best. Morin uses the example of snapping a photo of a warm mug of mocha, "My friends know how much I love mochas,” he says. “So my friends are happy for me.”

So if 50 is the magic number, and photos are the only way to share, then how come Path is quickly becoming the road less travelled?

This is the question that's been on my mind recently. My thinking is this; Foursquare was the first to let users 'check in' to locations and let people know where you are, Facebook's Places was the first check-in app that linked directly to an existing social network, and so Path, with it's minimalist and exclusive nature, should fill a previously empty void, no?

Apparently not. No one I know is using Path on the regular. Heck, most people I ask about it have never even heard of the thing. Why is it that the only quasi-scientifically based social network has been met with such a difficult beginning? Was it timing? Released too soon after both Foursquare and Facebook's Places to be differentiated in the marketplace? Or was it that in reality, people just want to shout from rooftops, not concerned so much about who hears them, but rather with the mere fact that they're able to yell. It's quite possible that Path was released at a time when our relatively new fascination (and addiction) to social media has left us on the rising side of a steep curve of interest--one that will likely correct itself just as quickly as it was formed. It will be interesting to see in the next 6 months if Path finds traction with users who have been jaded by the ubiquity of status updates and the ongoing stream of check-ins. Many experts see social media moving towards a trend of amalgamation and simplification, and so if twitter's 140 characters are the short-hand blog, then might Path's photo stream be the new Facebook wall? After all, if a picture's worth a thousand words, then Morin's got 860 reasons why people should switch from sharing tweets to moments.

To my mind, each network serves somewhat of a different purpose, yet we only have so much time and interest to devote to being social. Will users from Facebook and Foursquare check-out of their past networks in favour of the more intimate Path? Or as we reach the peak of the curve--the point of social media saturation, will the status and fame associated with being the mayor of 'Bus Stop #50045' trump the value of a shared intimate moment?

TS

To read, or to e-read, that is the question

2011-01-25T15:27:00.000-08:00

'Digital' has permeated all facets of life. It has simplified and expedited the means through which we access information, perhaps even cheapening the personal value of news. In order to remain a diverse and well-rounded agent of your community, your business, your family, etc. it is incumbent upon you to seek out information through more than just electronic means. For there is a value in knowledge unattainable through instantaneous search results; a personal feeling of worth and satisfaction that's discovered when a manual query yields just what one was looking for.

So once in a while, drop that mouse, put away that iPad, and leave Google alone. Instead, open a book, read a newspaper, talk to a friend. You never know what you'll find out when you unplug.

Plus, you can't make papier-mâché or heat your home with the interweb.

TS

Vibrant Coast's New Video!

2010-10-12T16:12:00.000-07:00

The newest video is out! Check it, like, it, share it, repeat.

The whole video was recorded using the Samsung Galaxy S smartphone with it's 5 megapixel camera and 720p recording quality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5bFZILgtWk

New Android App Idea - Modroids!

2010-09-23T08:56:00.000-07:00

Check out this new app idea we came up with for Android phones!

All video was shot on the Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant.

Like the vid, pass it on, and maybe the app will get made if it gains enough online traction!

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPH9nMN1jLY

Tips for Using the Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant

2010-08-30T01:23:00.000-07:00

I've been fortunate enough to get my hands on one of these devices and thought I'd post a couple of tips that you might not have been aware of.

Most of these can be found in the user's guide that's available here: User's Guide

Taking a screenshot:

While using the device, you can capture an image of a screen. While pressing and holding [BACK], press the Home key. The image will be saved in Gallery

Quickly adjusting the brightness:

You can quickly adjust the display brightness by scrolling left or right on the indicator line of the screen.

Activate your phone's mobile tracker:

If someone inserts a new SIM or USIM card in your device, the mobile tracker feature will automatically send the contact number to specified recipients to help you locate and recover your device.

1.
In Idle mode, open the application list and select Settings → Location and security → Set mobile tracker.
2. Enter your password and select OK.
3. Enter a phone number including a country code (with +).
4. Enter a sender’s name.
5. Enter the text message to be send to the recipients.
Select Save → Accept.

That's it for now, I hope to dig up some more soon and I'll update the page as I discover them.

Happy swiping...

Mobile Strategies for Newspapers

2010-05-11T14:13:00.000-07:00

The following are a few of my ideas for ways in which newspapers can take advantage of new mobile media and new technology to enhance the offerings they currently have, maintain a valuable connection to their readers, and begin to hybridize traditional and new ways of publishing news content.

Mobile-
For the most part, people in the advertising, marketing, and brand sectors of the media-sphere still consider mobile to be a new medium for reaching their customers. I think this is completely wrong for a number of reasons. For one, many companies have already jumped on-board in a big way with mobile marketing and advertising (yes, they're very different). Think about Google, The Weather Network, and to dabble into the world of print; The New York Times. The NYT is a particularly important example because they represent the only newspaper on the planet that is actually dictating to their advertisers how they should be reaching their customers through the NYT properties. In many ways the NYT acts like a full service agency for their advertisers; educating, planning, designing, executing, and analyzing the campaigns they feature within their various properties.
In the mobile realm, The New York Times has always been at the forefront of development and implementation of new technologies and strategies. Let's look at a few reasons why:
- launched the first iPhone news app (presently downloaded over 2 million times)
- one of the first sites to optimize for a host of mobile devices (they have a database of hundreds of phones)
- they sell mobile as standalone and as a part of larger, more robust ad buys
- they constantly update and improve their mobile offerings based on constant user feedback

These four points are big because they all trace back to the key criteria for a successful mobile execution; Innovation, usability and compatibility, Value-add, and longevity/repeat engagement. Many mobile campaigns that operated a number of years ago were focussed too much on making a big splash and then counting the ripples. This is a poor way to utilize mobile because it undermines the basic idea behind the entire medium. Once you've got someone's information, you have to put it to continued good use! I mean come on... you're in their pocket 24-7, don't just be the one night stand that keeps texting you to hook up again, bring something to the table and show some commitment! As Ben Gaddis, Director of mobile and emerging media strategy at T3 said, "thread campaigns together and create an ongoing conversation with your customers, not just a series of one-offs."

Like any form of marketing or advertising, mobile works best when it provides the user with something of value. More importantly though, this added value has to be easily accessible. As devices get simpler and more ubiquitous, people's willingness to take part in a mobile campaign is shaped more and more by a core group of variables. Namely; how fast and easily they can get something of value, how easy it is to spread the word about it, and whether or not it will affect their cell phone bill. Another qualifier that I would suggest based on my own perspective is how easily the value-add can be shared by someone with friends and family. Everyone likes to share cool, interesting, new and potentially valuable information with others, and everyone likes to be the first to break the news. Making it easy for someone to be the hero is a pretty great way to build brand confidence and create a relationship with your customers.

So to wrap up, mobile isn't new, it's here to stay, you better be on board, and you better think long and hard about how to maintain your rapport with your mobile users... just not too long. After all, our attention spans are the only thing too short for Google to track.

Shed the plastic, shed the shell

2009-08-11T12:59:00.003-07:00

A new standard has swept across our consumerist culture; one that seems to stem from the ‘greenification’ of businesses and plays on the newly adopted ideals of the fledgling eco-conscious demographic. For years, supermarkets and retail stores, big box and mom and pop shops have been slinging our goods into plastic bags so we might carry them off in a cheap, branded, disposable sack. But this is no more, or at least, not for free. With the introduction of the five cent ‘plastic bag tax’ in Toronto, anyone who would like to use a plastic bag provided by the store must pay $0.05 for each bag they use. Without getting into a huge debate about whether or not it’s a good idea, I’d like to say that I think it’s great that our government is changing the standards in our city so that people’s day to day lives are actually affected. Regardless of who is on the hook for the nickels; the businesses or the consumers, I see a great deal of opportunity for change in other facets of our consumptive nature that might be brought on by this initial departure from the comfy norm. But I digress.
My opinion on the new law has little to do with the common arguments of this issue such as, “who has to pay what” and “why don’t the business owners cover the cost as part of their advertising budgets”. My interest is primarily in the social ramifications of implementing this new strategy; I prefer to examine the actual felt response to the change, not the one felt by our wallets, but the one felt by our brains; our sense of community and interconnectedness.
I was driving down the street and spotted a guy walking home from the corner store with a carton of milk in his hand. It was instantly interesting to me because I’m one to notice weird stuff like that, but mainly because I could SEE the milk. It wasn’t in a bag, it wasn’t in a box, and it wasn’t obstructed by some store’s logo or slogan. The fact was that that guy only needed some milk. No eggs, no Dijon mustard, just milk. He probably was just like me; finished off the last carton with breakfast and didn’t have time to grab a new one before he made it home. So there he was—jaunting home, milk in hand, smile on face. And there was a connection there. I saw myself in him a little bit, as anyone who’s ever bought a solitary item after work would see, and it made me think about the bag tax. If we didn’t have the bag tax, he probably would have asked for a bag (or would have been given one even without asking), but since he didn’t, I can now view his purchase, even from my car. And to be able to see his purchase, is to be able to see into his world, and immediately, linkages are drawn between his world and mine. Linkages that would never have been drawn had he been swinging a Dominion bag with contents “X” instead, linkages that connect me to him as fellow men, even if that connection is just that we both like one percent.

It’s interesting to me that now that we’re not using plastic bags as much, not only are we connected through our common goal to save our own asses from a fiery doom, but we’re also being brought closer together by the increase in transparency of our actions. Granted, if people don’t stop to notice these things, then we won’t really ever progress from our shoe-gazing, fast-paced lifestyles; but I think that maybe this lack of bag barriers will help to increase people’s aptitude for exploration, question asking, pondering and in the end, relationships.

What do you think!?!

TS

Horoscopes - What the hell?

2009-07-10T10:22:00.000-07:00

Some people live their lives one day at a time; meeting challenges head on and braving all that life throws at them with little knowledge of what might come next. For others, living in this day-by-day manner is far too unpredictable to be enjoyable, and to help them deal with the unpredictable nature of life they seek guidance from a long-standing and widely accepted form of divination; astrology.

I know that I said astrology was widely accepted, but really I should probably have used the term ‘acknowledged’, because though it is true that many people look to the stars and planets for some guidance in their lives, I think it’s safe to say that a great majority of people look no further than the weather channel for their daily preparations.

Personally, I do have a daily horoscope on my homepage, but I certainly don’t live by it. It’s nice to check once in a while just to get that eerie feeling like you’re not totally alone in the world, but beyond these sorts of tenuous, overly simplified and ambiguous personal linkages, I don’t find any real substance in them.

I really don’t see (and this may be my ignorance talking) how celestial patterns relating to your time and place of birth can be a prediction for how your life is going to move forward. I believe quite firmly that we make our own choices and that life provides for those who provide for themselves. In other words, life is what you make of it, you catch more flies with honey than shit, and what goes around comes around. Sure, these are quite colloquial and cliché turns of phrase, but really, how better to sum up my feelings that things will go well for you if you try hard, be kind and generous, and treat others like you’d want to be treated. Pretty standard stuff, though it seems hard for people to take a step back and look objectively at how their own actions bring about the actions of others. If more people practiced what so many preach, there’d be way more generosity, an abundance of smiles, and less of a need for pre-packaged quasi-clairvoyance delivered to your homepage. Another issue I have with horoscopes is their boldness. Granted, if they were any more whimsical and open-ended I probably would have a lot more negative commentary, but I get annoyed when I read a horoscope that says, “Money is on your mind, but today you should focus on your creativity and leave your finances for another day.” So wait… cheeky Taurus is inching near to my 8th house of cards, so I should paint a still life rather than balance the books? Hmm… I can just imagine creditors everywhere seeing the same thing and ramping up the calls to all those oblivious Sagittarians out there with paint brushes in hand.

Even though I do feel quite skeptical about the whole idea of astrology, and my recent ‘research’ into into the field has left me no more of a convert, I still can’t discount it completely. If you think it’s creepy when it’s Friday and your horoscope says, “after today, you’ll feel a great weight has been lifted off your shoulders!” well then, I’m sorry for one, but secondly, I can tell you a story about the one person who, despite my skepticism, is keeping me unsure of what to believe.

A few years ago as a summer job, I worked as a tree planter for A&M Reforestation in Northern Ontario. It was a grueling 3 month test of character, physical endurance, and one’s ability to dispel all pre-conceived notions of what ‘clean’ actually is. Given that the work itself was the most repetitive and at times dismal things you could think of doing, it was the people that made the experience interesting. On one of our few days off we were bunking in a motel in a small northern town, and one evening I was sitting in the parking lot waiting for the gang to get ready to head out for dinner. I was talking with a girl named Kristy, and she and I had only really ever talked cordially about this and that, joked about how many bug bites per square inch we had, and other sorts of small talk. As I sat in the parking lot, she came up to me, and in a very calm and assured tone she asked,
“You were born on November 26th weren’t you?” At first my only response was a blank stare, partly because I wasn’t expecting that sort of a question, but mostly because she was only 1 day off!
“Uhhhhh… no, the 27th actually,” I replied. “Oh, yeah, that makes more sense,” she said.
More blank staring and an dropped jaw followed that line, and I just had to know more. She went on to tell me some of the most intimate truths about who I was, what I thought about the world, about people, things I was more or less still trying to figure out for myself! I was utterly shocked to hear such a deep sounding of who I was, and couldn’t believe that she could rhyme off such a laundry list of attributes without really knowing me at all. Over the course of our conversation she told me about her interest in astrology and how it had really become a huge part of her life. It allowed her to know and be comfortable with her herself, and to learn to be more in tune with others as well. I told her I thought she was a bit of a cheater though because I wear my heart on my sleeve, and that you didn’t have to be a psychic to know how I was feeling.

That being said, it was amazing for me to hear so much about myself from someone I barely knew, and the accuracy was enough to push my opinion of astrology into a shady middle ground; not knowing what to believe and what to discount.

I’d love to hear from Kristy again and see where the stars have led her. Maybe she’s still up in White River Ontario, planting trees and telling people what’s up. Or maybe she works for tarot.com, consulting astro-charts and creeping people out with her uncanny abilities. Regardless, there’s something to be said for a daily outside perspective on your life’s direction because in the end, I sort of think that whether or not your horoscopes are right is up to you anyway.

What do you think?

iPhone 3.0 software in Canada on Rogers Wireless

2009-06-18T13:08:00.007-07:00

Here are the new features that come with the upgrade to software version 3.0 and a little blurb about what I like/dislike about each one. It’s important to note that this upgrade is free for iPhone users, but costs $9.95 for iPod touch users.

- Cut/Copy/Paste
This is a welcomed and long over due addition to the software. Pretty much any iPhone user, right from the beginning in 2007, will tell you that this should have been included in the original software. Even Apple developers noted that “some features were certainly late” in their inclusion. This being said; cut/copy/paste works very well. I only have one issue with it though; when you hold your finger over text to begin the process, there’s no distinction between wanting to copy and paste, and wanting to shift the cursor, the cut/copy and paste buttons will always pop up, and they tend to take up a bit of space on the screen.

- Spotlight search across all native apps
This is an awesome feature. It works beautifully, and very quickly, and it allows you to search for anything on your phone from one location. Spotlight searches for the text you enter in all the various places on your phone; iPod (song names, artists etc), Mail, contacts, etc. To my knowledge, the only thing it doesn’t search is the Notes application. I’m not sure why, it definitely should. Apple should get on that. Here’s a screenshot of what a search for “Tay” came up with on my iPhone. Note the separate headers for content that’s part of address book, iPod, and Mail.

- Stereo Bluetooth
In my opinion, also something that should have been shipped with the original iPhone and all subsequent models. With this feature you can now use wireless stereo Bluetooth earphones that have microphones, as well as pair your iPhone with a vehicle that supports Bluetooth connectivity so you can use your phone right through the car’s speaker system and internal mic. I’ve tried it on a 2009 BMW X5, and it works very well.

- Automatic Wi-Fi login
I’m not entirely sure how this is different from what used to happen when you entered a wireless hot-spot you had already joined, but I guess they’ve improved the ‘remembering’ feature that will store previous hot spot info like passwords on your phone.

- Shake to shuffle
For me, I use my iPhone headphones that shipped with the device, and I always have my music on shuffle anyway, so this doesn’t really help me out. For those of you who are into the gimmicky aspects of Apple products, no doubt it’ll offer a little bit of novelty as well as functionality to your music experience.

- Mobile Me remote locate/wipe
A great feature that should see many Blackberry users striking an item off their list of things their phone can do that the iPhone can’t. The only issue with this feature is that you must be subscribed to the MobileMe service through Apple, which will cost you $99/year. There is also a free trial available here. A word of caution though, you must be running either Safari 4 or Firefox 2 in order to use MobileMe. Internet explorer isn’t supported. Being able to find your phone with GPS will no doubt help many people out when the accidentally leave their phone in some random washroom. I’m sure we’ll see something about this in the news soon when a kidnapping is thwarted because the kid has an iPhone and the parents could track where he was.

- Internet tethering
This is an interesting additional feature that I didn’t expect, but makes complete sense. This feature allows you to connect you iPhone to your computer and use your phone as a modem through either Bluetooth or USB. I’ve got a 6GB data plan on my iPhone that I got the day it launched a year ago, and I haven’t even come close to 6GB. Being able to tether my iPhone to my laptop will help me make full use of my allotted bandwidth as well as help me stay connected up at the cottage or wherever there aren’t any Wi-Fi or Ethernet connections. There isn’t even any extra fee to set it up with Rogers, though I did have to call in to activate the feature. Here’s a screenshot of the tethering settings page on the iPhone:

- MMS messaging
This is a double edged sword of a feature if I’ve ever seen one. Essentially it lets you send contact info, pictures and other media through what are basically txt messages, but you can’t do it until you set up your plan through Rogers with the more expensive txt messaging plan. I’ve got the $15 txt and voicemail plan, but even that won’t give you MMS. You’ll need to cough up $10 more per month ($25 in total) in order to add MMS to your txt plan. For me, that’s ridiculous, because I can just send people emails instead. AT&T in the US is in the process of enabling this feature, and when they do have it up, it won’t cost any more than a normal txt message, and will work with your current plan. When I asked Rogers customer service managerial staff about it, they said that AT&T is a separate company and they have separate cost structures. Great… thanks for nothing.

- Landscape Keyboard across all native apps
Another thing that was late in its adoption. It’s funny… I’ve gotten so used to using the small keyboard that now it’s tough to switch to the bigger landscape one. That being said, it’s certainly much easier to hit the right keys when you need to. One other issue I have with this feature is that it takes up a lot of screen real estate. When you’re sending an SMS message for example, you’ve only got a tiny window to see the history of the conversation because the keyboard and entry field take up more than half the screen. It should be noted that in a pinch, you can simply touch the “edit” button on the right side of the keyboard to see more though, but this isn’t the most ideal situation. Here’s a screenshot of a landscape keyboard in Messages.

- Improvements to Safari (speed, autofill, etc.)
Safari is a bit faster, but they still don’t have support for flash. One thing I do like though is the auto-fill feature that uses your own address book info to fill in fields on web pages. Go to the Safari settings page and select what info you want it to use for auto-fill. Buying my concert tickets will never be easier!!

- Notes become Sync-able
I haven’t used this feature yet, but it’s a welcomed addition because I like to store ideas and tidbits of cool info in my notes. To be able to access these from my computer as well will be nice.

- New Voice memo app
This app is pretty sweet. It loads very fast, and is very straightforward. It’s a great tool to be able to quickly make note of something and then come back to it later. You can speak way faster than you can type (I hope), so it’s a much better way to keep notes. Here’s a screenshot of what the app looks like.

- Improved stocks app
Did anyone actually use this in the first place?? I didn’t think so. Great, full screen graphs… now you can see your stocks tanking in landscape mode. Super.

All in all, I think this software update is awesome. I don’t know of any other phone I’ve had that actually got BETTER over time. Certainly something to be said about Apple’s desire to innovate and provide their customers with the value they’re certainly paying for.

What's with Officer Glue Stick?

2009-05-07T09:01:00.004-07:00

Summer time in Toronto is a gorgeous time of year. Flowers are in bloom, trees are lush and green, and people just seem to move about with a much friendlier demeanor compared to the colder months. There is however one aspect of summer life in Toronto that is just too jagged a pill for me to swallow. The issue is one that maybe some people don’t even know about, and I’m sure, one that many people will disagree with me on. Have you ever been walking or biking downtown and suddenly had to dodge a huge pile of horse crap? Well I certainly have, and it’s not the most pleasant thing to stumble upon in sandals.

My issue isn’t entirely with the horse crap though; it’s with the root problem behind the horse crap… the horses. The equine individuals that leave behind those steamy piles are in fact officers of the law. That’s right, Toronto cops who are members of the ‘Mounted Unit’ canter around T.O. on the backs of their partners, enforcing the law from on high.

Now, in a city where the average speed limit is probably around 40 km/hr, and where SUVs and large trucks are rampant, I really can’t see the benefit a horse brings to law enforcement on street level. Not only are they incapable of pursuing a suspect on the move, but they also take up a lot of road, and at times can slow traffic to a stop.

The average cost to maintain a horse is around $1200 per month as per my research online, and that doesn’t include any veterinary bills, the intense training, or incidental costs that could arise. Horses are pretty fragile creatures as well, and there’s a great deal that can go wrong with them. Compared to a police car that can outrun most production vehicles, act as a crowd control barrier, provide the officer inside with protection, move traffic out of the way with sirens, and actually transport criminals securely, the horse is looking a little bit old fashioned and out of date. Moreover, the cost to maintain a police car is likely very similar to that of the horse (or lower), but provides a great deal more functionality and value.

Horses can also get scared and go nuts, and you don't want to be under-hoof when an angry horse starts to lose it.

Some might argue that the mounted unit has some historical value, or that it’s a tourist attraction, but the reality is that a horse is simply a poor choice compared to a car for policing a big city like Toronto, and I don’t think anyone is vacationing here to see cops up on their high horses, you can get power tripped right at home.
I feel quite strongly that the resources being spent to keep this obsolete form of law enforcement running could be spent on a multitude of different initiatives that would benefit the community and improve the safety of Torontonians in a far more impactful way.

Please email me if you have any comments as my comment posting system seems to have a bit of a bug in it. I’m working on getting this fixed.

TS

Video Games, Cell Phones are creating 'Uber Thumbs'

2009-04-23T10:13:00.002-07:00

I think it’s true, Generation Y is all thumbs. But this isn't necessarily as bad as the turn of phrase might have you believe. Since I was a boy, I’ve been surrounded by devices and gizmos that I’ve operated primarily with my thumbs. Think back to your first GameBoy. Remember that big, clunky grey box with a yellowish screen that featured a 12 pixel version of the iconic plumber and his lanky Italian sidekick? I’d sit on the couch, or in bed late at night with a flashlight under the covers, trying for the life of me to pass that level with the giant Easter Island heads until my thumbs were aching and sore. It seems though, that for all of us who are accustomed to navigating our childhood on a d-pad, this time spent thumbing our way through level after level has prepared us perfectly for a world replete with new tech toys and gadgets that require such opposable dexterity.
Cell phones and smart phones are the new GameBoys of the 21st century, and their proliferation into the mainstream market across all age cohorts has provided us with a more level playing field on which to judge people’s abilities. Ask your self this, what level can you get to in brick breaker on the Blackberry. Come on, you know you’ve tried your best at least once. Now ask your parents the same question. I can pretty much guarantee that you will have achieved a higher score than them, even though they’ve been using a Blackberry for just as long a time as you. Now if you went back to when you were doing your Mario thing, and you asked your parents to try and beat a level, I’m sure they would have had trouble understanding how to hold a shell while running and jumping at the same time. It just goes to show you that though our parents are using their thumbs more often thanks to cell phones and Blackberrys, they still can’t hold a candle to the years of conditioning we’ve been through.
In an article from The Observer, a Guardian News and Media paper, columnist Amelia Hill writes about how cell phones and video games have caused a kind of “physical mutation” in people under the age of 25. Research from Asia shows that people under 25 have developed thumbs that are much more powerful and dexterous compared to their other fingers. As technology is designed with our thumbs in mind, and we use our thumbs more and more to interact with the world through these technologies, our thumbs grow stronger and increasingly predominant as our most useful digits.

I wonder, if in another century of thumbing our way through life, will we have completely different looking hands? Will society start using thumbs for more things? Will giving someone the ‘thumbs up’ be the ultimate act of affection? Well, probably not, but I do wonder about the future of the industries that have led us down this path of thumb supremacy. The video game, mobile phone and computer companies that design the tools and toys we use every day will likely be the largest influences, not to mention benefactors, of a thumb-centric society. It will be interesting to see if they keep these sorts of designs going, or if they switch to more finger-oriented interfaces.
Regardless of the future however, it’s interesting to note the changes that have already taken place in our physiology. Remember, the next time you challenge your parents to a thumb wrestle, make sure you put some money down. The odds are stacked in your favour!

As a note, if you find yourself stricken with the dreaded ‘Blackberry Thumb’, here are some stretches you can do to help alleviate the pain and get you back to work… or brick breaker.
http://www.courierpress.com/videos/detail/blackberry-thumb-carpal-tunnel-exercises/

Thumbs up man.

TS

To Tweet or not to Tweet?

2009-04-02T12:17:00.006-07:00

According to me, and a great deal of other Gen Y'ers out there, that is the question. I bet if you asked Shakespeare, he would say “tweeteth away”. After all, it’s another incredible source of romantic tragedy for him to interpret and dramatize. However, if you were to ask many girlfriends, boyfriends or spouses, they might have a different answer for you.
Twitter has been receiving a lot of press recently, and the media seems to be right on-time once again with their usual 1-2 year lag behind the integration and proliferation of a social medium into main stream culture. With the increasing coverage in newspapers, online, and on television comes an even more rapid ascent to top of mind status for people who would likely never have even heard of such a thing. In my own experience, twitter’s popularity has sparked a number of issues that stem mostly from the fact that every tweet I make reveals a little more of me to the rest of the world (or so it’s been said). In some cases this is true. When I post things like, “Great time at the Horseshoe Tavern last night”, ‘the world’ (or portion there-of who have chosen to follow my updates) gets a glimpse into what I’ve been up to. Most of the time however, this is not what I use twitter for. For the most part, I post interesting sites, thoughts about current events, and the titles and links to my new blog posts. For some, this is seen as a great way to let friends and interested parties know what cool stuff (or not so cool stuff) you’ve been up to. For others, it’s seen as a narcissistic vocalization of one’s own inner monologue that is best left unsaid and unshared with strangers and potential stalkers. Clearly, two distinct ends of the spectrum, but I’d say that most people’s opinions would be situated somewhere between the two.

Twitter, unlike Facebook, limits posts to 140 characters and doesn’t provide users with any other means to connect like adding videos or images. Because of this, twitter is very much a ‘take it or leave it’ medium, and one that innately imposes a necessity to be succinct. I think this does a number of things for the platform. For one, it means people aren’t telling their life stories on twitter; it’s all about the here and now (relatively speaking). It’s very interesting though how so many people, right from twitter’s beginning, saw the short, punchy, easy to do style of updates as an excuse to write about not just anything, but EVERYTHING they’re doing. The simple style combined with the ambiguous “What are you doing?” call to action preceding everyone’s text box, has led some users to shout nonsense pointlessly into the ether. Nonsense like, “I’m tweeting on twitter”. For people such as that, I have no reservation about unleashing the critics (twiticks?) on them. But for those of us who choose to use twitter as a means of access to relevant (because you choose who you follow) yet wildly arbitrary information, I must protest the dissenting voices.
Sure people can abuse twitter, and no doubt people do every day. But just as Facebook was new and scary for many in the beginning, twitter’s new kid on the block image will fade, and eventually settle into a state of ubiquity and commonality; just another social medium that few will even bother to contest.
If you’d like, hop on twitter and follow me @taysharpe. I can’t claim to be the most interesting, but I’ll do my best to post only those things that I find worthy of sharing. As of this post, gone are the days of shout-outs to inanimate objects and rants about telecom giants (though I’ll miss those).
For any critic of twitter out there, all I can say is try it before you knock it. If you’re one of those worried significant others, here’s an interesting article from The Globe and Mail that speaks to this notion of being e-jealous.

Tell me what you think about twits, tweets and twitter by posting a comment.

TS

What the hell is a Metrosexual?

2009-03-24T13:12:00.003-07:00

Gen Y is a group of people with incredible balance; we tip-toe our way across, through and often right over the lines that typically delineate the boundaries of societal norms. In many ways our deviance from the status quo is expected of a new generation, given that a generation that is a carbon copy of its predecessor would hardly warrant the label of “new” in the first place. So it seems that we were destined to be different, or maybe we’ve broken that mold as well; surpassing everyone’s expectations about how different we’d be. On measure, I would have to agree with the latter.
Metrosexuals are great examples of how some Gen y’ers have chosen to exercise their balance and teeter on the edge of social norms. Metrosexuality could be considered at one extreme to be a newly formed gender, and at the other, the male facet of our society that’s given in ‘whole wallet-edly’ to the merchandised culture of the day. In layman terms, either we’ve created a sexual orientation somewhere between gay and female, or some men have discovered the addictive pleasure of buying the newest and coolest clothes, products and hot beverages that women have been enjoying for decades.
You’ve seen them walking around Queen Street in Toronto, or singing their falsetto vocal chords off in many of today’s pop bands, but my understanding of a metrosexual is as follows: male, aged 16-30 who wears high fashion (or at least the illusion there of) or some kind of get-up that wouldn’t be out of place on a woman. I’m talking about really tight jeans, loud coloured shoes, long necklaces with some theme-of-the-week pendant hanging around their belly button, professionally styled hair (more often than not resembling bed head), and a tight fitting shirt and sweater (either of which is a low v-neck). Another staple of Metro attire is some sort of a European carry-all, or ‘man purse’. No Metro guy goes anywhere without the ability to carry just enough stuff to make them wish they actually had a knapsack.

Though the above description may seem a tad condescending, I really must say that a more general, less stereotypical take on a metrosexual would essentially be reducible to, “a guy that actually takes care of him self, pulls off stylish looks and is likely sensitive and confident enough to carry on a conversation with a woman.”
For this reason, I think non-metro guys tend to be a little bit put off by their metro counterparts. After all, they seem to be able to relate to women so much more profoundly about the things they love to talk about; new styles, great places to eat, and who got voted off the bachelor, etc. I happen to think however, that metro men deserve a bit more credit from ‘regular’ guys, especially because many of them have unlocked some pretty useful secrets that they’ve garnered while tip-toeing that fine line between the sexes. For one, if you ask any metro guy, I’m sure he’ll be able to rhyme off a list of things he does to keep in shape or stay looking good that would normally be considered female traits. For example, he may go to yoga classes, get his hair done at a salon rather than top-cuts, own a hair dryer, know what a “loofa” is, moisturize, enjoy drinking cosmos, and maybe even frequent the tanning salon once in a while. Now some of these might be a little iffy, and the cosmo probably won’t do you any favours, but for the most part, those are some pretty handy tips for guys who want to look their best for the ladies.
So the next time you see what looks like a Club Monaco model walking down the street, maybe instead of grimacing in contempt, ask him where he goes for the best sushi, and when he points you in the right direction, check out his well maintained cuticles, they probably got him laid.

What do you think? Are metro's a new breed somewhere between man and woman? Do you consider your self a metrosexual? Do you have some sort of distain that you'd like to get out, or maybe your opinion's changed over time?

Misplaced Waste, Misplaced Ideals

2009-03-12T13:27:00.003-07:00

This has become a highly publicized issue in recent years given the shift in public perception on the issue of climate change and pollution, and this publicity has gone on to spark a huge amount of discussion in a multitude of media. When people start talking about waste, and the human population’s incredibly honed skill of creating it, there are probably a great number of things that come to mind. Maybe you think about Al Gore and his 2006 film, “An Inconvenient Truth”, or maybe you think about your green bin and how you’re doing everything you can to reduce your waste and clutter.

Well in this post, I was moved to write about a couple news items that have caught my eye recently for two different reasons. Yesterday, the astronauts floating aloft 360km above our planet’s surface were given what traditional seafaring folk might call an ‘abandon ship’ order. Retreating to their Russian escape pod “Soyuz”, the astronauts aboard the international space station (ISS) were forced to wait out what NASA considered to be a near miss with a piece of rogue debris… or as I like to call it, space junk. Even though the piece of junk was only about an inch wide, and it only came within 4Km of the ISS, apparently things moving at 28,164 kilometers an hour can deal a hefty blow to the metal skin of a spaceship, and this was risky enough for mission control. So here we have one option for dealing with waste; the old cold war philosophy re-surfaces, and the wisest men and women in science choose to ‘duck and cover’.

Moving closer to home for a minute, Toronto officials are trying to come up with a way of reducing the amount of waste caused by those finicky plastic tops Timmy’s puts on top of their fabled paper cups (you know, the ones that hide the even more lauded “rim under-which you never win”?). The issue was raised by recycling officials saying that the plastic cups were contaminating their paper recyclables because people weren’t separating the two before disposal. After a failed attempt at legislating against the use of such lids, (thank you very much lobbyists) the city has taken it upon its self to spend over $50,000 on a task force to come up with a viable, compostable alternative to the plastic lids. To quote a famous SNL skit, “Really… I mean… Really. Fifty thousand dollars?” For that amount of cash you could pretty much guarantee that you’d win at least ten of the one hundred $10,000 cash prizes in the Roll up the rim contest. Now, doesn’t that seem like a much better investment than tossing a mindless crew of 40 task forcers $50,000 for a bonehead idea that these guys --> http://tiny.cc/biolid are already retailing a hundred of for only $7.59???

So we’ve got killer junk in space (movie idea?!), coffee cup lids contaminating our best efforts to do well by mother earth, and a couple exceptional uses of taxpayers money. Call me nuts, but I’d say there’s something crazy wrong with our ideals if we’re not only sullying our streets and landfills, but our own planet’s orbit? And we think only our finances are in crisis? Really…

TS

Barack Obama's Biggest Challenge

2009-03-04T10:57:00.002-08:00

Barack Obama has inherited more than an economy in free fall; he’s been left with a nation that most closely resembles a germaphobe huddled in the corner of a clean room, Kleenex boxes on his feet, eyes darting back and forth between the window and the air vent. The difference between this frightened fellow and the state of the American population however, is that the virus that instills fear in the eyes of a nation is much more insidious and infinitely more transmittable.

I’m speaking of course, about the mass media.

Throughout George W. Bush’s infamous career as president, he employed one of the most successful methods of motivation humans have ever dreamt up to influence, lobby, pacify, and control a group of people; fear. Mr. Bush employed the use of fear in a number of ways in order to accomplish many of his administration’s goals. He used fear of the unknown (or more appropriately, the non-understood) to create a wave of uncertainty that spread quickly across the United States, and made people feel as though it was their duty to prepare for the absolute worst; a loss of control. Presidential addresses went out time and time again about the unknown whereabouts of terrorists, the ever-changing state of the war in Iraq, the fluctuating price of oil, and thus, the dynamic and unpredictable nature of the U.S. we now know was born. It is very important to note how people were able to consume, or more accurately, how these addresses were able to consume the people. They were piped into our living rooms and minds over the airwaves of the media. Press releases dictating exactly how and what to portray in the news were fired off to the desks of every major agency in the United States every time the president wanted to let his actions be known.

Barack Obama has been elected president amidst a veritable whirlwind of uncertainty and turmoil. Americans are scared. They’re seeing family members head off to war in a shiny plane and return home in a matte wooden box. They’re watching their fortunes spiral down the drain. These circumstances combined with the rapidly worsening economic situation only serve to entrench these worries and fears, and Mr. Obama is going to have to take the reigns of this wild stallion of a nation and steer it over hurdle upon hurdle to greener pastures.

I believe the way in which Mr. Obama can accomplish this, is through the same means that former president Bush incited such unrest. Take control of a trigger happy mass media. His administration will have to work with the news agencies and media outlets to properly inform people of the news in such a way that educates them and encourages them as much as possible. Wave after wave of sensationalist stories about the “crisis” here and the “emergency” there will not boost people’s hopes and make them want to head to their local mall and ramp up that purchasing power again (unless it’s for canned goods, batteries and jerry cans of gasoline) .

Mr. Obama has his work cut out for him, but it’s in his best interest, and in the interest of every American, that he allies himself with those who have the power to reach the masses and educate the fear out of that frightened little germaphobe.

"Yes, I love technology, but noooot as much as you you see"

2009-02-23T10:29:00.008-08:00

The title of this post harkens back to a cult classic film icon of late; Napolean Dynamite, specifically his qwerky brother Kip's hilarious musical stylings. It resonates with me right now because I've just bough a new tech-toy that's captivating my attention, but I'll still drop everything to be with the Girlfriend and buddies. After all, there's no substitute for human interaction (you hear that Second Life nut bars?! NO substitute)

Over the weekend I finally purchased a nifty little gadget that I've been eyeing and deliberating about for some time now. For anyone who's up to date on their Mac gear, you'll no doubt know what I'm talking about, but for anyone who isn't so Apple-savvy, here's a little break down of my new toy; The Apple Airport Express.

This baby is a palm-sized router that's all about simplified networking with a couple amazing bells and whistles that conventional routers don't offer. As with most all other Apple products, the Airport Express accomplishes its goal in sexy, polished-white fashion, and integrates its self into your Mac OS environment seamlessly. (At least in OS X Leopard... that's what I'm running)

My goal was two-fold for the AP Express. One was to connect it to my current wireless network by using a technology called WDS (wireless distribution system) which allows other routers to not only join, but extend the range of your existing router's network. I was currently using a Linksys WRT54G (v3) router and to my unhappy surprise, this router which had outdated firmware installed, didn't yet support WDS. I opted to flash upgrade the firmware to some custom stuff that would unlock these capabilities currently lying dormant in most Linksys routers. Unfortunately, I bricked the bastard. I was hasty, I'll admit it. I didn't hardwire for the upgrade, I didn't restore factory settings before I tried it, and all in all, I just didn't do enough research before I jumped in. Well... maybe I'll be able to salvage it with a firmware restore, but that'll happen later (maybe never).

Luckily I had another WRT54G (v6) router tucked away from when I went to University, so the next day I brought that one back to life and had my network up and running again no problem.

The second goal for my AP Express was to utilize AirTunes. I absolutely LOVE music, and I'm all about saving time and running as few wires as I can through the house, so this feature is awesome. Basically, by plugging the AP Express into the wall socket near my stereo, running a component audio cable (the red and white ended one) from the mini-quarter inch (headphone) jack on the Express to the stereo, I can now stream music from my computer or any other computer on the network running iTunes, to the stereo right through the air.
Ballin'.... I know.

I also bought this little app off the net called "Airfoil" by Rogue Amoeba (free version exists but it's a temporary trial that only lasts 10 minutes) that lets me pipe the audio from ANY app on my machine to the AP Express, not just from iTunes. So on Sunday I watched The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou on my laptop in the living room with the sound pumping out of the surround sound without any wires! The app also adjusts the delay on the sound feed so that it's in perfect sync with the video. Yes, I love technology.

So in the end I was able to accomplish one of my two goals for the AP Express, and that's pretty damn good for now. My house isn't big enough to require more than one router anyway, so really there's no issue with range extension.

One last sexy feature is that with Apple's iPhone application "Remote", I can leave my computer in my room plugged into the speakers there, and as I walk downstairs to the main floor, hop on my iPhone, go to remote, switch the audio output tot he speakers downstairs, and my tunes follow me as I move throughout my house. I mean... come on. s a lazy music lover, you really can't beat that kind of a set up. For $100, the Airport Express is great value. Think about it, if you had 4 rooms with separate speaker systems, and the wires and labour to bring sound to all of them is going to cost you over $400, then just buy 4 AP Expresses and connect all of them to your network (takes 5 minutes) and bingo!

The sound quality is damn good too.

So what do you think? Was it worth it? Are you considering the same thing now that you've read this? Do you have a techy solution that you're proud of and can't wait to share? I'd love to hear about it.
The best thing about this whole set-up is pulling out your phone (or going up to your brother's computer), saying, "check this out" pushing play, and having their tunes pump out of the big speakers downstairs when they've been using the tinny, internal speakers on their MacBook for so long.

So good.

Too Sorry

2009-01-29T15:11:00.001-08:00

Call me out on this if you want, but I'd say that I'm a pretty polite person. After all, I am Canadian. In my travels abroad and through conversations with friends from outside our lovely little bubble, I've found that there's a real sense that Canadians are generally some of the most kind, polite and courteous people around.

I take great pride in my Canadian heritage and feel as though we're stewards of a dwindling kindness towards others, but I do have some beef with how one aspect of our polite demeanor has been taken to an extreme. The word 'sorry' is a special word in my books. Typically reserved for occasions when real sincerity is needed, I feel as though its use has become increasingly commonplace in our society to the point where it almost saturates our daily language; especially with strangers.

Picture your office, the subway, a restaurant; anywhere where people pass each other in close quarters and are forced to exchange some sort of pleasant comment. Too often I've found that this remark is "oh, uhh, sorry", "ummm hey, haha, sorry, if I can just get... haha sorry". What the heck is that?!? What ever happened to excuse me?

I'll admit without hesitation that for a time I was one of these awkward passers by, just trying to say SOMEthing that would make the strange encounter less so, but over time I became aware that I was saying sorry like it was my job, and decided that it was time for me to revert back to what I think is the appropriate response to such an encounter. Now, when I have to squeeze pass someone in a hallway or push my way to the bar in a pub, I offer up an "excuse me".

My gears are being ground for a couple of reasons that I should make clear. For one, I'm a huge fan of our wonderful language, and I try my best to find the right word to express the way that I'm feeling. This may surprise you given the verbosity of some of my earlier posts, but literary masturbation aside, I think the English language is one that offers so many options for expression that it's doing the dictionary a bit of a disservice to synonymize sorry with other excusatory remarks in such a casual setting.

I feel as though sorry should be saved for those times when you break a best friend's favourite dish, or when you step on your dog's tail by accident, or when you give someone the finger when you think it's that bully from back in the day, but it really turns out to be a complete stranger. Sorry should mean something, sorry should actually say to someone, 'I'm sorry!', I didn't intend to cause harm or inconvenience, but I have; and now I'd like to tell you that I've got a bit of regret for it. You're not actually sorry that you had to pass someone in the hall and you may have touched their shirt, and you're not sorry you had to push the big lug out of the way to get to the bar so you could order a drink, so why say it?

Canadians are so polite, so proper, and want nothing more than to go through life with everyone loving them and thinking the world of their intentions; but we can't go around throwing meaningful words around like they're bras in Cancun.

How do you feel about it? Do we say sorry too much? What are some other examples of its improper use? Maybe you just think I'm blowing smoke and I should just keep on apologizing for things I'm not sorry I did, but lets hear your view.
Do you know of any other words that people use at improper times?

Stand up for English and sound off!