David Akin's On the Hill

Pandemic planning gap: Can the Internet handle everyone working from home?

2009-10-26T19:53:52-04:00

The Government Accountability Office -- Washington's rough equivalent to Canada's Office of the Auditor General -- gave itself what you might think is an esoteric question: If a global pandemic like the H1N1 flu forces a whole pile of to stay home and telecommute using our home Internet services, could the Internet handle the extra traffic and, more importantly, could financial markets continue to function given their dependency on the availability of plenty of bandwidth?

Blogging, journalism, Twitter, and all that stuff

2009-09-30T18:38:15-04:00

Ian Capstick, a former press secretary for the NDP and now operating his own firm, MediaStyle, is running an interesting series on his blog. He's asking journalists the same three questions all related to the broad theme of how blogging and social networks fit in with the traditional day job of a daily journalist.

I mostly re-hash stuff I've already written about here and elsewhere about those issues but do check out what my friends Susan Delacourt and Bill Doskoch had to say about this brave new world.

Want to upgrade to Apple's Snow Leopard but will it work my favourite apps?

2009-09-05T13:54:55-04:00

At home, my old Cube is never going to run Snow Leopard, of course. But my iMac (2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 GB RAM) is going to get the upgrade as soon as I'm satisfied about Snow Leopard playing nice with the following applications..

Announcing & Explaining My Album Art Emporium

2009-08-13T13:36:51-04:00

I began digitizing my vinyl record collection in 2008. For many records, various online services would automatically retrieve album art and other information once I'd dumped the digitized files into iTunes. But in too many cases, the information was either absent, incomplete, or substantially different from the original vinyl. So with the help of a digital camera and some image editing software, I'm digitizing the album art as I digitize the actual music. This site contains the digitized album art...

Canada's Biggest Twits

2009-08-10T22:37:12-04:00

So, it looks like good, old-fashioned gumshoe work will be required here to find the Canuck with the biggest social media draw. Let's limit it, for now, to Twitter. Here's my ranking, with tweeps (Twitter followers) followed by the date I checked their Twitter home page:

What Canadian is drawing big social media crowds?

2009-08-10T21:53:34-04:00

How are Canadians or Canadian institutions doing when it comes to drawing big crowds on Twitter, Facebook or other social media platforms? I don't think we've really hit that mass inflection point yet. Comedian Rick Mercer, for example, has only about 7,000 tweeps or followers and a little better than half that when it comes to Facebook friends. David Suzuki has something north of 10,000 tweeps. But do we have anyone in this country cracking 100,000? How about 50,000?

Wow. Microsoft's revenues fall for the first time -- ever

2009-07-23T21:54:53-04:00

Say what you want about its products, but as an investment, there's been few better than Microsoft Corp. And since it went public in 1986, it has seen its revenue grow every year -- until now. Meanwhile, Apple Computer this week reported that, for the nine months which ended on June 27, its revenue was $27-billion, up 8.5 per cent over the same period last year..

Blast from the Past: "The Internet has yet to mature as a political tool"

2009-07-22T14:41:15-04:00

... the beltway media are missing this point: "The condescending reaction to the Dean insurgency by television's political correspondents can be reminiscent of that hilarious party scene in the movie "Singin' in the Rain," where Hollywood's silent-era elite greets the advent of talkies with dismissive bafflement. "The Internet has yet to mature as a political tool," intoned Carl Cameron of Fox News last summer as he reported that the runner-up group to Dean supporters on the meetup.com site was witches . ."

UW researchers combine 'SneakerNet' and USB sticks to bring Internet access to developed world

2009-07-14T10:21:06-04:00

.. a University of Waterloo research team has combined the principle behind SneakerNet with USB memory sticks -- which, for ten or twenty dollars can store several gigabytes of encrypted data -- for project called VLink, which researchers say will help extend the functionality of the Internet to less-developed, rural areas of the world.

More fine-tuning of #ottawaspends on Twitter

2009-07-08T15:40:20-04:00

For a while now, I've been 'tweeting' whenever the government issues a press release announcing that it is spending some money. I'm making a couple of changes to the way I've been going about this ...

AECL seeks regulator approval to keep Chalk River chugging through 2021

2009-07-08T14:54:04-04:00

The NRU, though, does more than just produce isotopes. It's a research reactor and is used by scientists in Canada and around the world to do all sorts of work. AECL -- or whoever ends up managing the facility once a federal government review of the Crown corporation is done -- is putting those engineers not involved in the NRU repairs to work on a variety of other tasks for the future of Chalk River Laboratories. Just got this notice from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Canada's nuclear safety regulator, that AECL is seeking the CNSC's stamp of approval for some of those long-term plans ...

Coming back to Canada's tech leaders, it feels a little too familiar

2009-06-22T10:19:49-04:00

The core complaints of the industry have not changed. Not enough angel investors. We don't support venture capitalists well enough. Government and other industry sectors don't buy enough tech stuff from Canadian companies. Canadian companies spend next to nothing (relatively speaking) on research and development. . . .

Minister uses Twitter to spread the word on Canada's embassy in Iran

2009-06-21T22:10:36-04:00

[Tweet at 1842 Sunday night] Some posters mistakingly believe that western embassies are sheltering wounded protestors in Tehran, except Canada. I've looked into this ...

[Tweet at 1843 Sunday night] ... and its completely untrue. Canada has contacted all relevant embassies in Tehran to enquire. None are doing so: they ca

MDS Nordion on cancelling MAPLEs: Wrong for Canada

2009-06-11T15:43:18-04:00

"The cancellation of the MAPLE project is a detrimental loss to Canada. The Government of Canada agreed with AECL's decision to abandon the MAPLEs. It was not a reasonable public policy for Canada or the world."

A thoughtful introduction to the use, value, and significance of Twitter

2009-06-07T13:15:56-04:00

"...Social networks are notoriously vulnerable to the fickle tastes of teens and 20-somethings (remember Friendster?), so it's entirely possible that three or four years from now, we'll have moved on to some Twitter successor. But the key elements of the Twitter platform — the follower structure, link-sharing, real-time searching — will persevere regardless of Twitter's fortunes, just as Web conventions like links, posts and feeds have endured over the past decade. In fact, every major channel of information will be Twitterfied in one way or another in the coming years . . ."

Chalk River: End of the line for world's oldest reactor?

2009-05-20T20:50:04-04:00

As radioactive water continues to leak from the nuclear reactor that produces more than half the world's medical isotopes, Canwest News Service has learned that technicians at the Chalk River, Ont., facility are privately wondering if the end has finally come for the world's oldest reactor.

What's a Twibe? I'm a Twibe. You're a Twibe. We're a Twibe.

2009-05-19T15:41:36-04:00

Just ran across another Web service that is a derivative of Twitter - Twibes. A Twibe seems to me be closely related to a Twitter hashtag but I'm still trying to figure out the concept. To start -- mostly to experiment with -- I've created two Twibes -- one for tweets, news, etc. by and about the House of Commons and one for the news by and about the Parliamentary Press Gallery.

What is a Twibe?

Time to pare it back on Facebook: Goodbye to some FB friends

2009-05-14T22:56:56-04:00

I've come to the conclusion that less is more on Facebook -- fewer friends means greater value. So, over the next little while, I'm going to be saying goodbye to Facebook friends and Facebook apps.

Help: Need Google contextual menu for Mac OS X

2009-05-04T12:58:55-04:00

I want a contextual menu plug-in for Mac OS X that will let me right click on any highlighted text in any application -- not just browsers or Apple apps -- and then search Google on the highlighted text, returning the results of that search in a Firefox window.

Hey! I'm gonna be on Google!

2009-04-16T16:03:07-04:00

..as soon as I saw it, I raced ahead of it, got off at the nearest exit -- which happened to be Woodroffe -- and got out my camera, which every good reporter always travels with just in case, and snapped pictures of the Google car taking pictures of me. Now, I just checked and, so far, Google's Street View is not yet available for that section of the 417. Which led me to wonder: A lot of people have written about their concerns about privacy and Google's Street View. Well, what about those of us who want to be on Street View?

Calling all geeks: I'm stumped over weirdly slow performance on my iMac

2009-04-10T13:35:44-04:00

Nothing like a long weekend with lots of computer problems to sort out on your homework. Normally, I don't mind sitting down with a cup of joe, some new programs to install, maintenance tasks to oversee and so on. But this morning, I'm stumped over what to do to solve a serious performance problem with my iMac. Can you help? Here's the setup ... Now with an update

Senate agrees to 'Berry and Laptop use

2009-04-06T11:22:18-04:00

The Parliamentary Press Gallery has successfully convinced the powers that be in the Senate to allow reporters to use their BlackBerrys and laptop computers in the Red Chamber...

Calling all G4 Cube owners -- who's upgraded their processor?

2009-04-05T19:24:20-04:00

So, before I shell out the dough and crack open the case, anyone out there -- and only 150,000 Cubes were made before Apple discontinued them -- got any experience with this or can point me to some reputable bulletin boards on this subject?... I'm leaning to the 1.5 Ghz processor - as this machine is used at this point for not much more than e-mail, Web surfing and light word pro duties.

Soft launch of David Akin's "Album Art Emporium"

2009-03-28T10:06:45-04:00

There's not a whole lot of content there now but, if you're interested and you have a minute to take a peek at it, I'm interested in feedback in terms of usefulness, layout and so on. Why am I doing this?... For many of records, various online services would automatically retrieve album art and other information once I'd dumped the digitized files into iTunes.

Attention Mac Geeks: Need advice on OS upgrade

2009-03-06T21:39:42-05:00

So I'm hoping that if I buy a Mac mini, I not only get new hardware, I'll get new software discs to refresh the old iMac.... When you buy new Mac hardware, can you use the discs that come with that hardware to upgrade software on other Macs you own?

B.C. Government's wireless networks has holes: Auditor General

2009-02-18T17:38:12-05:00

British Columbia's Auditor General tabled a report today that concludes that there's a lot of holes in the government-run wireless networks...

Do we need a new Internet? Or just new users?

2009-02-14T22:35:16-05:00

My reaction after reading John Markoff's piece in The New York Times today: : Time and time again, we've heard, mostly from companies who sell computer security products, that the world is ending, that there is a monster virus out there that's about to pull the whole thing down. I'm not convinced. Exercise a little common sense when you compute and I'm sure we'll all be fine.

Interested in the Internet? In knowledge? In the future of information? Then listen to David ...

2009-02-10T22:03:23-05:00

I'll bet you'll become a fan too after listening to the presentation archived by TVO's Big Ideas program. Best-selling author and Harvard Professor, Dr. David Weinberger, delivers the 2008 Bertha Bassam Lecture entitled "Knowledge at the End of the Information Age".

Help: Looking for some freeware Mac OSX audio recording software

2009-02-06T10:21:47-05:00

--No Content--

Mac OS X YouTube to iPod? Help!

2009-01-02T21:51:12-05:00

I've just spent too many useless minutes searching for a software app that can help with this issue so now I'm askin': I want to take a YouTube video and convert it to a format (mp4, etc.) that I can shove on to my iPod classic.... (I'm running multiple Macs here: Some with OS 10.4.x, others with 10.5.x and even some old dogs with 10.3.x).