YouTube opens Canadian site

YouTube has launched a Canadian version, YouTube.ca, at an event in Toronto today. Luis Garcia, international product manager for YouTube, said "The only thing that's different is that this is just a Canadian lens into that content, so if a user wants to get the Canada point of view into that global body of content, then they're able to do that," The idea is to promote Canadian content to Canadians with the CBC, the Canadian Football League, and Sony BMG Canada all be featured. According to the CBC "The CBC has been showcasing content on YouTube.com since March, including clips from The Rick Mercer Report and Royal Canadian Air Farce, as well as short films and archival footage." Check out this classic Rick Mercer skit, it's sort of fitting!

Lunar eclipse tomorrow morning

Here's some big news for those of us who like to gaze skyward! A total lunar eclipse will be taking place tomorrow morning and will be viewable to those in North and South America, eastern Asia, Australia and New Zealand. It's the second such occurrence of the year, the first being 5 months ago and more prominent on the east coast of the continent. According to the CBC, "The partial eclipse will begin at 1:51 a.m. PT and end at 5:24 a.m. PT, with the total eclipse beginning at 2:52 a.m. and ending at 4:22 a.m. Skywatchers in the eastern time zone will only have a brief opportunity to see the total eclipse — which begins at 5:52 a.m. ET..."

1.3 Million Monster.com users have personal data stolen

In this CBC article Monster.com is said to have confirmed that 1.3 million users had their personal information stolen in the attack reported by Symantec Corp. last week. A security notice published on the Monster.ca site says "Fortunately, we have been able to identify and shut down the source of the software. By gaining unauthorized access to employer accounts, the software was obtaining job seeker contact information. The information obtained was limited to the names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of job seekers primarily located in the United States. The purpose of gathering this information appears to be sending email disguised as Monster in order to gain recipients' trust, and then attempting to convince users to engage in financial transactions, or lure them into downloading malicious software." They further go on to encourage you to be careful about e-mails that appear to be from the company and ask you to download software or update account information... good advise any time.

WikiScanner keeping things real

Wikipedia is a noble project with an aim to provide information on any topic imaginable and for the most part it works, but the knock on it has always been the credibility of the sources. Now, in an effort to keep Wikipedia more open and honest, graduate student Virgil Griffiths has developed WikiScanner, a website that traces IP addresses of computers that have edited Wikipedia topics. It's a great idea, and it has the support of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. CBC story here.

Note: WikiScanner must be under heavy traffic as the site is taking some time to load.

How ironic... CBC memo regarding employee blogging leaked to blog

The Globe and Mail is running a story of an internal CBC memo to employees regarding their blogging policy that has been leaked through, what else, a blog. The corporation claims the document is only a draft but employees are getting a bit fired up over it. A little common sense goes a long way folks!

SpiralFrog taking it's acts on the road

A music downloading service that opened in Canada earlier this year is now hitting the road to offer its music in the U.S. The ad supported service, SpiralFrog, features more than 700,000 tracks mostly from Universal music and independent labels. There is a download manager which is not compatible with iTunes, and users are required to keep their membership current or they are cut off from the service. If a membership is not renewed within 30 days, download privileges are cut off and after 60 days the songs will no longer play. Membership is free and completely supported by ads. CBC Story here. To be honest, I haven't tried the service so I'll have to reserve judgment. The titles seem a little limited but then again so are Amie Street's and I'm liking that service.

How to assure that the best team wins

The CBC has an interesting article that, to me, proves that scientists don't know very much about sports! After analyzing and simulating league play, they found "a great degree of randomness of outcomes in games, with at least some chance that a lesser team can win in any given game". I have some experience in coaching, having participated in two national sporting championships. The fact is that teams who look good on paper do not always win, there is randomness in sport, that's what makes sport interesting! I do find this quote about major league baseball interesting however, "Over the past century, the lower-seeded team had an astounding 44 per cent chance of defeating a higher-seeded team", that number seems high but plausible. The researchers say that in order to ensure that the best team wins the respective schedules should contain a number of games equaling the square of the number of teams in the league. That would mean that a major league baseball team would have to play a schedule of 256 games, nearly 100 more than the current schedule! I say the best team should not necessarily win, but rather the team that performs the best when required to. If the best team won all of the time, nobody would be interested in participating or watching!

iPhone's use of Safari makes browser target

Independent Security Evaluators (ISE) of Baltimore has published an iPhone hack that targets the Safari web browser and would allow hackers to take over control of the handset via a Wi-Fi connection. The explanation giving in this article by the CBC sounds a little far reaching but not beyond the realm of possibility. According to the article "the hacker would have to create a network with the same name and encryption method as one the handset already uses", I guess it becomes more likely if the user is accustomed to surfing public Wi-Fis, which we can assume many users will. What makes this interesting is that the Safari browser has gone largely unnoticed by hackers and virus writers as has most Apple devices, now with the hype surrounding the iPhone I suspect we'll hear more of these stories. At least in this case it was researches who discovered the potential exploit and this will hopefully allow Apple to respond before any real damage is done.

Walls made of water?

The CBC is reporting that MIT architects are planning to produce a building that has walls of water. The Digital Water Pavilion, will be created for Expo 2008 in Zaragoza, Spain, and will have walls of water created by thousands of computer-controlled jets. Using technology similar to an ink-jet printer, only on a much larger scale, the walls will be able to display images and be turned off or on in order to allow people to pass through them. The pavilion will house a cafe and at a cost of about $6000 per square meter, if my math is correct, I hope they sell a bunch of lattes! It's interesting in a technological sense but I don't think it would withstand our Canadian winters. Personally, I think this is a much better use of ink-jet technology and I'll bet it didn't cost $3,000,000.

Facebook not so popular in the work place

It seems as though many government agencies and businesses are turning a cold shoulder to Facebook, the social networking site that was originally open only to students but has recently opened up for all to use. The CBC has the scoop on blocked access in Manitoba.

CBC - Facebook experiment gone wrong?

It appears as though the CBC may not have anticipated the hacking of social networking when they utilized Facebook to ask Canadians to post their hopes for the future of the country. In this post launching the experiment "The Great Canadian Wish List", the following statement was made "My PERSONAL wish is that people will go a little crazy with this thing, a la John A. MacDonald. They’ll take this opportunity to make wishes that push the limits of our collective comfort zone." As of Wednesday the Globe and Mail reported the top 5 wishes as:

1. Abolish Abortion in Canada
2. I wish that Canada would remain pro-choice
3. For a spiritual revival in our nation
4. Restore the Traditional Definition of Marriage
5. I wish tuition fees would be either lowered or eliminated

Definitely some hot topics here that may just push people to the limits of our collective comfort zones, but the problem is Facebook has experienced an issue keeping count of voting. Will we ever truly know the wishes of Canadians? I think that's what elections are all about!

Day of silence observed in protest of music royalties

A number of online broadcasters have gone silent today to protest new rates for royalties that were awarded by a 3 judge panel earlier this year and are set to come due on July 15th. The new rates fail to take into account the lean years when a company is getting up and running and so MTV, Pandora, Live365, and others have all vowed to be silent. Soundexchange, the music industry group in charge of collecting the royalties appears not to be phased by the action saying they are in negotiations with many smaller players and the protest is a "moot point". I don't subscribe to any of these services so it hasn't affected me, I prefer to ignore the music industry association all together and listen to podsafe music and recordings. The only one of the above that I have listened to on occasion is Pandora, but it shut Canadians out after the new rates came into effect. CBC has the story here.

CBC unveils new site

I just surfed over to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's (CBC) web site and was greeted with a brand new interface. It took me a moment, I double checked the address, and sure enough the site had undergone a radical redesign. In this letter to their audience, Executive Director Steve Billinger describes some of the changes and the reason behind them. Like anything that changes drastically, this will take me a little getting used to but the look is fresh and the promise of more tighter integration with other programming sounds great. I like it so far, now where did they hide the tech stories?