iPhone untethered

A teen from New Jersey and a software company hoping to cash in, both claim to have come up with methods of undoing the ties that bind the iPhone to AT&T. 17 year old George Hotz's solution is not for the faint of heart, especially when you consider how much the hot little device sells for (it involves a soldering gun). iPhoneSimFree.com claims to have a software only solution that it has released to the media before making it available for sale to the general public. Globe and Mail story here.

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!

IBM to help pharmaceutical industry in fight against couterfeiters

We've all received the annoying e-mail spam offering cheap pain relievers or erectile dysfunction drugs, and in many cases what you'd receive, if you actually fell for it, is counterfeit medication. IBM has created a system that it calls "ePedegree" to track medications from the manufacturer, to the pharmacy, and all points in between. Using RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags similar to those already employed in the retail industry, the system allows the drug companies to create electronic certificates of authenticity for medications. It's a cat and mouse game however, as other measures have already been employed only to be faked within a few months. IBM says the system has other uses "for keeping track of expiration dates, batch numbers in case a drug is recalled, and so on." Globe and Mail story here.

Some will pay just about any price for an iPhone in Canada

The Globe and Mail has the tale of two Canadian iPhone owners who were willing to pay largely for their iPhone's. One figures his first months bill will be $500 while the other spent an hour in lockup at the US - Canada border, lost his phones and has to pay another $400 in fines! Curb your enthusiasm folks, it will get here eventually.

Get by with a little help from complete strangers

New York based online charity, Modest Needs, is seeking charity status in Canada in order to make it easier to help Canadian applicants in their own currency, and to be able to issue tax receipts to Canadian donors. The concept is quite simple, applicants describe their short-term financial emergency (under $1000) and the group assesses their situations, if accepted Modest Needs pays creditors or suppliers, the applicant doesn't receive any money directly. I really like this model, it facilitates a communal approach to charitable donating, allowing a large number of small donors to make a big difference in someones live. Like micro loans, these small donations really highlight the power and reach of the Internet. I think most of us would love to help out in some way but often think we don't have the means to really make a difference. Globe and Mail story.

Toronto dethrowned as Facebook's top community

We Canadians often joke that Toronto believes it's the center of the Universe and until last week Toronto ruled Facebook's Universe as the largest geographic network on the social networking site, but London has taken over with more than 810,000 users compared to Toronto's 705,000. Facebook officials are not sure why London leaped past Toronto which, they say, is growing at the same rate as the site's worldwide user base. Interestingly enough, Canadian users make up over 10% of the site's user population with more than 11 million logins in June of '07. The Globe and Mail has more.

Phishing for answers

Researchers at Indiana University are employing some questionable tactics in an attempt to understand how scammers succeed at duping people out of their personal information and why people are fooled by such scams. The experiment involves phishing for information from random unwilling participants and has raised the eyebrows of others who say the researchers are no better than the scammers themselves. The debate is an interesting one, can you actually get good results from such experiments if the subjects knew they were going to be phished or is there a better, more controlled way of conducting such experiment without duping people into participating? This Globe and Mail article has more.

online domains still a hot property market

The industry has been around since the bubble days of the late 90's and it's heating up again. Domain names are being bought up and auctioned at a pace that is reminiscent of those glory days, only this time around it's the generic names that have caught all the attention. Back in the wild west days of the world wide web, before companies protected their property online, enterprising entrepreneurs bought up names and held them for ransom until the law got involved and cyber-squating was squashed. Now it's the generic names that are hot, domainers as they are known take advantage of the fact that many people type generic words into their browsers, put a ".com" on the end and hope the results will turn up what they are looking for. The owners fill their pages with context sensitive ads and hope to get paid by the click through or hope the domain gathers enough interest that it can later be sold or auctioned off. This Globe and Mail story discusses the concept in more detail and the numbers can be huge if you own the right property!

Get noticed!

The Globe and Mail has this article and this short clip online that describes having success by posting short videos online... enough said!

New CD format from Disney - CDVU+

Battling declining CD sales, Walt Disney Co. music label Hollywood Records is launching a new CD format known as CD View Plus (CDVU+). The new format will offer CD buyers additional content similar to that found on DVDs, in this case song lyrics, photos and other extras aimed at encouraging fans to give up their downloading ways. The Globe and Mail has this story. I think it's a last ditch effort that might be a little too late for the music industry, the youngsters are all about the downloading! I personally think that the Amie Street model is the way to go, it rewards artists for producing good music and encourages music lovers to visit often, not to mention its DRM free! But then again the model rewards the artist and that's not what the big labels are all about. Wake up music industry, your shiny new trinkets will not entice anyone... just what everybody needs another new format, lame! The only good news in this is that the format will be offered in a more earth friendly packaging.

China's online gaming crackdown

The Globe and Mail has this story of a new Chinese Government campaign to limit the number of hours teenagers spend online playing games. The government requires Internet gaming companies to install a program that requires users to enter their ID card numbers. Players under 18 years of age are prompted to stop and "do suitable physical exercise." after 3 hours of gaming, if they ignore the directive they will lose half of their accumulated game points, and after 5 hours all of the their points are lost. I had to chuckle a little bit when I read this article having just watched a Simpsons re-run where Marge's sister (Selma, I think) is attempting to adopt a child from China, the government liaison assigned to her case had some great lines that sounded a lot like these quotes:

"promote civilized Internet use,", "measured gaming is good for the brain, but gaming addiction hurts the body." and my favorite "will develop in a healthy, harmonious direction".

Power utilities go high tech in an attempt to stop copper theives

The Globe and Mail has an interesting article about the power utilities in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia turning to DataDot technology to deter thieves from stealing copper grounding wire from substations. The technology involves painting tiny micro dots onto the wire, the dots can then be uniquely identified by a code that is laser etched onto them. This allows the utility to identify the wire as their own and may serve as a deterrent. In my opinion, it will only really aid police in identifying wire as being stolen, after the fact, and will help in prosecution. Which, I guess, in turn helps to deter the thieves. I don't expect the scrap metal dealers will be examining the wire they purchase with microscopes. The technology though is quite interesting and the manufacturer describes many uses, mostly from the recovery standpoint.

The YouTube Election

Here is a very interesting story that the Globe and Mail is running regarding the affect that the Internet and YouTube in particular is having on the upcoming American Presidential election. Millions of viewers are tuning in to YouTube to view election related video, some authorized by the candidates and some not. The campaigners are definitely taking notice and trying to work the medium to their advantage. The last election showed the power of the Internet but bandwidth and social networking sites have come along way since then, it will be interesting to see how much impact technology will have.

Small time philanthropy, power of the people

Here is an interesting clip on the Globe and Mail's site regarding the power of social networking in a philanthropic way. Sites are emerging to allow everyday folk to band together for larger causes, nothing terribly new here but interesting none the less.

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!

Hey buddy, wanna buy a domain name?

If you do, and you have $400 million in the bank 'business.com' is for sale. Of course the site does have reported revenues of about $15 million so it's not just the domain that's for sale, but it does bring back memories of the pre-bust days of the late 90's. If you don't have that kind of money hanging around, I could be persuaded to let this domain name go for... say.... a cool$million. In the words of the immortal Dr. Evil..."Gentlemen you have my demands, peace out!"

Globe and Mail story here.

Newspaper or online news?

A survey conducted by British news publishers asked readers of web sites run by traditional news media whether they also purchase hard copies of the paper. The good news for the newspaper publishers is that 80% of the online readers also bought their paper. It appears as though there is a fine line to walk with how much content from the more profitable print media goes into the publisher's web site. If the newspaper ignores the web they are missing out on the growing ad revenues online, but if they publish too much of the content they risk losing readers who pay for their paper to the free web site. See the story at The Register. For the record I usually purchase The Globe and Mail, which I read at the local coffee shop and leave for another patron to enjoy once I've finished... I usually write this sites URL on it next to articles I intend to blog about, shameless self promotion perhaps but it's only fair it was my dollar!