pointing out the obvious

As a result of a comment by k-fleXxX in a previous post, I realize just how little I do for social causes. I’m certainly not speaking for everyone, but I’m a relatively aware person but do not actively participate in or donate to social causes. I am guessing that most of my peers are in a similar position. It’s a sad state of affairs.

These are some of the things I like to do…

• Support small/independent businesses because I like to see the little guy succeed (and feed his/her family).
• Want to see an indie flick? Check out Lightchasers.
• Looking for some fair trade coffee? Checkout Responsible Harvest.
• Avoid unethical companies. Though, watch your sources, some are whacky.
• (rant…) Tip wait staff, taxi drivers and other service industry staff well because I’m only going to burn that extra $5 dollars on something insignificant - I also know revenue canada targets them for undeclared income, which is sad because 1 well-off person likely shelters more income from the tax man than a dozen service staff.
• Donate to something.. usually it’s wwf.ca, and as a result I have a growing collection of animal beanie babies.
• Donate old clothing, appliances to goodwill. They have started coming door-to-door!
• Use recycled building supplies and find treasures.

But my overall financial contributions to the cause are terrible. I spend more on coffee than I do donating in a year. That’s pathetic. Do I really need that car? Do I need that computer? Do I need those jeans? no.. no and no. Is my whole generation like this?

we’re doomed.

and yes, I’m feeling particularly sorry for myself this morning. awesome.

With technology companies creating all kinds of useless gadgets, I think it’s about time they create a smart phone. When I say smart, I mean smart enough to not require diapers anymore. Here’s the idea..

Most cellular and mobile phones have bluetooth. Most offices are migrating towards IP phones. IP phones should be bluetooth enabled so that my cellular phone will detect it’s presence, and automatically forward all my calls to it. When I walk away from my desk, my cell figures out that I’m no longer sitting next to my landline and will turn call forwarding off.

You can extend this idea to allow everyone’s cell to forward to the nearest phone. If someone is sitting at my desk, maybe all of their cell calls are directed to that phone? Wouldn’t it be great if your cell calls were directed to the nearest phone in the airport lounge while you wait for your flight?

I guess the idea here is to have a single number for everyone. Whether you are at work, at home or on the move, people only have to call a single number to reach you. This also avoids insane cellular bills by forwarding calls to landlines, as well as increasing the quality of the call (I get terrible cell coverage at the Maple Leaf lounge in Pearson’s Terminal 1).

You might think cellular carriers would hate this idea - it reduces the number of minutes consumed, but if you think about it, it would INCREASE the number of calls throughout their networks. Your mobile number is now your main number - which is almost the case now, but in this case there are no other numbers. This is a cellular carriers dream.

Of course you can extend this idea and apply it to a range of other concepts, but I think the cellular application is the most relevant.

It looks like someone patented a similar idea, but it’s convoluted and impossible to understand.

Being featured on apple.com is incredible exposure for Blast Radius and a guaranteed raise for Marcus Ericsson. I never really met him, but from what I see on flickr and my time at Blast, this guy is incredibly talented. Nice one Marcus!

See what people can do with Apple hardware? Is anyone listening out there? (inside joke.. blastee’s will appreciate it)

This is old news by now, I had host issues last week and gave up posting.. but this was a draft, and I’m going to post it anyways.

Yahoo Pipes was released last week. It’s an interesting tool that allows you to create your own stream of relevant data - using a pretty sweet interface. So, if I wanted to see all news articles about burritos near my office, I can build a little flow chart that takes info from yahoo search, google base, flickr and any other supported input, pass in my information (which they make pretty slick!) and blamo - custom feed.

This is a fantastic analogy for a development approach. I totally understand, and completely agree. I’ve been on my share of jackhammer projects, and although I understand why the business selected the jackhammer, it almost* never makes things better. It just seems to make people (clients, stakeholders) feel better - as if we are doing more to solve the problem.

The spoon can be carefully sold to a client as the right approach, with lasting results, but it’s tricky. This business typically demands results yesterday, and want an approach that has a chance of making the deadline, no matter how unreasonable.

Unfortunately, with tight timelines, both approaches fail. The jackhammer is messy, expensive and produces a Frankenstein-ish result. The spoon is smooth, calculated and efficient, but takes time to produce results.

Knowing what I know, I would always push timelines for quality/cost - those two factors always end up biting you in the end.

* Rarely, projects finish ahead of or on schedule using this approach, but there are usually many casualties as a result. So it is effectively a net loss.

Cell contracts suck.  Virgin Mobile knows this and offers no-strings-attached plans.  For those of us using other carriers, you can get out of that nonsense contract through Cellswapper (if you’re in the US).  Great idea, I just have to move to the US to use it - yikes.

There are similar sites out there for all sorts of contract jumping, including ReLeaseMe, which helps you get out of the lease you were pressured into by the sales guy.  However, there is a gap in Cellswapper idea - someone needs to build a tool that will tell you exactly how much you will pay given a rate plan.  This tool would be invaluable - you input your local minutes, long distance minutes, and options you want, and it spits out your monthly cost for various rate plans with various providers.

Everyone would use something like this every so often, wouldn’t they?  I would..  I should build one..  I’ll let you know if I do.

While not everyone reads blogs through a tool like bloglines, I think a lot of us do. While reading the other day, I realized that I spent less time on the blog posts that were just text than I did with the posts that incorporated a picture.

Sites like blogto.com have great feeds, pictures and all. They are really hitting their demographic by ensuring they have a rich feed. I’ve noticed others have started incorporating pictures as well.

It probably just slows the reader down enough to actually get into the meat of the post.

I’ve seen other feeds take those images to the next level, by incorporating advertising within the images. Although annoying, it’s a great idea.. if you’re reading feeds through a rss/atom reader like bloglines, you miss the opportunity to pay for your site through advertisements, so why not include the ad in the feed?

Interesting post by Rob. He suggests that software developers will bend over backwards for their company, as long as they are treated with respect, have decent hardware and are generally kept interested.

Interesting work is sometimes hard to do, while respect and decent hardware should be easy. Either way, the article outlines what devs are willing to do given the company takes care of certain aspects of the working environment.

Unlimited mochaccino’s would definitely keep me happy.

The concept, provided by Enwave, is to draw cool water from the bottom of lake Ontario, use it to provide ‘cooling power’ to their office tower cooling system, then push that water into our regular water supply (i.e. for drinking). Interesting idea, that reduces the use of air conditioner electricity in the summer, but what effect does taking the cold water (from a depth of 85m) have on the lake itself?

It would be interesting to know whether the pollution generated and electricity used by air conditioner is more problematic than the overall effect of drawing colder water - thus warming - lake ontario.

One of the interesting points is that this system effectively reuses the existing water we draw from lake ontario for our drinking water - it is just drawn from a different depth. So what effect does the change in depth have? The enwave site doesn’t seem to answer this, and it was the first question on my mind. I understand that it reduces air conditioner use and all the bad things about that, but how does this system effect the lake?

It’s akin to the fluorescent vs incandescent bulb discussion. Although fluorescent bulbs contain a small amount of mercury (bad), because it lasts longer and uses less energy, the overall reduction in mercury pollution generated by a powerplant is more significant. So, it’s a net win.. still bad, but better. If you are truely concerned, you can bring used CFLs (compact fluorescent lightbulbs) to a recycling plant where they harvest and reuse the mercury.

Good times.

For whatever reason, I’ve always cherished my childhood visits to the McLaughlin Planetarium, which closed down in 1995. This morning, I stumbled upon a group, GeoSpace, who are proposing a new planetarium be constructed on the Toronto waterfront. If this plan becomes a reality, I will be one of the first in line to see the show. I so miss it.

The planetarium is just one of those things that seem to open your mind to a whole different set of rules.  The darkness, the voice, the stars, the chairs, the projector, the whole experience of a planetarium is so different than a museum or movie.  For some reason, the McLaughlin Planetarium is burned into my head, though I have only ever been there a handful of times.  It is clearly an experience I never forgot.
I wish the people in Toronto at the GeoSpace Planetarium the best of luck with their proposal.  They’ve got my support.