Using Internet Frog, I tested the speed of my internet connection with Shaw Cable in Calgary, Canada.
hmmm … 39% does not sound good. Do you get better?
What can I do to get faster internet?
InternetFrog.com: Network Tools, Internet Speed Test and Website Tools
Amazon is the big boy in on-line retail. I love just about everything they do.
But last year I shopped Chapters / Indigo as they are Canadian and finally matched prices and service with Amazon. It’s good for Amazon to have some competition.
This year … Amazon.
Lonely Planet Australia CDN$ 25.17
Love by the Beatles (Dlx Ed) (Digi) (W/Dvd) CDN$ 23.99
Free shipping. Hassle free shopping. Great prices.
Chapters / Indigo matched Amazon — but I had to join their loyalty card program to do so.
They should know that I am loyal only to companies that don’t require loyalty cards.
There is a lot of buzz about free internet phones
… and how people can make calls piggy backing on open wireless connections. The WiFi phones sound cool, but many forget that what is cool, is not always that functional.
The consumer experience on these devices remains horrible, … We have tried most of the new WiFi phones, and despite being ten feet away from the access point, have run into serious problems. …
WiFi, is a bit of black magic really, and even on laptops, one is challenged constantly to stay connected.
Warren sent me a page where you can compare 8 different free video platforms.
Life Goggles online video sharing quality comparison
Quality of streamed video is not good. More important to me is that it WORKS on all computers, all the time.
I normally use YouTube which streams even over some dial-up lines. Google Video is similar but with slightly inferior interface and fewer videos to choose from.
I actually first posted video to Vimeo. But it still has a weird progress bar obscuring my vision on my computer.
I expected not to like the Microsoft product — SoapBox — and didn’t. It was worst of the eight on my Mac Powerbook G4. Sound and video choppy.
Unless I find a compelling reason to switch, I’ll stick with YouTube.
Buy Nothing Day is symbolic.
Every November, for 24 hours, we remember that no one was born to shop. If you’ve never taken part in Buy Nothing Day, or if you’ve taken part in the past but haven’t really committed to doing it again, consider this: 2006 will go down as the year in which mainstream dialogue about global warming finally reached its critical mass. What better way to bring the Year of Global Warming to a close than to point in the direction of real alternatives to the unbridled consumption that has created this quagmire?
Buy Nothing Day – ADBUSTERS.ORG
Not sure about the tie-in with global warming, but I support Buy Nothing Day because of my philosophy of voluntary simplicity.
Yahoo! is a great company, but one which can do no right lately.
Yahoo Sr. VP Jerry Maguire Brad Garlinghouse seemingly leaked a critical memo now dubbed the “peanut butter manifesto“. He called for radical change in the company.
It’s generating more heat than light.
Even I’m ticked off by his hint of merging awesome flickr with lousy Yahoo Photos. Yahoo! owns both products.
Flickr isn’t just technology. Yes, it’s a great UI with a killer back-end and open APIs. But it’s communities. It’s a sense of place. It’s love. …
I have almost 13,000 pictures on Flickr. I love the company, the people who created it, the fact that they don’t think they own my data, that they have open APIs, and that they have created, single-handedly, with no patents and no (or little if any) IP, a whole new market ecosystem for digital photography. A big high-five and a toast to that.
As a photographer, I have a relationship with Flickr. Not with Yahoo. That’s not to say I don’t have relationships with Yahoo, or that I don’t respect Yahoo. I have lots of relationships with Yahoo, and lots of respect for the company. But my relationship with Flickr predates and transcends my relationships with Yahoo. (In fact, I hate the clunky way I was forced to “merge” the logins for both.)
The Doc Searls Weblog : Monday, November 20, 2006
Whatever happened to Jerry Maguire’s Manifesto, anyway?
Just had my first experience trying to customize something using Typepad software.
Forget it!
For me WordPress is far superior.
While Typepad looks more professional, it takes forever to get anything done. WordPress is far more graphic. You can SEE what is happening. The two software platforms remind me of Windows (Typepad) vs. Apple (WordPress).
Plus WordPress is free, Typepad starts at about $50 / year with plenty of ways to try to force you to upgrade.
Comparison of WordPress and TypePad – Emily Robbins
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UPDATE:
Finally resolved a small issue with TypePad.
First, we had to upgrade to $150 / year in order to change the sidebar navigation.
Then, when I submitted a request for HELP, the reply was quick — but they did not email me. After waiting around for 24hrs, I finally checked the account. My reply was there. (My WordPress host would have sent me 2 emails in that time.)
For the geeks out there, here was my final comment to tech support at Typepad:
“Enter your code
Copy and paste the code into the Notes field of the TypeList item. The Label field is optional, if you add text here, it will display on your blog.”
This is the problem. I cannot find any “note field”. It has only description field.
Ahhh … after much searching and reading multiple pages of documentation I find I must “Add a New Item” to My TypeList.
Now — who ever decided to use these cryptic terms? “Typelist item”? Who would guess that was what we now call a “widget” or “gadget”?
In WordPress you click on a “text widget” and it opens. Put in code or whatever you want. In your system there are too many steps. The process is not graphic enough.
You need to redo your site with drag and drop AJAX.
Yeesh.
I’ll advise people use WordPress until you do.
Pogue and Mossberg both agree that the screen on the Zune is great, and that the UI is comparable, or better than, the iPod in most cases. It also sounds just as good as the iPod, but that is where the praise ends. Pogue wonders why you can’t use Windows Media Player to sync with your Zune (you must use a new software program called, oddly enough, Zune). Mossberg was disappointed in the battery life, and he thought the entire product felt more like a prototype than a final effort.
They both pan the wireless sharing, which is supposed to be one of the Zune’s major selling points. You can share, via WiFi, songs from your Zune to another person’s Zune. They can only play them 3 times in the next 3 days before they go poof (leaving behind a note of what the track was in case you want to buy it at the Zune Store). Though here’s the rub, even if you only listen to 10 seconds of the song that counts as one ‘play.’
Overall it seems like the Zune is a typical Microsoft effort, acceptable with some odd omissions and oversights. I’d expect the Zune to give the iPod a run for its money when it is on its third version (but we may very well have a direct neural interface with our iPods by then).
Mossberg and Pogue on the Zune – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
I have the greatest respect for Economist. They sell a million issues a week.
But Economist hasn’t done much lately. Have they?
No blog. Relatively poor audiocast. No improvement to their website in years.
You’d think those UK free enterprise advocates would innovate.
Sometimes criticized for being too right wing, Economist (for the record) supported Bush in 2000 but not in 2004. They supported the coalition of the willing going into Iraq — but now call for Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation.
Scoble tells that Microsoft Search is close to Google Search in accuracy.
… I just tried a few searches and, indeed, it’s a lot better than it used to be. They’ve significantly closed the gap with Google.
… It’s also fast and the UI is nice. I think it matches Google all the way around on search. …
Now, the problem is, if Microsoft matches Google, who will switch away from Google? I won’t. The trust I’ve built since the late 1990s of searching Google many times a day without a problem is going to be a very hard thing to beat. To get me to switch Microsoft will have to be better than Google.
How about you? Does Microsoft (or Yahoo or Ask) have any hope of getting you to switch your default search engine?
Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be « Scobleizer – Tech Geek Blogger
I tried it on the search terms that I know best. Indeed, Live.com is getting better — though it is not nearly as good as Google overall.
The real story is how crappy the Yahoo.com results are in comparison. Do not use Yahoo for search.
Rick McCharles 