Yahoo is falling apart
It’s kind of sad seeing what has become of Yahoo as of late. It has been in the news for some time as it negotiates on and off again with Microsoft that eventually led to nothing. This did not make too many shareholders happy as they saw perhaps billions (yes billions) of dollars fly away. This created more drama with major shareholders such as Carl Icahn’s attempt to dissolve the board of directors and the head of Yahoo Chief Executive and co-founder Jerry Yan on a stick.
Eventually Yahoo turned to Google as their white knight but that deal (partnership?) turned out to a be a lame ad sense deal . Yahoo might as well have just created a publisher account. Shareholders see this as a ~ $800 Million deal, which pales in comparison to the ~ $12 Billion. Maybe Yang uses a different algorithm?
What is perhaps most interesting is mass exodus of Yahoo execs. What will become of Yahoo?
Proposed Canadian Copyright Law presented today
Possibly some scary news for Canadians who may soon face stiff copyright law where some critics are going so far saying that Copyright law could result in police state:
The federal government has introduced a controversial bill it says balances the rights of copyright holders and consumers — but it opens millions of Canadians to huge lawsuits, prompting critics to warn it will create a “police state.”
People caught downloading music or video files illegally could also be sued for a maximum of $500, but uploading a file to a peer-to-peer network or YouTube could result in lawsuits of $20,000 per file.
The Hype Machine is on
Most people in the tech industry are keeping an eye on Apple WWDC Event today and the rumoured release of the iPhone 2.0. Let fanboys rejoice, the Apple Hype Machine is in full force.
Most, if not all the big bloggers are doing live, play by play of the event including what Steve Jobs is wearing, here’s a few to keep an eye on:
Will this be the iPhone that Rogers wireless is planning on releasing at most likely some exorbitant pricing plans?
I am actually more curious how twitter will be able to hold up to the onslaught of tweets for this event, which I can only imagine will be massive. They are supposedly prepared for it based on their blog post.
We’ve moved much of the load off our database by utilizing more memcache, employing more read-slave servers, and by fixing some bugs for improved efficiency.
In the event that our estimates and preparations fail, we have designed a way to keep Twitter updates moving quickly through the system to their respective recipients. We have isolated and created on/off switches for many Twitter features. Should it become necessary to shed incoming load quickly, we can turn off features such as stats, pagination, and several others to preserve the reliability and timeliness of your Twitter timeline.
The TTC’s beta site is now live
Check it out the beta here: http://www.beta.ttc.ca. Supposedly it costs about $400k for the revamp, and will be fully functional by mid July. The RSS feed for service alerts is a great idea and looks fairly clean and simple. A definite improvement from their current site which looks like web 1.0 at it’s best or something that was done by some TTC employee who just learned how to use Dreamweaver.
Canadians - beware what you download
Looks like Canada is catching up to the US in regards to copyright infringement. There was a time where we were in sort of a legal limbo outside the reach of groups such as the RIAA and MPAA from legal actions . Guess things are changing….
From the article:
Link: URGENT MESSAGE TO CANADIANS
My fellow Canadians, a matter of the greatest importance has come to our attention. TOMORROW new laws will be passed by the Canadian government which will effectively OUTLAW the use of modchips and flash carts, among other things.
And more: Report Says Canadian DMCA To Include $500 Fine Per Download:
The National Post reports that the Canadian DMCA, which may be introduced tomorrow, will include a “personal use download” fine of $500. The front page story indicates that the fine (presumably a new form of statutory damage award) could be awarded on a per infringement basis, leading the possibility of hundreds of thousands of dollars in liability for file sharing. This provision has been rumoured for some time and may be designed to reduce the maximum possible awards, since the current statutory damages provision provides for damage awards of up to $20,000 per infringement.
This could become quite interesting and I wonder if we’ll start to see similar crackdowns and wild RIAA suits against us Canadians for wild amounts of money.
Canadian Border Checking Ipods Too?
Interesting and kind of scary article from Canada.com: “Copyright deal could toughen rules governing info on iPods, computers”
The federal government is secretly negotiating an agreement to revamp international copyright laws which could make the information on Canadian iPods, laptop computers or other personal electronic devices illegal and greatly increase the difficulty of travelling with such devices.
The deal could also impose strict regulations on Internet service providers, forcing those companies to hand over customer information without a court order.
Considering the US Border can search laptops without cause, it seems it’s not safe to travel anymore with these seemingly harmless devices. What you have on your computer or iPod could land you a serious fine or worse yet, jail time.
Crossing the border and delays between Canada and the US is already slowed by things such as terrorist alerts, currency exchange rates and high gas prices - this could just add another reason why not to bother crossing the border. Maybe their intent is to discourage travel and tourism. Thoughts?
Tag Galaxy
A phenomenal and impressive use of Abobe Flash to create a space themed visualization for Flickr images via tagging. Enjoy.
Site: Tag Galaxy
Bell offering movie downloads
Looks like Bell is jumping on the movie download bandwagon, ala Apple iTunes, Microsoft xbox 360 , Netflix, etc. Interesting arguments from the article in regards to this announcement and in the CRTC investigation on their own peer-to-peer throttling practices. Now I wonder when Rogers will follow suit with their own movie download offering.
Rogers has recently instituted a policy of enforcing download caps for customers. If Rogers were to offer movie downloads, it makes you wonder how they enforce internet usage, yet promote extensive movie downloading which would no doubt take a huge chunk of bandwidth. Then again, Rogers seems to have the reputation for not caring for customers as they continue to grow and expand into new media businesses. I’ve had a few run ins with Rogers myself that has recently led me open up their “iron grip” as much as possible by canceling my cable service and look at other alternatives.
It is nice to see that Canada is slowly catching up to the online media that our US neighbours enjoy so much. We can probably blame a lot on the CRTC’s restrictions. Let’s just hope that there’s some additional competition to keep Bell and Rogers on their toes.
Review: GrandCentral
Synopsis: Great in theory, not so great in execution
GrandCentral is a “free Google-owned internet service that uses VoIP to link customers’ phone numbers together”. It is currently in private beta and there have not been any invites available since March 14, 2008. Lucky for me, I managed to snag a “blogger invite” just before the deadline to sign myself up for an account.
Some Features include:
- Screen Callers - Know who’s calling and screen unknown callers
- ListenIn - Hear why someone is calling before taking the call
- Call Record - Record calls on the fly and access recordings online
- Block Callers - Unwanted callers won’t be able to reach you anymore
- Notifications - Receive voicemail notifications via email or SMS
- Ring Different Phones - One number that rings different phones based on who’s calling
- Greetings - Personalize your voicemail greetings by caller or group
- WebCall Button - Let people call you from a web page without showing your number
- CallSwitch - Switch phones in the middle of a call
It has allowed me to setup one US based phone number that forwards calls to my Canadian based number. In this case, it goes to my cell phone but I can also set it up to direct to various other phone numbers, all controlled via a easy to use web interface. This effectively allows people in the United States to call me for free since they simply call the US based number which is local for them and it will automatically call my phone number in Canada.
Not only that, through the web interface, it allows me to call any US based number for free as well. It basically provides a middle layer. All this for free….at least for now. Sounds great doesn’t it? It is great in theory and when it works, it’s a phenomenal service.
The main problem is that it is simply not reliable. On too many occasions, there have been sudden dropped calls and inability for calls to get through. There has been one major service disruption, and just today, apparently they almost forgot to renew their domain name!
This past weekend, all Canadian number seemed to be blocked and had me worrying that they suddenly decided to change their policies. It has since been restored. They are not the fastest on replying to support requests, however, I will give them credit since one of the customer service reps did call me to verify that things were resolved. A pleasant surprise.
You can get an idea about these and other issues by checking out their discussion rooms. I think most people agree that it’s simply not reliable and not quite ready for prime time. Would not use for business purposes until they’ve ironed out the kinks.
You would think that things would improve once Google got their hands on it but I am wondering if it’s just another one of their acquisitions that they put on the back burner as far as development is concerned (can we say Google Talk?)
Feel free to give me a call on GrandCentral
Free Photoshop Book in PDF
SitePoint, one of my favourite websites for resources and tips on web design/development, is offering the book “The Photoshop Anthology: 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks & Techniques Free” for the next 28 days.
Click here and enter your email address to get access to the links.
Direct url: http://photoshop.aws.sitepoint.com/
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Unscientific and unsupported theories on life, sports, tech and all things important to me.
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