Disqus - Latest Comments for felicopter

Re: VICTORY: FCC to Mandate Net Neutrality for the Web

felicopter — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 19:06:48 -0000

That is a misleading comment. The ISPs were throttling BitTorrent, which is mostly used to distribute pirated content. The CBC happened to use BitTorrent to distribute some content.

Re: Twitter as an Emergency Broadcast System

felicopter — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 14:57:44 -0000

Yes, Twitter could be great for emergency broadcasts. Requirements:

1. Twitter needs to become much more reliable. It may be okay for some ordinary tweets to be missing in the stream, but not for emergency tweets.

2. There needs to be a way for people to get interrupted with such urgent news at pretty much any time in their lives, not just when they happen to be online and monitoring Twitter.

Thoughts on point 2:

- For most people an SMS text message would be the best interruption mechanism. While Twitter provides the option (depending on country and carrier) to get an SMS notification of every tweet from every followed source, most people don't want such a flood of messages. At least one service, TwitSMS, permits a text to be generated only for tweets from the sources you specify, but one must pay money for this and organizations like Environment Canada may not be all that interested in supporting a new information channel that requires user spending. Perhaps TwitSMS could provide free notifications for approved emergency services, as a marketing tactic to attract new users (i.e. adopt the freemium model). Or (preferably) Twitter itself would add selective SMS as a feature at some point.

- There is also the DM mechanism for receiving more-important tweets. Environment Canada could have a Twitter ID specifically for Toronto-area emergencies, which could DM each of its followers whenever appropriate. This would however require that users be able to see their incoming DMs quickly (currently email notifications are often delayed), and that sources be able to send a lot of DMs quickly (API and sending limits could perhaps be worked around by Environment Canada's running multiple Twitter IDs for large cities).

Re: Extroversion

felicopter — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:34:11 -0000

For those of us who aren't naturally extraverted, it's also a less intimidating way to share things.

And now that things move faster than in earlier times, reading a person's lifestream is a quick way to get to know something about that person.

Re: interest in spying on people engaged in behaviors

felicopter — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 18:52:20 -0000

If Sobeys won't pay you cash for the Twitter account, maybe they'd be willing to give you Club Sobeys points? It wouldn't cost them anything, and they'd have to admit it would be appropriate.

Re: Fair Trade Jewellery Co. & War Child Profiled on 100 Huntley St. [Video]

felicopter — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 11:15:07 -0000

As a non-Christian may I just say "Well done!" to both you and 100 Huntley Street.

Re: A blog post from the hammock

felicopter — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 19:02:21 -0000

Pretty good typing from a guy and/or cat in a hammock!

Re: Touching donation -- Ontario College of Art gets Microsoft Surface unit - Page 3

felicopter — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:22:30 -0000

I love the headline, "Touching donation"!

Re: Ignatieff puts Conservatives “on probation”

felicopter — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 17:17:04 -0000

I haven't even watched the video yet, but I recognize the face and I'm already laughing. Well done!

Re: Prepping for ChangeCamp: Generation Y and the curious case of (my) civic engagement

felicopter — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:40:39 -0000

I actually like the self-centredness of Gen Y. In a world where so much has changed lately and lots more change lies ahead, conventional wisdom isn't that much use, and searching (for how to effect change, for meaning at work, etc. etc.) is essential. Gen Y-ers will find the answers that need to be found.

Rohan (pre-Gen X)

Re: ChangeCamp: Putting people and creativity back into public policy

felicopter — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:29:02 -0000

For me as well, this puts ChangeCamp into a context that I was already familiar with. Thanks!!!

Re: Apple iPod Touch large: I want one

felicopter — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 06:18:27 -0000

I think Apple has to launch such a device because cheap netbooks are now robbing sales of traditional laptops. Apple doesn't want to drop the price of the MacBook, not by much anyway, so this device can meet the lower price point, leaving the "more powerful" MacBook where it is. I use quotes because for most people I think the new device would actually be superior, as I wrote at http://www.rohanjayasekera.com/blog/2008/12/dec... .

Re: Yahoo’s Ymail: Don’t really get it

felicopter — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:03:04 -0000

Mathew, I see this as a bit of an excuse for them to get some "normal" press as a counterbalance to all the negative stuff -- and it worked, mostly.

I agree that the addition of the two domains is pretty lame. As my colleague James Koole remarked to me, while he can't be james@yahoo.com because that's gone, in a few hours james@ymail.com and james@rocketmail.com will be gone too! james4703@ymail.com isn't a whole lot better than james830362@yahoo.com.

I don't think that what teenagers do today is representative of what they will do tomorrow. Eventually people grow up and have to start communicating with people other than their friends and family, and unless they wish to be interrupted by those people, or let them into their Facebook, email will be how they want to be contacted.

Those willing to pay a small amount of money have more routes to a decent email address (i.e. without an unwieldy suffix) than those who consider only the free services. Registering your own domain like mathewingram.com is one way, but there's another, less well known, alternative: there are surname-based domains available for shared use. For instance, you can be mathew@ingram.net or mathew@ingram.org or mathew@ingram.to (or even ingram@mathew.com if you want that), because all those addresses are available through the Tucows Personal Names Service (disclosure: I am the product manager). This service is sold through Tucows resellers and is also available at NetIdentity.com (where it was invented; Tucows bought NetIdentity). There are around 40,000 surname-based domains available, including those three for Ingram -- nothing for Jayasekera, though!

Rohan Jayasekera

Re: Omnidrive: Not dead yet, thanks

felicopter — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:29:53 -0000

As I blogged back in March 2007, Omnidrive disabled key functionality without even telling its users. And there was no admission afterward of any shortcoming on their part. The signs of lack of integrity were already there.