Wayne D's Blog

I was hanging out at my local and saw Susan Boyle come up on the CBC National news. The sound was off but I was curious enough to note her name, When I came home and Googled her this is what I found.

Updated April 19th, 2009

Evidently the video owners have decided that they don't want people embedding there content so you have to go to Youtube if you want to watch the video.

Susan's Boyle's last performance

updated April 14th with a link to the Rabble TV coverage of Mesh. other additions are marked

MeshU and Mesh are history for another year and I survived both. Fueled by coffee, Redbull and lots of yummy snacks I spent three days at Canada's web conference.

I met so many great new people and heard so many interesting speakers I can't recommend enough that you go if and when you get the chance. Both conferences sold out this year so for those who didn't get a chance to go I thought I'd do the elevator pitch version of MeshU and Mesh.

I will attempt to sum up in one sentence what I took away from the panels and keynotes I attended over the two conferences. These will not be the next best thing to being there. The presentations and presenters were dynamic, nuanced, thoughtful and my short description will attempt to encapsulate what I took away from their talks, not necessarily their main point or theme. You can find video of some of the keynotes and sessions at media.meshconference.com and Mesh TV. Here is a link to Rabble.tv coverage of Mesh. What you don't get from my comments and the videos is the wonderful food, great socializing and all the great interesting new people you will meet.

So we begin with MeshU. The format, first presenter, then the name of the seminar and then my take away.

Ryan Singer - Value Judgments in Interface Design - Designers need to be able to quickly and easily modify the user experience, the MVC methodology still rules

Brydon Gillis - Building Software the Obama Way - Lead with action and change, not policy.

Leigh Honeywell - Break it to make it: writing (more) secure software - Security is very important but we are doomed anyways, but try to be as secure as practical.

April Dunford - Segmentation, Positioning and Storytelling: How a Smart Market Strategy Can Drive Growth - Pick a target market and tell your stories, spread yourself too thin and you are history.

Now on to Mesh
Mike Masnick Keynote - Dinosaurs you need to change your paradigm or my paradigm will eat your lunch.

Jessica Jackley Keynote - Helping other to do good is a wonderful way to live.

Tyler Crowley - Professionalizing Pro-video content - Making great video can be done really inexpensively but making money is very difficult.

Hyper-local media: Does It Work? Panel - Yes it does but don't expect to get rich doing it.

The Future of News Panel - The business of news is in flux, there are many people trying to figure where it is going.

VC Keynote with Howard Lindzon and Paul Kedrosky - Canada's VC system is broken, go south young person.

Bonin Bough Keynote - Pepsico is very bullish on social media and you should be too.

David Miller Keynote, Open government data is important and improved transit is the future hope for Toronto.

Phil Gomes - Managing Personas Online - Don't switch off your brain when you go online, think twice, type once.

Jeff Quipp - Search Engine Optimization 101 - Build lots of pages with great content and search engines will beat a path to your door.

Mark Evans - How to Integrate Social Media Into Your Marketing Plan - You haven't missed the boat, everyone is still experimenting but don't piss off the Mommy bloggers.

Thanks for taking a chance and joining my grand Mesh09 branding experiment. I'm creating two T-shirts. One with IMetWayne.com on it and one with wdawe.com on it. The first one I'll wear during MeshU09 and the second I'll wear on the first day of Mesh09. I'm curious to see how many people will take a flyer and type in my URL to see what I'm all about based on a T-shirt. Are T-shirts effective marketing tools, or are all those beer shirts I have collected not worth the cotton they are printed on from a marketing perspective? Feel free to add your comments on T-shirt marketing.

Feel free to browse the eclectic content contained herein. This is a blog without a theme. You can also follow me on twitter at twitter.com/wdawe where I promise I will not market, advertise or otherwise take advantage of you.

Some days the heavens open up and a bolt of enlightenment strikes you right between the ears. I work in a mixed Linux and Windows environment and she blurted out "Linux is annoying" or something similar. When I asked her to expand she explained that it annoyed her because it was different than what she was used to and that is what annoyed her. I can understand that, nothing is worse than thinking you know how to do something on a computer and then realizing that you are incorrect. No one wants to feel stupid and even at the best of times computers and software can annoy me. For better or for worse Windows has trained people to do things in a certain way and doing them in a different way is going to make them annoyed. Opening a terminal window and typing a command is completely alien to people who have grown up on Windows based operating systems. In a Windows based operating system actions are always initiated with the mouse, the keyboard is used for text entry. There really isn't any point in trying to convince people to use a command line interface, the ship has sailed and it's necessary to live with the new reality. Those who are working on Linux need to understand this, it doesn't matter if they think their method is better, the more they can make their operating system behave like Windows from the user perspective the more likely they are to be able to convince Windows users to at least give it a try.

If the current shift to web based applications, smart phones and netbooks continues continues the choice of operating system may become a moot point. The promise of Java to "write once/run anywhere" may come to pass as we access more and more services through a web browser. Perhaps the reason I find Linux not to be too annoying is because I already do so much with web based tools. I've written blog posts through the browser on my Blackberry, I use browser based tools to administer my MySql databases, browser based database applications. I long ago gave up running a mail program instead using browser based email clients first from Yahoo and now from Gmail.

I read an article today about running C and Python code on the web in a Flash virtual machine. The open question is whether this is any more promising because of the Adobe Flash vs. Microsoft Silverlight feud that is underway than the Sun Java vs. Microsoft Java wars that hobbled Java's adoption 10 years ago. Adobe isn't targeting Alchemy for new projects but instead suggesting it as a way to run legacy code in a secure Flash environment. I burned off about 15 minutes playing Doom in Flash compiled from the original C source.

That's for the future, for now Linux will continue to be annoying because it's really more of a concept than a product. The product is the distributions and they are generally inconsistent and incompatible with each other. Unless you are going to compile from source with the minefield of library issues that may entail there is no guarantee that any Linux package will run on your system if it isn't included in your distributions repository. Far too complicated for your average computer user, isn't it? For now your best chances are probably with Ubuntu, if you are ready to take the plunge good luck.

May 2010 updated with the rates that came into effect starting April 1st 2010 from http://www.ontarioelectronicstewardship.ca/stewards/fees.html

Jan. 27th 2010, See my update which discusses the likely increase in these fees at Ontario Computer Recycling Tax Rates Likely to Rise

When is a tax not a tax? When it's a government mandated and collected user fee. As of April 1st all Ontario residents will be forced to pay a tax on evey new computer. monitor, TV, mouse sold in Ontario. These new fees kick in April 1st and the government is planning on passing on the money collected to the industry to recycle electronics. This means there is no government oversight of the fees they are collecting from us. The best of both worlds, plausible denialbility for both sides. What are the rates?

Desktop Computers $13.44 $7.80 unit
Portable Computers $2.14 $2.75 unit
Computer Peripherals ( Mice, Keyboards. Single Hard drives,
Optical Drives) $0.32 $0.40 unit
Monitors $12.03/ unit Televisions $10.07/ unit
Displays < 29" $12.25 unit, Displays > 29" $26.25 unit
Printers $5.05 $5.40 unit

These rates are only good for one year, so expect them to rise next year.

Why does a 52" LCD TV cost less to dispose of than a 17" LCD monitor? No idea. Why $10 more for a $500 desktop than a $2000 laptop. Couldnt be because a desktop is easier to disassemble and reuse.

The best part is that this is only the beginning, next we get to pay a new disposal tax on the following items.

# Computer peripherals will include modems
# Printing devices will include copiers, scanners, typewriters.
# Telephones (physical and accessories)
# Cellular phones
# PDA’s and pagers
# Audio and video players
# Cameras
# Equalizers, (pre)amplifiers
# Radios
# Receivers
# Speakers
# Tuner
# Turntable

The best part is that these taxes are completely hidden so you can continue to live in blissful ignorance. I feel sorry for Ontario retailer because it appear to me that items bought out of province are exempt. This is a great time to make Ontario retailers less competitive, the middle of a recession. Another unaccountable bureaucracy to pick our pockets, sigh.

The paltry consumer information on the website glosses over the level of the fees that are being applied. It's always best to keep the people who are paying in the dark.