My friend Austin Hill has set out to do a neat thing for the holidays. In the tradition of the Million Dollar Homepage, Austin has put up a blog post and will pay $1 to charity for every comment made on it. As of 4:54pm Eastern on December 19th, he had 71 comments. Pretty neat, eh?

Also, if you are in the holiday giving spirit, be sure to check out GiveMeaning.com, the Vancouver-based giving site for the $5 philanthropist run by my friend Tom "Still The Kid" Williams. Support a cause that matters to you, and invite your friends to help, too.

And happy holidays to all.

Oh my sweet goodness, this is the funniest - because it is so true - thing I have read about business in a long, long while.

Thank you Joel!

I sampled the new service at a downtown location yesterday. It was easy to get online by getting a userid and password via SMS to my 'berry, though I couldn't figure out how to change either after the fact (e.g. am I stuck with the wacky randomly assigned thing in the future or can I change it?). The service was also a wee bit slow - not the connection, which was both broad and "excellent" for the time I was connected, but the speed whereby pages were being served up was very slow. Not sure what might be behind that.

All in all, it was handy and since it's free for the next 6 months, great value too :-).

Update: Sitting here at my Second Office (the *$ at the northeast corner of Yonge and King here in the Tdot :-)) back online with the Hydro service. Around me, people are having problems getting passwords and userids: upon entering their mobile numbers and hitting enter, the next page deosn't load, so they are getting nowhere. This also happened to a friend yesterday. For me, since I already have login info, I got in right away.

The signal is strong, and I am loaded and viewed a couple of YouTube videos just for the heck of it, and the Slingbox is streaming well to boot. Although, I did turn it off since there's only so much "Backyardigans" an adult should have to watch in one morning, and I had my fill at home ;-)

And as a final note, just as I went to publish this, my connection died.

So, my overall rating? Early days, so I am going to give them some slack and assume that they will work these niggles out. This is "beta" so it is not necessarily indicative of where this system will end up.

Tags: toronto, wifi

Man, living in a formerly heavily Ukrainian neighborhood has never meant anything until now. Today, it's wall to wall cars-with-flags and honking horns.

Little Italy eat your heart out! Too cool.

Update: It hit me that unless you are following the tournement, you are likely scratching your head as to why this celebration was happening. The reason is that Ukraine beat Switzerland 1-0 in todays's FIFA World Cup match.

Here are a few pics of the spectacle - literally at the end of the street. Yep, this is Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Today might just be my best sporting event day ever.

England over Ecuador, now five cars out of the Montreal GP in the first 13 laps.

Yee-haw.

The good people at the Globe and Mail have taken it upon themselves to do a feature on me in this Thursday's edition of their new Report on [small] Business Magazine. It's the second time they are putting it out, and in keeping with their main and respected Report on Business Magazine, they are devoting the last page to something called "Exit Strategy". The people they featured last time were Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield of Flickr, who sold to Yahoo! This time? It's me.

Now, I don't know what they are going to say (Simon Avery is the author, and a photog followed me around for 3 hours a few weeks back) so I guess we will all learn together on Thursday. All that I will say is that if it is good, it's true. And if it is not, it's clearly all out of context :-)

UPDATE: I am yet to see the paper version since I was travelling, but here is the link. For clarity, contrary to the facts layed out in the piece, I didn't calculate airline yield as a child - I was older than that. And, I didn't move to Seattle to work for USA Networks, but for Expedia, Inc., although Diller had bought us by that point. Also that was in 2003 not 2004. And, I didn't actually bring Signature Vacations online - I was about 6 months into that project when I moved on to Expedia.

Tags: globeandmail, reportonbusiness

Heading to Ottawa for a CIRA meeting, watching Argentina vs. Netherlands on the 'puter via wifi and a slingbox. 24:13 in. Both teams playing well.

Feed sorta dodgy, but on the whole...man, this ROCKS.

ps: If you applied for a spot on the CIRA Board, we are meeting to discuss who we will put forward tomorrow.

GO HOLLAND!

Update: here's a sample of the quality of the picture. Not bad, for wifi on a moving train.

Update 2: Ended in a 0-0 tie. Caught the last bit here in the Ottawa train station. Is this the future of media? Well, something like this sure feels likely...

Tags: slingbox, worldcup, train

I know it's hardly in keeping with what I write about here, but if you haven't seen this video, you simply have to. According to the email that was forwarded to me with the link, here is the story:

This tunnel in Russia is the longest in-city tunnel of Europe. There is a river running over it and water leaks at some points. When the temperature reaches -38 degrees like it did this winter, the road freezes and the result is the attached video taken during a single day with the tunnel camera.

Keep an eye out about thirty seconds in. After you've seen it, you might want to reconsider public transit...

Tags: Lefortovo tunnel

Seems that's what a bunch of the studios are saying. Their US$150m investment in Movielink, the jointly owned movie download site, hasn't gone anywhere and they are looking to get out. Business Week reports that they have been shopping it, to little avail, and that they have one year of cash left.

It all sounds a little like what happens when you get competitors trying to figure out how to work together and keep a Genie in a bottle, all at the same time. Goat rodeo. And who loses? The potential customer, and category adoption overall.

Now, I get that infighting and arrogance on the part of the studios may well be a big part of the problem here (as Carlo at Techdirt says), and their seeming inability to move beyond just allowing people to watch on their computer screens is a biggee. But - and maybe it's just me - given this brave new broadband planet we are living on, where convergence is just really starting to start and new forms of media are only now starting to pay their own way as money follows the audience, could it be that now might not be the best time to be getting out of the movie download business?

Maybe, say, fixing it might be an idea?

See also Tim Lee's blog.

Tags: movielink

Given that I was born in 1966, I don't really have memories of 1968. But something tells me that if I did, Michael Ignatieff would be bringing those early days of Pierre Elliott Trudeau-mania back to mind.

I was fortunate enough to attend a fundraiser for Michael last night here in Toronto, and then have a brief chat with him and his lovely wife Susanna immediately following. I was connected in to the campaign via Brad Davis, who is running policy and web stuff for Michael and spoke on the political panel at mesh last week. I am really interested in how the web is going to influence politics in Canada, and so I may have provided the odd suggestion to Brad ;-) I should also say that I am not political per se - in fact, I'm not member of any party, and in the past I've voted for everybody from the NDP to the PCs (I don't think I could ever support the nouveau-Reformistas in power today, but anyway...). And, I think that the Liberal Party still faces some serious challenges to overcome the faults of a few in the whole Sponsor-gate thing. But enough about that. That's the past. I went to hear about the future.

So, let me talk about Michael. This is one smokin' smart and passionate dude. He was at the end of a long day, and he still managed to illicit a depth of thoughtfulness, clarity and emotional connection with the topics and the audience that was truly impressive. And what a breath of fresh air from a potential political leader. There were none of the traditional platitudes, the canned delivery of soundbites, or the trying to stay "on message". I mean, here was a guy that actually *knows* this stuff. He can comment on Darfur because he just bloody *knows* it. He can talk about investing in education because he just bloody *knows* it. He can speak to needing to do right by the environment for our families and futures because he just bloody *knows* it.

When is the last time you can remember a serious contender for high political office in this country who was so clearly smart *and* compassionate? Right. It's been awhile, hasn't it.

In fact it last started in 1968, by my estimation.

Go get 'em, Michael.

Tags: michaelignatieff

I hesitate to write this up given the support Rogers is showing for mesh (and I truly am thankful for that), but given how frustrating this has been and how many people I've told already, I figure I might as well. It's become a bloody dinner party topic already.

What a service disaster I've had with these people. It's especially silly given that I've been ready to pay them for new hardware for about a month, and they have been seemingly unable to take my money. Yes, really. Here's the whole sordid tale of woe:

It started back before Christmas. I received a lovely, expensive direct mail piece from them - well, Rogers "Office of the Chief Marketing Officer" actually. All embossed and lovely, with a stamp and everything. Having spent the odd dollar on marketing (or several hundred million in fact) in past lives, I thought "Hmmm that's an expensive piece...I'm going to open that." Which I do, to read that I am being invited to buy a BlackBerry at a discounted price.

This is great!

Except, of course, for the fact that I have had a BlackBerry, from Rogers, for several years, and had been spending upwards of several hundred dollars a month with them for some time. "Hmmm" I say to myself. "This doesn't feel like a good use of Rogers' scarce ad dollars". So, being the good guy I am - and a little ticked off with the silliness, frankly - *and* given that their CMO has put his name and phone number on the lovely letter, I decide to call him (sidebar: in case you don't know, these things are done by ad agencies - usually ones that specialize in direct mail. In fairness, it is quite possible that the CMO had not even seen the piece). I leave him a voicemail,  including my Rogers phone number, alerting him to the fact that it could be that his agency has messed something up ("I'd expect that 'BlackBerry? Yes/No' would be a basic filter on your data run"). And I get on with my day.

Now, imagine my surprise - and tremendous impressed-ness - when I get an SMS from him later that day, acknowledging my voicemail and thanking me for my call. I respond, thinking "nicely done" and figure that is that.

But no. Several weeks later, what falls through my mailbox? Another lovely letter. From Rogers' CMO guy. Letter goes along the lines of "We recently sent you a letter inviting you to buy a discounted BlackBerry in error - we know you have one already - what we meant to send you was this offer of a new high-speed BlackBerry at a great price." And I think "good on them - they made a mistake, they recognized that they looked silly to a big batch of customers, likely valuable ones, and either they or their agency is making good." I mention it to a few people, decide not to to take them up on it, and move on.

Fast forward to about a month ago. Now, all the cool kids have the new 8700 and I figure "okay, time for me to get one too." So I trundle on down to my local Rogers store (Bloor West Village, Toronto) to buy one. No expectations of  the previous great deal, though I expected that they could see that I spent a bit and might cut me a deal, as tends to happen with these sorts of things. I walk in. Say "Hi. I want to buy a new 8700." Lady goes to the computer and says "it looks like you have a pending hardware upgrade. Yes?" I say "No" and she says "they just upgraded the system and it's acting kind of weird sometimes. I can't do anything else. I need to call and things are so bad right now because of this change that it takes a long time to get through. Can I call you later?" And I'm thinking "this is nuts, but hey, things happen" and say "Sure." Needless to say, she never calls. And when I call her, "the store is busy" and she can't talk. Well. Isn't that super.

Fast forward to yesterday. *Again* I walk to my local Rogers store, this time with my 5 year old in tow. Guess what? Same deal. It's now been *a month*. System is still busted. Still can't take my money. Same question about "pending upgrade". Same "can I call you?" To their credit, this time, she (a different person) does call, to say that whoever in the service department will do whatever and that in 48 hours or so they should - finally - be able to take my money.

Somehow I think we all know how this is going to turn out, don't we? How embarrassing.

Man, if it wasn't for the GSM international coverage thing, I would certainly be taking my business elsewhere.

What a goat rodeo.

UPDATE: Well, ride 'em cowboy, the goat rodeo continues. To their credit, the same woman who called me yesterday called me back late today, and was very pleasant. Sadly, that and apparently no amount of money will get me my new 'Berry. She spoke with their IT people who are apparently quite familiar with my "stuck in a pending upgrade" problem, and have *no way to solve it*. Seriously. They had hoped that whatever fix they have been working on would be in place by now, but gosh no luck. So the option presented to me? Call Rogers Customer Relations (a.k.a. in most companies as The Complaints Department) to have *them* help me figure out how I can give them my money.

Yippee-ki-yay! Goat rodeo, ho!

So parking the whole "this is silly, why should I be stuck fighting to get this done?" question, I have to wonder about a more basic business issue. I mean, I'm just one guy and the 'Berry I have will work just fine so, beyond what is now the humour of this, I'm not busted up about it. But more importantly, I can't possibly be the only person stuck in this holding pattern, can I? How many customers must there be like me, unable to upgrade to a new whatever, because of this unsolvable glitch? What kind of ripples might that be having back into hardware manufacturers, Rogers handset revenue etc.? I sure hope I am wrong, but this is making me go hmmmm...

Goat rodeo indeed.

Tags: rogers, goatrodeo

Of course Steve makes a bunch of good points, but the caption caught me. Appears that we Canadians sure are orderly...

So they tell me I should blog, so here I am. Blogging, on my own - not-yet-perfect - blog. Let's see what becomes of it.