Mosaika show on Parliament Hill

Mosaika
Originally uploaded by acodring

What a neat show!

Every Ottawa household with a growing Canadian should check this free show out.

www.mosaika-sl.ca/mosaika.asp?lang=en

Twitter favouritism

When should I retweet and when should I favourite? Should I expose favourites prominently? If so, where? http://twitter.com/dlq/favoritesThu Jul 15 16:09:23 via Socialite.appDarcy Quesnel
dlq

Good question. I don't have a 'Best practise' answer, but I'll jot down how I'm using Twitter Favourites (aka Favorites in 'merica).

When I started out, I thought of Twitter favourites as a quiet way of showing I liked a tweet. I didn't expect anyone to actually look at my favourites, just that some tiny bit of tweet karma would somehow flow to the original author. If I wanted to give a tweet more exposure to my massive list of followers (cough) I would retweet it.

Later I included them as a feed in my friendfeed stream, but still didn't consider them anything anyone would actually see. @TinyBuddha probably got most of my favourites.

Lately I've been using Tweetdeck on iPhone for most of my twitter reading. It's relatively quick and painless, except for following links to longer posts that don't have mobile themes enabled. My lowly 3G just can't render the pages fast enough to make it worthwhile.

To work around that slow painful experience I've effectively assumed I'm the only one that would ever look at my favourites and started using them as a quick "ReadItLater" bookmark to make sure I can find potentially interesting links when I get back to my laptop. I set up a column in Tweetdeck to pull in all my own favourites and click away when I have some reading time.

The fact that I haven't even looked at what I'm flagging as a favourite introduces some risks (e.g. RickRollingByProxy) if anyone actually is looking at my favourites, but for now I'm willing to take that chance.

Anyone know of a 'best practice' for Twitter favourites? Hopefully Darcy's tweet will garner some good responses.

Re: Lansdowne Stadium Reno to Cost Taxpayers $284 million

Clive, Mayor Larry,

Thank you for sending the information and link below Clive.

The main point of the deck as I understood it, and I agree with it wholeheartedly, is that our City is about to be saddled with a huge debt with very dubious returns. 

Every explanation I've read on how wonderful the OSEG proposal is reads like a Nigerian email scam with slightly fewer typos. "Send money and you will be rewarded handsomely." The idea of paying to build a new stadium for a twice dead football team sets off all the same alarm bells for me that those emails do.

Please focus my ever increasing tax bill on projects which will create true, lasting value in our city - public transit comes to mind.

Thanks for your continued service to our city.

Andrew

On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 4:23 PM, Doucet, Clive <Clive.Doucet@ottawa.ca> wrote:

Dear Ottawa residents,

Last week at City Hall, I hosted a press conference with Professor Ian Lee, Sprott School of Business, Carleton University and concerned taxpayer, Jean-Marie Leduc.

A few of the highlights from the press conference include:

• Taxpayers will be on the hook for $284 million over 40 years for the stadium and stadium parking.  


• Compare this to the $250 million needed for sewers for a clean river in the next 5 years.


• The stadium subsidy is $6.4 million per game - the team is only guaranteed for 5 years.


• The estimated useful life of the refurbished stadium is 40 years. 


• You think the Lynx is a white elephant - wait for this stadium.

For more information, Professor Lee's slide presentation is available at the following link:

http://www.clivedoucet.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Prof-Lee-Financing-of-Stadia-Slide-Presentation.pdf

It's not too late to change the outcome of this stadium "deal".  Write to your councillor and the mayor.

The next Council vote on Lansdowne will take place on June 23, 2010.

Sincerely,

Clive Doucet

Councillor, Capital Ward
www.clivedoucet.com

CBC Radio 3 - Best of the 2000's

These stunning collections serve as reminders that Canadian musicians have been rocking it, literally, and building a spectacular portfolio these past 10 years.

CBC Radio 3 has been a huge part of breaking these artists, and it makes me proud to be a taxpayer here in Canada.

Do yourself a favour (Canadian spelling!) and have a listen right here or on the CBCR3 site.

Best of 2000's Part 1 on CBCR3 or here.
Best of 2000's Part 2 on CBCR3 or here.

View to Manhattan from South Mountain Reservation

View to Manhattan
Originally uploaded by acodring

Ban On Hand-Held Devices Now Ontario Law

This new law banning handheld use of mobile devices is intuitively good, but the crude data I've scraped up doesn't make it look cut and dry.

Drivers up, mobiles way way up, accidents and injuries flat or down. What am I missing?

Ban On Hand-Held Devices Now Ontario Law: "October 26, 2009 12:15 PM
McGuinty Government Makes Roads Safer By Countering Distracted Driving

It's now the law - the use of hand-held cell phones and other wireless devices while driving is prohibited in Ontario.

The new distracted driving law makes it illegal for drivers to talk, text, type, dial or email using hand-held cell phones and other hand-held communications and entertainment devices. Hands-free use of these devices will still be permitted."

If You Don't Ask, You Don't Get - Google Voice Apps Refunds

When I heard that the Google Voice app was rejected and the other two Google Voice apps were removed it didn't even occur to me that they'd pull it back from people who purchased before the removal.

On my next restore I found the app was no longer there, so I sent a note in to Apple to find out what the scoop is - where's my app or where's my refund!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: iTunes Store <iTunesStoreSupport@apple.com>
Date: Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 10:23 AM
Subject: Re: I have another purchase or download-related question.; Follow-up:
To: andrew

Hi Andrew,

I hope you are having a great day so far. My name is Kanitra and I will be happy to assist you.I'm sorry to hear "VoiceCentral" was removed from the store shortly after you purchased it.  I have reversed these charges. You will see a credit of $2.99 in three to five business days. If store credit was used for this purchase, you should see the credit post within three to five business days. If you still do not see your store credit, you will need to sign out of the iTunes Store and sign back in.

Thanks for being a valued iTunes customer.

Sincerely,

Kanitra
ITunes Customer Support
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes

Please Note: I work Sunday-Thursday, 8am- 5pm CT

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you. You may receive an AppleCare survey email; any feedback you provide would be greatly appreciated

Customer First Name : Andrew
email : andrew@andrewsdomain
Web Order # : 123412341234
Support Subject : I have another purchase or download-related question.
Sub Issue : Other Question
Comments : iTunes Account Name: acodring
Platform : iTunes-iPhone/3.0 (2)
Item Name : VoiceCentral
Comments from Andrew:

You removed this application from the App Store after I purchased it.
I later had to restore my iPhone and the app will no longer install.

When will you process a refund for this?  I would have thought you'd do it automatically given the wierd situation you've created with these types of apps.

Really it's a pretty deceitful way to operate that really won't encourage me to buy more apps if you can just remove them at any time and deny me access to them.

Thanks,
Andrew