A few months ago I talked about Megan Meier, a young girl who encountered abuse from a classmate’s mother via MySpace. That abuse eventually led to Megan committing suicide, and sparked a whole series of internet debates about where the fault for something like that lies and how accountable social networks should be for the actions of their users.
Today Facebook announced that they will be implementing over 40 safeguards to help protect its users from sexual predators and online cyberbullying:
Facebook, the world’s second-largest social networking Web site, will add more than 40 safeguards ...
Apple announced the official iPhone developer program a while ago. Unfortunately at the time they also indicated it would only be open to people in the United States at first. I decided to just sign up for it at the time anyways, assuming they would open up to Canada at some point as well.
Turns out they did. I got my official email last night saying I was accepted, so today I went and paid my $99 and can now develop iPhone applications (if I want to). So, maybe I’ll mess around with XCode on my vacation for an afternoon and see if I can make anything cool. ...
The Amazon EC2 service is a rather revolutionary cloud computing system that came out in late 2006. It provides a fairly flexible infrastructure that allows you to launch application servers on demand. Traditionally new web companies are forced to pay for rather expensive co-location facilities for their servers, with little or not thought given to scalability (which isn’t always a bad thing, considering most companies never reach a point where they need scalability). That being said, for a company that either requires scalability, or is looking for new ways to reduce costs, Amazon EC2 might ...
So, this is a fairly basic question. Lately, some people have been installing little rick roll blockers, thinking that it somehow protects them from being rick rolled simply because the video no longer plays. My take on that is that it’s basically a form of cheating, and that if you clicked the link, you were rick rolled.
But let’s see what my knowledgeable readers have to say. Chime in below:
[poll=12] ...
I went out for a few beers tonight with Boris and Dave down in Yaletown, a pseudo celebration for Cinco De Mayo. One of the topics that came up casually over a few margaritas was the fast approaching onslaught of Vancouver technology events.
Kicking it off in approximately two weeks is the fourth iteration of Launch Party Vancouver down at the Republic on Granville street. It’s always a great event, and most of the local technology companies (and freelancers) are usually in attendance. I was sort of the unofficial photographer for Launch Party III, and will definitely bring my camera around ...
I realized I removed most of my contact information a while ago. I actually briefly had my phone number available on my Facebook page, and acquired two stalkers in the process last year, so I basically removed everything but my email. Thankfully that’s passed, and I’m less timid now. So, if you’re looking to get a hold of me, here are a few ways:
You can try email on my contact page
Check out my facebook page
My recently resurrected MySpace page (warning, may disappear without notice)
My Twitter page
My Jaiku Page
...
As most of you know, I turned 31 on April 7th a few weeks ago. At roughly the same time (and coincidentally, on the same day), somewhere over in Victoria, Lloyd Budd was welcoming his son into the world.
Lloyd Budd is a hardcore WordPress user, and an all-around nice guy. I meant to post something about this a while ago, but just got swamped (with WordPress stuff). That aside, I want to congratulate Lloyd and his wife on their new addition to the family. Given that he shares the same birthday as me, I’d recommend stocking up on beer now. ...
Wow. That’s all I can say. The imagery and cinematography are pretty out of this world. I’m not a big blockbuster kind of movie guy, but it looks pretty amazing. Obviously this was Heath Ledger’s last film, and he commented a few times that he thought the role was fairly disturbing.
Check out the trailer here ...
Last night I had a few beers with the guys after work, and then headed down to Boneta to wish Victoria Potter a happy birthday. Then I scooted home, grabbed my camera, and went down to meet some friends at Plush near the Plaza of Nations.
I realized after waiting in line for about 5 minutes that I really don’t enjoy clubs like that at all. Once inside, I just found the music and the people somewhat overbearing, so I left. Since the casino is basically across the way from Plush, I decided to head inside and play 30 minutes of blackjack.
I haven’t been to a casino in a long time. Rebecca and ...
Last night was Vancouver’s first ever WordCamp down at the Network Hub downtown. I got there about 15 minutes early, and was fairly amazed that it was already standing (or sitting, if you will) room only. There were so many people in fact, that they wrapped around the edges into locations where you couldn’t even see the projector. Clearly Vancouver has a very large and supportive WordPress community.
Photo by John Biehler
The open-source community in Vancouver is pretty amazing. Whenever I travel and tell others this, they are always suspect, like it would somehow be impossible for our little ...
It’s official — Roger’s has made what they call a public statement regarding just that:
TORONTO, April 29 /CNW/ – Ted Rogers, President and Chief Executive
Officer of Rogers Communications Inc. today issued the following statement:
We’re thrilled to announce that we have a deal with Apple to bring the
iPhone to Canada later this year. We can’t tell you any more about it right
now, but stay tuned.
Not very informative, but I guess it dispels the myth that it’s not coming. Although, most people thought it would get here eventually. I also read that Rogers is testing out a $20 unlimited ...
So it’s been fairly cool passively watching the WordPress blogs on the internet slowly convert to BraveNewCode’s WPtouch iPhone theme. Tod Maffin just sent me a link to the CBC’s Official Blog, which now sports a fancy new WPtouch theme.
Check it out. ...
I got a call from the accountant this morning, and she said my taxes were all done. I just had to swing by and sign some forms and they would be e-filed.
Before I gave her my taxes, I did a quick trial run myself, just to see what the difference would be. If I were to have filed them, I would have gotten back around $600. Having her do it (and properly take into account all my camera gear), I get about $1800 back. Her fee for doing my taxes was about $160, so that means my net return is $1640, or about $1000 more than I would have gotten had I done them myself.
Not bad. ...
I had a few beer tonight, and ended up stumbling across this Russell Peters video. This guy is awesome. I, quite literally, walked into the guy at the Juno awards a few weeks ago. I nearly knocked him over while leaving the media room.
PS – Media Temple just barfed again, and I’m still running. ...
I’ve been using Google Reader as my main RSS reader for some time. For the most part, I’m pretty happy with it. They’ve recently added the ability to share items, which makes it far more interesting.
The one thing I’d love to see though is the ability to add local comments on those shared items, comments that only my friends could see. So many times I’ve read items in my friends’ shared feeds and really wanted to say something, or get clarification. Going to the real site and posting a comment sort of implies a certain level of knowledge on my part (especially if it’s a technical ...
I set up a Linux box at home a while ago, mainly so that I’d have a stable place to run my blog. To that end, I installed Centos on it, which is an enterprise grade version of Linux (many hosting companies use it).
The one downside to using Centos is that most of the packages in the repositories are rather old (although they are usually stable). So if you want to stay on the cutting edge, it’s fairly hard using this distribution.
While trying to install PHP 5.2 tonight, I stumbled upon a a really great up-to-date Centos repository. Thankfully it has prebuilt PHP and MYSQL versions. ...