I accidentally stumbled across the official Whitehouse Flickr account tonight, and was pretty enthralled by some of the photos in the account. First thing that's cool is that the Whitehouse even has a Flickr account. Second thing to take note of is that the photos are licensed with a creative commons attribution license, so basically you're free to use them in both commercial and non-commercial settings as long as you do proper attribution. I've always liked looking at candid photos from other presidencies. For whatever reason, I took a fascination with those from Kennedy's administration, probably ...

I woke up to an email inviting me to a big Molson event down at the Burrard Street Brewery next week. It's an event geared towards some of Vancouver's web 2.0 saavy people and bloggers that involves sampling various beers as well as a special blogger brew that they have cooking up just for us. It actually sounds like a ton of fun. Given that I can demolish a few beers without much effort, I think I'll definitely swing by and check it out. A few other of the night's attractions will be: Kerry Scarsbrook & Gord Rickards, creator of Rickard’s Red, will be in attendance. Molson Brewery founder ...

So here's some food for thought for the blogosphere. Lately I've been pondering a few of the legal aspects of the Internet, namely what it is we are all allowed to do, and what it is some companies think we shouldn't be allowed to. Let me give you a use-case to demonstrate what I'm talking about. Photo by Ben Sheldon on Flickr Let's say I set up a blog, and I'm checking out Flickr and I see a photo I like. Let's say for a second that the CC license is set in such a way that I can use the photo on my blog. So, I right click on the image, say "copy image address", and slap it into a blog ...

So, here's the deal. I really want to attend some of South by Southwest this year. The only problem is that all the hotels in Austin, Texas are pretty much sold out. I worked the phones for a bit tonight trying to find a place to crash, but haven't had any luck. So, a friend of mine told me to put something on my blog to see if any fish would bite. So, is there anyone that has a floor or a couch they could possibly donate for a few days during South by Southwest this year in Austin, Texas. I'd happily trade some photography skills or web skills in return. Drop me a line if you can hook it up. Thanks! ...

One of the changes I made on the site the other day was the inclusion of wordpress related entries plugin when viewing single posts. Unfortunately wordpress has completely overhauled their folksonomy system in the 2.3 version, and not all my posts are tagged properly. In fact, I'd say only about 20% of them really are. I'm going to try and do about 10 of my old posts a day or something like that to try and get them up to snuff, but it's a fairly boring process, only made possible by this bottle of pinot beside me. In other fairly exciting news, Boris Mann, everyone's favourite Vancouver Janitor, ...

Check them out. I have to grab a cab so can't write now. ...

Friday afternoon I logged into my myspace account after a long absence and, after debating about it for about 3 seconds, deleted my account entirely. It's not like it caused me any headache or anything, but I just don't use it really at all anymore and don't have time to maintain that and my facebook account. So, after searching around for a while, I managed to find the "Delete Account" button and forever put it into the trash. Anyone else actually still use myspace, or has everyone migrated to Facebook now? Also, a few people have been tracking my new blog entries with twitter - if ...

Tomorrow night Tonight there is a Vancouver technology mixer down at the trendy night club Republic on Granville Street. I haven't been out to one of these in a long time, mainly because I've been feeling a bit under the weather for the last few months, but I think I'm going to check it out tomorrow. Launch Party recently launched a new website, and if you look very, very closely, you may recognize the header image on it :) So, hopefully I'll still feel like heading out tomorrow. I will be good to catch up with some old tech friends and see what's new. Plus, it gives me an excuse to go buy a new ...

Is it just me, or is facebook getting a little old these days? Except for the event planning thing, which I think is fairly useful, there's not really a lot about it that I really think is that great anymore. And to be honest, I'm getting a little tired of saying ignore to things like the funwall, or turkey tossing and what have you. I know people are just having a little fun with it, but I'm just not that interested in alot of those things everyone is inviting each other with. It's not really a big deal, as I don't get enough of them to where it takes a lot of time out of my day, I just don't ...

Tonight I'll be heading down to the Alibi room in gastown for the opening ceremonies of BarCamp Vancouver. For those of you who aren't aware what BarCamp is, it's essentially an "unconference" where the participants meet and generate their own discussions about things that interest them. The closest event to this that I've been a part of was the unconference at Northern Voice back in February, which had a really great turn out. Here's the official description from the BarCamp website: BarCamp is an ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. ...

When I first started my current job, the COO and one of the founders was a guy named Erik Lagerway. During the time he was at our company, we shared many a beer and even a plane ride or two together (the most memorable being the one to Phillidelphia where we got to witness first-hand drunken broomball in Horsham and Whatchamachukinchunk). His current brainchild is a service called Gaboogie which was designed in an attempt to simplify conference calls in the enterprise environment. Most conference calls today are setup via email, and involve participants calling into a conference bridge at a specified ...

A few days ago, Flickr gave me the not-so-subtle warning that my account was about to expire. Since I've had a pro-Flickr account for a full year now, I thought I'd take this opportunity to share my thoughts on the service so far. Flickr sort of came to the limelight about 18-24 months ago as one of the leading websites that had real Web 2.0 technology. If you haven't been there you should definitely check it out. Most of the website utilizes Ajax and as you use it, sometimes it feels more like an application than a mere website, and that was really one of their original selling points. Most ...

I'm sitting in room 1005 at the Forest Sciences Center at UBC, eagerly awaiting the "User Generated Content and Activist Campaigns" session to begin. Prior to this was the keynote address by Anil Dash, which gave some great insights into the importance of blogging, and a few allusions to where blogging may go in the future. One of the most interesting part of this conference, for me at least, is a glimpse into the nature of bloggers. The other night at the social, Lee LeFever gave a presentation about his trip around the world, and one sentence that stands out in my mind from his presentation ...

Last night was the first event of the Northern Voice conference. Everyone met down at Heritage Hall on Main Street for some great food served by some local chefs here in Vancouver. The beer flowed like Vancouver rain, and people seemed to have a really great time hanging out and getting to know each other. Having been to many conferences, it was a pleasant surprise at how smoothly the events went and how social most people were. Here are some sample photos northern voice so far, along with a live shot of Photocamp: ...

Tomorrow officially marks the start of the Northern Voice 2007 activities. Northern Voice is a Vancouver based conference where web-bloggers meet up and discuss various technological and social aspects of blogging. I've heard a lot of good things about it, and Boris and his company Bryght are the main organizers for it. The main social is tomorrow night, which will be a great chance for everyone to meet each other and break the ice before the main activities begin. Friday is "Moose Camp", which is an opportunity for conference participants to gather around and form their own agenda based ...