A mighty w00t! to Toronto native Cory Doctorow --author, activist, Internet visionary, teacher, and one of the driving forces behind the always wonderful BoingBoing -- on being honoured by the Electronic Frontier Foundation as one of their Pioneer Award recipients. Outstanding news.

And just how completely geektastic is this: Randall Munroe recently ran this episode of his terrific XKCD webcomic with a good-natured poke at Cory:

Earlier this evening, I took Charlie and Ruairi over to the playground of one of our local schools for a little knockabout hockey practice - injecting some much-needed life into the work/life balance.

On the way there, we all noticed the contrail of a jet, high in the clear sky, as the plane passed above the clear, bright moon. Walking East, we noticed how the line of the contrail seemed to be moving down the sky, appearing to cross in front of the moon and then steadily sink below it, while the jet continued to arc across the firmament.

Thinking we were witnessing some kind of parallax effect due to the fact that we were still moving as we gazed upwards, we stopped. The gap between the roughly straight line of the contrail and the moon, however, continued to widen - slowing down, but still moving further away from the "fixed" point at which we'd first observed it.

Was this phenomenon caused by high altitude wind, somehow pushing the entire contrail evenly across the sky? Or were we perhaps witnessing, as Charlie suggested, simple but pleasingly startling evidence of the Earth's rotation?

And while you're noodling that one, Ruairi (4) would like to know if it was really a plane we saw, or was it Buzz Lightyear...

I wouldn't necessarily blog about all of my client work - in fact, there are a fair number of client things that will always remain "off the blog", either for reasons of confidentiality, or simply because they're just not particularly relevant in the stream of stuff I write about here.

This new client, however, is one I think is genuinely relevant, interesting, and exciting.

A week and a half ago, Tamera and I met with Elaine Kunda - CEO of ZipLocal for the first time.

Twelve days later, and here we are announcing the launch of their completely re-developed and exceptionally slick hyper-local search service. And this thing rocks.

Yes, I know they're a client (so they are, quite literally, paying me to say this), and I've vacillated in the past over the fuzzy issue of promoting clients on my blog - but I can't not love this service.

Simple thumbnail of what it does: other search engines and business directories are generally pretty good when you want to find specific information by address or business name. They're not usually so good at combining the concepts of categories and neighbourhoods.

Google Maps, for example, can tell me how to drive from my home address to our regular dentist's office - but it wasn't much use a few weeks ago when I had a dental emergency on the weekend and needed to find the nearest emergency clinic to the Beach.

ZipLocal is perfect for that kind of search, or for finding sushi joints near the office, or a place to get my shoes fixed if they suddenly spring a leak in Ahuntsic. And I love the way it lets me do things like flip the full details of a listing as an SMS message to my cellphone. Groovy. OK, I'm gushing. Sorry.

The service is still in beta at the moment; they're busily adding more and more info to the directory and rolling out new features over the next few weeks. I'm hoping there'll be a mobile version at some point in the future, and a blog widget would be nice. I'll shut up now, but check it out for yourself - especially if you're in Toronto or Montreal (where the data is deepest right now). Let me know what you think.

I popped down to the Carlu for my panel session at the ICE07 ("Interactive Content Exchange") conference this afternoon.

The topic of the panel was "Blogging for Dollars: Monetizing Blogs & Podcasts". Stuart MacDonald moderated, with Ryanne Hodson, Shel Israel, Mark Evans and I as the guest spokespundits.

Sadly, I really was only able to pop down and had to pop back out pretty fast. Just way too busy to attend more of the conference - four new clients in the space of about 10 days and rather more than the usual insanity at home. Long story. I've been getting a great taste of the conference by following my boss Joe's live blogging, though.

I'm afraid I was also a little underwhelmed with how my own panel went. We touched on some interesting points, but I felt that we didn't really get to dig too deep into the thornier issues.

I had four main points of disappointment:

1. Consensus is boring.
My esteemed panelists and I have already drunk deep of the Social Media Kool-Aid. We're all passionate advocates of blogging, podcasting, vlogging, etc. And we've all, in one way or another, made some money because of our blogs. Panels are most interesting when there's some vigorous debate, IMHO. Not to say that this was a complete kissyfest, but there was certainly a broad and congenial spirit to the whole thing.

At one point in the session, I found myself wishing there was some scumbag marketer on the panel - an astroturfing specialist of the Penguin Army persuasion, perhaps. Some one to shake a little Tabasco into the oatmeal.

2. What about the ethics?
I felt we paid lip service to the transparency/authenticity issues. OK, so perhaps "ethics" is too grand a word here, but there are difficult questions of integrity and honesty in some of the paid blogging threads we touched on, and I don't feel we really gave them much air time.

3. The bizarre room layout.
It's extremely hard to get a good conversation going with the audience in the kind of staging we saw at ICE. There was a good 20 foot gap - kind of a mosh pit - between the front row of seats and the raised stage. We panelists were parked up on stools with lapel microphones that were taped to the furniture, restricting our range of movement. Then they lit the stage with intense lights, making it really hard for us to even see the audience. That was frustrating.

4. My own performance.
Perhaps it was the pressure of being in such terrific, intelligent company as Shel, Mark, Ryanne, and Stuart - but I felt that my own contributions to the discussion were less articulate and a lot less interesting than I'd have liked.

I found myself reaching for many of the same easy examples and well-worn ideas we've all cited in similar situations in the past. Not that they're bad examples, per se, but there wasn't an awful lot of fresh and valuable new thought being offered - by me, at least. I can't say I really helped to give the audience their money's worth - but at least I didn't actually fall off my precariously high stool (although, as Shel commented later, that might have added some much-needed humour to the rather dry discussion).

Must try harder.

I'm indebted to Andy Nulman, who keeps the terrific "Pow! Right Between The Eyes!" blog, for finding and posting what may be one of the best images I've seen on the web so far this year - or ever, for that matter:


As Andy says: if you have to ask why this is so incredibly cool, you probably wouldn't get it - but I'll explain anyway...

The Mickey Mouse figurine is the result of a collaboration between Japanese company Roen, Medicom and Disney (yes, it's apparently officially-sanctioned by the House of Mouse). They've taken Pennie Smith's iconic photo from the front of my all-time favourite album and
helped make Mickey seem a whole lot cooler in the process.

Now I just need to find out where you can actually buy one of these...

OK, yes - I'm a geek.

As if Twitter wasn't already distracting enough, now there's Twittervision - an interactive map that pops up random tweets from all across the World. It's an endless parade of tiny glimpses into the online lives of the Twitterati. Kind of global nano-blogging petri dish.

If you're already wrestling with Continuous Partial Attention issues, do NOT click that link above.

It's conference craziness for the next few weeks in Toronto, with at least four big events coming up between now and the summer lull.

Next week, I'm on a panel at ICE 2007 discussing "Blogging for Dollars: Monetizing Blogs & Podcasts". Stuart MacDonald is moderating, with Ryanne Hodson, Mark Evans, and Shel Israel
on the panel. I'll be the bloke on the end of the row looking meek and a little overawed. (Shel will also be guest of honour for this month's Third Tuesday (on a Wednesday), as Joe points out).

April brings Webcom 2007 to the UofT convention center. I'm not slated to be speaking at this one, but I'm looking forward to catching up with Jon Husband, Elizabeth Lane Lawley, Kate Trgovac, and finally getting to meet Euan Semple while they're all in town.

Looking deeper into Spring, I'm going to be presenting a session at the IT360 Conference on May 1st. My friend Jai Cole, long-time producer of the Network World and Linux World events, has pulled four mainstream shows in under this new banner. I'm giving a talk titled "The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum: Managing The Impact of Blogging and Social Software in the Corporate Environment" for an audience of IT professionals and managers. Should be a hoot.

Rounding off the season is the hotly-anticipated Mesh 2.0, where I think I'm going to be co-presenting a workshop session - more details on that shortly.

I'm going to need a new business card file...

I'm a little late in posting a St. Patrick's Day message - rather too busy enjoying the weekend with the family.

Yesterday was filled with low-key fun: hanging out with the kids, enjoying Charlie's hockey game (6-2 win, pulling them back to the top of their league playoffs), grocery shopping, feasting on traditional corned beef, champ, and kale, finished up with some completely non-traditional escapist relaxation - watching Casino Royale on DVD (terrific stuff).

For those who might be wondering: yes, I did fall off the wagon. The bottle of 16 year old Bushmill's Malt in the cupboard was calling to me. We figured St. Pat's was the one day we should all be allowed to relax our Lenten abstinence just a little.

On which note, there's a little booklet that has been knocking around our kitchen for years, featuring "Favourite Irish Recipes". I've no idea where this came from, but it's a great little sampler of traditional Irish fare.


Paging through it yesterday morning, I found a page that startled me. In between the recipes for Cod's Roe and Urney Pudding, the most unusual recipe in the book has to be the one for something euphemistically described as "Potato Wine". That's not quite what we would have called it growing up. Mountain Tea or Poitín would be more like it.

The recipe calls for 2lb of potatoes, 2lb of raisins, 4lb of brown sugar, 1 pint of fresh wheat (de-husked), water, yeast, and a Campden tablet. This is one recipe I've no intention of trying out (although I'll confess I'm tempted). Distilling such a concoction in Canada (and most other parts of the World), even if only for home consumption, wouldn't be legal. But I'm fascinated by the description provided, by the closing advice to "take care to judge the potency of the brew!" and, most of all, I'm just quietly delighted to encounter this recipe in such an innocuous little volume.

Happy St. Patrick's Day to you - whatever you're drinking.

"Too much of anything is good for nothing. Too much good whiskey is barely enough."

Today would be a good day to eat pizza for lunch, enjoy a slice of apple pie, munch on some pine nuts, and wash it all down with a refreshing glass of pineapple juice (or perhaps a pina colada).

Yes, it's Einstein's birthday, and the day maths geeks the world over celebrate that irrational number sometimes known as Archimedes' Constant or the Ludolphine Number.

Lots of fine ideas for celebrating Pi Day to be found through a little casual Googling. Did you know, for example, that you can calculate Pi by throwing frozen hot dogs? Sounds like a constant source of fun.

This is a rather interesting move from the Globe and Mail.

In an effort to encourage further engagement with their online edition, they've launched a "Join the Conversation and Win!" contest. Between now and April 8, anyone posting a comment on a story at theglobeandmail.com (including comments on any of the Globe's official blogs) will be entered into a prize draw. At the end of the contest period, one randomly-selected commenter will win $10,000.

It strikes me as an odd little contest, but I can't think of any good reason to dislike it.

Simply by commenting on some of my favourite Canadian journoblogs - including those written by Keith McArthur or Mathew Ingram - I get a chance to win $10K. What's not to like?

The BlogFlak Resources blog has a useful post advising caution in moving or deleting an old blog.

The author flags the very real possibility that an old, abandoned blog URL could be taken over, with whatever link traffic you may have built up co-opted for nefarious purposes:

"Never, ever delete your old blog even if you have no use for it again, that is, unless you don’t mind having it taken over by blog spammers. There’s an ever increasing use of automated software that can detect when someone stops using a blog address and it WILL be taken over..."

Excellent tip. The sad truth is - you don’t even have to delete your old blog to find your self squatted by scammers.

If you build up traffic on a blog at one location, then switch it to a different domain, there’s a good chance you can find yourself hosed one way or another anyway - depending on your platform. Moving domains (or blog platforms) naturally saps your Googlejuice - that’s just a fact of life. But when your old blog gets squatted and someone else starts dining on your link gravy, well that just plain sucks.

This exact thing happened to me some years ago, when I switched from Blogger's free Blog*Spot hosting service to my own domain. I wrote about the experience here and then followed up with much more detail about how it happened (and precisely how painful it was) here.

It hurt. At the time, I was able to make enough noise about this that even Six Apart's Anil Dash left a comment on my blog offering to switch me to a TypePad site for a discount (thanks, Anil!).

The good news was that I was eventually able to get through to the right people at Google/Blogger Support and get my old URL back. The restoration of the Blog*Spot domain was far from a perfect fix, however, as all the old content and links had been blown away, and with them all the hard-won Googlejuice from my first three years of blogging.

I later saw the same kind of thing happen at my erstwhile employer, Marqui, when they switched their corporate blog from blog.marqui.com to marqui.com/blog - losing many months of Googlejuice and killing thousands of links in the process. Ack.

The lesson here: think long and hard about where your blog will live, and plan on it living there forever.

I'm overdue in pointing to this.

My antipodean, globe-trotting mate, Paull Young, has posted an episode of his excellent "Forward Podcast", featuring a discussion the two of us recorded in an alcove we christened "Podcast Nook" at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in NYC.

It was a splendid opportunity for me to prattle on at length about the importance of reading in this business. We put so much focus on the essential writing skills one needs to succeed in Public Relations, and yes: of course you have to be able to write.

But it's equally important, to me at least, to know that you're giving your brain a good work out with the material on your night stand.

Read first; then we'll see if you can write.

"Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity."

Once again, dear friends, March 1st has come and gone and I've been hit by the realisation that I utterly failed to mark my own "blogiversary" for about the fourth straight year in a row.

As of March 1st, 2007, this blog has been up and running for six straight years (or one metric aeon in Interweeb time).

Of course, not one of you sent me any kind of a "Happy Blogday" message or a cake or anything, but then given my own apparent indifference to the passing of the blog years, I'll forgive you.

The first time I remember missing my own "Blogday" was back in 2003. I'm reposting here an updated version of what I wrote back then, as I'm still quietly and smugly amused by the thing...


Taking the glass-half-full POV, I'm choosing to see this non-event for what it really is: an epoch-defining moment of mass Collaborative IndifferenceTM on a scale not seen before.

Never in the field of human conflict was so little cared about not much by so few readers.

Indeed, I think we can safely say that this was the first time in the brief history of the weblog phenomenon that the entire Blogosphere was absolutely united in not giving a tinker's cuss about a nodal point in this magnificent shared narrative being woven by us all.

So utterly unanimous was our apathy in this respect that, in truth, even I failed to give a stuff about the passing of what might conceivably be considered a quite extraordinarily insignificant anniversary.

If only we could harness this awesome power and put it to good use! Imagine the effect of such grand scale Collaborative Indifference directed towards the situation in Iraq, for example.

If the massed might of the American military machine could only be infected with this entirely healthy attitude of impassive lack of interest. David Petraeus could yell until he was blue in the face - not one of those U.S. squaddies would be bothered to crawl out of their bunks and head into town to kick up trouble.

I think I'm onto something here. Off to see my IP lawyer tomorrow (heck if British Telecom could attempt to patent the hyperlink, surely there's room for a patent on "who gives a monkey's"?).