Attic Topic
Welcome to the beta of the new saila.com. Send in your bugs.
Canada
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Canadian political slander
Keeping track of the various ways Canadian politicians insult one another from the perspective of a Canadian watching his country's election while living through an American election. -
CBC: near- or farsighted?
Recently Canada’s public broadcaster urged the CRTC to “reject old assumptions about new media” and claimed that the consumption of broadcast media is not being negatively effected by the Internet. -
Canada Day Rant
Living in the U.S. puts into context how important it is not to become complacent about Canada’s national perception. -
Noticing differences
When asked about the differences I’ve seen with the U.S. and Canada, my response has not been about the money, the accents, or the milk containers, but rather it involves the level of cultural tolerance. -
The Exlusion of Garth Turner
Garth Turner and I have a history. -
Remembering two Canadian media greats
This weekend Antonia Zebisias broke her blogging silence to remember Sid Adilman, one of Canada’s best entertainment journalists. He died this past Saturday and the paper he spent so much time at, the Toronto Star, remembers him well. -
Not-so quality TV
Last night, CBC broadcast an English-langauge remake of its Quebec arm’s hit sitcom, Rumeurs. This version, produced by the one and only Moses Znaimer, was well promoted and expectations were higher than normal for a Canadian show. -
Canada’s government on the brink
Now, it’s just a matter of minutes before the opposition parties in Canada’s parliament pass a motion of non-confidence in the Liberal government of PM². When that happens, Canadians will mark their ballots for the second time in less than two years — the date, likely Janaury 23, 2006. -
A social-democratic budget passes
Yes, there’s been a dearth of posts here; no, I don’t plan on turning this into a polictical blog. However, given the last two posts were about the Canadian government’s delicate position, consider this the third (and for now) concluding entry. -
Then again’
Okay, maybe the Gomery revelations will bring down the government. To be fair, my last post was based on the first day of leaked testimony. The subsequent revelations definitely make neither the Liberal party nor PM² look good. Nevertheless, I hope Mr. Wells is right — we don’t need another election a year after our last one. -
Gomery revelations won’t bring down the government
The Captain’s Quarters seems to have got itself a juicy scoop and some nice traffic from Canada. But with all the hyperbole coming from our media outlets (force a quick election, explosive and damning testimony, devastating impact on the minority Liberal government, and criminal charges against senior Liberals), keep in mind a few things: -
ITunes Canada has finally arrived.
After a lot of stumbles, Apple has launched a Canadian edition of it’s iTunes service. With 700,000 songs available for only 99¢ it maintains the less-than-a-buck/pound-a-song model here in Canada. The result means it’s cheaper to buy the same songs off of the Canadian iTunes than it is in U.S. or the U.K. -
ISPs freed
Just in time for Canada Day, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against ISPs paying royalties for music their users download. The move, pushed by SOCAN, was deemed impractical, unfair, and unconventional. One of the judges, Justice Ian Binnie, wrote: -
Two more seats
Two more seats, two more seats would have made things much better. Stupid FPTP -
Go vote
Election day in Canada, so stop reading this Canadians, and go vote. (Find your local polling station.) One more thing, if you’re thinking of voting Conservative in protest against the Liberals, make sure you understand the ideas of the Calgary School. -
A Royal pain in the…
The man behind the RBC crash and Eric Reguly on how the bank reacted -
Elections sites fail validity test
As I mentioned yesterday, Canada’s in the midst of a federal election so Joe Clark and I (along with some other members of WebStandards.TO) thought it’d be a good idea to see how accessible and valid the five major parties’ sites were. -
Rare political rant
I’ve also posted a rare (for this site, at least) political rant about a disturbing trend emerging in the current (Canadian) federal election -
Telcos revolution
The telecommunications industry, especially in -
Music industry fails to prove infringement
Canada’s Federal Court has ruled that the Canadian Recording Industry Association didn’t prove there was copyright infringement by the uploaders it was trying to sue. The judge, Justice Konrad von Finckenstein, also said that downloading isn’t illegal under the Canadian copyright law. The ruling, and its ramifications, will likely have a tremendous effect on Canadian cyberlaw. -
Canadian copyright ruling brings hope
A quick legal update, from Michael Geist, on Canadian copyright law -
meyerweb,com redesigns; standard-based Scrabble; Martin’s throne speech
Mr. Meyer has redesigned his site, and is using a neat little trick I built into my new design (who knows when anyone but me will see it). -
Conservative Web sites; Roots looking to sweatshops?
David Akin has written an article in The Globe and Mail that reviews the Conservative Party leadership candidates’ Web sites. But how do they do on the standards count? -
Martin threatens paulmartintime.ca
Yesterday was supposed to by my last post for the holidays, but the Liberal Party of Canada’s threats to sue a parody site — Paul Martim Time — couldn’t be ignored. As it looks the Prime Minister’s people were less than pleased about the site, and timed its moves to appear during a dead news cycle. I wonder whether they would have had such a problem with the site’s design had it been a site filled with compliments for PM²? -
CIRA to sue; Web design patterns
Well, the Canadian Recording Industry Association sure isn’t wasting anytime. According to the National Post, it will start suing Canadians who upload music early next year (downloading being legal in Canada, for now). -
Blue prize won’t be for MSNBC; Web generations; downloading legal; paulmartintime.ca
The well-designed Man in Blue is contemplating a regular prize for XHTML/CSS-based sites and wants to know your thoughts. (FWIW, I agree with Tom.) -
Au revoir, Ti Jean; usable Web fonts; Widgetopia; interviewing chofmann; limited copyright tariffs
Bye bye, mon Chrétien… I doubt the new guy will be as much fun as you were over the past decade. (For example, “I’m Feeling Lucky” Google search for "What is the worst blog in the world".) -
NYTimes on: the American perspective of Canada, flawed Ecstasy studies, and the iPod; bad HMTL
Yes, it requires registration — get used to it, registration is going to be the trend of ’04 — but The New York Times has a number of good pieces today, including: -
Advanced CSS ornamentation; four-column layouts; Chrétien profiled
The Literary Moose is known for his clever designs that push the limits of CSS (and also, though valid, tend only to work in Opera). And now, like a rule-breaking magician, he reveals a number of his tricks at the Nemesis Project to an awe-filled audience. -
New Liberal candidate
“The cries of various groups have reached my ears and call me forth…” The Liberal leadership race takes an interesting turn. -
MSN for Mac OS X; saila.com in Russian; decriminalizing pot; PNGs
Following on the release of a new version of Internet Explorer for the Mac (called MSN for Mac OS X), CodeBitch did tested it for the known CSS bugs in the previous version. The results were posted css-discuss. -
Copyright term extensions; Digital Web Magazine at seven
Canada looks to be following on the heels of the U.S. in granting copyright extensions. Here it’s been dubbed the “Lucy Maud Montgomery Copyright Term Extension Act” because the unpublished works by the creator of Anne of Green Gables would enter the public domain January 1, 2004 if this doesn’t pass. If it does, Anne would be protected until 2018. -
Congrats, Jack
Congratulations to my former prof, and the husband of my former councillor, Jack Layton on his victory today (despite the Net slowdown that delayed the first federal online election). May he help reinvigorate this country’s tired political landscape. -
XSLT; styling headlines; fighting copyright tariffs
Although I’m extremely busy right now I have the opportunity to finally practice what I preach about the separation of presentation and structure, and am finally realizing how valuable XSLT would be in a real-world situation. -
Harvard Mouse unpatentable
Well, one potentially scary chain of events has been stopped at the source. Canada’s supreme court has just ruled the so-called “Harvard mouse” cannot be patented -
Multiculturalism and privacy
Canada takes pride in describing its implementation of multiculturalism using the metaphor of a tapestry (or salad bowl , or mosaic) to contrast with the idea of a melting pot. But recent attempts by the U.S. government to fingerprint some foreign-born Canadians crossing the border prompted the federal privacy commissioner to suggest passports no longer display the place of birth. -
Star redesign; responding to Asper; privacy in Canada
The Toronto Star, Canada’s biggest paper, is celebrating 110 years in print by redesigning itself (due a week today), and running a retrospective series. Some of the more interesting ones are about the paper itself, including a great piece on the Star’s legendary switchboard and a bittersweet reminisce of the newsrooms of old. -
Netscape 7; Canadian net user’ database
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eBay buys PayPal; new leaders
The little company that began as a nifty way to share money via Palm devices, has been bought by the Web site that began as a way to trade Pez dispensers. Though both systems deal in hard dollars, this long-expected deal could prove to become a stronger beachhead for the cashless society. -
Muppet Manley
Nearly, four years ago I participated in my first real media scrum while covering a story for CANOE Money. Bill Gates, and a then Beaker-like John Manley were announcing a $1-million donation to Canada’s SchoolNet. -
Mozilla 0.9.9; increasing the copyright tariff
Mozilla 1.0 is almost—finally—here. Version 0.9.9 has been released and its a good one. Download and use it now. -
Newfoundland’s new name
As I work on a piece about one journalist’s attempts to make money online, I thought I’d share something completely unrelated: the province that can always get a laugh is changing its name. -
Coverage of the Olympic announcement
In the spirit of my little test of sites during the elections, I checked at some of Canada's big ones for coverage of the Olympic announcement between about 10:05 a.m. and 10:20 a.m.: -
New-media grants
Mark Evans has an interesting take on the government's plan to give the new-media industry $108 million. He argues, in his column on CANOE Money, that the plan is exactly what should not be done. -
Buzz.ca
Missed the big picture of Buzz.ca completely when a former colleague of mine pointed out the Chrétienizer late last year. -
Summit of Americas
The media coverage of the Summit of Americas has, surprisingly, been almost fair. The Internet has allowed the indie media outlets get their message out as quickly -
Election results (or how the big sites fared)
How Canadian news sites fared during the night of a federal election. -
Taxes
The joy of taxes. -
Top 100 English-Canadian Books
This list of the top 100 English-Canadian books were chosen by the University of Toronto Bookstore Review in April 1999.