ohryan.ca

A Web Developer in Winnipeg

  • Google Reader is Dead. NewsWorthy.ca to the rescue!

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    NewsWorthy.ca NewsWorthy.ca is a project I’ve been working on for the past few months. In a nutshell, it’s a better way to get all the latest local news in one place. Sites like Reddit and Google News are a good way to get the “best” or “most important” stories of the day. But they sometimes fail at surfacing up to date, breaking news. If you’re a news hound like me, I think you’ll find NewsWorthy quite useful.

    With Google announcing their intentions to shut down Google Reader, today seemed like the perfect day to pull off the “alpha” wrapper and release it to the wild!

    At the moment, NewsWorthy only supports Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal. I’m looking for the best ((“best” means, updated frequently and intensely focused on local news)) news source in every Canadian city. If you’d like to recommend sources in your city, feel free to email me.

  • Mailbox.app – First Impressions

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    I got access to mailbox.app last night around midnight, have been using it all day.

    My very brief review:

    • The ability to mark emails to “read later” seems clever and works fairly well. It’s smart enough to know if it’s 1am and you tell it to read an email tomorrow, you actually mean at the beginning of the next day. All “later” email get’s placed in a gmail label [mailbox]/later.
    • The short/long swipe interface is cute and works fairly well. But get’s tedious with multiple emails. The app needs a better way to preform actions on multiple emails at once.
    • Overall the UI is great, in general.
    • I noticed that the pending email badge count is actually the number of email threads in your inbox, instead of the number of unread messages. This is acts as a great little nudge to inbox zero.

    That’s all for now.

  • Cause and Effect and IKEA

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    With the fervor surrounding the grand opening of IKEA’s Winnipeg store (their first new market in Canada since 1982, btw), the media, Twitter, bloggers, internet-trolls, your mom are all giving IKEA way to much credit.  They are confusing cause and effect.

    IKEA this year and The Jets return last year are not revitalizing our fair city. They are proof that we are once again a thriving “world class” city. A city Winnipeggers can be proud of, a city that is once again One Great City.

    Obviously IKEA and The Jets are two huge milestones. But there is a lot of other developments underway. Almost 2 years ago I wrote a post on /r/Winnipeg about how great I thought 2013 would be. As examples of the city’s progress I listed:

    • IKEA
    • 5 Target stores
    • An NHL team (cross your fingers)
    • Canadian Human rights museum
    • At least, two more awesome buildings downtown (Avenue building and Royal Bank renovations)
    • New Airport
    • A bunch of completed infrastructure projects (Disraeli, Osborne St Bridge, West Perimeter upgrades)
    • Phase 1 of BRT
    • alcohol in grocery stores (hopefully)
    • New Bombers stadium at the U of M
    • Renovated Children’s Museum
    • New area code (431)

    I’m sure there are tonnes and tonnes of smaller projects that could be added to the list.

    The classic Winnipeg apathy and self-loathing that has been such a part of the Winnipeg zeitgeist for as long as I can remember is no longer relevant.  The proof is in the lingonberry pudding.