ohryan.ca

A Web Developer in Winnipeg

  • Canadian Tech News, September 9th

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    A bit of a slow news week this week. I blame Labour Day.

    Vidéotron’s cellular network goes live today
    Quebec internet and cable TV provider launched it’s wireless offering today. This is the second new celluar network (after Wind) to spawn from the wireless spectrum auction a couple years ago. The service claims to cover 90% of the province. Assuming you don’t want to use your phone out of province, their voice packages are not bad and data starts at $5/mo for 50MB.

    Gap launches Canadian web store
    In a classic example of a US giant completely missing out on the Canadian market, it only took the Gap 10 years to launch a dot-ca store. So go nuts Canadians, buy some jeans like it’s 1999.

    RCMP attempting to kill Craigslist erotic services
    Craigslist censoring it’s adult section has been all over the US-centric tech news this week. Hearing these stories I just kind of assumed that Craigslist was censoring the section across the site. But apparently no one except the RCMP bothered to take a look at Craigslist’s non-US domains. If you take a look at craiglist.ca, you’ll find the erotic section alive and well.

  • Google Chrome, Now More Piratey

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    Sometime in the past 24hrs my copy of Google Chrome updated to version 6. Along with a more native UI, it now sports a bold red skull and cross bones when you visit a site with an unverified SSL certificate. How awesome is that?!

  • Canadian Tech News, September 1st – CRTC, Telco Refunds, WiFi is Bad, Google Games

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    This week – in a bid to stay relevant to consumers – CRTC made a couple of good decisions; the cell phone industry still sucks; wifi wackos and Google acquisitions.

    Canada avoids broadband duopolies, keeps line-sharing alive
    In a decision that’s most relevant to Eastern Canadians – where telecom competitions actually exists – the CRTC ruled in favour of the little guy. After 4 years of flip-flopping the CRTC ruled that large cable and DSL ISPs such as Bell and Rogers must share their lines with smaller competitors at the same bandwidth speeds offered to their own customers. Unfortunately the ruling isn’t 100% good, the CRTC said it’s still ok to filter traffic and throttle things like p2p. (CBC coverage)

    MTS, Bell, Telus forced to rebate customers and service rural communities
    Get a load of this convoluted government logic:

    In 2002, the CRTC allowed phone companies to charge above their normally regulated price caps so that new competitors entering the market for home phones — primarily cable companies such as Rogers and Vidéotron — could undercut them.

    The extra charges went into deferral accounts, which over the years amounted to $1.6 billion. Phone companies were allowed to draw on these accounts to lower the wholesale rates they charged competitors…

    The rest of it was supposed to be spent on rural broadband. Turns out, 8 years later the telco’s haven’t spent a whole lot of that money “the total remaining amount has risen to $770 million…” Yesterday the CRTC ruled that $421 million of the cache has to be spent expanding rural service, $310 million goes back to urban customers in the form of $25 – $90 rebates. Don’t ask about the other $39million, they’re probably sending it on internet filters or something.

    The WiFi Debate is not over
    So a drama professor named Fancy and a Cold War era microwave expert named Tower walk into a bar…
    The head of the drama department at Brock University “…took the unusual step of issuing a news release to warn staff about Wi-Fi dangers.” I guess he’s trying to upstage Health Canada. I really don’t know what else to say about this ridiculous FUD.

    Canadians still paying the highest cell phone bills in the world
    Long story short: cellcos take in the highest average revenue per user at $55; we have the 5th lowest mobile penetration at around 75%; not only is mobile service expensive, it’s not affordable when compared against GDP per capita. Take a look at the wirelessnorth.ca post for all the fancy graphs and real analysis.

    Google buys Toronto-based  game developer
    In “me too” news, Google Canada has acquired a Toronto-based cross platform game developer SocialDeck.