ohryan.ca

A Web Developer in Winnipeg

  • People Suck At Email #8, Order Lists

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    After a 9 month hiatus I’ve been inspired to write another installment of “people suck at email.” In preparation for this post I read over the previous entries in the series, I realized that the previous post have been written from my perspective. I didn’t want this to turn into “people suck at emailing me” or “ohryan sucks at email.” My intention was to provide some useful tips for email and netiquette, not just annoying whinging.

    This installment of PS@E concerns the use of ordered list. When I write an email containing multiple questions or comments on a general topic, I find that it can be useful to track each separate point with an order list. By doing this the recipient has an easy way to refer back to specific points in the body of my email, it beats inline replies and awkward sentences that start with “Re: XYZ” or “When you said Acme…” I also find that writing in point form has the side effect of helping me keep my emails short and sweet.

    Of course, this system is completely useless if the recipient doesn’t honour the list items.

  • EFF THE CRTC!

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    As an adendum to my last post, I would like to extend a giant FU To the CRTC.

    Re: Skype and Google Voice

    Both services are prevented from offering Canadians incoming calls by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. CRTC rules require all phone providers to include enhanced 911, which enables emergency operators to automatically locate callers.

    ~ Nowak, Peter. “Google launches free voice calls from Gmail”, CBC.ca. Aug 25, 2010

  • Canadian Tech News, August 25th

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    This week – in my ongoing attempt to keep myself up to date on Canadian tech news – I came across two great sources:

    • Techvibes.com – they claim to be a “hyper local technology blog.” I don’t really know what that means, but they certainly have a great deal of Canadian Content.
    • @CDNTechNews on Twitter –  Ex-pat living in The UK put together a twitter account republishing a bunch of his favorite Canadian RSS feeds.

    Onto the news:

    Google Launches “Call Phones from Gmail” in Canada
    Today Google released a calling service allowing you to make free phone calls within North America via gChat. The big news here is that they released this for Canada and the USA at the same time! The even bigger news: google.com/voice is now accessible within Canada! I’m hoping this is an indication that full-fledged Google Voice will be available soon, with inbound numbers and the whole spiel. At the moment it’s limited to a call history for numbers dialed through gmail. Note: your language needs to be set to “English (US).”

    Federal Computers Caught Vandalizing Wikipedia
    In two separate cases Federal government computers have been implicated in some pretty nasty Wikipedia vandalization. In the first case an employee at the Federal Corrections services HQ re-titled the Official Languages Act, changing it to “Quebec’s Nazi Act.” In another incident, someone at Air Force HQ in Winnipeg removed quotes  critical of the Joint Strike Fighter and accused a politician of using the word “awesome.” This genius tried to edit the article 9 times during work hours. Clearly the internet is serious business and these people should all be sent to jail.

    Saskatchewan Man Charged with “crashing an internet chatroom”
    In a story that sounds like it was pulled from the archives circa 1998, a northern Saskatchewan man is being charged with “mischief, illegal use of a computer and possession of a device to commit a computer offence” in an apparent DDOS on “the chatroom of a commercial website in New York.” I’m really curious about what constitutes a “device to commit a computer offense.”

    Canadian Online Ad Revenue Growing
    In optimistic news for Publisher, online advertising is expected to each $2Billion dollars in 2010 only two years after hitting the $1Billion mark.

    Telus Wants CRTC to Keep Eye on Shaw
    As you may be aware Calagary-based Shaw recently purchased Winnipeg-based Canwest’s broadcasting assets.  In other words a large ISP (and backbone provider) now owns a bunch of TV stations. Telus is worried. You should be worried too. It’s a little early to tell, but there is a really possibility this could turn into a net neutrality issue. I’m sure the CRTC is wetting the rubber stamps as we speak.

    City of Ottawa Launching App Competition
    If you’re an Ontario resident, the city of Ottawa is looking for your “cool apps that make life easier for Ottawa residents.” They’re offering a total of $50,000 in prizes, with a top prize of $5,000. I’m a big fan of open-government initiatives, hopefully this is a trend we continue to see fan out across the country.