A Web Developer in Winnipeg
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
This week – in my ongoing attempt to keep myself up to date on Canadian tech news – I came across two great sources:
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.
The Pomodoro Technique is one of those nebulous life hacks I’ve heard about on the internets in the past but never given much credence to. In 50 words or less: it’s a time-management method wherein you spend 25 minutes intently focused on a single task without distraction, then take a 5 minute break. Every 4 cycles you take a 15 minute break. As someone who works from home, distraction from social media (and sometimes household emergencies) are my main productivity killers, any time-management magic that could help me defend against those distractions would obviously improve my productivity.
After hearing Scott Johnson talk about Pomodoro on a few of his podcasts, I decided to give it a try last week. In all honesty, I did very little reading on the subject, I based my implementation on his description and reading through the (short) Wikipedia entry. In theory the Pomodoro Technique is supposed help you force yourself to stay 100% focused on a given task, by giving you a 5 minute break as a reward. At the end of the day, the sum of the breaks is should be less lost productivity than the sum of all memes, IM jokes, emails and reddit visiting, etc that you’d normally be distracted by throughout the day. It worked for me, for about 6 hours. Overall I had mixed feelings about Pomodoro.
My main productivity boost came from shutting down IM and twitter clients; turning off email checking; and making a conscious effort to avoid all web usage. After the first couple of pomodoros it became really easy for me to do this for a 25 minute stretch. Once I was in the zone, I felt really productive and got a lot of work done.
While 25 minutes was the prefect amount of time to try to trick myself into doing a small task, it didn’t leave a lot of time for larger tasks (hell, this blog post has taken me way more than 25 minutes to write) and it didn’t give me a lot of leeway to sync up with other people’s schedules. I found myself needing more than 25 minutes for some programming projects and I had to postpone a phone call in order to stay on target.
In conclusion: all that said, give it a shot. Especially if you’re self-employed or self-motivated. You’ll probably learn something about yourself, your workflow, the kinds of things that distract you the most. Who knows, it might be a better fit for you.
PS.
