The 100 Best Movies of 2008 - Times Online
If You Liked This, You’re Sure to Love That – NY Times
This article, by the fantastic Clive Thompson, discusses the Netflix contest, where programmers try to improve the movie recommendation formula that Netflix uses. Netflix is the popular American DVD-by-mail subscription company (in
While the top researchers keep getting better at making movie suggestions, one of the things that stumps them is the “Napoleon Dynamite problem”.
30 Days of DRM: 30 Things You Can Do
Educate yourself about the proposed Canadian Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), which looks to be even more restrictive than the current American counterpart. While the current legislation is widely seen as being fair and appropriate, Michael Geist has a list of 30 ways that you can make your opinions known about the draconian changes to the Canadian DMCA that tilt control toward the biggest corporate media companies.
Michael Geist is the best Canadian journalist covering digital media issues, such as copyright, DRM and the Internet. He is also not afraid of calling things as they are.
The Royal Canadian Legion: Poppy & Remembrance
November 11 is Remembrance Day in Canada, marking the date that ended the First World War. For more on the history of Remembrance Day, the poppy and Flanders Field, the Canadian Legion's page explains in more detail.
William Gibson Hates Futurists : tyeebooks.ca
An interview with Vancouver's own writer William Gibson about Vancouver, futurists, terrorism and his new book, Spook Country from The Tyee.
Today's Link source: Boing Boing
Engadget Mobile
I'm in the market for a new cellular phone. I love my old phone to bits, but the buttons don't work so well any more.
While there are some exciting phones that are available (and some that are not available), unfortunately Canadian wireless companies seem to be working together, because they all seem to offer expensive voice plans, overly long contracts, high cancellation charges, high fees, low-featured phones and/ or ridiculously high data download rates.
Engadget Mobile seems to have the latest and best news on North American mobile phones, and that includes Canada. So if and when the situation changes, and Canada gets the iPhone and/or reasonable data rates, I'll be ready to pounce.
Sacred Destinations Travel Guide
There's often something spectacular about sacred places. People are inspired to create spaces that are more meaningful than the other places where they work, live and play. This often translates into a place that is unique, complex, beautiful and timeless, and installs a sense of awe in mortals. Sacred places are some of the oldest and best preserved architectural structures in the world, and can be key to understanding the values and dreams of a culture.
Many of the sites in Sacred Destinations have photographs, maps, links to other sites, and a description and history of the place.
They have included all of the favourite sacred places I’ve been, including the torii/ arches in Fushimi Inari, Japan, the mosaics in Ravenna, Italy, the reclining Buddha in Bangkok, Thailand, and the Notre Dame Basilica in Montreal, Canada.
It’s a great site to visit when you’re planning a trip to a foreign vacation, whether that means everything you need to get started on a pilgrimage, or a few tips of great places to check out on a backpacking trip.
Today's Link source: Digg
I'm away for a couple of days, and haven't been able to update. Have a
great Canada Day weekend, and listen to some Tragically Hip, Barenaked
Ladies, Sarah Mclaughlin, or K-OS.
Chris
Aboriginal Culture and Traditions Storytelling
June 21 is National Aboriginal Day in Canada.
In honour of this date, today's link has a collection of oral stories told by elders from Canadian First Nations perspectives, and include: First Nations Stories, Métis Stories, and Inuit Stories.
Today's Link source: Google Suggest
Exclaim Magazine
Exclaim is Canada's authoritative music rag, with profiles of the coolest up-and-coming artists, playlist charts from Canada's college radio stations, and have indie pop culture news (not to be confused with the trashy mainstream news).
They do feature a lot of new Canadian music, but have also profiled exciting global scenes as well. If you know anything about Canadian music these days, you'll know it's doing okay. The reviews are extensive, featuring films, DVDs, concerts, and music from every genre, including: heavy metal, electronic, hip hop, alt-country, pop and rock (though not mainstream), punk, funk, experimental and avant garde, soul and world.
It's the magazine that people WISH that Rolling Stone and Spin were.
When I lived in Japan, Exclaim was the music magazine that I chose to subscribe to because of their excellent pop culture coverage. The low international rates were a bonus. In Canada, the hardcopy version is certainly worth more than the free cover price.
Today's Link source: I have no clue
How to Mash Up RSS Feeds with Yahoo Pipes - MacLife
About a month ago, Linkjockey published a story about Yahoo! Pipes. The link that day explained the Pipes really well, but today's link will hold your hand through the steps of creating your own RSS feed mashup with Pipes. The tutorial takes you through the steps.
It IS really easy to use the Pipes, and get start remixing content from the web.
My goal was to create an uber-RSS feed for sports teams. It would be an aggregation of news stories from around the world. As a proof of concept, I figured that I could pick the two hockey teams battling for the National Hockey League's Stanley Cup: the Ottawa Senators and the Anaheim Ducks. See the examples on the sidebar, or click the links below for full feeds.
Ottawa Senators RSS news feed
Anaheim Ducks RSS news feed
This could have a lot of value for drafting picks in hockey pools. Let me know what you think!
Today's Link source: MacLife magazine
CBC Radio 3
Happy Victoria Day!
Victoria Day is a Canadian holiday that honors the birthday of Queen Victoria, who died 106 years ago. In some parts of Canada, Victoria Day holiday is colloquially known as May Two-Four. This phrase is for two reasons: the holiday falls on the Monday on, or before, May 24th, and a two-four is slang for a case of 24 cans of beer.
Celebrating Victoria Day with free independent Canadian Music from CBC Radio 3 or listen on your ipod by subscribing to their podcasts.
Today's Link source: CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)
Expo 86 (tribute site)
May 2, 2007 marked the 21st anniversary of Expo 86 in Vancouver. If you're interested in this historic event in Vancouver's past (or wondering about that Death Cab for Cutie song), this is the best Expo 86 site.
The site is lovingly put together with an Expo map, descriptions of the pavillions, trivia (Expo ended up attracting over 50 million people, but losing CDN$311 million!) , and so much more. It's obvious that so much love and hard work has gone into creating this very deep site.
Of course, people are drawing comparisons between Expo 86 and the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. If you have fond memories of Expo, or are even curious, it's well worth a visit. Something's happening here!
There are additional Expo 86 pictures on Flickr.
Today's Link source: Brian Walks and the Google
Joost
Skype totally disrupted the long-distance calling industry with free phone calls over the internet. Now the founders of Skype have started a new enterprise, Joost. Joost aims to do for TV over the internet, what Skype did for long distance calls.
Imagine Youtube with real "tv shows" from real television, combined with internet user content. It's full-screen on your computer, and on-demand, so you can watch it anytime you want. It's for Mac and Windows. And it's free, like television should be. Joost currently has channels from Canada's Much Music, poker tournaments, Ministry of Sound , Vancouver's Nettwerk record label, World's Strongest Man, Fight Network, documentaries, videos and more. Maybe it's not "essential" TV yet, but I'm sure more content will be added all the time.
They started under the code name "The Venice Project". At the moment they are in beta-mode, so you have to sign-up and wait for them to offer you the software to download. I got accepted yesterday, downloaded the software and I'm pretty impressed. The software works really well and the video quality looks really good. This is going to be huge!
Best TV listings for Canadians: Sympatico / MSN TV Listings/ TV Guide
Mrs. Linkjockey doesn't like me flipping through every single channel, trying to find something interesting to watch on the boob tube, and the local cable company's listing is too slow for me. Yesterday, I saw a review of all the TV listings sites on the Internet... for Americans. You enter your postal code, and the sites tell you what's on television in your area. None of the sites worked for Canadian postal codes. None.
So I did some of my own research, and discovered that the best results for me, the best TV listings for Canadians comes from old reliable TV Guide . They show listings for cable, digital cable, satellite providers and antenna for your postal code, over a 2 hour window. They show all the channels on the same window, and if you click on the name of a show, you get a little synopsis. In other words, they provide everything you're looking for, without actually streaming the show to you.
Honourable mention: Canadian Cable Listings from TV Times
If your TV provider isn't listed on TV Guide, TV Times may have a better selection of TV providers. The only downside is that they only show 20 channels at once. And my dad was telling me that TV magazines are dying.
This week, with the help of US regulators, they will begin charging more money in royalties from internet radio stations than from broadcast radio stations. I don't think anyone is making much money from internet radio, and if this change is enforced, it will force public radio, not-for-profit hobby stations, as well as the legal, for-profit stations, off of the internet. Goodbye internet radio! Too bad for music fans! No new music for you. Im glad the NPR is fighting the good fight to stop these tyrants from destroying music completely. I've made a personal decision to not purchase any music from RIAA labels this year. I've spent thousands of dollars on music, but I've decided not to support the music mafia any more. That's why I've made Tuesdays at Linkjockey about music; it's to help you find new music and to convince you that good music still exists. End of rant. A Linkjockey shout out to Vancouver's Spirit of the West for putting on a spectacular St. Patrick's day show at Vancouver's best concert venue, the Commodore Ballroom. They're a Celt-rock and folk-rock institution in this city.
The RIAA is the Recording Industry Association of America, which is an association of the major record labels in the USA.CD sales have declined in recent years, and the RIAA is trying to find new ways to make money; such as shutting down Napster, trying to ban mp3 players, taxing blank cds and mp3 players in Canada, and getting lists of customers from internet providers and universities and extorting money from mp3 downloaders. The RIAA don't seem to acknowledge or address their other problems, namely that the music they've been promoting stinks. Their marketing tool (radio) is stale. After downloading mp3s, people don't want to buy a full album of filler to hear the 1 or 2 hits, and they don't need a shiny plastic disc to listen to music. With the tactics the RIAA is using, in the end they wind up punching themselves in the face by alienating and attacking the biggest music fans.
everystockphoto.com - your source for free photos
everystockphoto.com is based in beautiful Vancouver, BC, Canada, as was the fantastic photo-posting site Flickr, before it was bought by Yahoo!.
Google Grants Canada
Traditional advertising companies are struggling, as newspaper readership and TV viewership decline. People are spending more time on the internet, and the big advertising winner is Google. By putting paid search results beside search results and third-party websites, Google is doing very, very well.
In return, Google has created a philanthropic program to give free advertising to registered charities in Canada, the USA and other countries. Fill out the online form, and if you're approved, your great charity will be harnessing the power of Google's search to reach the online hoardes.
Tonight, I'll be bringing up this idea at a meeting for the fantastic camp I'm involved in.
Energy Alternatives - Alternative Energy sources, alternate energy, solar panel, photovoltaics
This Canadian company's website is a great resource for those wanting to learn more about environmentally-friendly energy solutions to global warming.
From the first steps of learning about different kinds of alternative energy, to instructions, to supplies for building your own project; there is a lot of easy-to-understand, practical information at this site! Among other things, they cover microhydro projects, solar water heaters, solar panels or wind generation projects.
One day, you might even be able to sell energy back to the Power Company!
