Time to switch (back) to Shaw? -- Telus to start charging BC and Alberta customers for data overusage

Telus is not getting any kudos for its decision to begin charging BC and Alberta customers who go over their monthly Internet data plan limit. This would include any Internet services accessed through Telus' Optik TV service. Shaw has no such plans (yet). Telus will be phasing in the charges between March and July.

Here is the Telus online statement about its course of action. And a CBC News story about customer backlash. I'm sure Shaw would love to welcome (back) any disgruntled Telus customers.

Freebase.com winding up

I see that Freebase, founded in 2007 with a goal of becoming a "Wikipedia for structured data" is being shut down by June 20, 2015. Users will be directed to Wikidata. I wrote about Freebase for the February 2008 issue of Searcher magazine, so kind of sad to see its demise.

"Sharknado" vs "Atlantic Rim"

Not sure which is worse, a tornado depositing living sharks into the streets of Los Angeles, or monsters from the deep attacking Florida and being beaten back by robot fighters. On the latter, did you think I was talking about the new movie "Pacific Rim" or had made a mistake in the title of this blog post? No, because a TV movie aired in Canada on July 13, 2013 called "Atlantic Rim", which right down to the title and plot could not be a more direct ripoff of "Pacific Rim".

The copyright lawyers must be sharpening their pencils. After all, there has been a legal battle waging over the use of the title "The Butler" which originally was a 1916 movie now owned by Warner Brothers. The Weinstein Company thought it could use the title "The Butler" for its upcoming film that stars Forest Whitaker as Cecil Gaines, a White House butler employed by all the presidents between Eisenhower and Reagan. I too had always thought that you could not copyright a title, however, this dispute seems to be based on other legal and non-legal issues. According to this Huffington Post story on July 9, Harvey Weinstein told "CBS This Morning host Norah O'Donnell, there have been 122 instances of movies using the same title as other movies in Hollywood history, including the recent comedy "The Heat," which shares its name with three other films." As others have pointed out, something else is going on.

Might be an interesting project to put together a Web site called Ripoff Central or something like that which documents "Hollywood" vs indie film ripoffs. I'm sure the producers of "Atlantic Rim" will defend its existence on the basis of you can't copyright an idea, only its execution. After I watch my recording of "Atlantic Rim" I'll try and report back. Sadly, I never recorded "Sharknado" but I hope to catch it in a rerun.

Are you still here or have you transmigrated to another Earthlike world?

It's now officially the End of the World Day according to those who have misinterpreted the Long Count Calendar of the ancient Mayan civilization. Are you still here or do you think you've transmigrated to another Earthlike world that's just like the one and the life you thought you left behind?

Welcome to the end of the world Mayan style

It's supposed to be the end of the world tomorrow Mayan style. Hope you're ready for whatever happens, even if it doesn't. At least it's a Friday. TGIF takes on a whole new meaning.

For more news on the 2012 phenomenon check out those Google News results.

The f-bomb that keeps on ticking

What do actor Tom Hanks and the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama have in common?

They both used the f-bomb in October 2012.

Tom Hanks purposefully on a talk show while speaking in character from one of his roles in the movie Cloud Atlas and the Dalai through a transcription error while speaking at Brown University in Rhode Island.

Buy American? President Obama bought French game Just Dance 3 for Christmas

According to a tweet from French multinational computer gaming company Ubisoft, United States President Obama obtained their game Just Dance 3 as a family Christmas present. So much for Buy American! What's that about Do what I say, but not what I do....

The Ubisoft tweet also caught the attention of the venerable Forbes with this headline
"President Barack Obama Endorses Ubisoft's Just Dance 3 Videogame For Christmas". Forbes missed the obvious Buy American contradiction.

Government of BC says "Canada Starts Here"

The Victoria Times Colonist newspaper reported on October 8, 2011 that the Government of BC "changed the province's international brand of 'Canada's Pacific Gateway' to 'Canada Starts Here'".... The slogan seems to have been unveiled in late September 2011 as part of a jobs plan announcement by Premier Christy Clark.

I wonder how the East Coast feels about that since they have more of a claim to that slogan than BC does.

A search of Google for "Canada Starts Here" reveals some interesting other uses by other parts of the country:

Canada Starts Here: The Great Waterway, a site promoting Ontario's 1000 Islands region

A Pro-Life Canada Starts Here, the tagline and motto of the Student Life Link site for high school students against abortion.

Your Fly-in Fishing Trip to Canada Starts Here! if you're into fly-in fishing trips in Ontario

And who's going to argue with Fodor's Travel Intelligence which clearly states in its Newfoundland and Labrador Travel Guide section "Canada starts here, from the east, on the island of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic. Known as Mile One, the province's capital of St. John's is North America's most easterly point and its oldest city."

Extreme Symphony Sports, only in Victoria, BC

In what's being called a first, brave members of the Victoria Symphony Orchestra will take part in the first Victoria Extreme Symphony Sports event following the mountain bike JumpShip event on a barge in the Inner Harbour on June 10, 11 and 12, 2011. This is all in anticipation of a new program as part of Victoria Symphony Splash, details as yet to be released by organizers.

Ok, I made all that up, but to give you an idea of the possibilities I've concocted this artwork from a couple of items from the Microsoft Office clip art gallery.

Have you tried the new Gmail Motion?

That was a great April Fool's gag from Google: Gmail Motion (http://mail.google.com/mail/help/motion.html). I was intrigued when I saw the "New! Gamil Motion Beta". That exclamation mark gets me every time. And if it's from Google, it must be true. Well, it was truly an April Fool's experience, especially the part about Google Docs Motion, the next breakthrough in collaborative document management.

Has The Bieb (Justin Bieber) lost his voice?

Did anyone else hear (pardon the pun) that The Bieb (Justin Bieber) lost his voice today (April 1, 2011)?

New dance track in progress, "Don't Swallow Your Mobile"

I'm working on another dance track called "Do Not Swallow the Mobile" or "Don't Swallow Your Mobile" inspired by the media story of a crocodile in a Ukrainian aquarium that swallowed a visitor's cellphone when she tried to take phone. Luckily, the croc did not take her arm as well though I imagine it was probably far enough away not to be a threat.

Here are some Google News stories about this incident.

Warriors in the City public art fundraising campaign for 2011-2012, how about it BC Lions Society?

Update of June 24, 2010:

A highly reliable source in the Royal BC Museum confirmed for me today that the BC Lions Society has taken up this suggestion, which was also made by a RBCM staffer, and that the Warriors in the City will be standing guard in Victoria probably some time in 2011 to coincide with the exhibit.

Original post of January 29, 2010:

The Royal BC Museum is one of the four Canadian venues in the exhibit The Warrior Emperor and China's Terracotta Army that begins at the Royal Ontario Museum on June 26, 2010. Visitors to the Victoria Bay Centre, a downtown shopping center, may recall the shopping mall version of these clay pieces. This touring exhibit, however, is the real deal courtesy of the Chinese government. The RBCM will host the army of clay in late 2011-early 2012.

As part of that exhibition I'd like to encourage the BC Lions Society for Children with Disabilities, who are currently sponsoring the Eagles in the City fundraising campaign, to consider the possibility of replicating either a warrior or perhaps a horse for a Warriors in the City fundraiser. Previous public art exhibits of this nature by the BC Lions Society included Orcas In The City and Spirit Bears in the City (the URL http://www.spiritbearsinthecity.com/ gave a MySQL database error when I tried it on January 28, 2010). The RBCM had sponsored the Eternal Egypt Orca which was decorated by staff member and artist Adrienne Aikens.

MakerBot, 3D printing on the cheap

This looks pretty cool, 3D printing using ABS plastic with a robot design from MakerBot. Not that I'll be rushing out to get the plans, but there's a cool video on YouTube I saw through Robert L. Balliot's Ocean State Librarian blog's Research Link of the Week. Request for you Robert, please provide a permalink for the current research link, not just the past ones. While he suggests public libraries invest in this technology, many libraries such as my own can't even afford to buy books and other resources due to cutbacks. So I don't think something like this will be at the top of their list. This seems to be something that would currently be of more interest to an artist coop.

A modest proposal: ban any and everything worldwide, including words, that violates the International Olympic Committee brand value

As a result of yet another news story about the Canadian Olympic Committee's (COC) pressure tactics against a small business owner in Vancouver that I blogged about in What, no flames allowed at the Vancouver Winter Olympics?, I've come up with a modest proposal.

I propose that any and everything that violates the International Olympic Committee's brand value be henceforth and irrevocably banned worldwide. This would include not just existing registered trade marks such as Toasterz and Eaterz, the very trademarks that the COC objected to, but also more famous ones such as the Calgary Flames name and logo, Ronson’s Lighter Fuel logo and any pizza joint worldwide that uses the word Olympic in its names, as well as words such as torch for flashlight in Great Britain and the Olympic Mountains in Washington State.

Since an Olympic event is held every two years, with the next one after the Vancouver Winter Olympics being the London Summer Olympics in 2012, and the IOC has demonstrated over the years that it is like the UN of the sports world, why don't we just avoid all the legal hassle of doing battle with them, bite the Olympic, er, sporting bullet, and take the opportunity to stretch our creative muscles.

Lost and not claimed, lots of mobility aids at the 2010 Winter Olympics

A bizarre report in the Times-Colonist (online, February 20, 2010; hardcopy, February 21, 2010) that lots of mobility aids, including artificial limbs, have been left behind by 2010 Winter Olympics visitors using Greater Vancouver's public transit system operated by Translink.

As Todd Coyne wrote,

TransLink’s lost property storage centre has a whole area devoted to the dozens of crutches, canes, walkers and artificial limbs left by those who apparently boarded transit needing mobility aids and then somehow waltzed off without them.

If you've recently been part of the Olympic crowds in the Lower Mainland and can't find something you might have left behind on the Translink system, here's their Lost and Found contact information.

Red rock tapes could stay here (more info)

Update for February 13, 2010:

Red Robinson provided his reasons in a lengthy letter to the Times-Colonist editor on February 13 to my question about whether he had contacted the BC Archives or the Library and Archives Canada about acquiring the interviews he gave to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He said that organization will put them online, yet in the original Times-Colonist article it was stated that "A couple of years ago, he had them digitized." Since the interviews are already in a digital format and he was willing to relinquish them for full public consumption, he could have had the digitized interviews uploaded to probably the world's largest online repository of free, historic audio material, the Internet Archive's Audio Archive.

Mr. Robinson mentioned the Jack Cullen and Dal Richards collections. If he had checked the BC Archives Web site he would have discovered that they have some of their work already, along with many other examples from BC radio broadcasters (producers and stations) and musicians.

Original post of February 11, 2010:

My letter to the editor of the Times-Colonist newspaper appeared in the February 10, 2010 issue and online. It's my reaction to its story from February 6 about Vancouver rock and roll DJ Red Robinson donating his interviews with music industry personalities to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, USA.

DJ Red Robinson interviews heading south to Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Ohio, USA

I was very surprised to read in the Victoria Times-Colonist newspaper on February 6, 2010 this remark by Vancouver rock and roll dj Red Robinson:

"There is no repository for my stuff, or Bruce Allen's, or Bryan Adams', or anybody," Robinson said. "It's a disgrace." So he decided to give [his stuff] to the Rock Hall.

First of all, though I obviously can't speak for those institutions, I would love to know if he had approached the Library and Archives Canada or even the Royal BC Museum which houses the BC Archives. Mr. Robinson might be surprised to know that legendary rocker Randy Bachman's archival records (described under the title "Randy Bachman fonds") are preserved by the Library and Archives Canada and constitute a relatively large body of multiple media material. That institution also preserves the Gino Empry fonds, an individual with performing arts credentials somewhat comparable to Bruce Allen's.

Secondly, the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) has a Canadian Music Hall of Fame program, so if folks in the music industry are intent on keeping their archival records in Canada, perhaps they should start working with CARAS towards a physical solution rather than see Canadian recording industry cultural property head south or, worse, destroyed through neglect or willful intent.

Although Canadian cultural property generally excludes material less than 50 years old and created by living persons, there are always exceptions. And the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board even has grants available to help designated public institutions acquire material they might otherwise not be able to afford.

Copy Wars: China P88 vs Apple iPad, Dark Void computer game vs Avatar movie

You may have heard about the Chinese company, Shenzhen Great Loong Brother, that's threatened to sue Apple over some kind of claim that Apple's iPad is a clone of their product, the P88, which apparently has been on sale in China for the past six months. This Wired magazine article points out some of the silliness around the Chinese claim.

James Cameron's movie Avatar has also had its share of accusations of third-party influences, one the most interesting coming from those familiar with ayahuasca, a drug from South America that supposedly gives its users the illusion of being connected with the natural world. In Avatar, the Na'vi people of the planet Pandora achieve this feat through a direct physical connection by plugging the end of their hair braid into not only their Tree of Souls, but also into some animals. This Globe and Mail op-ed piece by Canadian filmmaker Richard Meech compares Avatar's symbiotic connection to the drug-induced, imaginary one of the Amazon "vine of the soul."

Now comes the computer game from Capcom called Dark Void. In Episode 1, Chapter 4, after falling through a long hole in a mountain, the hero (you) end up at the bottom and in a landscape that looks suspiciously like the floating Hallelujah Mountains of Avatar. In the movie the Na'vi use flying beasts to fly around and in Dark Void the heroes use rocket packs.

Apple iPad meets Star Trek

I swear I saw the new Apple iPad lurking in the background of the most recent Star Trek film. Apple's own advertising even displays the film being viewed on the iPad. Certainly the concept and design of a thin, large-screen computer tablet has been a prop in some science fiction films and TV shows (not that I can name one off the top of my head), so I hope the iPad does well. The pricing is certainly interesting.

I'd be happy to have one sent to me for review.