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Lifecamp Toronto, a great event
Yesterday, I attended Lifecamp Toronto, a lifehacking event organized and hosted by Sacha Chua, over at a neat little place called Linuxcaffe. The idea behind Lifecamp Toronto (a.k.a. #lifecampTO for those of you on Twitter) was that people could have the opportunity to share what they can provide for others, what help they'd like from others, and network based on those sets of traits.
Figure out who you should follow with Tweepler
Despite all the people who claim it's best to automatically follow everyone who follows you on Twitter, there's still a lot of people, myself included, who find its better to vet each follower and decide whether to follow them or not. Of course, it's not always easy to determine if a follower has been checked out or not. That is, until recently, when a new service, Tweepler, was launched.
Restarting the economy? Funding small business would be good.
Bailout, bailout, bailout. If you listen to the news, it sounds like the only way to get things moving again is by rescuing big businesses, many of which have been on the ropes even before the recession began. But where's the support for small businesses, or new ventures? If anything is going out to help them, it's certainly not being reported.
The horrible state of mobile communications in Canada
Something really cool fell into my lap on Friday. After dealing with a lame old phone that couldn't hold a charge for more than seven minutes of talking, I was able to replace it with a lovely HTC Touch, already upgraded to Windows Mobile 6.1. It's truly a lovely phone, and using it is ever so enjoyable.
I wish I could say the same about my service provider, Telus, but I can't.
Why the Do-Not-Call List doesn't work
Canada's DNC list, highly promoted by the federal government and panned by almost everyone else, has a huge list of flaws. There are enough exceptions allowing marketers to call people on the list, that they might have used a hunk of Swiss Cheese. But the biggest problem isn't from the exceptions in the law governing the list.
No, the problem is that there's no protection from telemarketers and phone scam artists outside of Canada itself.
I'm sad to report that #APtweetup was a flop
The Twitter meetup I planned, #APtweetup, went absolutely nowhere. Little buzz, and no attendees. Little surprise there, and a reminder that I shouldn't be allowed to organize things on my own. (It's been a while since I gave up on TIGC, after the other organizers all abandoned the effort.) I got some good ideas on why it was such a flop, though.
Isn't this a good time to start building your own business?
Even with the economy tanking and people losing their jobs left and right, not all is lost. The upside to a recession is that prices deflate, making it a little more affordable to start your own business. So why aren't people doing this?
Let's take a look at the benefits of starting a business during a recession. There are a few of them…
Flickr sucks; why isn't Google taking advantage of this?
Google. A bottomless pit of bandwidth and storage space, and quite a few bucks in the bank. Yahoo. Struggling to survive, and resources certainly nowhere near what Google has available. So why is it that Yahoo's Flickr photo hosting service offers unlimited space to users at $25/year, while Google's Picasa caps you at 10GB for $20/year? Something doesn't seem right.
Entering a crowded market? Cheer up!
It's not the end of the world if everyone else is working on competitors to your project. However, it does mean you need to work harder on differentiating yourself from your competitors.
Things are finally feeling like they're in motion!
I'm referring to the social media project I've been working on for the past while. Over the past few weeks, I've only been working in fits and spurts. But yesterday saw the first day of some serious, hardcore development work on the project, as well as making the final choice on name. And this morning, I was struck by inspiration for the logo for the site.
It feels damn good to finally be making progress.
