Category Archives: computers

New Look for Northern Voice

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Longtime Northern Voicer here (That’s the Northern Voice blogging conference, May 7-8 in Vancouver) ; I’ve attended the conference every year but one, and this year I’ve busted into the dizzy heights of the presenter’s list, which certainly puts me in the upper 50% of attendees. Yes, when it comes to Northern Voice, me luv it longtime.

But…

Is it just me, or does this thing:

Northern Voice Mascot, PedoBearMoose, yo!

The official Northern Voice mascot

Look like this thing:

Pedobear

Pedobear, the one and only!

Now, Kris said something about having some sexblogging workshops this year. I’m just not sure this is the very best way to draw an interested crowd.

Northern Voice Get Your Moose On

On WHERE, goddammit? And how do I get him off?
Oh wai- NEVER MIND!!! I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW!!!!

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Social Media Club of Vancouver presents: Olympic Lessons

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VMC Olympic Weekend Coverage!!
Image by nofutureface via Flickr

VANCOUVER OLYMPICS DEMONSTRATE BOTH GOOD AND BAD IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Local leaders in traditional and social media gather to discuss impact of social media on the 2010 Winter Olympic Games

VANCOUVER, BC – In the afterglow of the 2010 Vancouver Games, top BC media leaders will come together on March 18, 2010 to discuss the positive and negative impacts of both social and traditional media on the Games. The panel discussion will be held from 7-9pm at the BOB Coworking Space in Vancouver’s Gastown District, 163 E. Pender Street.

In its first official event, Social Media Club Vancouver, a trade association dedicated to business uses of social media, and the Vancouver Blogger Meetup will bring together a panel of established media experts to discuss expectations versus realities in media coverage of the Games—a large, high-profile, complex and geographically dispersed event.

The panel will include Kirk LaPointe, Managing Editor of the Vancouver Sun; John Biehler, citizen journalist and blogger; flashmob specialist Laurent Piche; Colin Horgan, columnist at the Guardian; freelance journalist/bloggers Jonathan Narvey and Shane Birley; and moderator Colleen Coplick, founder of Type-A PR and the MissManifesto network.

“The 2010 Winter Olympic Games were perhaps the most ‘social’ Games ever,” said Eric Weaver, president of Social Media Club Vancouver. “VANOC, the City of Vancouver, individual teams, news outlets and private companies were all utilizing social media at the Games. Many of these groups found innovative and unusual ways to integrate social media into their communication efforts. We saw some really fascinating uses, and some cautionary tales. This panel discussion will point the way toward more integrated and effective uses of both types of media in the future.”

Discussion will cover key learnings on social media at the Games, how traditional and social media impacted the event, where media shone and where it failed.

The event is free, and interested parties can register at http://smcyvrolympiclessons.eventbrite.com/

Social Media Club of Vancouver

Social Media Club of Vancouver

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ABOUT THE PANELISTS

MICHAEL ALLISON

Michael is a consultant at The Wilcox Group and provides communications support to clients including General Motors of Canada, KFC and Lesley Stowe.

Michael advises clients on approaches to social media that complement existing PR goals and strategies. He plays an integral role in creating employee social media policies, writing for the web, engaging online influencers, training clients how to use social media tools and building meaningful relationships. For General Motors of Canada, the official vehicle supplier of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games, Michael led an integrated social media strategy involving the Chevrolet brand for the duration of the 106-day torch relay.

Michael holds a master’s degree in professional communication from Royal Roads University and a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Victoria.

JOHN BIEHLER

John is a Vancouver-based e-business analyst for a large corporation, a technologist, a consultant, conference speaker, trainer, photographer and gamer. Through True North Media House he became one of the most prominent bloggers and photographers covering the Olympics.

SHANE BIRLEY

Shane Birley is a blogger, author, web developer, poet, and creative writer based in Vancouver, BC. He is a partner in Left Right Minds, a web development, arts management, business blogging and on line marketing content consultant company. He also writes Nerd Sense, a blog for non-nerds about technology and a collection blog titled Why The Internet Is Cool where he writes about random things found out on the Internet. He is the co-host of the Vancouver Blogger Meetup.

COLLEEN COPLICK

Colleen Coplick is a PR professional and popular Vancouver-area blogger. A self-described writer, photographer, instigator and connector, Colleen specializes in social media strategy & marketing, feature writing, and blog writing, teaches seminars, and is a regular conference speaker.

COLIN HORGAN

Colin Horgan is a freelance journalist and blogger. Born and raised in Calgary, Colin Horgan earned his Bachelor’s degree in history from Carleton University in Ottawa. After moving to London, England, Colin returned to Canada and became a blogger and contributor for the Calgary Herald. Recently, Colin has been a contributor to the Guardian, where his writing focuses on Canadian politics and culture. Colin currently blogs at TrueSlant.com, and his work has also appeared in the Globe and Mail and online at Maclean’s.

KIRK LAPOINTE

Kirk LaPointe has been the Managing Editor of The Vancouver Sun since 2003, and is responsible for the day-to-day online and newspaper operations of Western Canada’s largest newsroom. He is also the executive in residence and an adjunct professor at the graduate school of journalism at University of British Columbia. Kirk blogs on media change at themediamanager.com and is an avid social networker on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin, among others.

Kirk has held several senior news positions in Canadian media, including Senior Vice President responsible for all of CTV News, the founding Executive Editor of National Post, the associate publisher and editor in chief of The Hamilton Spectator, the editor in chief and general manager of Southam News, the Ottawa bureau chief and general news editor of The Canadian Press, and a host for CBC Newsworld.

JONATHON NARVEY

Jonathon Narvey is a Vancouver-based communications specialist, freelance journalist and copywriter. He is the founder of WRITEIMAGE, a corporate copywriting services company.

A native of Winnipeg, Jonathon moved to the west coast of Canada soon after beginning a career as a writer. He writes primarily about politics, current events, and life in Vancouver, along with other interests such as environmental sustainability, business and technology. He has contributed articles and columns to print and online media publications such as the National Post, Vancouver Sun, Granville Magazine, Business in Vancouver, Sounding Board, Winnipeg Sun, the Vancouver Courier, and the North Shore News.

LAURENT PICHE

Laurent Piche is a “flashmobber” and co-founder of Improv Everywhere Vancouver. Laurent and his team cause scenes of chaos and joy in public places. Created in August of 2001 by Charlie Todd, Improv Everywhere has executed over 100 missions involving thousands of undercover agents.

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ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA CLUB VANCOUVER

Social Media Club Vancouver is a local chapter of the Social Media Club, a worldwide trade organization dedicated to the advancement of social media. The Vancouver chapter is a business-focused social media association aimed at generating learning, friendships and opportunities for all of its members. Composed of marketers, media professionals, advertisers, bloggers and business owners, SMC Vancouver holds monthly meetings around the business uses of social media.

# # #

For more information about Social Media Club Vancouver, please contact Guacira Naves at smc.naves at gmail.com, or visit http://smcyvr.com.

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Nothing to see here

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Move along I’m just testing out my new Post to WP from Jeebusphone app. This could easily go sideways.

FerretDance

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We old-timers of the intarwebs will recognize a resuscitated meme when we see one; oh yes, this is nothing more nor less than a reworking of that classic of the intertubes, the Hampsterdance. With a significantly more anorexic cast. Sound familiar?

Other examples, through time:

Sadly, none have ever approached the catchiness of the original tune and site: there’s just something about Adsense-laden sidebars that somehow limits the freedom of the ecstatic experience, once shortlisted for Song of the Millennium.

They look suspiciously like Meerkats. Better keep an eye on these buggers.

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in the name of Cthulhu and for the love of all that is holy has anyone seen this laptop cord????

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Technical difficulties; the story of my life. And bitching about them publicly seems to be the key to success in my life. They were supposed to have ended nearly a year ago, when I arranged to buy Eve, my fantastic new (lightly used, only driven on Sundays, albeit by a Vangroover singleton, not a little old lady) laptop, a Dell Inspiron. It has bells! It has whistles! It has the machine that goes PING!

It has a dead laptop cord.

And, of course, they are available for sale. For almost exactly half of what I paid for the computer in the first place.

I went to ReBoot, my favorite little DTES computer bits and bobs shop. They were very sweet and went through all their cords and turned up blank. I went to FreeGeek, which I dare not do by myself since they’ve probably read what I’ve said about them (repeatedly, over the last three years) and would off me if I walked in without escort, so I got an intimidatingly-tall escort and away we went to the retail shop of Freegeek, where we were told “You want a laptop cord? You’ll have to wait till So-and-So gets back. He’ll be back in a half an hour. Maybe.” No, here’s the box, you can look through it yourself. No you can leave the model here and we’ll see if we have it. Nada.

I believe the technical term for this is “par for the course.” I do believe they mean well. I do believe they have a wonderful mission. And I have never, not once, seen them deliver that mission to anyone on the Downtown Eastside, although I have frequently offered my ear to my friends who have to vent about their experiences therewith.

I support them, I really do, I just wish they didn’t routinely suck.

Anyhoodlewinklewhatever, we rooted around for far too long anyway and So-And-So never showed up and they didn’t have the cord in any of the boxes we could get our paws on, nor did they seem to have any index of anything they had. Or if they did, they weren’t telling.

Which brings us to YOU!

Knowing as many people in the tech scene as I do, I have reasonable faith that one or more of you has, in that inevitable pile of plastic-coated macrame under your desk, a cord exactly like this except for the fact that it, you know, works. It is, of course, unlike every other cord on the face of the planet (certainly different from all of mine, and who thought we’d ever see the day when I have an extensive collection of laptop cords, eh? and a fine lot of good it has done me).

And the netbook I’ve borrowed from my friend Cathy Browne is, of course, unable to upload the pictures of the laptop cord, so I’ve had to wait a week and a half until Roland had the brilliant idea to take the chip and upload the pix to Flickr from a computer that could do that, which is really something I should have thought of myself, except that experiencing the internet by essentially looking through a straw has a way of limiting one’s vision over time.

And now, to the sexiest centerfold you’ll ever see (assuming you’re a retro-tech perv who doesn’t get out much):

Back of the brick of the power cord

Back of the brick of the power cord

Super duper closeup action of laptop cord brick wooo, exciting!

Super duper closeup action of laptop cord brick wooo, exciting!

and this is what it looks like supine. Did you know that word, supine?

and this is what it looks like supine. Did you know that word, supine?

and another aspect:

the pointy bit Tab A which goes into Hole B in the computer

the pointy bit Tab A which goes into Hole B in the computer

Three the hard way, the bit that goes into the brick

Three the hard way, the bit that goes into the brick

And that’s all she wrote, except that there’s a reward for the first person to solve this problem for me. I dunno what, but it’ll be nice, I promise. And unusual, considering the source. I ain’t got nuthin usual. I’m all out of it.