November 10th, 2010
In Vancouver the public transit is operated by Translink. There are lots of good things to say about Translink. The buses are clean and fairly punctual and the drivers are generally friendly and helpful, sometimes exceptionally so. The routes are well-planned and the service frequent. The SkyTrains are a marvel of efficiency and comfort. The…
November 5th, 2010
They’re $50 million lottery prize winners in a country where the prizes are tax-free. Claude and Kurt Blanchette-Ebert are a month away from celebrating their 30-year anniversary, though they’ve never could afford a vacation to celebrate any of the other 29. They recently lost their house. Claude worked as a furniture upholsterer; Kurt is a…
October 22nd, 2010
Daddy: Please don’t burn the books. Then there won’t be any books in the house and I kind of like them. Some folks dined recently with Ross Dawson. Dawson apparently wrote his future-of-publishing-themed blog entry while dining. Here’s a snippet: A critical issue is the physical space that books take. Some have tried to get rid of…
October 17th, 2010
I’ve been thinking a lot about libraries. To think about the library of the future you must start with an appreciation of libraries today. That appreciation must be derived from being an active customer of libraries — you don’t qualify if you don’t regularly borrow books and other physical (analog) materials. You also don’t qualify…
October 14th, 2010
The future of Adobe’s Flash format is murky. I first glanced at Flash technology’s murk when Steve Jobs launched an attack last April. Jobs stated that “Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice…. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all…