As more and more people become connected using smartphones like the iPhone and Blackberry it has become even more important for websites to feature mobile portals that make it easy to access websites. Here’s a list of the major Canadian news outlets and how they’ve fared with each of their offerings. I’ve tested each of these on my iPhone, but they should viably work on Blackberry, Android and other smartphones with a decent browser.

CBC.ca (http://cbc.qwapi.ca/)
CBC’s mobile website probably has the most visual style of all the sites I’ve looked at. They pack the most content onto the page, though that comes at a price. A lot of the links are just on the cusp of being too small to comfortably read from a distance, especially on the content pages where the text isn’t bolded like the links of the same size. Adjusting from portrait to landscape on my iPhone does help the size, but I find reading the complete width left to right on the screen to strain my eyes a bit at that size.

Toronto Star (http://www.thestar.com/iphone/)
The Toronto Star’s mobile site strikes a good balance between being functional while having a little bit of visual flair. The design works well both portrait and landscape modes. Their start page offers 2 lead stories from each main topic, then a link to more stories.

National Post (http://www.nationalpost.com/m/)
I find the National Post’s offering seems to come off as the most pedestrian of all the sites. It’s not bad, but doesn’t seem to do anything with any flair. The only thing featured on the start page are the top stories, with all the links to the rest of the sections buried at the bottom.

Canada.com (http://www.canada.com/mobile)
Canada.com is the news portal associated with Canwest Global. This site is presented well and features some nice usability tweaks. There is menu dropdown at the top that allows you to quickly access the major sections. As well the footer has links to all the major sections, plus collapsible menus allowing you to quickly down into further subsections of content. The footer also has home and back to top buttons which are handy. I think these tweaks come as a trade-off too as the site seems a little slower then some of the other sites.

Canoe.ca (http://m.en.canoe.ca/)
Canoe is the news portal for Quebecor Media, which owns The Sun chain of newspapers. I would say their mobile site is easily the crappiest of all these media sites. There seems little to no effort put into styling the content for the page. The other beef I have is that they paginate the content. My iPhone can easily render more text on the page, making me load a new page every 6 paragraphs is annoying. They definitely have a long way to go to catch up.

Globe and Mail (http://m.theglobeandmail.com/)
The Globe and Mail’s mobile presentation isn’t the flashiest, but it features probably the nicest typography of all these sites.  The part I like about it is that it does load quickly and gives you plenty of links from the various sections.  It also allows you to sort by top stories and most recently posted.

Ever since the iPhone was released, along with the iPod before it, it seems companies have constantly released devices that have been labeled as Apple “killers”. Devices that aim to finally knock Apple off their pedestal as market leader. To date there has yet to be an “iPhone killer”, yet that doesn’t stop the media from ramping up the hype for the next upcoming device.

I was recently at a monthly meetup of designers and developers in Waterloo and a representative from RIM was there presenting on the merits of the Blackberry as a development platform. At one point during his presentation he mentioned how Apple was very good at articulating what they are good at, yet Blackberry does a crappy job of this very thing. To me this isn’t something that is exclusively the realm of Blackberry. Pretty much every smartphone manufacturer has the same problem when competing with Apple.

After seeing this new Verizon commercial yesterday, this served as a perfect example of what handset manufacturers are doing wrong. It’s a quaint and clever concept that I’m sure Verizon paid a boatload to get the rights to using the Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer characters. But after watching that video, what handset got the most facetime in that commercial? While it wasn’t the actual iPhone in the commercial, the viewer saw Verizon’s iPhone stand-in on screen for 20 seconds of a 30 second spot. The Verizon handsets only show up between 23 seconds and 28 seconds of the video. So 66% of the commercial featured the iPhone, and 10% was spent talking about the products they sell, then the other 24% spent talking about Verizon and their network.
Message: The iPhone is useless because AT&T has a crappy network. Verizon has an awesome network. Buy this Windows phone, or buy this Google Android phone.

Contrast that ad with an Apple ad selling the iPhone. Nothing but the phone and its function are shown for the first 23 seconds. 1 second devoted to app store logos, 2 seconds for iPhone logo, 2 seconds for carrier logo and 2 seconds for Apple logo. So 76.6% of the commercial was devoted to showing the product and 23.3% was used for the of branding various partners. Apple didn’t once mention verbally the network or the carrier.
Message: Look at all the cool stuff you can do with your iPhone

Can you see the disconnect here? A new device like the HTC Droid hits the market within the last 2 weeks. It’s supposed to be a real contender to the iPhone throne. Yet the handset is relegated to 2.5 seconds of face time in this Verizon commercial. Do we know anything that the device is capable of? About the only info you get is what smartphone OS the phone is running and the price. Apparently the only reason to get one of these 2 phones Verizon is offering is because their network is better.

Apple’s device has been on the market for over 2 years now, yet Apple focuses on the positive. They show you what cool things the iPhone empowers you to do. They maximize the amount of time you see the product on screen and keep the message simple and on point. The carrier is an afterthought.

This is where Apple has diverged from all other handset providers. They control how the iPhone is sold and marketed. They don’t allow it to be lumped in with a bunch of other similar looking phones in the carriers marketing. Essentially they are selling a phone, they don’t care about the network or the carrier, they allow their product to sell itself instead.

When talking to the RIM rep I commented to him about Apple’s carrier relationship and marketing contrasted with how Blackberry and the rest of the smartphone makers. He mentioned that BB spends a lot of time managing and working their partnerships with carriers, helping them implement things like carrier branded app stores. While I’m sure they do great business together, Apple has done it differently. They only need the carrier for their network and retails sales channels. Apple handles pretty much everything else. The carrier is an afterthought.

You would figure that Apple’s way of doing business would have carriers running the opposite way, yet as seen in Canada recently, nothing could be further from the truth. Bell and Telus, after losing large chunks of marketshare to Rogers and their exclusive iPhone arrangement, spent billions of dollars to build an HSPA+ network in part to accommodate the iPhone. Now that Rogers exclusivity agreement with Apple is over rivals Bell and Telus will also be offering the iPhone as well. This after Bell spent the summer mocking the iPhone in their Palm Pre ads. It will be curious to see how Bell and Telus will market the iPhone, given Apple controls the advertising and they won’t be able to play the my networks better then your network card against Rogers.

Handset manufacturers will never create this “iPhone killer” if their device is always playing second fiddle to the carrier.  By allowing the carrier to handle promotion of their devices they are shooting themselves in the foot with every new handset they release.  While Apple’s iPhone stays in the spotlight, the latest RIM, Motorola, Palm or Samsung device just becomes part of the crowd because carriers don’t market one smartphone any differently then they do the others in their lineup.

This is the most hilariously useless product I’ve ever seen. Who in their right mind would want to invest in a drivable treadmill? I almost wish these would catch on, if only to see reports of SpeedMobile crashes in the park or on streets.

Finally got around to posting about our Halloween party we hosted on Friday.  This is the 6th time we’ve hosted the party, but first in the new digs.  Now we had 2 floors and the exterior of the house to decorate, which was a bit of a challenge.  Need to stockup on marked down Halloween decorations now for next year.  We were definitely lacking in outdoor decorations, but we’ll sort that out.

For the costume this year I came up with a couple’s costume idea for Corina and I.  Now it wasn’t quite your conventional couples costume idea, but it worked out quite well.  We went as Jay and Silent Bob, characters from numerous Kevin Smith movies.  I figured it was cool way of spinning the guy/girl costume concept.  The costumes themselves were actually some of the easiest we’ve ever come up with to put together, but got some of the best reactions from people this year.  The only downfall is that we didn’t actually get a picture together wearing the costumes.  I’m going to try remedying that tonight by getting dressed up again and taking a picture.  In the meantime he’s a badly Photoshopped version.

We definitely had a pretty good turnout of people to the party.  We tried to be considerate of those with kids who might need to find babysitters and have the party on the Friday, instead of trying to find someone on Halloween Saturday.  This kind of backfired as there were a few people who would usually be there that didn’t make it because they had to work Friday night.  Oh well, lesson learned on that one.

Our plan this year was to feature just general Halloween music on the main floor, then at the request of Corina, a 1990’s dance party in our basement.  We practically bought this house for parties like this and it worked out quite well.  We managed to pretty much fill the basement at one point in the night which was quite cool.

The best male costume this year was grabbed by Corina as Silent Bob.  She ended up being the runaway winner for that with a vote total dwarfing everyone else.  The girls prize was contested via a 3 way dance off, to which Ally came away as the big winner, with her Amy Winehouse costume. I put together an album of pictures below. You might notice one in there where a bunch of people are humping our neighbours inflatable Halloween decorations. Thanks to Ally, who I yoinked some of her photos from Facebook for this album.

Since we were hosting the party we decided to have our dog Chance spend the night at Corina’s parents place. He’s a bit of a runner when the door is open, so we didn’t want to be chasing him down the street when he escaped. This plan sounded really ideal until Corina picked him up the next day and found he had been sprayed by a skunk the night before. We gave him a bath in tomato juice, baking soda, peroxide and dish soap, which got rid of most of the smell, though I can still smell the faint scent of skunk in his fur. Not quite what I felt like dealing with given the industrial sized hangover I had at the time.

Halloween 2008
Halloween 2007
Halloween 2006
Halloween 2005

On today, the fateful day that the grandest free host of them all, Geocities, closed, I wanted to look back on my memories of the service. I think like many people who grew up in the 90’s, my start in creating webpages was with Geocities. I remember a friend of mine in high school, Graham, who had started his own webpage. I was instantly interested, being the geek that I am, even though I didn’t actually have an internet enabled computer at the time. Graham gave me a simple piece of paper outlining how to format a link, how to embed an image, bold and italic text and how an html page was structured.

After getting that piece of paper I was off and running. Back then Geocities was organized into neighbourhoods that each had a theme. You just picked an area that matched the theme of your site and you were good to go. In my Star Wars obsessed teens I wanted to create the ultimate Star Wars site called Wedge’s Hangar Bay, so I picked the UFO themed Area51 to host my site. I really wish the site still existed, but from what I remember it pretty much looked like every other Geocities site from the 90’s. The background was a starry sky, as was mandatory for every Star Wars site at the time. The content was a hodgepodge of stuff that didn’t go together, but I didn’t know any better. The features I remember having was one called Wedge’s Ramblings, which I would probably call a precursor to this very blog. Back then it was a static page with some random rants, but it was definitely blogging before there was actually a term for blogging. And also on that site I started the site OasisCentral, which ended up being my fixation for years afterwards. After awhile I outgrew Geocities and moved on, but it still definitely holds a fond place in my heart after all these years.

For more on Geocities, check out ComedyCentral’s 7 Retro Things We’ll Miss Forever

I recently got an invite to Google Wave and haven’t found much use for it so far, mainly because I don’t have any people who I usually communicate with on a regular basis on it to communicate with.  I’m hoping once they bestow some invites upon me I’ll be able to try it out in earnest.

Even though I haven’t found much use for it, a few people have already put it to good use, making Pulp Fiction and Good Will Hunting inspired mashups to show the power of the service.

This year Corina and I hosted our first Thanksgiving dinner.  With my parents in the process of selling their house I seized upon the opportunity to host my favourite meal of the year.  As an avid fan of cooking I relished the opportunity to host a big, showy holiday dinner.  Since Corina and I moved into our own house we finally had a chance to do just that.

We prepared a turkey, who I dubbed Marcel for the meal.  I don’t know why Marcel, but it just came to me.  I also handled the stuffing, mashed potatoes and made some pumpkin tarts.  Corina handled a wide array of vegetables, including squash, cauliflower, carrots, zucchini and corn.  It turned out to be quite the array of food we had.

Family Thanksgiving dinner

As you can see we managed to fit 8 people around our dinner table rather comfortably.  I was rather surprised how well the table worked.  I think it’s the first time we’ve had a full table.

I used this opportunity to relaunch my blog deelish.ca, which had been neglected since before we moved into our new house.  I posted recipes for the sourdough and rice stuffing, how I went about preparing the turkey and making some great gravy.

Overall I was quite pleased with the whole meal and things seemed to go off without a hitch.  I’ve heard so many “first time” hosting a turkey dinner stories that I was kinda worried some type of calamity might befell my dinner, but everything went awesome.

I saw this on MurderBurger and had to share.

It’s been about 6 months since my wife and I decided to go cable free after moving to our new house.  At first it was an experiment to see how we’d fare without the $60 cable bill.  After 6 months I’m to the point I would question why I would ever go back to subscribing to cable.

We are currently subscribing to Rogers Express service, which allots us 10mb service with a 60GB download cap.  The bonus to having Rogers internet without having cable is the fact that we actually do get a handful of channels, as Rogers is unable to shut off all of the channels and provide us with internet.  We get Global, CTV, CBC and Omni 1 and 2, along with a smattering of other channels.  This is great since much of the syndicated primetime shows appear on Global or CTV in Canada anyways.  Then we’re just left to fill in the gaps.

Our current setup in the house has a HTPC Hackintosh setup in the living room, then an Xbox running XBMC in the bedroom.  When I want to watch something on live TV that isn’t on our TV, I typically turn to Justin.tv.  Quite often you can find a live stream of popular shows just by searching their listings.  I find this is pretty indispensable for live sporting events.  Even if I had cable I would rarely be able to catch Senators or 49ers games because I live outside their broadcast market.  You have to pay for $250 packages like Centre Ice or Sunday Ticket, and even then you’re paying for tonnes of games you’ll never watch.  The football season has started and I’ve probably watched more 49er games this season then I have in the last 2 combined, even with the ability to timeshift and watch west coast NFL broadcasts.  No more suffering through Buffalo Bills games anymore for me.

If you want to watch episodes of shows that have already aired, you can’t really go wrong with a site like SurfTheChannel.  You can pretty much watch back episodes of pretty much every show on television.  There are also quite a few sites out there that allow you to stream DVD quality movies too, many of which are still in theatres.  Watch Movie Links has all sorts new releases, ready to watch.  No downloading or anything which is pretty sweet.  I think my favourite for doing this is NinjaVideo, always has quality streams and is organized really nicely.  They even have every documentary you might ever want to see which is awesome for those who might miss content from channels like Discovery or National Geographic.

The compromise to using online feeds is that you can’t always count on great quality for these feeds.  Some of them are fantastic, others are pretty crummy.  Going cable free isn’t for everyone, as sometimes it does require patience to find what you are looking for online.  But once you get used to how to use online streaming there are a world of options as to what to watch online.  I find nowadays I watch TV I actually want to see instead of being tied to TV schedules and whatever garbage might be on right now.   Not spending $60 a month on cable has been a great decision for us.