There has recently been quite the uproar lately about what is happening in Downtown Brantford. The City Council has been planning to knock down 41 old building as part of their downtown revitalization project. These building date back to before Canada was even founded in 1867, so you can imagine there are more then a few people ticked off with this type of city planning.

Photo credit to Oliver Casarsa from the Facebook group

My original thought on the project was to tear them down. I lived in Paris, just down the road from Brantford and spent a good amount of my formative teenage years hanging out in Browntown. I moved to the area in 1994 and bore witness to the slow decline of the Brantford Core. There used to be comic book shops and book stores that I’d frequent, or memorable nights spent playing video games at Funtown then checking out a movie at the old $2 Cineplex. All of those things are gone. Purdy’s, a favourite among friends of mine for their weekly Monday music trivia. Long gone. Since this stretch of Colborne Street had been dead or dying for at least 10 years now, my thinking was what is there worth saving down there?

After doing some reading through the Facebook group called Save The South Side of Colborne Street, a couple things came clear to me. Originally when I heard they were knocking these buildings down I assumed they had a plan in tow that would utilize this space and help the ongoing revitalization process going on in downtown Brantford. As it turns out, not so much. All they really have planned is a spot for a combined athletic facility to be jointly used by the YMCA, Laurier University, Nippissing University and Mohawk College, who all have campuses in Brantford, which will occupy only 1/3 of the cleared space. The City Council is essentially rushing headlong into this project because it has government money to burn as part of Canadian stimulus spending. They don’t have a full plan for how this land is going to be used, they just want to raze the land in hopes that developers will come running to build projects on the land. The City claims that nobody has been willing to redevelop the area in the last 20 years, so they’re just going to knock them down. The Province of Ontario has told the City Council to reconsider their decision on this issue, yet they wish to soldier on.

Personally I think that this is just a big gambit by the City to force the issue of redevelopment within the core. In the end they have expropriated the buildings, moved everyone out and now have a large amount of empty buildings with a lot less strings attached then before. I think the city all along has wanted a white knight-type developer to swoop in and save the day here. By threatening to knock down 41 pre-confederation buildings, they’ve brought the downtown redevelopment to the forefront, garnering a lot of mainstream coverage of the issue. Their goal here has been to find a developer to take this project on, so raising the profile of the issue could enable them to pull on the heart strings of some developer, get them to open their wallet and get involved.

Think of the public relations victory for the City Council, the incoming developers and Brantford as a whole if the buildings get saved and properly redeveloped? Guess we can just hope this is what actually comes to pass.

Photo credit to Erich Davies

On this past Saturday Corina, Erich and I made our way to the Personal Computing Museum in Brantford, Ontario where they were having an open house. The reason for the event was that Syd, the owner of the museum had written an application for a Commodore VIC-20, an almost 30 year old computer, to enable it to send status updates or tweets, to Twitter. Essentially it was bridging the gap between ancient and modern computing technologies. I took a video of the historic tweet on my iPhone. Not the greatest quality, but at least you can hear Syd give the explanation of the difficulties of being able to write such an application for such an old device.

This was the first time I’ve been to the PC Museum and I have to say I was quite impressed. They have a wide array of perfectly functional, classic computers that people are allowed to use. Many had classic games like Space Invaders, Arkanoid and even text based classics like Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I personally was fascinated with the back wall of the museum, which featured many of the original boxes from classic video game consoles and computers, and loads of old software boxes, cartridges, tapes and floppy disks for every sort of computer. It was pretty impressive. There was mention that they have a games night there twice a year, which I’d definitely be interested in checking out.

If you’d like to follow the Personal Computing Museum on Twitter, follow @vintagePC

There has been something that hasn’t been sitting with me well for awhile and up until now I hadn’t been able to figure this out.  The Olympics is being hosted in Canada and our Men’s hockey team is the pride and joy of many in this country.  Yet I found I just wasn’t excited about it.  I didn’t even bother to watch Canada play in their first game against Norway.  So tonight I was invited to go watch the Canada vs Switzerland game with friends.  I was kinda begrudging about going, but couldn’t really figure a rational reason why I wouldn’t want to hang out with friends and watch a hockey game.  The game went to a shootout, with Sidney Crosby scoring the winner, then Martin Brodeur stopping final Swiss shot to seal the win.  You’d figure I would be happy, but again I wasn’t jumping out of my skin about it.

On the drive back home I finally put my finger on what was bothering me about Team Canada.  It’s that I fucking hate a lot of the players on the team!  I’m a hockey fan, I follow it quite closely, I play Fantasy Hockey as well and know a fair amount about the game. I just find that the team Steve Yzerman has assembled here is like an all-star team of players I hate.

Sidney Crosby
I’ve disliked Cindy since he was drafted to the Penguins. I disliked the way he flopped all over the ice during his first few years in the league. I’ve long disliked the Penguins, back to the Lemieux/Jagr days and really disliked when they won the Cup last year.

Marc-Andre Fleury
Fleury is guilty by association with Crosby. Also the fact he blew that World Junior gold medal in 2004 to Canada doesn’t help his cause either.

Chris Pronger
I’ve disliked Pronger since his time in Anaheim. He left Edmonton on bad terms, then went to Anaheim and won a Stanley Cup. The fact he won at the expense of my beloved Senators just makes it that much worse. He gooned Dean McAmmond in that series, a play that I’ve long felt turned the momentum of the finals.

Dany Heatley
Here is a guy that I used to really like, up until he weaseled his way out of Ottawa. He signed a big fat contract in Ottawa, only to leverage his no-trade clause into a move to a Cup contender in San Jose. The fact that Ottawa helped him resuscitate his career after the whole vehicular manslaughter thing just seemed like a slap in the face to Senators fans.

Scott Niedermayer, Ryan Getzlav and Corey Perry
Not that I terribly dislike any of these three, but they play for the loathed Anaheim Ducks. Niedermayer also played for the New Jersey Devils, another team I really dislike.

Patrice Bergeron
Plays for divisional rival Bruins. Got the Olympic spot that should have probably gone to Mike Fisher, given Fisher was having a better season in a similar role for the Senators this year.

Martin Brodeur
I will begrudgingly admit that Brodeur is a great goalie, even though I believe much of his success is a bi-product of New Jersey’s defense first system he’s played behind his whole career. Also him beating the Sens in the 2003 Conference Finals didn’t endear himself to me either.

Sure many of the reasons I listed might be petty. Sure I hold grudges and have a long memory. But that’s just the way I feel. I think even if Stevie Y had put Mike Fisher or Jason Spezza on the team I would probably feel different, but I feel I don’t really have anyone to root for on this team. Being a Canadian player doesn’t buy my undying loyalty. Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing Canada win and want them to win gold in hockey on home soil. Just don’t ask me to be excited to cheer on Cindy Crosby and Dany Heatley while they do it.

This week everyone has been talking about Google Buzz, the latest thing to roll out of the search giants labs. After waiting 2 days I finally got to see it and was pretty underwhelmed by what they are offering.

The first impression is that it is a half-assed Facebook/Friendfeed ripoff. If this service came out 2 years ago maybe I would have given it the time of day, but to me this seems a day late and a buck short on the part of Google. Google has failed at getting any slice of the social networking pie over the years, losing out badly to Facebook and Twitter. They tried launching a social network, called Orkut back in 2004, but did little to nothing with it. In 2007 they bought Twitter clone Jaiku, then did little to nothing with it.

The biggest issue with this product is that it requires building out yet another network of friends. I know myself I’m tired of it. I’ve used eMode/Tickle, Hi5, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed and LinkedIn over the last 7 years and I’m all networked out. That doesn’t even mention the niche networks like Digg, MyBlogLog, thesixtyone and Last.fm that I have used, or the services I signed up to and never built out a full network on. Google is absolutely crazy to expect people like myself to use their service, and the reality is, if they don’t have a geek community evangelizing their product to others it will go nowhere.

The part that baffles me about this product is who they’re targeting with this product?  It doesn’t do micro blogging as well as Twitter.  It doesn’t do content sharing as well as FriendFeed or Facebook.  Are they targeting Gmail users too stupid to know any better?  Buzz features pretty much zero innovation and looks like one of Google’s many also ran products in the marketplace.  Google seems obsessed with having their thumb in every pie.  Aside from search where they are undisputed kings, Google seems to be getting a reputation of making me too products that don’t manage to innovate or if they do innovate, are so far behind the market leader that closing the gap is nearly impossible.

Google, I think I’ll pass.

I loaded up Canoe.ca today and saw the headline above. Something I never knew about Jack Layton. He may be an NDP, but I never took Jack for the decapitating kind.

Update 3:57pm Glad I got the screencap, the story headline got updated pretty quickly.

I’ve waited a couple days now to comment on Apple’s latest product, the iPad. I typically don’t like being “that guy”, evangelizing Apple to other people. I know the company isn’t infallible, but really how many companies out there are? The iPad is definitely flawed, but I don’t think it is flawed for many of the reasons people are currently crucifying it for.

The Name
This was the first thing that people seemed to have gone off on. In the last 3 days everyone seems to have made the obvious feminine hygiene product jokes. We laughed. Stupid Apple. But didn’t we say the same thing about the Nintendo Wii? It was stupid. Everyone made all the obvious urination jokes. Boy was the Wii a failure. Oh, wait, no it wasn’t. It’s gone on to sell almost double the amount of units of it’s nearest competitor. So in the end, people will get over an unfortunate name and they won’t even bat an eye when you mention iPad.

It’s just an oversized iPhone
I’ve heard quite a few people complain about how the iPad is running “just” the iPhone OS. The problem with this argument is that it’s more then likely being used by people who have never used a tablet PC. To put it simply, a full operating system like Windows or OS X isn’t meant to be used on a touchscreen. Stuff like scroll bars and tiny interface buttons don’t work or make sense on a touchscreen. This is the reason why most tablet PCs use a stylus, as your fingers are too inaccurate for controlling a touch screen. And more then likely this is a good reason why tablet PCs have never really taken off, as they tried to put a square peg in a round hole by offering a desktop OS on a touchscreen device.

Apple was among the first, if not the first to offer a proper touchscreen experience on a mobile phone. It’s been an obvious success as they essentially revolutionized the phone industry and caused every other manufacturer to take note and create similar touchscreen devices. They’ve already proven the iPhone OS is a winning touchscreen solution, why not have it running on the iPad?

But how will you get any real work done on this thing?
The reality here is that this isn’t even being positioned as a work machine. I think the definition of “real work” for most people would have the requirement of being able to type. If you were expecting to be able to code websites or type the next great novel you were probably barking up the wrong tree in the first place. This device is meant as an entertainment device. The type of thing you can surf the internet on while watching TV. Given the explosion of smartphones we have become a generation of multi-taskers as these devices have enabled us to passively answer emails, send a quick tweet or browse the web from anywhere in the world, including the living room sofa. Nobody complains that they can’t get any real work done on an iPod Touch. It’s simply not the reason why 99% of people bought the device in the first place.

The fact that this device starts at $499 should also tell you this isn’t meant as a workstation. This item is meant to compete with something like the Amazon Kindle DX, which retails for $489 US. People are willing to spend that kind of money on a Kindle, so you can be sure the public would be willing to spend the money on something like an iPad.

It’s too expensive
I’ve heard people complain about the price as well. This is possibly the most ridiculous complaint out of them all. Here’s a chart for the device pricing.

People complaining about the pricing are the types who don’t actually know the true cost of devices like the iPhone and similar smartphone devices. But the iPhone 3G is only $199, this is so much more expensive they might say. The fact is that is the subsidized price offered by cell phone carriers. Without a contract an iPhone costs much more. On eBay a new, unlocked 16GB iPhone 3GS sells for roughly $500 US, and $650 to $700 for the 32GB model. So you can see Apple’s pricing is quite close to being inline with the real market values of similar current generation iPhones.

I already have an iPhone, what’s the point of it?
The iPhone is a great device, but it’s not ideal for all types of browsing. Something I did this morning was fill out an online form to get tickets to an upcoming event that had been promoted through Twitter. I wasn’t quite ready to get out of bed yet, so I filled the form out using my iPhone. As I’m sure anyone whose used an iPhone or iPod Touch for filling out forms you know there just isn’t enough room on the screen to fit the keyboard and see which form box you’re filling in sometimes. This would be a piece of cake using a 10″ screen to browse the page. Another thing I instantly thought of was using an iPad in the kitchen. I like to look up recipes online, but find it a pain to actually use that info in my kitchen. I don’t have a printer(nor really want one), so I either write down the recipe on paper by hand, haul our 15.5″ Toshiba laptop into the kitchen(where it takes up valuable real estate) or I look it up on the iPhone. None of these solutions is ideal. This is exactly where the iPad comes in.

The iPad is far from perfect, but I think it’s a good start. I feel Apple made some boneheaded decisions (no USB, SD, 4×3 screen resolution among others) but the concept definitely has promise. Looking at devices like the first Eee PC netbook or the first generation Kindle have shown companies don’t always hit a home run with their first attempt, but people will buy into the concept none the less.

I think many people have gotten caught up with years of rumour mongering about this mystical Apple tablet that it could do little else but disappoint. They could have announced the iPad came with a free unicorn and the public still would have been letdown by the announcement. People had the perception that this device was going to meet all of their personal computing needs, so when it failed to meet those lofty expectations they have essentially thrown it under the bus instead of looking at what Apple is actually offering.

Sure this device isn’t going to be for everyone, but my guess is that it’ll be another Apple success once people actually have a chance to use it and figure out the value of the device. So lets take a chill pill and wait until April when you’re actually able to go to a store and try one out.

I’ve been following this whole Leno/Conan/NBC debacle online, as I don’t really have NBC to actually watch it all unfold.  After hearing all the details I can’t help but feel kinda similar to another recent retirement situation, the one between Bret Favre and the Green Bay Packers 2 summers ago.

Brett Favre
On March 4, 2008 Brett Favre gave a teary eyed announcement that he was in fact retiring from the NFL after 17 years in the league. He’d had a long and successful career, but now he was stepping aside to let his successor in waiting Aaron Rodgers take the reins of his longtime team, the Green Bay Packers. Announcing this in March gave the team plenty of time to prepare for the transition to their young quarterback.

Jay Leno
On September 27, 2004 Jay Leno announced that he was leaving the Tonight Show in 2009 after having hosted the show for 17 years. It had been a long and successful run as host, but now he was stepping aside to let his successor in waiting Conan O’Brien take over NBC’s flagship late night talk show. Announcing it 5 years in advance gave NBC plenty of time to prepare for the transition to their new host.

Aaron Rogers
Drafted in 2005 by the Green Bay Packers after sliding from being a potential first overall pick to number 24. He became the heir apparent to Brett Favre in Green Bay, their longtime, future Hall of Famer quarterback. For 3 seasons he bided his time as backup, learning the Packers system and honing his craft. Finally after 3 seasons of waiting he was to get his chance to be “The Man” in Green Bay.

Conan O’Brien
Starting in 1993 he started as the host of Late Night with Conan O’Brien, after David Letterman had defected to CBS. For years he was the heir apparent to Jay Leno at NBC, their longtime Tonight Show host. For years he bided his time in the 12:30am timeslot, building his following and honing his act. Finally, after years of waiting he was to get his chance to be “The Man” at NBC.

Favre
From the time Favre retired there were rumours of his desire to play for the hated Minnesota Vikings. As summer rolled on these rumours began to grab more traction and Favre announced that he wanted his old job back or to be traded to the Vikings. After showing up in training camp and generally creating an awkward situation for Aaron Rodgers and the entire Packers organization, Favre was traded to the New York Jets. This avoided the problem of trading Favre to their hated rivals the Vikings and facing him twice a season and at the same time gave Brett a fresh start with a new team.

Leno
After Jay had announced that he was stepping away from the Tonight Show rumours started popping up that about his desire to jump to broadcast rivals Fox. In the months preceding his departure from the Tonight Show NBC announced an unprecedented move, they were going to give Leno a primetime 10pm talk show 5 days a week. This avoided the problem of Leno competing head to head with NBC 5 nights a week and at the same time gave Jay a fresh start in a new timeslot.

Favre
After 7 unsuccessful months with the New York Jets, Brett retires again and asks for his unconditional release from the team following the season. At this point Brett is now a free agent and the rumour mill cranks up again about his going to the Minnesota Vikings. After a few months of waffling Brett finally signs on with Vikings and will now face how old team the Packers twice in the same season. In the end Brett got exactly what he wanted, to play for the Vikings.

Leno
After 7 unsuccessful months in the 10pm timeslot, NBC cancels The Jay Leno show. NBC decides to reorganize their late night lineup, attempting to shoehorn Jay Leno between the evening news and Conan’s Tonight show. In the end it looks like Leno will get that he wanted all along, his old show the Tonight Show back.

Conan O’Brien has refused to be part of moving the show to a later timeslot and at this point it looks like he’s the one who’s going to be moving to another network.  Sad really as NBC never really gave Conan a chance to grow a following for the Tonight Show, as Leno’s show offered a poor lead-in to the nightly news, which in turn weakened the Tonight Shows ratings.

I have recently started playing foursquare on my iPhone and was bestowed the honour of being Mayor of Walmart in Cambridge, after I had checked in there twice on consecutive days. Upon this happening it was tweeted to all my Twitter followers this dubious achievement. At this point you would expect much of the anti-Walmart sentiment was aimed squarely at me after broadcasting my achievement.

As I’ve stated before on this blog, I don’t have a beef with Walmart. I know it’s the cool thing to do to bash Walmart. It’s just human nature. People hate the New York Yankees just because of what they stand for, and Walmart is no exception. After shopping at Walmart my wife Corina and I grabbed dinner at McDonalds and the topic of why Walmart is #1 came up. To me this is a question people don’t actually give nearly enough thought to.

My feeling is that Walmart is just simply way ahead of the curve when it comes to changes in retail sales. I see lots of innovation on Walmart’s part when I enter their stores, stuff that you simply don’t see from the competition. We have a brand new Walmart Supercentre in Cambridge, which seems to have lots of things that set it apart from the competition.

• They have 2 giant entrances for improving the flow of traffic in and out of the store.
• Where they have the carts is loaded from the outside of the building in, so you don’t end up with some flunky pushing 45 carts in and blocking the front entrance for customers for 2 minutes.
• They have an express checkout queue with 8 registers, usually with at 3 registers open simultaneously.
• The debit/credit machines use a paper-less digital signature pad for credit cards
• They have greeters at either door that can answer questions, or put a sticker on a product you’re returning(which I did the other day)
• They have carts, mini-carts and baskets available for you to shop with so not everyone needs to be bumping into each other with big carts

Those are just the things I’ve noticed. From what my friend Dan has told me(he works for a company that supplies Walmart), these types of innovations don’t stop at the store, but go all the way down the distribution chain when compared with their competition.

In Canada Zellers is the next biggest retail chain and they are just laughable by comparison.  The one in Cambridge is one that is attached to a mall and is the same old dingy store its been for the last 20 years.  Sure they’ve rearranged things in recent years, but you know what they say about polishing a turd.  I rarely find the same deals I would find at Walmart, aside from when items are on clearance.  If you do find a deal, then you have to wait 20 minutes in line while they check out the 5 old ladies with carts full of items and expired coupons to use on said items.

As I mentioned previously, we were at McDonalds, which is another market leader that draws the ire of many people.  Why are they #1?  The same reason, innovation.  I think almost all the McDonalds in Cambridge have been renovated or rebuilt in the last few years.  Much of what they’ve done has been rather interesting.

• They have multiple drive-in ordering lanes, which cuts down on the lineup waiting to order
• The drive-in register automatically spits out the correct amount of change to give back to the customer, reducing room for employee error and speeding up the payment process
• Big, visual, uncomplicated menu boards
• They’ve updated the decor making it more inviting.  They’ve taken a page from coffee shops and added comfortable leather furniture and fireplaces to make it more of a place you want to spend time and chat with friends

I find going to a place like Harvey’s in Canada some of the decor looks like plastic versions of your parents 80′s pastel couch set, with the artwork to match.  You go to Burger King and Wendy’s and stand in their hamster maze of a queue to order from the one cash that is open during Whopper Wednesday.

Walmart and McDonalds are proactive to many of the issues that plague retail service.  Much of their competition is not.  I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, there is a reason why people keep coming back to these companies.  Customer loyalty is something companies have to work hard at and as far as I’m concerned it’s more the competition failing to keep up with Walmart then Walmart crushing the competition.

This is an older video, but still really amazing. Definitely shows you how not to drive in icy conditions. It’s like they had never seen snow before or something.