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  • Google Street View Car, Downtown Montreal?

    Hum… I was on my way back from work on Montreal’s Sherbrooke Street tonight when I spotted something in the oncoming traffic that most definitely looked like a multi-lens, 3D capture camera mounted on a standard black car.

    View Larger Map

    Difficult to miss it, perched 4 feet above the car’s roof and right at eye level for me in the bus.

    Knowing that Immersive Media, the company handling most (but not all) of Google’s Sreet View image capture, is from Calgary, I wasn’t exactly surprised. But it definitely got me curious.

    Well, it turns out that the bolts of controversy coming from the States have been duly noted by our government and its privacy watchdog. See also: Canada to Google Street View: “Car!”.

    Ms. Stoddart’s letters to Google and Immersive are available online.

    On my end, I’m equally interested in both parties’ perspectives.

    • As an individual and a Canadian, I do enjoy my privacy.
    • As a geek and having lived in many places, I do want the technology.

    Finding an appropriate compromise is the name of the game.

    Update: I guessed I had somehow missed the buzz on the always excellent Montreal Tech Watch. That’s definitely the car (see picture). I hadn’t seen the side logo from the bus. Oooooh. Aaaah.

  • Steve, listen to the frog!

    I couldn’t let this go unnoticed. :p mwah…

  • Release: Moostick 1.0

    Moostick is my take on a Mootools-powered, unobtrusive, Javascript news ticker library.

    Moostick will take in any type of <li> container (<ul>, <ol>…) and turn it into an animated news ticker, fading between each entry at a set interval.

    This project is an experiment in mootoology. Quite arguably over-engineered for its core purpose, I use it to hone my MooTools skills while trying to still provide a fun and stable tool for others to use.

    The unobtrusiveness aspect of the project is key in keeping the content accessible when pages are loaded without Javascript and/or CSS, whether by users or machines, and is one of Moostick’s top goals.

    See the project page for more information.

  • CBC New Media sites upgrade and consolidation

    I just noticed that CBC Radio 3 has finally upgraded three massive sites for which I designed the backend software seven years ago, while living in Vancouver.

    Mind you, they did also run the innovative Zed site in the meantime, but the latter has now passed on after four TV seasons. On the other hand, 120seconds.com, newmusiccanada.com and justconcerts.com have all been consolidated as sections of their main site.

    My team and I built all the software used to run and manage the three sister sites, while the interface design was handled by a stream of super creative artists. Features included audio streaming, Flash-based UI (120seconds) and components, admin tools up the wazoo (for admins, DJs, artists, etc) and quite a bit more.

    I think six years worth of use isn’t a bad ROI. If nothing else, I can’t be blamed for not designing and writing long lasting software. And it did score them a Webby nomination (though heavy.com wan this one).

  • Gotta love Steve Jobs

    You really have to admire Steve Jobs. Whether you like him and his style or not, you can only admit the guy’s got one massive pair of cojones:

    Do you know how many CEOs dream of writing something like that (either version)? Both of the above pretty much say the same and the official one is just as gutsy from a market’s perspective.

    Arrogant? Probably. Right on target? I think so.

    Being an early adopter has its ups and downs, and seeing a dramatic price reduction a couple of months after the initial release is one of the latter. Although usually, the rest of the industry holds for as long as they can, when sales start going down, to lower their prices. Just look at the new Motorola RAZR2 being released at US$599. You know it’ll be free with activation in 3-6 months from now.

    Sir, I salute you. Now if you could just personally come and manhandle our Canadian telco executives to sell the darn thing here, and I’d be all set.

    Although, maybe the wait will be worth it?

    Update: maybe I’m on to something with the above HSDPA wet dream… See here.

  • Release: wpDirAuth 1.0

    I have now released the first version of wpDirAuth, a WordPress LDAP connectivity plugin I have been working on for the last month, after an extensive community-based peer review period. The latter helped a lot with hammering desired functionalities as well as coping with the countless configuration permutations found in the directory server sphere.

    Fun stuff. 🙂

  • You found me!

    To find out more, see also tekArtist.org.

  • Open Source Developers group on Facebook

    I’m trying to kickstart a group on FB that aims to reach the largest audience of Open Source developers on the site, be it software, hardware, content and other open ventures.

    Join in, say hi, show your colours and maybe even inspire others.

    Post early, post often. You can also spread the word, thanks to Digg.

    Oh, and if you’re feeling creative, an original logo would be great. 🙂

  • Feels good to be FOSS'ing again

    After a happy-daddy-induced hiatus from contributing to FOSS in the last few years, I have to say it feels great to be in that sphere once more. I quite recommend it (/smiles and points, infomercial style).

    The few projects I’m working on and have or am about to release are not only motivating from a software perspective, but at the human level as well. A request for a peer review has led me to meet more like-minded people, if only virtually, and the in and off thread intellectual stimulation that has ensued is in and of itself retribution enough to me. Bonus: The threads have so far been focused and I’m getting some really valuable contributions.

    Gotta love it. And sure, I will consider the outpour of VC funding that is sure to follow.
    Uh uh, will too. ;p

    Here’s an update on the recent days progress:

    • wpRedirect 1.0 was released last week, preceded by 1.1, which adds WordPress caching into the equation to be fair to those cute little cycles in server land. Bah, okay, ‘coz I was looking for an avenue to play around with WP_Cache. Busted!
    • wpDirAuth is nearing its first official release, after the forum thread and miscellaneous other review requests led (recurringly) to some helpful insight on the portability, as well as coincidentally, on the licensing aspects of the project. I still have to formalize the end-user documentation and wait for a few more reviews (/me liky tight security) and we should be on for the 1.0 release.
    • Moostick is a yet to be published Mootools-related project I’ve been toying with. It’s a bit on the over-engineered side for its current purpose (unobstrusive JS news ticker), but I’m planning on developing the library with a slew of features on the longer term. For now, there’s not much in the way of end-user documentation for it yet (always the last step), but the source, code docs and examples are all available publicly for pre-release reviews.

    On this, time to hit the sack, because I’m having as much fun at work and I do need my beauty slee… err, I need to lay down for a while, manly and all… 😉

  • Release: wpRedirect 1.1

    I just released wpRedirect 1.1, now with WordPress caching goodness. I am also now packaging the generated code documentation for download, per release.

    You can find more information on wpRedirect, a handy WordPress post and page redirection plugin, on the related project page.