One of the most popular sites on the internet, Digg.com has made a business mistake the level of which has not been experienced since New Coke — the core functionality of allowing users to “digg up” the site’s stories was removed. They’ve since announced a reversal to this decision but for a few days, at [...]

Americans have recently been questioning themselves deeply on subjects like imperialism, religion, taxation, and prohibition. All the while, oil is gushing, but in all the wrong places.  Perhaps it’s addictive, or something (don’t look at me, smarts the likes of a world leader are needed to figure these things out). At the same time of [...]

Canadians used to brag about our leading-edge prowess in digital communications technology. My, how things sure have changed. We now live in an era where Nortel is an investor’s punchline, and the Cable and Telco companies provide limited services with high prices and pushy contracts. Canada has, in fact, become the laughing stock of the [...]

It might have just started as a fun idea at Google HQ for a lazy Saturday, but the decision to run a masthead showing a UFO “abducting” one of the letters in Google has set-off heaps of speculation.  Will September 5th now be unversally proclaimed Unexplained Mystery day thanks to Google’s masthead? Internet folk are [...]

Are you prone to search “elsewhere” before searching your own music collection for a particular song ? While recently doing so myself (for a completely “fair use” project), I was struck by the sheer laziness of my actions. Yet, I thought (after finding the song in an instant), certainly the global internets should be trusted [...]

A story I recently posted on the grog.ca forum continues to consume my thoughts. IP addresses… are not stored permanently. That’s part of a statement I’ve tried to immediatly slap on every public site I’ve ever managed (check the bottom of the board for the whole statement). I seriously needed to do a double-take this [...]

There is a fight going on for the internet, and the internet is losing.  Recently the New York Attorney General pretty much single-handedly cut-off millions of Americans’ access to newsgroups — the original home of free discussion on the internet (Rogers found a much sneakier way to destroy newsgroups on their own but that is [...]

Home phone providers have always known that there just aren’t enough lines available should everyone pick-up their phone at the same time and try to make a call.  They rely on established traffic patterns and add a bit for emergencies. They know that 13 year-old girls are constantly tying-up their system, and they deal with [...]

If people left your broadcast system to obtain free (and in many cases better) programming, you’d become concerned.  Unless you also provide access to the internet, that is. Then you’d want to try and control, or shape, your customers’ habits to encourage the use of (or at least prevent a further mass exodus from) your [...]