I am speaking at the ACCT Canada 2009 Conference on November 10th. The Alliance for Commercialization of Canadian Technologies is the "national advocate for the value created by academic technology transfer and commercialization". The short form of that mouthful is that they primarily represent the tech transfer offices of universities. In university lingo, this is often done by the University Industry Liason Office (UILO). Yes, acronyms are fun :P

As part of my role at Bootup, I'll be first participating in the "Innovation Clusters, Incubators and Accelerators" panel. We'll be getting on a call to discuss the format and talking points for the panel tomorrow, but I expect I'm going to be the private industry / capitalist viewpoint. This is a free form panel discussion, so it should be interesting to see where it goes.

Some of you may have heard that Twitter was down the week before last. This kicked out all sorts of thinking and discussion that, perhaps, one company shouldn't be a single point of failure.

The other item that has been coming up again and again is a request that the Bootup Entrepreneurial Society run a "social network" of some kind. People really enjoy Launch Party and other events, and have found them a great place to network.

More specifically, running Co-Founder Speed Dating, we set up Crowdvine as a mini social network. What we found is that it was heavily used - lots of people used it to check out the backgrounds of other people and it continued to be used after the fact. People who couldn't make it to the event checked in and contacted people, some of which actually resulted in companies being founded.

I finally tried out Nokia Sports Tracker. Here's a screenshot of my workout:

Yes, screenshot. Nokia, in their ever loving wisdom, don't have embeds. You can download a version of your "workout" in KML, but you can't embed your route. Update added this suggestion to Get Satisfaction.

This is a really interesting service that works well - it's got a great S60 app for your phone with various different modes, and pretty much updates your location in real time both on a map on your phone, as well as beaming it online.

The one issue is that it absolutely *drained* the battery on my N95. We actually spent 6 hours biking around for the Vancouver Bike the Blossoms event, and it would have been great to have a log of the whole event. I charged the phone the night before, so I have no idea why it got so completely drained. Oh, right, and there are the usual Nokia-can't-really-make-web-apps issues, like the fact that I can't share a link to a map of the Vancouver area, showing that there are a dozen or so people using it in this area.

Or, how I got a tasted of Linked Data and wanted more.

I've been noodling about with a variety of semantic web / open data concepts for some time. Most recently, I spoke at Drupalcon DC 2009 on Practical Semantic Web (and why you should care). There's a video of the presentation embedded in that last link, and the presentation is available on SlideShare.

I think I can explain things even more simply: we can place a simple piece of data on a web page - like an address, or marking something as a person. From those source pieces of data, we can link it to ever more pieces of information. Except, instead of just "bare links", these links carry meaning, creating a richer web of content. In my presentation, I used the phrase "RDF is food for robots" - a way to share more info about the visible, human readable information that is already there.

From my point of view, that's already cool enough. But it's still not very *practical*. Why should you care, today? That leads me to open data, in general. The Dev Seed guys in DC have a great example of this in their StumbleSafely site -- it mashes up bars in Washington DC with crime statistics, cross-referenced with time for day, night, and evening data.

We don't have anything like this in Vancouver. What we do have is some interesting data that is beginning to be gathered in Freebase, and more specifically in the Vancouver-specific corner of it, known as vanbase. Looking at the StumbleSafely application, and thinking about some data that I hate to see duplicated over and over again, I came up with the idea of restaurants, and extra information about them.

I just created an account on oDesk and, frankly, have fallen down a rabbit hole.

Of course, Drupal was the vector once again: I had Daryl leave a comment, with his username linking to a trends page showing Drupal jobs on oDesk. This intrigued me, so I dug into the system a little more.

For starters, there is a Drupal 5 test. I haven't taken it yet, but I fully intend to kick the tires on it. The testing system is run through Expert Rating. I want to explore this more, maybe even to the degree of developing tests for modules and components ... this feels like a useful function that could kickstart a lot more items.

Finishing up the Drupal bits, it looks like the oDesk Community section is Drupal-powered. The oConomy section is particularly interesting -- you can see that $48M worth of work have flowed through oDesk, and that the odometer is part of a custom module that they've developed (view source shows you all this).

The Global Provider Map has tons of interesting information -- Canada has 3253 Providers, with an average hourly rate of $24.92, and average feedback score of 4.29. And then there's Iceland -- 24 providers, $50.19 an hour average. Where the hell is Bouvet Island? The Maldives?! 11 providers...

Do work, get paid. I'm excited to think about how this can be used by startups especially, or to prototype startup ideas. Or, for that matter, working with global communities to build their knowledge worker populations. Hey Evan, it's time to bring the world to to Whitehorse, and vice versa.

I could go on to describe some details on how this works -- a crazy desktop app that monitors your "Activity" levels at the computer, takes screenshots and webcam shots (yes, webcam shots -- wearing pants is required), and creates your time log. But, I'm really just scratching the surface myself as I familiarize myself with the system. Has anyone out there used oDesk before? As a programmer or a buyer? I'm interested in feedback from people that have actually gone through the process...

The rabbit hole? I can truly run and interact with teams, companies, and businesses all over the world. This is the ad hoc network of professionals with varying sets of skills that I've been thinking about since a bunch of university friends and I sat down in 1995 and thought about online pizza ordering for Toronto.

Update: OK, I took the Drupal test and got 92%. Not bad, and I was impressed by the depth of some of the questions.

I'm going to be doing a short interview with Global TV with my thoughts on the Blackberry Bold, which "launches" today on Rogers (apparently, reports say that the product isn't actually available in stores).

Of course, this is currently a GSM phone, so it's one more piece in Roger's arsenal vs. Telus and Bell, which both have the same set of CDMA phones. The newest phones are released on GSM first, and the CDMA versions lag by months, if they are available at all.

I've never been a huge fan of the Blackberry… as a consumer phone. I think that's still the case. This is definitely a great upgrade, but unless your company is paying for it, you're more likely to get an iPhone for home use. In addition, the Bold is more expensive with Rogers - $600 without contract, $400 with 3 year contract, vs. $200 (8GB) or $300 (16GB) for the iPhone.

If you're a current Blackberry users that loves the keyboard and scroll wheel, then you'll like this upgrade. Otherwise, we're waiting for the Blackberry Thunder (the touchscreen version) to potentially be "more like the iPhone".

Related links:

• Boy Genius Report: Blackberry Bold review - we've been rockin' it for a month
• Mobile Computer UK: RIM Blackberry Bold Review
• iPhone Blog: YouTube Video Review of iPhone vs. Blackberry Bold
• Boy Genius Report: Blackberry thunder, touchscreen

I'm going to be on CTV Newsnet again, this afternoon at 3:15PM PST, live with Marcia MacMillan. Below are a few notes and links, I'll clean this up and post a link to the clip once it's wrapped. I talked about the iPhone last time, and somehow I think it's going to come up again.

in fact, Rogers is the only firm NOT charging for incoming texts, they now have a decent data plan, they have the high end Nokia phones, AND they have the iPhone.

Only North America charges for incoming text messages -- Europe and Asia have always been free.

via Ian Bell - http://www.physorg.com/news129793047.html - "SMS costs are, in the aggregate, 4x higher than getting data from the Hubble space telescope. Global SMS revenues are larger than the Hollywood movie, music and video game industries combined."

Lots more from Ian, like "I could personally store-and-forward all of Canada’s SMS traffic myself via my Novus broadband in Yaletown, and it would have limited impact on my BitTorrenting". Oh, right, and of course the fact that SMS effectively is NO extra load on carriers - "As such it costs the network exactly nothing and uses no bandwidth that isn’t already in use — traffic load is the same on the network even if no SMS messages are being transferred." - http://www.kenneyjacob.com/2007/06/19/how-sms-works/

via Yule Heibel - Productivity is boosted by mobile - "They say that by 2016 the value of the combined mobile wireless voice and broadband productivity gains to the US economy will equal $427 billion per year" - http://www.psfk.com/2008/07/how-mobile-boosts-productivity.html

Bell and Telus being called before Jim Prentice, Minister of Industry - http://www.smstextnews.com/2008/07/bell_telus_called_before_federal_indu... - of course, I'm going to mention C-61 and cellphone locking that Mr. Prentice has a hand in

Update: I was off at a photowalk this evening and am just getting back. My segment was quite short, but I'm glad I got a C-61 mention in. Thanks to Mr. iPhone John Biehler for digging up the direct link to my clip: http://watch.ctv.ca/news/latest/text-charges/#clip65669

I'm glad I waited in posting any sort of "the iPhone with Rogers will suck" commentary, as it seems they have somewhat come to their senses. As usual, John Biehler was my iPhone news source, and here's the link to the Roger's press release.

A new "promotional" data plan is going to be available until August 31st (and I actually believe they'll extend it...), where you can bring your own voice plan, and add a 6GB data plan for only $30 / month. Hmm, maybe over 50K signatures at ruinediphone.com changed their mind? No, it's not unlimited ... but in talking to Roland -- who is the heaviest mobile app user I know -- he's never gone over 500MB. I think I used a couple of GBs when I was at the Olympics in Torino, and large megapixel camera phones and the fast 3G speeds could certainly eat bandwidth, but 6GB seems fair.

So...am I getting an iPhone? Nope. I don't really like contracts, and I don't like locked phones. I imagine we'll be able to get an unlocked iPhone at some point, where I'll be able to swap out SIM cards when traveling as I do now.

Meanwhile, looks like I'll be on CTV Newsnet talking about the other Canadian wireless barons -- Bell and Telus. They are going to start charging for incoming text messages. Well, this should be a fun ride ... Rogers isn't charging for incoming, it has the iPhone and the latest Nokia phones, and now -- decent data plans. Really, what are Bell and Telus thinking?

Update: Looks like this is not just for iPhone -- you can add this plan to *any* phone, as long as you sign a 3 year contract, and it does apply to Fido as well. See the post on howard forums for reference.