Category Archives: General

General items that fit either no category or more than one category.

Google Street View Comes to Canada

Google Street View became available to a select number of Canadian markets today.  When you visit the Google Maps site, you can drag the little man standing on top of the zoom status anywhere on the street.  The major centres which now have the Street View enabled include: Vancouver+area, Calgary, Ottawa, Kitchener, Hamilton, Toronto+area, Montreal, and Halifax.  I know it wasn’t too long ago when I saw them driving around in Saskatchewan so I imagine more areas will becoming online soon.  It seemed like not too long ago when doubts were being raised whether it would ever come online due to the privacy laws here in Canada.

Low Flying Planes

Just driving home from Regina today and noticed a smaller plane flying very low over Emerald Park / White City.  The plane kept circling over the entire area.   I imagine it is being used to take pictures.  My guess is an expansion for the “birds eye view” at Microsoft’s Bing Maps.   Better keep my eyes open to see myself driving around once the new maps do come out.

Motorola Rival A455

I just received my Motorola Rival A455. I won it in a random draw at work for completing a Motorola etraining course. It is a very sweet prize indeed. I ended up getting the purple Rival, a weird t-shirt and some strange card game.  The prize is alright but I was looking forward to the silver model. The phone itself is kind of cool for text messaging with its side sliding full keyboard.  Telus is selling it right now $399 no contract, $349 on 1 yr, $299 on 2 yr, and $99 on 3 year.  I wonder what mine would be worth on the open market? I have to thank Motorola again for such an awesome contest and the great prize. I doubt I will be using it as my primary phone is still holding strong but I am sure it will find itself being used sometime.

Digg removes ‘Blog This’ feature and I only notice now

Well one of the features I really liked about Digg is no longer available. I often used the ‘blog this’ feature to add news articles that I felt were interesting and worth sharing on to my blog. I know that the feature wasn’t used very often by a lot of the visitors of digg but it made my life easier for sharing links. After trying to post an interesting article to a 2009 NHL Free Agent tracking site I had to research the lost feature. It turns out that the feature was removed on May 26 according to the digg blog. I guess it makes sense for the removal of the feature if I use it less than once every few months but I don’t know who it hurts to just leave it and let it be unused.

Graduation Day

After years of long hours and hard work, the payoff has finally arrived. Yesterday, I walked across the stage, not once but twice, to receive my degrees. My main degree was the BSc Computer Science with Coop and my second degree was a BA Economics. I believe having both degrees will be very beneficial in my future careers as I will be able to see problems from more than one perspective. Congratulations to all the other grads and now good luck in finding jobs.

Virgin Launches BlackBerry Pearl Flip

As I had predicted by the product page being up on the weekend, Virgin Mobile Canada launches the new BlackBerry Pearl Flip.  The pricing on the new phone is very competitive and beats out the big players in Canada.  Virgin Mobile has it priced at $0 / 3 year … $299 / 2 year …  $349 / 1 year … and $399 / no contract.   Comparing that to Telus puts the pricing all $50 cheaper (Telus would have the upper hand in terms of plans though… Smartphone Combo!).  The Flip comes with newer software than whats is on the Curve or Pearl thus making the phone a little bit more attractive.  Unfortunately, Virgin isn’t throwing in an 8gb card with this phone like they did with the Pearl and Curve at launch (probably reducing costs).   Overall though, for a $0 smart phone this is a great device, fully capable of much more than people will give it credit for.

Blackberry App World Goes Live

One day into the new BlackBerry App World and I am liking it. I have been able to download a lot of new apps and really enjoy the ease of downloading. I have only downloaded free apps so far but in the future the pay apps seem like a very good option for me. I was really impressed to see Shazam for BlackBerry. Its cool stuff being able to walk around a mall and for my Storm to tell me what song is playing. Overall I would recommend the App World to anyone with a compatible BlackBerry.