Digital Advent Calendar for Canadians

Over the past three days on Facebook, I've noticed friends posting about Harrowsmith Now's online Advent Calendar. I finally had a moment to check it out today and was delighted!

I love the idea of taking the concept of an advent calendar, putting it online, and making it enjoyable for adults. For each day in December, one can click the date to see a new interactive experience with a focus on Canada's winters and the holidays. The online advent calendar is much better than waxy chocolate and is guilt-free and made in Canada.

I won't give away the digital treats that await you, but they are fun and reflect the Canadian pastoral culture that Harrowsmith has famously chronicled since the magazine began in 1976. Harrowsmith closed in 2011, but reformed in 2013 as quarterly magazine and website, Harrowsmith Now.

I wanted to share the calendar as I feel we all could use some holiday cheer right now. As a Canadian digital media aficionado, I wanted to find out more about this project, so I contacted the magazine.

Wayne MacPhail, the magazine's digital brand strategist, agreed to answer my questions. I asked him about their new website, Harrowsmith Now which launched last month. He noted that it "is aimed at millennials who share the same concerns we do about sustainability, a love of the country and an appreciation of handmadegoods." The website includes features, blog posts, and, of course, the advent calendar.

MacPhail says his team was motivated to launch the calendar as a way "to give folks a little taste of the season and the holidays (not just Christian ones) during the month. There's enough bad in the world right now, we need something a bit more uplifting and fun".

He describes the development process:

"I started with a rough mockup in Tumult Hype using an existing advent
calendar as a backdrop. I then shared it with Michelle Lydon, a graphic designer I work with. Michelle developed the circular number motif in Illustrator to match the dimensions of a landscape retina iPad Air 2. I brought those graphic elements into Affinity Designer and broke them into the constituent elements and then built the interactive piece in Tumult Hype (HTML 5). I sourced the content partly from Harrowsmith staff and partly from a call I made to my pals on Facebook."

I've seen the first 3 days of the calendar (December 2nd is particularly wonderful). I asked MacPhail what other types of digital treats await us. He notes, "We've created some little interactive amusements, more video links, recipes, and a few other easter eggs and surprises."

Give it the calendar a try. I can't wait to see what Harrowsmith has in store for the 25th!

I Spy Spotify

This week, I got my invitation to try out Spotify as they have just now ventured into the Canadian market (after launching in 50+ other countries).

Over the years,I have used many other online music services before. I don't like services that only play a specific genre or era of music as after a while one ends up hearing  the same kind of stuff over and over again, there seldom are any delightful surprises, and I like to hear the latest songs.

With the exception of Pandora, which I loved during the brief period it was available in Canada. It had most of the music I liked, but it was incredibly good at predicting music I hadn't heard of but liked. I was sad when they pulled the plug on Canadians accessing it.

I've heard Spotify was as good as Pandora, so when I heard they were planning of coming to Canada I got on the waiting list for my invitation. So I was quite happy earlier this week when I got my sneak peek entry code.

And I'm happy to report that I love it!

Patrick O'Rourke at Canada.com has done an excellent job describing the features of Spotify and comparing it to similar services. Michael D'Alimonte at MTL Blog provides a great tutorial on the service for Canadians complete with ample screenshots.

It is not clear, however, what Spotify's pricing model will be once it is fully rolled out into Canada. Currently, I have access to the service for no charge. There are no commercials, instead there are tips on how to use Spotify spliced between songs, which I'm assuming will be eventually replaced with conventional commercials. I don't listen to music on my smartphone, so I haven't tried that service yet, although it sounds very promising.

What I love about Spotify

Here's what I want from an online music service and so far Spotify has:

1. ability to listen to specific songs on demand
2. extensive collection of songs from the past 70 years
3. ability to make customizable playlists
4. ability to skip songs, preferably unlimitedly (but a limit is fine)
5. playlists or channels based on genres, tempo / mood, or holiday

At present, I'm getting all these services for free - including unlimited skips and on-demand songs.  But from what I've read of Spotify's service levels in other countries the ability to have unlimited skips and on-demand song choice is a "premium" feature, that I'll have to pay $10 a month for after my sneak peak is over.

I love the interface. It's very easy to use. Downloading and installing was simple on my old computer.

There collection seems pretty extensive, with a strong Canadian component. I tried to find my favourite songs and found pretty much all but a handful (apparently some artists have pulled their songs from Spotify due to their meagre payments - see BBC).

They dazzled me when I searched for  "The Girl from Ipanema" and there were at least a couple hundred versions and they even had about twenty versions of "The Story of My Life" (a no-longer secret fav). I think my music taste is eclectic so I like an expansive, diverse collection from a music service. As a reviewer of Spotify noted that it has the ability to serve "subset of people who like to mix corny hip-hop with twangy country oldies" which perfectly describes me.

There ability to search for songs, artists, and albums works great. When I do find a new artist I like (it turns out that the covers of "The Story of My Life" are excellent - better than 1D even!) I like the links to their bios and other songs.

I haven't integrated Spotify with my social media, but I think that would be a great feature if there were a critical mass of my friends using it.

What I don't like about Spotify

Their help and tutorial content could be much better - or frankly exist at all.  They appear to rely heavily on user communities, which is fine (particularly for the people using the service for free). But in browsing a bunch of posts, I found many posts by people paying for the premium service and not being able to contact customer service any other way.

I'm also not impressed by their recommendation engine (particularly compared to how great Pandora was at this) . Their "Discover" feature appears to just be recommending music trending in an undefined "near me" - but it isn't close to music I would like. They also present some artists that are popular on Spotify, but these have not changed in days of using the service and have not been updated to reflect the various songs I have added to my lists and favourites. For example, they have been recommending Adele to me for days. What a novel artist to recommend - it's not like I'd ever heard of her or would encounter her work otherwise.

They have the ability to generate recommended songs based on a song provided - which they call a "Radio Station".  My experience with this was dismal - the songs they returned were not similar in instrumentation, tempo, genre, or any other pattern I could discern other than a similar time period (i.e., plus or minus ten years).

So other than being seriously underwhelmed by their recommendation ability, I overall love Spotify.

I'm going to go to bed now, but before logging off, I put on an Adele song ("Chasing Pavement") and it turns out this Adele isn't such a bad singer. Who would've known?

Interested in Starting Canadian Chapter of the Internet Society?

Over the past couple years I have been interested in starting a Canadian and/or an Ontario Chapter of the Internet Society.

The Internet Society is an international, non-profit organization devoted to making the "Internet for everyone".  They do this through chapter work promoting standards (e.g. IPV6), facilitating global access particularly in developing countries, advising and arguing for policy that supports the open nature of the Internet, and other related work.

Currently, the Internet Society is reaching out to Canadians to help organize a national chapter and/or provincial chapters - currently there is only a Quebec chapter. 

If you are interested in helping start any of these chapters Internet Society, you can start by becoming a member. It's free and quick to do.

The Internet Society also has a short survey that they are asking interested Canadians to fill out as expressions of interest. 

Please consider joining and filling out the short survey before Dec 16, 2012 to help get chapters here.

Notable Canadians in Digital Media & Technology

In honour of Canada's birthday, I'm updating my list of Canadian individuals and companies who contributed to digital culture or technology.

My goal is to document an aspect of Canadian history and culture that is overlooked. I'm loose in my definition of what constitutes a person as Canadian. Some people or companies got their start in Canada, but were acquired or lured to the United States. Some innovations were done by Canadians while abroad.

The point is not to debate citizenship, but rather to document innovations and their Canadian connections to demonstrate that Canada has made and continues to make a significant contribution to digital media and technology.

People

• Parham Aarabi, professor and inventor of imaging and internet advertising software
• Lorne Abony, e-Business (Petopia), gaming (FUN), and digital music business leader (Mood Media)
• Melody Adhami, co-founder of Plastic Mobile and leader in mobile app development
• Chris Albinson, venture capitalist, co-founder of C100, expat Canadian tech network
• Ronald Baecker, computer scientist and HCI researcher
• Jim Balsillie, co-founder of Research In Motion
• Michel Beaudet, creator of online humour videos Têtes à claques
• Gilles Brassard, co-inventor of the first quantum cryptography protocol, BB84
• Alexander Graham Bell, original telecom inventor
• Tim Bray, father of XML co-founder of Open Text
• Rhiannon Bury, academic, studies women and online fandom
• Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of Flickr, pioneer in use of tagging
• Bill Buxton, principal researcher for Microsoft, pioneer in human computer interaction
• Garrett Camp, co-founder and CEO of StumbleUpon
• Dave Carroll, creator of "United Breaks Guitars" video meme
• Ann Cavoukian, privacy czar, promotes greater privacy in social network sites and privacy by design
• David Cheriton, computer scientist, mentor and initial investor of Google - now billionaire
• Vincent Cheung, creator of image software Shape Collage
• Geof Collis, accessibility advocate and publisher of accessibility news
• Michael Cowpland, founder of Corel tech eccentric
• William Craig, founder of iCraveTV, first company to stream television over Net
• Cassie Creighton, 5-year old co-creator with dad, Ryan Creigton, of a popular online game
• David Crow, organizer of tech events, DemoCamp and StartUpNorth
• Douglas Coupland, author of tech-themed novels Generation X, Microserfs, JPod, etc.
• Ronald Deibert, researcher and campaigner against Internet censorship and cyber-espionage
• Peter Deutsch, leader of the team that invented Archie, the first Internet search engine
• John Demco, creator and first registrar of the .ca domain
• Hossein Derakhshan, influential Iranian blogger
• Sara Diamond, academic leader founding Banff's New Media Institute and Mobile Experience Innovation Centre
• Cory Doctorow, tech blogger and co-editor of Boing Boing
• Timo Ewalds, creator of social networking website Nexopia
• Caitlin Fisher, digital artist and augmented reality innovator
• Markus Frind, founder of popular dating site Plenty of Fish
• Ganz Sam and Howard, founders of children's virtual world, WebKinz, pioneered toy with virtual counterpart concept
• Michael Geist, prominent Internet law scholar
• William Gibson, author and visionary of cyberculture, coined term "cyberspace"
• Murray Goldberg, developer of WebCT one of the earliest and most popular e-learning platforms
• James Gosling, inventor of Java programming language
• Calvin Gotlieb, "father of computing in Canada"
• Kunal Gupta, founder of mobile app. agency, Polar Media
• Jeremy Gutsche, futurist and founder of TrendHunter
• Kevin Ham, world leading domainer
• Caroline Haythornthwaite, researcher on social networking, online collaboration communities
• Graham Hill, founder of environmental blog site, TreeHugger
• Geoffrey Hinton, computer scientist in area of artificial intelligence
• Cory Horner, early DIY programmer, leader in government transparency, launched How'dTheyVote.ca in 2005
• Tara Hunt, online marketing and communities expert
• Glenda Hyatt, accessibility advocate and blogger
• Mathew Ingram, tech journalist and co-founder of mesh conference
• Donna Jodhan, campaigner for web accessibility, launched the first federal court case demanding greater accessibility of government websites
• Mitch Joel, digital marketing expert
• Brian Kernighan, computer scientist, creator of "Hello, world" program, popular for training programmers (the first code I wrote)
• Asif Khan, founder of Location Based Marketing Association, blogger on locative technology and marketing
• Deidre LaCarte, creator of Hampster Dance, believed to be first Internet meme
• Lake Minnewanka Squirrel, Internet meme of scene-stealing rodent
• Mike Lazaridis, founder of Research in Motion
• Rasmus Lerdorf, creator of PHP and open source advocate
• Pierre Lévy, academic, developed notions of collective intelligence
• Bruce Livingstone, founder of leading stock photo service, iStockPhotos
• David Lyon, researcher on technological surveillance
• mafiaboy, prominent website hacker
• Amber MacArthur, tech journalist and podcaster
• Steve Mann, inventor and researcher, pioneered fields of wearable computing, mobile blogging, and sousveillance (reverse surveillance)
• Don Mattrick, founder of Distinctive Software (predecessor of EA Canada) at 17, now Microsoft's President of the Interactive Entertainment Business
• Marshall McLuhan, communications theorist and tech visionary
• Mike McDerment, co-founder of invoicing web-service FreshBooks and co-founder of Mesh conference
• Sid Meier, game developer of the Civilization series, second inductee into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame
• Lane Merrifield, co-founder of Club Penguin and developer of children's virtual worlds
• Michael Mulley, DIY developer of government transparency website, openparliament.ca
• Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, co-founders of role-playing gaming company BioWare
• Ryan North, writer and creator of online comic Dinosaur Comics
• David Ossip, founder of Workbrain, efficiency software
• Emma Payne, author and founder of Wired Women
• Rob Pike, co-creator of UTF-8, a unicode standard
• Kate Pullinger and Chris Joseph, pioneers in transmedia storytelling, incl. Interactive Alice
• Simon Pulsifer, prominent and prolific Wikipedia contributor
• Jade Raymond, gaming executive for Ubisoft
• Andrew Rivkin and Mark Rivkin, founders of online gambling tech company, Cryptologic
• Rafal Rohozinski, cyber security expert
• Mark Rzepka, pioneer of online pharmacies
• Robert J. Sawyer, scifi author, including his recent WWW trilogy
• Gerri Sinclair, founder of Canada's first multimedia research centre
• Jay Steele, founder of Viigo, a news aggregator app
• Jeffrey Skoll, co-founder of eBay
• Star Wars Kid, another Internet meme star
• Jennifer Stoddart, Canada's privacy commissioner, investigates practices by social media companies and mobile users' practices
• Don Tapscott, tech culture visionary and author of Wikinomics
• Clive Thompson, journalist has written for Shift and Wired
• Ilse Treurnicht, CEO of tech incubator and innovation centre, MaRS
• Jutta Treviranus, researcher on web accessibility, lead author of authoring tool accessibility guidelines
• Barry Wellman, academic, pioneer in studies of online communities social networking
• Beatrice Helen Worsley, computer pioneer - possibly the first woman to earn a PhD in computers and her dissertation was first on modern computers
• Tim Wu - Internet governance and policy scholar, coined term "network neutrality"
• Michel Vulpe, inventor and founder of i4i, successfully sued Microsoft for patent infringement
• Bob Young, founder of micropublisher, Lulu and former CEO of Red Hat

Companies or Projects

• AbeBooks - once the largest used books e-tailer
• Archie - first Internet search engine
• b5media - blog aggregator
• BiblioCommons - online library catalog enhancements
• BioWare - gaming (acquired by EA)
• Black Box Games - gaming (acquired by EA)
• Bump Technologies - 3D desktop visualization (acquired by Google)
• Cambrian House - crowdsourcing
• Canarie - research infrastructure network
• Concept Share - collaboration software for design professionals
• CGI - multinational IT consultancy
• Chilly Beach - online cartoons
• Club Penguin - children's virtual world (acquired by Disney)
• Corel - office and imaging software
• CryptoLogic - gambling software
• Desire2Learn - learning based software
• Discover Anywhere Mobile - location based services software
• Distinctive Software - gaming (acquired by EA)
• Digital Cement - marketing agency (acquired)
• ePresence - webcasting software (acquired)
• Extreme Venture Partners - venture capital for tech start-ups
• 500 pixels - online photo portfolio
• Flickr - photo sharing website (acquired by Yahoo)
• Fresh Books - online personal accounting software
• eHarlequin - online storytelling and community
• Geotoko - mobile marketing
• GigPark
• gShift Labs - search engine optimization
• gsmprjct technologie - interactive technologies
• Guardly - mobile personal security app
• Guestlist - event management
• HootSuite - social media monitoring
• Ice.com - early e-tailer
• Idée - visual search engine
• InGamer Sports - live event social gaming
• iStockPhoto - stock photos
• J2Play - developed world’s first mobile multiplayer game (acquired by EA)
• Justwhiteshirts - early e-tailer
• Kik Interactive - texting software
• Iceberg Radio - Internet radio
• Lavalife - online dating
• LiveHive Systems
• Long Pen - event software and robotics
• Mamma.com - one of the first meta search engines
• MaRS - tech incubator
• MegaDox - online legal forms and document templates
• mTrip - mobile travel guides
• MyVoice - communication aid
• Naked News - online porn
• Netsweeper - content filtering software
• Nexopia - social networking website
• Nortel - telecom tech
• NowPublic - citizen journalism
• Octopz - online collaboration
• OpenFile - user-generated online newspaper
• Open Text - early web directory, content management software
• Plastic Mobile - mobile app agency
• PlentyofFish - online dating
• Polar Mobile - mobile apps agency
• PostRank - social engagement and influence ratings, incl. Aide RSS (acquired by Google)
• Pretzil - check-in aggregator
• Quillsoft - literacy and speech recognition software
• Radian6 - social media monitoring
• Reseach In Motion - mobile devices
• Social Graph Studios - Facebook app development company
• Shopify - e-commerce solutions
• Simply Audio Books - leading audio book e-tailer
• Syncapse - social media management
• Sysomos - social media monitoring
• StumbleUpon - website social discovery
• Swim Guide - mobile app to locate nearby beaches with safety status
• TakingITGlobal - organizer of IT volunteers
• Task Avenue - location-based task reminders
• Tech Vibes - tech news
• Torstar Digital - media company, producing various Canadian websites and mobile apps, incl. Shopcatch
• A Thinking Ape - mobile agency
• 20-20 Technologies - interior design software
• Tucows - ISP and application
• UFile - tax-filing software
• Viafoura - online user engagement
• WebCT - early e-learning platform (acquired by Blackboard)
• WebKinz - children's virtual world by Ganz
• Weblo - virtual world
• Wild Apricot - software for non-profits
• Workbrain - business efficency software (acquired)
• Xtreme Labs - mobile agency
• Zeitag - mobile app displaying geolocated historical photographs
• Zerofootprint - environment software

This list is not exhaustive - but has been exhausting to put together. Please help me out by letting me know of any additions.

The Top 15 Canadians in Digital Media

A blog post that I started a couple years ago in honour of Canada Day to track notable Canadians working in digital media has continued to grow over the years. Backbone Magazine asked me to write an article on this, so I selected 15 Canadians whose contributions to digital media was particularly outstanding.

The article, The Top 15 Canadians in digital media, is the November/December cover story for the print edition of Backbone Magazine. But the article is also available online on Backbone's website (along with other of my blog posts).

The editor of the magazine also started a discussion on LinkedIn to hear from other people on who else should be added to the list. I'd love to keep this list going - encompassing more people and a broader spectrum of industries and roles.








So please offer any suggestions you can think of either on the LinkedIn group or here.

Internet Society Membership Drive

I've been a member of the Internet Society for a few years. They sponsored my participation in the Internet Governance Forum at Hyderabad, India. The Internet Society (ISOC) is a non-profit, international organization that helps develop and promote Internet standards and policy. They work actively with governments to ensure that the Internet remains free and open.

Here is a description of ISOC from their website:

The Internet Society is a cause-based organisation that works to ensure the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of people throughout the world. The Internet Society works with help from its members and Chapters to provide leadership in Internet related standards, education, and policy. As the Internet continues to evolve, both technically and politically, the Internet’s unprecedented success is due to a decentralized, open, multi-stakeholder model, which relies on processes and products that are local, bottom-up and accessible to users around the world. The Internet Society's key initiatives target the critical issues that affect all aspects of Internet development and growth. They embody the Internet Society philosophy that the Internet is for everyone and they provide the organization with a solid foundation from which to positively influence standards development, access, business practices, and government policies.

Although, there is not a national chapter for Canada or one for Ontario (Quebec is the only region with a chapter), ISOC does offer the opportunity to join for free as a "global member". I have wanted to help start an Ontario chapter for the past two years. As my research focus is increasingly moving away from policy and standards (for example web accessibility guidelines) and my professional and personal life is rather over-taxed at present, I have been hoping someone would lead the charge to start an Ontario chapter.

Currently, the Internet Society is hoping to recruit more members. For those who work in the Internet field or digital media, I believe it is important to join, as well as for those who are concerned about protecting the central role the Internet has in our lives. ISOC offers ten tips on why to join that note the collective and individual benefits of joining such as more powerfully influencing Canadian policy and having a personal role in important developments.

I would love to see more people join from Ontario as I hope this could propel a chapter formation here. Also, ISOC is offering tech gadgets for prizes (which I'll donate to a local charity in the unlikely event I win).

So please consider joining. Please run any questions or comments by me here or by email.

Join the Internet Society today, it's free!

Canada's Cyber Celebs - 2010

In honour of Canada Day, I'm updating my list of Canadians who contributed to the Internet, cyberculture, or enabling technology. These are Canadian inventors, researchers, developers, business leaders, academics, and writers who either contributed to the development of the Internet and our understanding of it.

• Chris Albinson, venture capitalist, co-founder of C100, expat Canadian tech network
  
• Jim Balsillie, CEO of Research In Motion
  
• Michel Beaudet, creator of online humour videos Têtes à claques
  
• Alexander Graham Bell - without him all those on dial-up would be out of luck
• Tim Bray, father of XML & co-founder of Open Text (early search engine)
• Rhiannon Bury, academic, studies women and online fandom
• Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of Flickr, pioneer in use of tagging
• Bill Buxton, Microsoft's principal researcher, pioneer in human computer interaction
• Garrett Camp, co-founder and CEO of StumbleUpon
  
• Ann Cavoukian, privacy czar, effective in promoting greater privacy controls in social network sites, particularly Facebook
  
• Vincent Cheung, creator of Shape Collage
  
• William Craig, founder of iCraveTV, the first company to stream television over the Net
• Douglas Coupland, author of Generation X, Microserfs, JPod, etc.
• Ronald Deibert, researcher and campaigner against Internet censorship and cyber-espionage
  
• Peter Deutsch, leader of the team that invented Archie, the first Internet search engine
• John Demco, creator and first registrar of the .ca domain
• Hossein Derakhshan - influential Iranian blogger
  
• Cory Doctorow, activist, blogger & co-editor of Boing Boing
• Michael Geist, academic, leader in field of Internet law
• William Gibson, author and visionary of cyberculture, coined term "cyberspace"
• James Gosling, inventor of Java programming language
• Kevin Ham, the world's leading domainer
• Caroline Haythornthwaite, researcher on social networking, e-learning, online collaboration & communities
  
• Graham Hill, founder of environmental blog site, TreeHugger
• Donna Jodhan, campaigner for web accessibility, launching the first federal court case demanding greater accessibility of government websites
  
• Brian Kernighan, computer scientist, creator of "Hello, world" program, popular for training novice programmers (it was the first code I ever wrote)
• Deidre LaCarte, creator of Hampster Dance, believed to be the first Internet meme
• Lake Minnewanka Squirrel - Internet meme of scene-stealing rodent
• Mike Lazaridis, founder of Research in Motion
  
• Rasmus Lerdorf, creator of PHP and open source advocate
  
• Pierre Lévy, academic, developed notions of collective intelligence
• mafiaboy, prominent website hacker
• Marc MacKenzie, winner of most beautiful Twitter message
• Lane Merrifield, co-founder of Club Penguin and developer of children's virtual worlds
  
• Michael Mulley, DIY developer of government transparency website, openparliament.ca
  
• Ryan North, writer and creator of online comic Dinosaur Comics
  
• Emma Payne, author and founder of Wired Women
• Rob Pike, co-creator of UTF-8, a unicode standard
  
• Mark Rivkin and Andrew Rivkin, founders of online gambling tech company, Cryptologic
  
• Mark Rzepka, pioneer of online pharmacies
• Gerri Sinclair, founder of Canada's first multimedia research centre at Simon Fraser, founded NCompass Labs (CMS)
• Jay Steele, founder of Viigo, a news aggregator app for Blackberry
  
• Jeffrey Skoll, co-founder of eBay
• Star Wars Kid, another Internet meme star
  
• Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics
• Clive Thompson, journalist has written for Shift and Wired
• Jutta Treviranus, advocate and researcher on web accessibility, lead author of authoring tool accessibility guidelines
  
• Barry Wellman, academic, pioneer in studies of online communities & social networking
• Bob Young, founder of micropublisher, Lulu and former CEO of Red Hat

This update has are a lot of additions, but only one cut. Please let me know of anyone who should be added to this list (or cut).

Happy Canada Day!

Recommendations to Improve Web Accessibility

In July, I completed my MA thesis researching diffusion issues for web accessibility. I'm hoping to get the full thesis published, so any journal suggestions would be appreciated. In the meantime, below are the recommendations that developed out of consultations with 21 web practitioners (designers, managers, producers, consultants, & developers).

Recommendation #1: Make WCAG More Accessible
The W3C should consult web practitioners to uncover their specific difficulties using and understanding the guidelines. The guidelines and support material should then be rewritten to address deficiencies. Possible improvements include using better organization schemes, clearer language, alternate access points, and simplified checklists.

Recommendation #2: Support Material Is Needed
Adequate support material is difficult to find and often insufficient. Therefore, a prominent free website should be set up to provide detailed, clear instruction. This may include a code library and design tips. As the W3C is already a central resource and education is already in their mandate, it follows that they should consider assuming this role in a more effective manner that reflected by their current offerings.

Recommendation #3: Education Should Address Accessibility
Both academic and training organizations must start or continue to cover disability and accessibility. Not only is training in the specific techniques required, but also an appreciation of the needs of disabled people. As some small businesses and non-profits have minimal training budgets, ideally education costs should be affordable or free. This may be a suitable role for local advocacy or industry associations to assume.

Recommendation #4: A Canadian Web Accessibility Champion is Needed
No disability organization in Canada is currently effectively leading the charge for web accessibility, leading to inattention and missed opportunities. A Canadian government or advocacy organization is required to take the lead to initiate and maintain momentum on this issue. Duties may include instigating awareness campaigns, appearing at events, promoting education, and acting as an informational resource.

Recommendation #5: Media and Industry Should Cover This Topic
For web practitioners to gain awareness of web accessibility, learn specifics, and appreciate its social importance, media and industry must not ignore this issue. Industry should make a point of addressing this topic in events and newsletters and ensure the topic is raised at conferences. Media, particularly trade reporting, should cover the topic through individual articles on the topic and raising it within the context of other topics as applicable.

Recommendation #6: Authoring and Testing Tools Should Better Facilitate Accessibility
While some authoring tools are increasing accessibility support, continued work is required both to make producing accessible content easier and to render accessibility features transparent.

Recommendation #7: Financial Incentives Should Be Offered
Cost was raised as an issue by all participants, yet the Canadian government offers no specific financial incentives to mitigate the cost of web accessibility work. Although full funding for all organizations to implement accessibility would likely be unattainable, Canadian government should, at the least, allow special tax deductions for accessibility initiatives.

Recommendation #8: Web Practitioners Need to Feel Individually Responsible
Some web practitioners felt unable to implement accessibility without supervisory permission. These practitioners should be encouraged to understand both that their actions can improve the quality of life of disabled people and that not complying contributes to disabled people’s exclusion from full participation in society.

Online TV Saves My Life

I’m almost finished my on-campus time at Royal Roads University. But as the program is general communication, with a focus on professional communication, there is almost no discussion of Internet topics and I’m in serious withdrawal!

In addition to the classwork, there’s an overabundance of after-class team work and “reflection” papers. Yes it’s meaningless academic busywork. So they keep us busy. During the scant free time, the campus is stunning beautiful so it’s been a treat to just walk around here.

Still there are moments when I need a break and need the refreshing mindless entertainment that only TV can offer – mental candy. As my room does not have a television, I decided to see what fun video stuff I could get online for the first time. As I have television and nearby DVD rental place at home, I’ve never ventured to explore streaming television available in Canada.

First stop: YouTube
Over the last year or so YouTube has grown on me. Its short videos ranging from the cute to the bizarre, are great but aren’t really suitable for extended viewing.

Next stop: American TV network sites
The United States has a lot available but due to copyright restrictions they are blocked in Canada.

Canada’s main stop: CBC.ca
I tried CBC.ca and enjoyed some Fifth Estate documentaries and Rick Mercer Report (although Rick Mercer is best when viewed contemporaneously) otherwise CBC doesn't have much in the way of comedy or drama. But after a hard day of listening to research methodology or talking about my feelings in interpersonal communications class, I need the relief only trash TV offers

Next stop: CTV.ca
Thankfully, CTV.ca provided me the medicinal TV, I needed to heal my academia-addled brain. Due to my wife and my busy schedule we tend to watch DVDs of tv shows we already know we like. CTV’s Broadband Network (including MTV, Discovery, Comedy Network) has a plethora of shows available to watch on demand – some even have all episodes of prior seasons. I should be ashamed to admit that the direness of my academic experiences drove me to repeat viewings of Gossip Girl & Paris Hilton’s BFF.

Recommended stop: Global TV
I Twittered my dire straights and asked for help and was referred to GlobalTV. I saw they had The Office and Heroes. Line-up is ideal for me, but after three attempts to watch an episode of The Office and was repeatedly either shut out or had an episode switch to the start of another episode. Global does allow one – in theory, if it worked for me - to access an episode at various points inside, which is great if you don’t have time to watch an entire episode.

Best stop: is undoubtedly CTV's Broadband Network as it offers a lot of good shows and has no technical problems.

I also noted that Bravo and Showcase have a lot of good shows on their site again. I may never need to buy an over-priced TV show DVD set ever again!

Canadian Coffee Websites Need a Pick-Me-Up

I conducted a review of the websites of Starbucks, Second Cup, and Tim Horton's for my current class. I also reviewed Starbucks' parent company website, which is a bit slicker than it's Canadian counterpart. My impression from my review (based on content, design, multimedia, etc.) is that while Starbucks (unlike many multinationals) cares enough to have a unique national presence, they don't want to fork for a good website.

Starbucks' Canadian website comes across as quite cheap and hokey compared to Second Cup & even Tim's. Second Cup's seems like a rich, discerning and expensive website (although the wait time for loads would seem unacceptable to their customers). If I judged Starbucks solely by their Canadian website, I would think it is a very small, young company. Or it is possible they don't see the business value in using the web - which is possible, but considering their competitors are doing more, one would think they'd be forced to keep up.

Overall, all of the sites have some good features. Starbucks makes a more convincing case for prospective employees, Second Cup offers a more enticing depiction of their menu, and Tim's offers the best nutritional information options. All of the websites could be doing a lot more - and I don't mean expensive gimmicks or design , just some well-placed content would do the trick (except for Starbucks, which does need a redesign).

Characteristic	Starbucks	Second Cup	Tim Horton's
Canadian website	Yes	Yes	Yes
Use of .ca domain	Yes	No	Yes (but redirects to .com)
Bilingual	Yes - but defaults to English	Yes - must choose language first	Yes - must choose language first
Main colour	Beige	Brown	Brown
Secondary colour	Khaki	Cream	Red
Overall design critique	Functional, spartan	Rich, sleek	Clean, professional
Approach to graphics	Amateurish sketches	Slick photography	Colourful photographs
Store locator present	Yes	Yes	Yes
Platform	Microsoft content management system	PHP	Content management system
Multimedia	None	Extensive use of Flash & slick user controls (many pages have wait time to load)	Videos of happy employees (couldn't bring myself to watch)
Ability to load card	Yes	Yes	Yes
Bells & whistles	None	Storybook presentation of their teas, which is graphically lush & ability to turn pages - also has virtual tour of a location	Road trip planner - so you can plan your trip around Tim's
Glitches	Dead links	Content below the fold with no way to know it's there	Road trip planner - took more than 5 mins. to load
Menu	Bare bones -lists with descriptions, with exception of coffee -some content for connoisseurs	Rich, graphic presentation with descriptions - special feature sections for coffee & teas	Standard presentation of menu
Nutrition info	No	Fairly detailed - but hard to find	Extremely detailed including those with special needs - has a nutrition calculator
Social responsibility	Very prominent - item in nav and graphic promoting - although many links on this dead - supports several charities, including employee charitable work	Link on homepage to one charitable campaign - otherwise nothing	Very prominent graphically and in nav - emphasizes charitable efforts for children & community
Corporate history	As expected - no mention of Canada	Emphasized Canada	Long, included storied history (ie. Tim Horton bio)
Mission statement	Yes	No	Essentially
Employment info	Detailed, enticing - emphasized commitment to diversity - links to own job finder microsite	Brief & lackluster	Very detailed
Email newsletter	No	Yes (I got this for awhile - it was nicely designed, had a few useful mentions of new products, but was ultimately boring)	No
Coupons	No	No	No
Contests	No	Yes	No (links to info on in-store contest)
Innovative use of web	No	No	No
Compelling reason to return to site	No	No	No
Notes	significantly different from US parent company website		Extensive investor relations material & press info

Social Media Popular in Canada's Websites

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Canada's Cyber Celebs

In honour of Canada Day, I wanted to further document Canada's contribution to the Internet and cyberculture. This area is greatly underpublished, as I found out while researching my prior articles on Canada's top Internet successes.

Below I have collected a list of Canadians inventors, researchers, developers, or writers who have contributed to the development or our understanding of the Internet or cyberculture. I'd like this to be an ongoing project and I will flesh out the bios in more detail in the future.

• Alexander Graham Bell - without him all those on dial-up would be SOL
• Tim Bray, father of XML & co-founder of Open Text (early web search engine)
• Rhiannon Bury, academic, studies women and online fandom
• Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of Flickr, pioneer in use of tagging
• Bill Buxton, Microsoft's principal researcher, pioneer in field of human computer interaction
• William Craig, founder of iCraveTV, the first company to stream TV over the Net
• Douglas Coupland, author of Generation X, Microserfs, JPod, etc.
• Peter Deutsch, leader of the team that invented Archie, the first Internet search engine
• John Demco, creator of the .ca domain, co-founder of Webnames.ca
• Hossein Derakhshan - influential Iranian blogger
  
• Cory Doctorow, activist, blogger & co-editor of Boing Boing
• Michael Geist, academic, leader in field of Internet law
• William Gibson, fiction author, visionary of cyberculture, coined term "cyberspace"
• Marina Glogovac, CEO of Lavalife
  
• James Gosling, inventor of Java programming language
• Kevin Ham, the world's leading domainer
• Graham Hill, founder of environmental blog site, TreeHugger
• Pierre Lévy, academic, developed notions of collective intelligence
• mafiaboy, prominent website hacker
  
• Emma Payne, author and founder of Wired Women
  
• Gerri Sinclair, founder of Canada's first multimedia research centre at Simon Fraser, founded NCompass Labs, content management software
• Mark Rzepka, pioneer of online pharmacies
  
• Jeffrey Skoll, co-founder of eBay
• Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics
• Clive Thompson, journalist has written for Shift, Wired
• Barry Wellman, academic, pioneer in studies of online communities & social networking
• Bob Young, founder of micropublisher, Lulu and former CEO of Red Hat

Please let me know of anyone who should be added to this list. I haven't included all the founders and leaders of the various Canadian companies (e.g. Research in Motion, Nortel, Club Penguin, StumbleUpon), but let me know if you feel they should be included.

More Biggest Canadian Internet Success Stories

Canadians aren't good at trumpeting their own success. Granted, we're a small market so our stories aren't always that big and glitzy (though some are).

I noticed that Canada's Internet history and successes are not well documented and I'm hoping to help improve this situation.

While my list of Canadian Internet Successes is by no means scientific, it is a start.

While some companies are obvious successes (eg. Flickr, StumbleUpon, RIM) there are some I'm not sure about (eg. is Nygard truly a leader in e-Business that one source claims it to be?).

Also, the list is biased towards front-end and B2C companies - this is not intentional, but reflects my limited knowledge base.

Please help me out with any omissions, corrections or details about companies already listed.

Criteria for inclusion:
* doesn't have to be an Internet company, but must use an Internet component (ie. Web, e-mail, FTP, etc.) successfully
* scope or influence extends beyond Canada
* founded or based in Canada
* commercially successful or influential for online offerings, technology, design, research, etc.

Top Canadian Internet Successes

1) Club Penguin (Kelowna, British Columbia)
Disney’s purchase this summer of Club Penguin for $350M US (read Globe & Mail article) must make Club Penguin the biggest monetary success story of any Canadian Internet company. Club Penguin is a gaming and social networking site for pre-teens. I believe they were so desirable not only for their site's stickiness with a choice demographic, but also because they had a viable, profitable model in place that doesn't rely on advertising.

2) Flickr (founded Vancouver, British Columbia)
While Flickr sold out to Yahoo for a paltry, rumoured, 20-30 million, this photo-sharing website is one of the most popular and most used websites in the world. Flickr was a pioneer in the tagging of photographs.

3) Reseach In Motion (Waterloo, Ontario)
While RIM's BlackBerry device is capable of web browsing, its claim to fame is being the first to allow users to retrieve non-wireless email accounts from a wireless device.

4) Kevin Ham (Vancouver, British Columbia)
One of the first and, by some accounts, the best domainer, Ham owns a portfolio of websites worth at least $300M and with revenues of $70M a year. (Read Business 2.0 profile)

5) Archie (Montreal, Quebec)
Considered the first Internet search engine. Archie was created in 1990 at McGill University to search and index FTP sites.

6) CryptoLogic (Toronto, Ontario)
One of the top four online gambling software companies. While tighter online gambling regulations in the States have hurt, they are still doing well and recently done a high-profile partnership with Playboy.

7) StumbleUpon (founded Calgary, Alberta)
Started in Canada, this social bookmarking and recommendation site gets more popular every day. StumbleUpon relocated to San Francisco for financing and was subsequently bought by eBay in May 2007 for $75M US.

8) Open Text (Waterloo, Ontario)
One of the first search engines and an early leader in web-based content management.

9) Lavalife (founded Toronto, Ontario)
While Lavalife didn't invent online dating, they revolutionized it by making it much more fun and thus became North America's most popular dating site. They sold out to an American company for $152.5M CDN.

10) iStockPhoto (Calgary, Alberta)
iStockPhoto is one of the leading royalty-free stock photography websites, and, by their own admission, the "world’s busiest image market", pioneering the use of micropayments. They sold in Feb. 2006 to Getty Images for $50M.

11) NowPublic (Vancouver, British Columbia)
Billed as the world's largest citizen journalism network with thousands of citizen reporters in 140 countries. The company recently received (see CBC article) one of the largest investments ($10.6M) in citizen journalism.

12) William Gibson (Vancouver, British Columbia)
This science fiction novelist didn't work on the Net, but his work predicted the Net - and he coined the term "cyberspace". Gibson has also been a contributor to Wired Magazine and writes his own blog.

13) AbeBooks (Victoria, British Columbia)
The world’s largest used book online marketplace, AbeBooks continues to grow. They have recently bought other book websites and remain a favourite with bibliophiles.

14) Justwhiteshirts.com (Toronto, Ontario)
This company, selling men’s clothing (not just white shirts), was an early e-commerce success. Somehow they managed to lose their head start and went out of business last year.

15) WebKinz (Woodbridge, Ontario)
Owned by toy and gift company, Ganz, this company makes plush toy animals that come with a secret code that let's the owner participate in the WebKinz virtual world. With at least a million registered users and stickiness and loyalty in line with Club Penguin, WebKinz is undoubtedly a goldmine.

16) Naked News (Toronto, Ontario)
Originally a free online website with daily news coverage by stripping anchors. Naked News launched in 2000, before the heyday of high-speed connections but were nonetheless phenomenally popular for awhile, due, no doubt, as they say in Avenue Q - "Grab your xxxx and double-click, the Internet is for porn!"

17) eHarlequin (Toronto, Ontario)
The leading romance story online destination, eHarlequin is a branch of Harlequin Enterprises, the world's top romance book publisher. The popular website was also an early pioneer in web 2.0 techniques.

18) Cambrian House (Calgary, Alberta)
A leader in crowdsourcing via its online community and software to enable peer production.

19) TakingITGlobal (Toronto, Ontario)
TakingITGlobal is a website with an active, international community that enables developers to create IT projects to aid developing nations.

20) 20-20 Technologies (Laval, Quebec)
The leader in software for the interior design industry (according to their own site) 2o-20 Technologies offers a suite of products many using or enabled by the Web.

21) Tucows (Toronto, Ontario - originally Michigan)
I knew this company when it was owned by my first ISP, i-Direct. Tucows was the ultimate site for freeware and shareware downloads.

22) Ice.com (Montreal, Quebec)
Ice.com is one of the largest jewelery e-tailers and certainly one of the nicest looking.

23) Têtes à Claques (Montreal, Quebec)
This French-language humour website, Têtes à Claques started with a series of bizarre animated online shorts. It's the most popular French-language website in Quebec and its popularity is spreading into France.

24) Nygard (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
According to an Industry Canada report , Nygard was a pioneer in the fashion industry in using technology, saving at least $10M a year back in 2002 for its innovative use of e-Business. Apparently, Nygard was one of the first designers to actively display their catalogue online.

25) Weblo (Montreal, Quebec)
I’m reluctant to put this virtual reality site on the list, as it seems to be much ado about nothing. Lots of money was spent here with the hope that audiences will come, but there’s little to draw them in.

26) Simply Audio Books (Oakville, Ontario)
The largest company in the rental and sale of audio books via their website. Simply Audio Books earned revenues of more than $6M last year.

Honourable mentions

• Iceberg Radio - one of the largest and first Internet radio portals
• b5media - global blog syndicate
• Chilly Beach - web-based Flash cartoons that transitioned to a TV series
• MegaDox - legal documents
• Long Pen - Devised by Margaret Atwood, now on the board, LongPen enables remote celebrity signing events via online conferencing and robotic signing of books/goods
• Don Tapscott - co-author of Wikinomics and digital evangelist
• Digital Cement - marketing services firm with a specialty in e-mail marketing, acquired by Pitney Bowles in May 2007 for $40M

Close, but no cigar
Founded, totally or in part, by Canadians living abroad:

• SitePoint, publishers of web development books, videos, websites and forums, but although co-founded by a Canadian, they are based out of Australia
• Jeffrey Skoll – first president of eBay and he wrote their business plan
• Thompson Corporation – started in Canada, now headquartered in Connecticut, though largely owned by the Canadian Thompson family (that is, pre Reuters merger). Thomspon, a specialty and trade publisher, was one of the first companies to go into digital publishing in a big way.
• Treehugger.com, founded by Ottawa-native Graham Hill, but based out of New York, this environmental blog was bought this summer for $10M by Discovery Channel.
• Bob Young - from Ancaster, Ontario, Young co-founded Linux distributor Red Hat and he is now CEO of Lulu.com, one of the first websites enabling digital and print micro-publishing.

Canadian pioneers
These were certainly Internet leaders in Canada:

• Chatelaine - one of the first Canadian magazines to really do something with their "companion" website, then were leaders in integrating & cross-promoting print & web
• Sears Canada - made a success out of e-commerce in Canada, while others were giving up on it or just not able to figure it out
• Chapters - before Amazon came to Canada, Chapters' website was doing just fine here
• Grocery Gateway - for a long time they were the only grocery website and it seems still one of the best

What did I miss? Please help out with some additional information or with some additions to the list.