Why the mobile industry is like real estate

Let’s take a moment today to focus on mobile.  It’s a medium that we all use every day to the point that we don’t really even think about it anymore.  And in spite of its pervasiveness and its massive global reach, the mobile phone is really the weapon in your technology arsenal that’s the most intimate – I know people who sleep with their phones and wake up to them chiming! Yes, Twitter is getting all the buzz these days, but you’re kidding yourself if you think it’s ever going to have even a fraction of the impact of the...

Apparently Canada loves online video – but do we really know why?

On a glorious spring Friday in Toronto, it seems particularly relevant to take a look at some numbers for online video viewing that were released last week by ComScore for February 2009.  Remember February?  When it was cold and we were all curled up in our blankets with our laptops watching videos… apparently? Well according to the stats from a new ComScore report tracking February viewing figures, Canada is the world’s top online video viewing country by percentage. The average online video viewer in the Great White North watched 10 hours of video online...

Swine flu hogwash and the mass media

So have you heard about this Swine Flu thing? Of course you have. The WHO and the CDC’s of the world combined with the CNN’s and CBC’s have made it impossible not to. Each time I turn on my TV or computer, pick up a newspaper or do anything at all to interact with civilization I find myself being updated on what’s new with it. Even tech blogs and podcasts, where I spend most of my time have gotten into the act of telling us more and more about this perilous threat to the future of civilization. And let’s not even get into the fine role...

Our wired world has a long way to go – putting “big” numbers in perspective

Last night I attended Refresh Events 7th installment at the MaRS Discovery District in downtown Toronto.  Stemming from keynote Thomas Purves‘ presentation on augmented reality, a spirited group discussion broke out to end the evening.  Topics included everything from global and local socioeconomics, to the proliferation of Java mobile apps in South Africa, to whether or not internet access could become a basic human right, to a future where people may have their phones “inside them” (insert joke here – last night’s best involved...

‘Hacking’ into niche content – launching a web series, with Jill Golick (Part 2)

Welcome back for part two of my interview with Jill Golick on her pay-per-download web series for tween girls, Hailey’s Hacks.  If you missed part one yesterday, you can get caught up here. Let’s dive right back in. What are some of the tools you’re using to promote the content?  How have you found the response to date? Before we launched we built up little presences for Hailey on Facebook (as a Facebook page), on icanhascheezburger, Twitter, YouTube and 12seconds....

‘Hacking’ into niche content – launching a web series, with Jill Golick (Part 1)

With microblogging and social networking seemingly dominating all of the headlines these days, I was really refreshed a short while ago when I came across an original pay-per-download instructional web video series called Hailey’s Hacks. I thought it was great to see someone investing video content with a clear purpose, rather than simply networking, and even greater, to see that it was starting with a business model – a somewhat novel concept these days! I got even more excited when I realized that Hailey’s Hacks was created by Toronto’s own...

Could microblogging and social media undermine the tech conference industry?

This week’s Mesh09 conference in Toronto was a fantastic success, by all accounts.  David Usher continued to move from music into the social media scene, though it couldn’t be resisted to ask “how does Nickelback influence you”.  His response?  “Chad’s a nice guy…”.  Of course, the Globe and Mail’s Mathew Ingram, a conference organizer, was also present and in his usual fine form, chiming in humorously on the Tropicana redesign fiasco in his recap panel with Mike Masnick.  But perhaps the highlight of the...

Daily Challenge breaks a record, reminds us not everything has to happen online

If you’re networked in Toronto and you didn’t hear about Daily Challenge’s Pay it Backwards Day this past weekend, then there’s a possibility that your Facebook and Tweetdeck have experienced a major fail. Plastering every possible social network with information on how to get involved for weeks on end, the #PIBTO team achieved their goal on Saturday by setting an official world record for acts of kindness at the Second Cup at John and Richmond. But in the process of using all tools social and digital to promote the event, in the end, they showed...

It’s not Gossip, Girl – it’s the future of hyper-niche citizen journalism

I have a confession to make. I love cheesy TV dramas. The unenlightened among you might call them “chick” shows, but as a regular viewer of many such programs, I can assure you that they do have entertainment value for the discerning gentleman – just sometimes it’s a little harder to spot. In spite of this confession, up until this week I had managed to avoid a program that all the ladies seem to be talking about these days. A little show called, Gossip Girl. The show was actually named for a pop-culture term that I always thought I...

Cross-platform communication and why the Bell Fund doesn’t ‘suck’

This article appeared in the February 17, 2009 edition of the Interactive Ontario Newsletter. As many of you I’m sure know, the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund had one of their scramble-to-get-it-all-in-a-binder deadlines on February 2. While this deadline was one like any other, Canadian television writer, Denis McGrath, took the occasion as an opportunity to pen a decidedly hyperbolic blog post on the subject. In the entry, titled “Sucky Canadian Broadcast Websites” , McGrath lambasts the Fund and interactive producers for failing to properly...