Toronto Unlimited? Give me a break...

Taxpayers paid for this!?!?!?!? Wow.

Hiring product managers...

So I had a great meeting with our fantastic advisory board yesterday, and we talked at length about adding the right people to the team to help grow the company. One of those key roles, over on the engineering side of the fence would be a kick-ass product manager... and as luck would have it, Ken Norton just wrote a terrific article about hiring product managers.

What's with HTML email?

[rant] So I got an email today to confirm whether we were on for a
meeting later in the day. A couple of words. HTML-ified words,
though, so the email was ~7 K... and this wasn't even one of the
really complex ones (you know, the ones that have a company logo or
signature or bizzare font) either. While I'm not about to switch to
Pine anytime soon... this whole HTML email thing needs to stop :) [/
rant]

it's dead... again...

Once and for all ( I think ) the Treo finally died. How sad. It
drives me crazy, of course... and I'd really love to hear from people
if this is just my experience or if others have the same experience
of unreliable Palm hardware? I know at least one other person who
sprung for the extended Treo warranty from having been burned in the
past... While I know BlackBerries aren't without fault either, so
far, in personal experience they seem to be much better
constructed... at least in terms of being able to survive more than a
year or two before self-destructing.

It's alive!

Okay, after many reset and reflash events, the treo's working again... but at this point, I've got to admit I'm finding it hard to trust the device not to self-destruct. We'll give it a few days, but there's no question a Treo 650 or BlackBerry is soon on the horizon... Guess we'll see which...

Why does Palm gear have to break?

So I love my Treo... everyone knows I do. I always have. My current
Treo is a 600. I've had a 180, a 270 and now this one. Here's the
catch: Every Treo I've ever had has just one day magically stopped
working. I think yesterday was that day for this one. I keep pressing
the reset pin on the back in the hopes that it'll wake up, I can
flash it and just resync... and yet... after 12 hours of trying... no
such luck.

So here's my big gripe: Palm makes great devices. The Treo 600 and
650 are amazing smartphone/PDAs. But there're two things that RIM's
always done better... BlackBerries are WAY better at power management
(just ask anyone who has a push email solution on the Treo... it's a
must to charge the thing daily... and the fact that it can't just
charge by USB with the included cable is pretty irritating).
BlackBerries also seem to be way more robust... I've dropped them a
hundred times and they just keep working. I've talked to two friends
that've dropped them into (respectively) a toilet and a puddle. Both
left the devices off to dry for a few days, and then they worked just
fine (Not that I'm sure I'd want to use the toilet-drenched one...
but that's hardly the point).

Anyway... so as I sit here and lament what I think might be the death
of my Treo... Palm, PLEASE work on those two things: Battery life and
robustness/not-die-ability :) Dunno... while I'm a pretty big fan of
the Treo, we'll see if this lovely event marks the switch back to the
Berry for me... I hear the 7290's pretty sweet.

I hate Dundas Square.

This post's about a week overdue... but man do I hate Dundas
Square... I get sort of twitchy whenever I see it. Who... tell me...
WHO, thought that a grotesque chunk of concrete, idiotic "dancing
fountains" and more billboard space was what Toronto needs more of?
Where're the benches, trees, and grass? Want a place for people to
gather? Give 'em a place to sit, and somewhere to relax. Ugh.

QuickSilver

If you're a Mac user, check out http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/ ...
a super cool tool that just helps speed up workflow. It's cleaned up
my dock (mind you, I always had a pretty minimalist dock
beforehand... it drives me crazy to see people with 30-40 icons of
stuff they MAY someday decide to launch). It's even enabled fast-user-
switching without having to take up precious menubar space (I have a
12" PowerBook, so space is at a premium). Anyway, as Merlin
(43folders.com) points out, it's hard to describe QuickSilver to
someone that hasn't used it... so play around with it... and let me
know if you find any other cool ways to speed things up.

AmbientVector wants to be FE :-)

So, I came across something very cool today... a Fair Employment mark that can be displayed by firms that commit to not discriminate against employees based on their sexual orientation. This seems like an obvious, no-brainer to me ... (and probably to anyone who knows me well enough and has heard me rant and rave about how irritating some of the current Canadian debate around gay marriage is). So... here it is : Ambient will absolutely not, ever, discriminate against anyone based on their sexual orientation. (Hell, I'll promise that we won't discriminate on any criteria other than: brains, personality and good fit.) Now, if only the FE folks made the agreement open to those of us who aren't based in the US.

For those of you who ARE in the US, please have a look at Straightforward... it really looks like a great idea.