I knew that I might be a little too busy to write an anniversary blog post with my work schedule this week. That’s why I wrote that article last month to mark having worked at Microsoft for 11 months. My schedule was a little less hectic then. Go and read the article if you like – everything that I wrote then still applies today, with the notable exception of a month’s time having passed.
Having said that, I still like celebrating milestones, so I thought I’d mark this day with a quick photo-collage featuring Yours Truly on the job:
As I wrote earlier: “It’s been great so far. I’m going to stick around for a little while.”
I have no idea if WIND Mobile is going to be able to deliver what they promise – a mobile phone company that listens to its customers and provides better service than the sad players in the Canadian mobile phone oligarchy – but they’ve got the right ideas and some rather funny videos that perfectly illustrate what the Canadian mobile customer has to contend with.
What if Toronto’s hot dog vendors had a pricing model like Canadian mobile phone companies? Buying a hot dog would be like this:
Canada is the only country in the world where mobile companies lock you into three-year contracts for mobile service, and this situation is illustrated in the video titled Bike Lock:
I always look at the service packages offered by U.S. mobile companies with envy. Here, the mobile companies love nickel-and-diming you:
WIND is a new entrant into the Canadian mobile phone market and a branch of Globalive Communications, who already have a presence in Canada in the form of Yak Communications, an alternative phone and internet provider. They seem to be taking a very “social media” approach to their marketing, what with the “viral” YouTube videos and a “conversational” website in which readers are encourage to actively participate in online discussions.
They look like an interesting company to watch, and hey, if they can get me a better deal than Rogers, I’ll switch.
British uberpopnerd Brett Domino elevates hip-hop to a whole new level with a medley of Rapper’s Delight by the Sugar Hill Gang, Jump Around by House of Pain and Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff’s Boom! Shake the Room, equipped with only two “Stylos” and a microphone:
Klenginem
Klenginem is a German guy who does Eminem numbers – in tlhIngan Hol, which you might know better as “Klingon”. Qapla’!
Kate "AlpineKat" McAlpine
I can’t talk about nerd hip-hop without bringing up Kate "AlpineKat" McAlpine, the science communicator/rapper behind the Large Hadron Collider Rap, which explains what the Large Hadron Collider is and why it was made:
I caught Dragonette at the launch party for MSN.ca a couple of weeks ago and was pretty impressed. I’m fond of their synth-pop-cut-with-guitars sound and am going to have to get my hands on their new album.
The map below shows AggData’s map of the continental United States visualizing distances to the nearest McDonald’s. The closer a place is to a McDonald’s, the more brightly it is illuminated. Click the map to see it at a larger size:
