Bike Season Is Here

My Whereabouts According to iPhone

Two researchers recently unveiled something interesting regarding Apple’s iPhones. It turns out that at around the same time as iOS 4 was released, iPhones started to collect users’ location data. There’s been a lot of talk about what this means to the average user and I definitely recommend reading them.

I couldn’t pass up a chance to see what my own location data looked like and I used the tool developed by the researchers to do so. Below is all my activity on the island of Montréal and vicinity in the past 1 year. One noticeable thing is that it looks like I haven’t ventured east of the island!

Comparing that to my Foursquare checkins over the past year there’s an obvious similarity.

The interesting thing here is that it’s always fun – and sometimes useful – to look back at where you’ve been in the past year; like Gina Trapani mentions here. The only challenge now is to make this data safe, and only accessible to users who opt-in to have their data recorded and not everyone.

A sign that apple blew it by not supporting flash

Is when a non-techie person sees the new, fancy ipad and immediately realizes that web browsing on it is crippled because you can’t go to all sites on the net. For a company who focuses on the user experience, I think they missed the mark there. Not having Flash on a phone may not be a big deal but for tablet devices it really means they are not replacements for laptops (or other forms of computers).

A New Anthem For Canada

Election fever is heating up in Canada. I’ve seen a lot of rhetoric for all of the parties. But this one has to be one of the better ones!

Oh Canada! – a new anthem for a new day from missjdub on Vimeo.

It’s about 6:30. Friday evening. I’m sitting at home, flipping through channels. Trying to distract my mind from thinking about the work I have to do. And it’s been working.
I hear a knock on the door… We don’t get visitors here. Only the land lord asking for money, or the next door neighbours asking to borrow spices or tools! It’s neither. A man in his late 20’s or early 30’s. Immediately I think of charity, or maybe even some sort of religious recruiter.
“Hi I’m your neighbour from upstairs, my name is C.” [name withheld] , he says.
“I thought we could talk. After all, in these times when everybody isolates themselves and we’re alone it’s good to talk.”
I’m not sure what’s going on.
Upstairs neighbour?
I wasn’t playing music. I wasn’t making any loud noises. We’re not that loud usually and I had gotten home a short while ago.

My mind working extra fast to come up with a reasonable guess as to why this man is down here, I notice him eagerly waiting at the door so I invite him to come in . He’s jittery. Some of his sentences are incoherent. There are long pauses followed by a flurry of words. I notice he’s not wearing a jacket and from the type of clothes he is wearing, it doesn’t look like he could be coming from the cold outside. So, I believe him. There’s an awkward silence, and he begins.
“Can I read you something?”. And I notice he has a notebook with him.
“When I finish, you may think I’m crazy. You may dislike me. But please listen.” This makes me very curious. And I reassure him and ask him to read me what it is he has with him.
C has a very odd style of writing. Some sentences are well written, yet some sound like they’ve been written by a high schooler and some don’t make much sense to me. He has written about how he wants to be normal and have a job. But nobody will keep him on the job for long. How he dislikes it, but can’t help it. The passage was short, but it gives me some insight into what’s bothering him.

…to be continued