Thanks to Peter for the heads up!
Photo by ryn wltr wgnr from the BR Flickr Pool.

Our first feature is on the 'Temple of the Modern Girl,' one of Mt. Pleasant's most lovely boutiques, located at 2695 Main St., 604 630-8656. For other details, do continue on. Below is the Video and some background on our lovely producers...

Remember Terry Gilliam's Brazil? Remember Robert de Niro's character? In a dystopian society where nothing works because of a callous authoritarian government, he's a renegade heating engineer who's called a terrorist because he actually makes things work.

Nearly two months into the civic strike, community centres closed, garbage accumulating, and half the city torn up by construction, Vancouver could use a good visit from Archibald "Call me Harry" Tuttle. For instance, take the fabled promise of covering the city with free wireless Internet access through your laptop or PDA. On Valentine's Day, 2006, city councilors Peter Ladner and Heather Deal argued over who came up with the idea first, but everyone was in agreement that it was a good idea for the city. And what has happened since then?

While showing a German documentary film crew around our fair city, I explained to them that three of the four daily newspapers available were owned by the same company, not to mention some of the mini-tabs. They were astonished that this was permitted. This kind of media monopolization isn't allowed in other countries.

I was reminded of this when I tried to show a friend an article I had published in the Vancouver Courier a year or two ago. (Disclosure: I still freelance for them.) I visited the Vancouver Courier's site for the first time in a while and found it had been folded into the Canada.com megasite.

On Shore Boards, an independent Vancouver-based company, is beginning to make a splash here with a revolutionary board technology. OSB's founder and CEO Brad Bradfield, an ex-pat surfer from South Africa, went ahead and redesigned the skateboard to achieve what he himself was looking for: a more surf-like feeling on concrete. By widening the rear wheel-base and exchanging the front trucks with what is essentially an in-line skate system, Brad's brain-child is built more for carving sea-walls than for grinding handrails.

Almost sounds like a comic-book premise doesn't it? Quick, someone make a movie. And don't forget the spandex jumpsuits.

New Media BC heads this worthy initiative, which was created to address the fear that Vancouver is losing its lead in the heated race around the world to be the premier hotspot for digital entertainment. In order to sustain our position in the global marketplace, Vancouver must devise ways to cultivate smart business growth.

Stefan created a software that significantly changed how radio newsrooms operated. He built a company that continually innovated, not just making its software better, but always finding a way to help technicians and stations when something wouldn't work. He kept Burli based in Vancouver, and did his best to make it a good place to work. And he never forgot Citr, giving generously of his own time and talents to extend the station's reach and technological power. Most recently, he developed Citr's podcast engine. Yet you won't find Stefan listed in Canada's top 40 under 40, or on Maclean's list of Canadians to watch. Why?

Picture this: a guy on a conference call has his earphones firmly in place and is checking something on his cell phone/email device. He doesn't even slow down as he steps off the sidewalk - still focused intently on his gadget! - and a car coming up to the intersection has to slam on its brakes in order to stop in time. That happened the other day in Yaletown. I did giggle, but it was hardly an isolated occurrence, so it's getting less and less funny, especially when you consider what could have happened.

And it's not just the super-geeks.

The lecture was titled "The Totalitarian Urge: total information awareness and the cosmic billiards" and I didn't really know what to expect, as it was the first time I had heard Cory speak (although I am pretty familiar with his work). I thought it was a pretty engaging talk, with a multitude of tangents and references insuring that there was something in it for everyone, on every level. I thought it was pretty great. There were a lot of shocking bits and a lot of funny bits and even so I was so tired that I'm sure I missed a lot of it.

Apparently an awful lot, as per the above photo. This Saturday, along with about three hundred others, I braved the sleet and trekked out to UBC for Northern Voice, Canada's blogging conference.

What happens at a blogging conference?

Well, it was surprisingly fun.

Created by Vancouver "blogfather" Darren Barefoot, "Get a First Life" (scooped by Sean in Morning Brew) is a hilarious parody site of the popular and rapidly growing online community Second Life. It is just a one-page site (darn) but it already has some interesting quips; "first life is a 3D analog world where no server lag exists" or "What's this body thing and what's with all the dangly bits?"

If Apple manages to pull it off, and indeed have created a product which actually works as well as all the hype surronding it (perpetrated here by myself as well), then this device with be paradigm shifting in the tech world. It will blow normal PDAs and smart phones out of the water. Basically the iPhone is a smart phone, combining a widescreen video iPod, a mobile phone, and a "breakthrough Internet communications device" into one. Now this in itself is not earth shaking, my Dell PDA can almost do this now. What is different will be the seamless integration which Apple is known for. And it is what I have always wanted; one device to do it all - and play nice with my Macbook.

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