Alec Saunders SquawkBox

For those planning to attend the Shel Israel blogger dinner on March 6, there has been a venue change.  The Peel Pub changed hands and became something called Filthy McNasty’s. Nobody there answered our calls, so David Forde has managed to Shoeless Joes to throw in $3 beers, and free finger foods.  Shel will be there, and there will be copies of Naked Conversations available to buy if you don’t already have one. 

By the way, I just finished reading Naked Conversations on the plane to San Francisco yesterday.  If you ever need a way to explain the relevance and value of blogging, the how-to’s, and the do not’s, it’s excellent.

Here’s the map.  The event begins at 6:30pm

IF YOU HAVE A TORONTO AREA BLOG AND ARE PLANNING TO ATTEND PLEASE LET PEOPLE KNOW THAT THE VENUE HAS CHANGED. So many people replied to the last posting that it will be impossible for me to reach them all.  So please help get the word out. 

I’m sitting in Montreal’s Trudeau airport, and noticing what appears to me to be a new trend.  Airports have been capping off the power outlets.  Where have they all gone?  It used to be that you could find a power outlet on a wall or a pillar at the gate, but not anymore.  In recent weeks, I’ve travelled through Seattle, San Jose, Chicago O’Hare, Toronto, and Montreal.  The plentiful power that laptop users used to depend on is virtually non-existant.  Here in Montreal, I am sitting in a phone booth, because it has a power outlet for laptop users.

UPDATE:  There has been a huge amount of traffic on this yesterday since I posted it.  BoingBoing linked it, as well as the CBC.  Clearly it’s struck a nerve.  I’d like to start a Wiki to track airport power outlets.  What is the best way to do this?  My hoster providers TikiWiki and PHPWiki.  Is one better than the other?

UPDATE: Wiki started at http://airpower.pbwiki.com.

Dan York and I sat down at ETel a month ago, and recorded a podcast about security and iotum.  As I was thinking about this in advance of the talk, I came to the conclusion that privacy was probably the bigger issue, and that’s what we talked about mostly.  Enjoy!

After my experience getting charged with overage on my Unlimited-But-Very-Limited Blackberry data plan, several readers sent me links to the Rogers Blackberry Users petition.  It turns out my case is actually pretty tame compared to some of the users out there who have been charged thousands of dollars.  Some folks also suggested a complaint to the Competition Bureau,  which is probably a more effective way to get a result from Rogers.

For now, I’ve written to the Rogers VP in charge and will wait to see what happens.  I suspect that what happened was simply a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing.  They introduced a new product and overlooked the data usage issue.  If Rogers responds, they can be customer service heroes.

David Kearns, writing in Network World, has offered an identity based view of what we do at iotum.  Much of what we talked about as we were developing the early designs was the "Who, What, Where, When, Why" of communications.  We boiled that down to the overarching concept of relevance, and ultimately identity becamse one of the 3 pillars of Voice 2.0.  It’s nice to see someone latch onto those ideas.

He also mentioned that he saw us at ETel.  One of the the exciting things I walked away from ETel with was the work being done in identity. Although not part of the main conference, for the most part, there were a gaggle of identity geeks at the show enthusiastically promoting XRI.