Startup Sunday at Cadboro Bay United Church

Great to start a new year with a such a caring community!

Exclusive: Amazon Wants To Offer Its Smartphone for Free. Who Will Follow? – jessica lessin

Exclusive: Amazon Wants To Offer Its Smartphone for Free. Who Will Follow? – jessica lessin

This Russian Software Is Taking Over the Internet | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com

This Russian Software Is Taking Over the Internet | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com: It now runs about 15 percent of all websites, including everyone from startups such as CloudFlare and Parse (bought by Facebook earlier this year) to web giants such as Automattic and Netflix. “We use it for everything,” says Automattic’s Abrahamson. “We run as much of our software stack as possible on top of Nginx.”

What Does the Fox Say: The anatomy of Ylvis’s instant viral hit — paidContent

What Does the Fox Say: The anatomy of Ylvis’s instant viral hit:

What Does the Fox Say? features adults in outlandish animal costumes reciting an Old McDonald’s-ish list of animal noises, before addressing the titular question in the chorus. There is thumping bass and a silly, easily imitatable dance: In short, it is the video internet hipsters and five-year-olds can finally agree on.

Redesigning 'Star Trek': the original series brought to life in 80 pulp posters | The Verge

Redesigning 'Star Trek': the original series brought to life in 80 pulp posters | The Verge:

The designs feature a vintage style, with some reminiscent of classic movie posters and others harking back to the covers of pulp sci-fi novels. According to Ortiz, what makes them work — and fun to work on — is the sheer diversity of the episodes he illustrated.

Microsoft Enters Into $7.2B Deal To Buy Nokia’s Devices And Services Business And License Its Patents | TechCrunch

Microsoft Enters Into $7.2B Deal To Buy Nokia’s Devices And Services Business And License Its Patents | TechCrunch: In a surprise move, Microsoft announced Monday evening that it has inked a deal with Nokia to acquire “substantially all of Nokia’s Devices & Services business, license Nokia’s patents, and license and use Nokia’s mapping services.”

Turning Apple TV Into Ouroboros | TechCrunch

Turning Apple TV Into Ouroboros | TechCrunch: Apple has been ‘pulling the string’ on the Apple TV for seven years now. Think about that one for a minute: it’s had a set-top box since before the iPhone.

Why Local is the Future of Commerce | Street Fight

Why Local is the Future of Commerce | Street Fight:  Local search revenues are skyrocketing, expected to increase annually 10% over the next five years. User-generated reviews and ratings have dramatically improved our ability to determine the quality of a businesses, altering, more than replicating, the consumer’s experience in the local marketplace.

What Will It Take to Bring All Businesses Online? | Street Fight

What Will It Take to Bring All Businesses Online? | Street Fight: Word of mouth reputation, geographic location, foot traffic, print advertising, and other traditional forms of getting the word out may do quite well for many businesses in small towns and big cities alike. As Louis Gagnon of Yodle noted, online marketing is complex and business owners are preoccupied with the day-to-day needs of serving customers, leaving little time to focus on activities with a less clear-cut reward for their energies. The Yodle study also notes that SMB proprietors see family and time off as important considerations. They are not necessarily concerned with being the biggest player in the market. Ranking sixth in a Google search result may not be a fate worse than death in their minds so much as we suppose it to be. The exceptions to this rule are the folks who come to us, perhaps skewing our sense of the SMB population as a whole.

Sony's lens camera smartphone accessories could start from $250 | The Verge

Sony's lens camera smartphone accessories could start from $250 | The Verge:

In case you needed further proof that Sony will announce its "lens cameras" soon, Sony Alpha Rumors (SAR) has leaked the rumored accessories yet again. The camera site has previously revealed the lens cameras will attach to iOS and Android devices and act as a wireless lens using Wi-Fi. This time, the big surprise is color: SAR has obtained images from an anonymous source that show the rumored QX10 lens camera in a champagne gold and silver finish — perfect for that rumored gold iPhone 5S.

Happy 50th birthday, Compact Cassette: How it struck a chord for millions • The Register

Happy 50th birthday, Compact Cassette: How it struck a chord for millions • The Register: Feature On 30 August, 1963, a new bit of sound recording tech that was to change the lifestyle of millions was revealed at the Berlin Radio Show.

The adoption of the standard that followed led to a huge swath of related technological applications that had not been envisaged by its maker; for Philips, the unveiling of its new Compact Cassette tape and accompanying recorder was about enticing people to buy a fuss-free portable recording system.

Sonically, the Compact Cassette recorder was no hi-fi and, from the start, was never meant to be. Instead, the company had succeeded in putting together a format for recording, storing and playing back audio that immediately made sense - and delivered so many convenient improvements over existing systems that its success was assured.

Powerful: Olbermann talks about his dad, Satchel Paige and King’s speech | The Sherman Report

Powerful: Olbermann talks about his dad, Satchel Paige and King’s speech | The Sherman Report:

by Ed Sherman
AUGUST 29, 2013
The segment lasted 3:32 and at the end I felt a chill running down my spine.

Thus is the talent of Keith Olbermann.

His recollection of his father using Satchel Paige to illustrate the roots of segregation was powerful as anything I heard during the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s famous speech.

Like him or not, you owe it to yourself to watch.

▶ Kevin Spacey urges TV channels to give control to viewers - YouTube

▶ Kevin Spacey urges TV channels to give control to viewers - YouTube:

Double Oscar-winner Kevin Spacey has challenged TV channels to give "control" to their audiences or risk losing them at his address at the James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival.

The Ultimate Cheat Sheet For Starting And Running Your Business | TechCrunch

The Ultimate Cheat Sheet For Starting And Running Your Business | TechCrunch: 4) Should you go for venture capital money?
First build a product, then get a customer, then get friends-and-family money (or money from revenues which is cheapest of all) and then think about raising money. But only then. Don’t be an amateur.

Steve Ballmer’s Classy Exit | TechCrunch

I agree with Alex's claim that in the last few years Microsoft has made some large bets under Ballmer....ballsy moves that the old Microsoft would not have undertaken.  However where I diverge from his opinion is that these gutsy decisions were not made from for-sight - they were clear reactive measures borne from Microsoft losing developer mindshare at an incredible rate.

Steve Ballmer’s Classy Exit | TechCrunch: Microsoft is a company struggling to be reborn, but its new trajectory is something Ballmer steered. Were mistakes made under his tenure? Certainly. But that doesn’t mean Ballmer isn’t leaving on a high note. In fact, his exit is classy: He stuck around longer than few others would have, and the concluding years of his tenure as CEO have been his best.

How to Convince Investors

How to Convince Investors:

Great article. Good advice in what is a marathon race.

A formidable person is one who seems like they'll get what they want, regardless of whatever obstacles are in the way. Formidable is close to confident, except that someone could be confident and mistaken. Formidable is roughly justifiably confident.

Open Letter to Jeff Bezos From ex-Washington Post Staffer Kara Swisher - Kara Swisher - Media - AllThingsD

Open Letter to Jeff Bezos From ex-Washington Post Staffer Kara Swisher - Kara Swisher - Media - AllThingsD: If I were you, I would probably even begin to make plans now to dump the print newspaper altogether. Despite the hue and cry over it, we all know it’s coming, so you might as well start early on with what is plainly inevitable. That does not mean there will not be print products, but you know full well that you used to sell more analog books, and now the game is largely a digital one.

Remembering the Apple Newton's Prophetic Failure and Lasting Impact | Wired Design | Wired.com

Remembering the Apple Newton's Prophetic Failure and Lasting Impact | Wired Design | Wired.com: In product lore, high profile gadgets that get killed are often more interesting than the ones that succeed. The Kin, the HP TouchPad, and the Edsel are all case studies in failure–albeit for different reasons. Yet in the history of those killings, nothing compared to the Apple Newton MessagePad. The Newton wasn’t just killed, it was violently murdered, dragged into a closet by its hair and kicked to death in its youth by one of technology’s great men. And yet it was a remarkable device, one whose influence is still with us today. The Ur tablet. The first computer designed to free us utterly from the desktop.

Diggit Harnesses the Power of Local to Help Canadian Businesses - Techvibes.com

Check out an article about us in TechVibes!

Diggit Harnesses the Power of Local to Help Canadian Businesses - Techvibes.com

Rinku Sen: The Racist Mind - COLORLINES

Great article...sheds a little light on the decision in the Trayvon Martin case.

Rinku Sen: The Racist Mind - COLORLINES