With the recession still raging, it may come as no surprise that many Americans’ opinions of the Federal Reserve, the government’s most important financial agency, have started to sour. This time in 2003, 53 percent of Americans thought the Federal Reserve was doing an excellent to good job, compared to 30 percent today, according to a recent Gallup poll.
 
One of the most contentious issues surrounding the Federal Reserve is the support of the taxpayer bailouts on the part of the Fed and its chairman, Ben Bernanke. However, many analysts also have determined that Bernanke’s actions have had a significant impact …read more

Recognize the quote? Probably not, so I’ll give it to you. Aerosmith, Livin’ on the Edge. Yep. Why do I bring this up? Because Corvida wrote a post that some are going to take issue with, I’m sure, but I have to stand by:
I don’t think it’s a secret as to why I did it, but in case you don’t know, Loren Feldman of 1983media did a video last year entitled “Techn****”, which basically put black people in a bad light. He asked where were the African-American tech bloggers and then proceeded to put on a parody of a “gangster” …read more

Regardless of who is to blame or what is causing it, our planet’s climate is in a state of flux.  Let’s just get that out of the way now, shall we?
Great.  Now let’s talk about dealing with realities here.  Essentially as the world warms, etc we’re going to see a shift in things like where key fishing grounds are (the ocean’s temperature will change) and where the “bread baskets” are in a given area.
Lucky for Canada, as things warm. more of the prairies should become arable and what is arable now should be able to support a wider range of …read more

Since Rogers Mobile announced their iPhone pricing this week, the reaction to their plans has been less that enthusiastic (to say the least).
RuinediPhone.com has started an online petition to Rogers to change their rate plans and an open letter to Steve Jobs on what is certainly a slap in the face.

Did I sign it?  You bet I did.  Do I think it will make much of a difference?  Yeah, not so much.
That said, this is what I left for them:
Rogers, Canada is a world leader in technology, but Rwanda has cheaper cell and data rates than we do.
Canada will be …read more

I think we’re in a rut.  A semantic, AJAX-powered, XML-based, open source rut.  I have had a hard time getting excited about tech news of late, hence the last little while I haven’t been posting as much nor with as much passion as I have in the past.
I’m looking at everything we’re doing and seeing that we’re re-working and refining what we’ve developed.
Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, RSS, blogging…we’ve been at this a while, but what’s truly new or revolutionary?  Don’t get me wrong, I think this is all amazing … I’m just anxious to see the next big thing.

The question is …read more

Cambrian House of Calgary closed its doors recently leading many to suggest that is was crowdsourcing that was to blame, but I think Mathew Ingram hit the nail on the head:
Does this mean that crowdsourcing startup ideas doesn’t work? I don’t think so — but it shows that simply coming up with good ideas isn’t always enough. Someone has to execute them.–Cambrian House: Failure or evolution? » mathewingram.com/work |

I’ve worked at a bunch of startups over the past 4 years and work, there is always work to be had a plenty.  The ideas are almost always good, but without …read more

There was a bit of a dust-up recently about making lists of “bad PR people” and it’s taken me a while to get to this because I’ve been answering emails from PR folks.  I put out a call on ProfNet that Manscaping 101 (my men’s grooming blog on b5media) was open for business and I’d love to hear about new products.
Did I get answers?
Yeah you could say that.  Like about two dozen plus in one day and … I answered all of them.  Yep.  Even a polite, no thanks is good.  Come on they are people, have jobs, and deserve …read more

Today is the Technology Channel’s Theme day and we’re looking at “green” technologies (I’ll have the round-up post link here when it’s posted).  While we might think that tools like RSS (as Juned suggests in his post on RSS as green tech) are truly green, are they really?
Things are a lot better now, in terms of technology being green, than when I first started in tech years and years ago.  Computers, monitors, etc all use less power.  Better online tools, faster connections, PDF and collaborative editing have reduced the number of faxes and print outs needed (I still like to …read more

My friend Deb Schultz is a deep thinker.  Something I love about talking with her.  Okay that and she makes me laugh really hard.  She has one of those 30,000 foot views of the world.  Perspective.  Something that we often forget as we write about the latest machinations of the Web 2.0 world.
Recently Deb, and others, have challenged us to do more with the tools we’ve been given.  Take this amazing stuff and push the boundaries a little, do cool things, see what we can do beyond say how nice a day it is in 140 chars or fewer.
Deb being …read more

I blogged about my new Telus EVDO card this morning, I’ve been using it all day and been very much enjoying it.  Okay I think I’ve found a conflict with my built-in SD card reader and the PCMCIA slot, but that might be an Acer thing and I’m not too worried right now.  However, what I’d like to relate here is my buying the card yesterday.  What I learned and experienced is pretty interesting and can be a lesson to all of us, but especially customer-facing people.
I’m a busy person who would like to spend money with you–treat me like …read more