Morning radio shows should have blogs don’t you think?  There are always funny stories, community projects, contests, something to talk about.  Well the morning show I listen to on 107.3 Kool FM here in Victoria doesn’t have one so, I sent Robin Farrell this email yesterday morning:

BTW … why don’t you guys have a morning show blog, huh?  I dare you.  I double dog dare you.  Not only that,  I’ll come in Monday morning and help you set it up on air and show you how to use it!  Come on, you’re not scared are ya ;-)?

Tris

Wouldn’t you know it, they went for it!  So Monday morning at 7:30 I’m going help them set up the blog.  I’m going to use Wordpress.com, of course–that cool with you Lloyd, Toni, and Matt?  Yeah thought so.

Anyway, no URL yet.  We’ll work on that on Monday.  You can listen live through the website.

Now Buzz Bishop and JackFM won’t be the only DJs with a hot blog.

Watch out Victoria Robin, Frankie and Danny are coming to an RSS feed near you!

Photo credit from the 107.3 Kool FM website

By luck and happenstance (love that word) I was able to go to the Victoria Entrepreneur’s Lunch yesterday.  Great time hanging out with techies for a while and talking tech.

The lunch is organized by Rian Bowden of DailySplice.  Rian said it started small and informal and is now growing every month.  There were 24 folks there yesterday.  Which means if a truck drove into that corner of the Old Spaghetti Factory, Victoria’s tech sector would be pretty much wiped out in one fell swoop!

I say that it’s luck that I went because I happened to decide that yesterday would be the day I visited Flock North and hang out with Joshua McKenty and Mark Lise.  Turns out Rian had been sending emails to an address I can’t get to anymore (my old One By One Media one, so please update your addressbooks to my gmail or b5media address) so Joshua said are you going to the entrepreneur’s lunch and I said “ahroo?”.

Rian is going to have them about once a month email him at rian [at] dailysplice [dot] com to get on the list for when the next one.

Speaking of Rian I need to try DailySplice now that it’s out in the wild.  He told me about it under NDA a while ago (blognation days), now I need to try it and blog it.

Another outcome of visiting Flock was, well, trying Flock again.  My only stumbling block was the blog this extension for Windows Live Writer … but with some help from Joe Cheng I got it figured out and it’s working!

Since I liked Flock before and I found it faster than Firefox, I’m using Flock now.  I think I’m going to like it.  Not to mention I’m using a “local” piece of software!

The rest of my pictures from the lunch are in my Victoria Entrepreneur’s Lunch Flickr set.

One of the cool things demoed at DemoCampVictoria–Success at DemoCampVictoria01–My thoughts from last night–was Joshua McKenty’s Buy it later.  Joshua developed and pushed BountyUp for a long time, but on a whim one night decided to tackle a simple problem: you want to buy something at Amazon and it’s out of stock, why do you do?  Joshua created a simple Firefox/Flock extension that let’s you click a button and have a service tell you when it’s available.  If it is available, but you just want the best price, the Buy It Later will tell you when the price changes.

So let’s walk through it…

First you go to the But It Later home page and click the button to install the extension in Firefox or Flock:

After the standard install, restart reopen procedure, you’ll be asked to put in your email address.  Now if you use Twitter, use that email address.

Now you’re set to go shopping. If you’d like, for example, Darren Rowse’s book, ProBlogger secrets on Amazon you get there and see this page:

Note that little button on the right there?  Can’t see it?  Let me zoom in for you:

You click the button and then get an email to confirm this and that’s it really.  When the item is in stock or the price changes, you’ll be notified via email or Twitter.  That simple.  When you buy the item, the link is through Joshua’s Amazon affiliate id so he earns a commission.  Of course this doesn’t change the price you pay, it just helps fund this cool effort.

Joshua has over 800 accounts already and, yes, he’s making money through Amazon affiliate links.  I have some cool insight into what is coming up for the extension, but I’ll wait until it’s announced then I’ll give you details.

In fact, what is planned is very cool and collaborative and … innovative.

So why buy it now, when you can Buy It Later?

Photo/image credits:

• Joshua McKenty by Tris Hussey
• BuyItLater screenshot from website
• Amazon shopping areas screenshots from Amazon

After the success of Thursday’s DemoCampVictoria01 and reading Mack’s post today about getting a tweetup going in Edmonton–EdmontonTweetup anyone? at MasterMaq’s Blog–I think it’s time we have one of our own.

There are certainly enough geeks and techies in Victoria and if this Twitterlocal pull of twitter users within 20 miles of Victoria (that’s about 30 km, btw) is any indication, well I think we could have a great time.

My preference would be a good coffee place with WiFi, but hey who knows right?

Okay Victoria twitterati, let’s get this going!

BTW, I’ve also created a VictoriaTech Diigo group for us Victoria people to exchange links and info

When you launch, launch with a bang: DemoCampVictoria01 Rocked

Last night I live-blogged Victoria’s first DemoCamp and it was a huge success.  The place was packed.  We were in the presentation centre for the new Juliet condos that are going up on Blanchard Street.  The presentation centre is a lovely, lovely venue for event and thanks to Dave Chard, Wendy Pryde, and Jessica Pryde for being amazing hosts.

Mark Lise told me that he expected more than the 48 people there were chairs for and yep, that was true.  It was a packed house.  When this DemoCamp was being planned, Mark had arranged with buddies from Flock and Songbird (I’ve downloaded Songbird, btw) to give presentations, then in the couple days just before last night Mark said people came out of the woodwork to want to present.  This was a great problem to have, more people who wanted to present than there was probably time for.  As it turned out there was time for everyone.

Reflections on DemoCampVictoria01

One of the perils/problems with live blogging is that often you don’t get to synthesize what is going on until much later.  When you’re at a conference and still covering other sessions often this means not getting back to reflect on what you wrote about (and having only vague memories of).  Now a day later I’ve had some  time to reflect a bit.

Sure Flock and Songbird get a lot of attention here, but what about SkyscraperPage?  Oh didn’t know about them?  Have you seen the scale drawings of skyscrapers?  Chances are the drawings came from them.  That was one of my wow moments.  You’ve probably seen a lot of their skyscraper posters around.  I’m told a Vancouver one will be out this spring (it’s at the printers right now).

Joshua McKenty talked about the irony of pushing BountyUp for a long time, then in a few hours made BuyLater and is already making money.  It also helped that Lifehacker and others did some posts about him too.

Gels talked about her new project at UVic the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (ETCL) where she is working on making a collaboration platform for academics to read and annotate scanned versions of texts.  We’re talking about texts hundreds of years old.  You know how hard it is to even to get to look as those kinds of documents much less discuss the contents in situ with people also interested in that time period?  Pretty darn hard is the quick answer.  There are a lot of cool things that can be done with a platform like that … once it is off the paper-alpha stage.  No matter what Gels thinks, it was great to see such an important project presented at its very earliest stages.

We were even graced with Boris Mann’s presence (here is his chat with Wendy via Utterz) and the Victoria premiere of Darren and Julie in Victoria!  Welcome back to Canada Darren and Julie.

So far Mark and Yule have posted their thoughts about DemoCampVictoria01.  I think since I managed to live blog and get pictures up last night, I’m allowed to have slacked off a bit on this post.

I can’t wait for the next DemoCamp, I have a feeling we’re going to need a bigger place and there are going to be a lot of people wanting to present once they hear how well last night went.

More pictures from the event:

www.flickr.com tris’ DemoCampVictoria01 photoset

Photography by Tris Hussey

We’ll be starting shortly here at the Juliet show-demo centre.  Geeks aplenty consuming wine and cheese…

This is, without a doubt, the swankiest location for a DemoCamp…awesome kickoff for Victoria’s first DemoCamp.

It was a great time. My Flickr photoset from Victoria’s first DemoCamp is uploading

Live Blog:

DemoCampVictoria01

(04/03/2008)  Powered by: CoveritLive

  

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6:00

Folks are just finishing their wine and cheese here at the Juliet demo centre. Â Boris Mann from Vangroovy flew over. Â Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo have made their first (I think) Victoria appearance since moving here recently. While Make Lise thought he might be having trouble finding presenters, in the last two days people have come out of the woodwork wanting to present.

6:00	Quick photo break and to make sure people take schwag … I do not want to haul it back to my apartment!

6:06	And we’re off …

6:13

Mark Lise is doing the intro … The person in charge of the Juliet presentation centre is talking about this new project. Â Â Yes, it’s a condo development, but it is also putting people in the downtown core. Â It is a catch-22 isn’t it … you need places to live … nice places. Next project is going to be at this location 834 Johnson–condos aimed at people my age, especially making that first downpayment. Boris Mann made a great point about designing small suites that could also be used as the home office. Boris–do you take stock in startups?

6:22

First up … The 30 second speils … didn’t catch the name (Darren thank you Janette) … programming Denbian “I only have 30 seconds dude…” Demo of songbird Josh Cognition.ca BuyLater and Timetracking … Dylan skyscraperpage Gels interface designer .. academinc research facilitated online Person to person lending sensor platform human motion for atheletes. Flock … ooh ahh.

6:26

We’re going to get a demo of the trunk build of Flock that was just pushed out minutes ago. Â We’re going to be looking at what will be coming in Flock 1.3. Built on Firefox, etc … I liked it a lot. Â But all I needed was the stupid WLW plugin to work in it and I’d jump on it. Â It does have a built in blog posting tool that is awesome. It is already on the trunk of Firefox 3 … the goal is to launch the new Flock with Firefox 3 in June.

6:28	Hey this isn’t working … oh you’re not online. Â Added Digg and Pownce! Â Native! Â This is the social browser. Â Discover and find as you go. Â Drag and drop stuff from sites to friends. Â Monetized on search like Mozilla … Yahoo, Ask, and others.

6:29	[Comment From Guest] Do they have estimated purchase prices of what the condo units would go for? This would be a consideration for a startup office / home environment situation. Definitely a good area to startup in though.

6:29	They didn’t say, but there is info here … try to post later

6:34

Matt … sensor net that tracks human motion. Â Small sensor, attach to something (person) MSB Solutions — company. Sensor is about the size of a deck of cards. Â The sensor currently measure power and velocity. This has been worked on for a year … this is targetted at strength and conditioning coaches …. “we haven’t sold any yet … ” Â Love the honesty.

6:35	The questions are great … everything from connect to iPods, weapons research, obesity studies, … here’s a great one … maybe an input device … yeah if it can do velocity and x,y … okay and z .. .. the air mouse!

6:36	Is that explosive or exploding atheletes?

6:39

Essentially it sounds like their markets are only going to be limited by their imagination … what do you need to measure on people who are moving. Â All kinds of ways to test things people do. It sounds like they are starting up … very early … but I bet they just got $1,000s of dollars worth of ideas here. Â Gotta love crowdsourced marketing!

6:40	Fortuno .. this is the person to person lending (I assume better than asking your friend for money). A lot of interest in micro loans, payments, etc.

6:45

fortuno.ca Jay and Jesse … Person to Person to lending. Â Like Kiva, but local. Â Canadians to Canadians. Â Bypass the banks. Â This is still an investment. Â You still pay interest, I gather. How it works—Borrowers post something like an ad on the site with a bit of a story. Â Lender can see story and some of the credit history. Â Okay, lenders don’t generally fund a whole loan themselves. Okay, concerns. Â Privacy and security. Using TransUnion to verify identity and check credit. Â “Bad risk” users aren’t allowed into the gate.

6:48	The story around the loan … the why is supposed to help make the loan process more human. Â These are unsecured loans. Â Key bit of info there …

6:57

Gels on ETCL etcl.uvic.ca … Why this instead of Google Scholar? Â Adobe? Â Both are large companies and have propretary stuff. Â The key is that as an academic … you have to try things open and flexible. Â Built on Ruby on Rails. Environment to research online. Â Manually scanned in docs from past (100s of years). Â Let people non-destructively annotate the documents. Â Collaborative learning. Public Knowledge Project (PKP) … UBC and SFU, open access documents. Â Pushing for open access to information and documents. Good question about expansion to use for archives and such later. Â We’re really looking at taking paper information and putting it together online so people can collaborate and annotate.

7:02	Dylan skyscraper diagrams. Â Basic stuff, but it works … and it’s here! Â Who would have thought the only site that does scale diagrams of buildings is here in Victoria.

7:03	Note to DemoCamp people … speak slowly and clearly when you open saying who you are.

7:06	Wow it is cool to see all the skyscrapers from different cities. Â Now this rocks … they sell posters of cities! Â Vancouver is the first, at the printers right now. Â Avail. in the spring. Â Posters are the money makers. http://skyscraperpage.com/

7:07	This is worth seriously checking out. … oops someone didn’t turn off their IM … should I or shouldn’t I

7:10	Josh is not going to talk about BountyUp … but Cognition.ca BuyItLater http://buylater.cognition.ca/ Â

7:14

Simple Firefox extension … took him 4 hours to code. Â Only wrote for Twitter first … email after Lifehacker-ed. Â Amazon US, Canada, UK. This is a rockingly simple idea … okay this is how it works You install the litte extension, you go to amazon and want to buy something, it’s out of stock or expensive. Â …you click button to tell you when it’s cheaper or in stock. Â That’s it. Josh is already making money. Â This rocks.

7:17

Songbird. Â Open source alternative to iTunes. Â Buy from the places you want, not just iTunes for example. I HATE iTunes … and need to get rid of it from my system. Â Windows media player, meh, not so married to it. Â This looks like another great Victoria born solution. http://www.songbirdnest.com/

7:17	Build on Firefox engine so like Flock and Firefox it’s built on extensions.

7:17	“It’s none of our business if it’s legal or illegal”

7:19	Music stores through web page API. Extensions. Â Scripting. Â JS, Zool, etc.

7:19	Also check out Josh’s new Twitter-based timetracking tool http://timetrack.cognition.ca/

7:24	Last up Darren, moldusD … I think … this is a database programming tool. Â Opensource. Â Language. Â Ouch, leaving the programming language for last. Â Hmm, maybe not the best call.

7:26	BTW Rebecca Bollwitt has a guest post by Raul on Michael Geist’s talk today at UBC http://www.miss604.com/2008/04/michael-geist-e-publishing-and-the-law-guest-live-blog.html

7:28	Darren has incorporated as a company so that he care earn a living from this. Â muldis.com … Man Janette is a great listener!

7:28	Time to wrap up here … Going to shoot some pics and video.

7:29	Wow this space is being offered for free for future events! Â Talk about great support for the Victoria tech community! Â Props to them!

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