Wednesday, January 25, 2012 12:52 PM EST
Cleveland fans use Twitter campaign to get last laugh on LeBron
Shane Dingman
NBA star LeBron James is not used to being laughed at.
This is despite the laughable "Decision" television special, and the even more hilarious Nike commercial that sought to downplay the hoopla surrounding it (see below).
This is the conclusion of some spurned Cleveland Cavaliers fans who have taken to Twitter to encourage a campaign of mockery aimed at their former hero. The #LaughatLeBron movement aims to spoil his homecoming game in Cleveland, five months after he announced on television that he was taking his talents to the Miami Heat.
David Acosta has become a media sensation for his plan to get fans to hoot and holler at LeBron every time he touches the ball at the Dec. 2 game. The New York Times reports "Acosta, who has nearly 1,000 followers on Twitter, figures that James, like most professional athletes, has learned how to play in hostile arenas and tune out boos. The last thing he would anticipate hearing is laughter. So if fans want to get a rise out of him, why not do the opposite of what he expects?"
The fans need to do something creative to get under his skin, the team is asking fans to refrain from wearing any profane or vulgar clothing directed at James or his family, and has warned any obscene signs will be confiscated.
Link to this post
Monday, November 29, 2010 12:49 PM EST
Comparison of dropped-call data weakens Rogers claims
Iain Marlow
Rogers is currently facing legal action from the Competition Bureau, which undertook an investigation and determined Rogers was employing “misleading” advertising as it hyped its new discount wireless provider, Chatr.
Specifically, the Bureau found Rogers’ claims that Chatr had “fewer dropped calls than new wireless carries,” an obvious reference to companies such as Wind Mobile and Mobilicity, were “misleading.” As a result, it wants to slap Rogers with a $10-million penalty, get the company to pay out money to Chatr customers who may have been lured over by false claims, and tell everyone they were wrong.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012 12:52 PM EST
Rural broadband need pragmatic approach, expert says
Iain Marlow
I was in Ottawa for the International Institute of Communications' telecom policy conference and managed to pull aside and chat with the man responsible for creating America's national broadband plan .
Blair Levin, who left the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in May, is now a telecommunications and society fellow at the Aspen Institute, a think tank.
He had some interesting and practical things to say about national broadband strategies and connecting rural areas in an era of global austerity, and his ideas are clearly rooted in the pragmatism he was forced to adopt in order to help the FCC push through their strategy. Some may think he's not being ambitious enough for rural areas (in terms of speeds or quality of service for rural areas), but this is a man who had to balance a lot of rivalling concerns – as the Canadian government is being forced to do right now.
All of this, of course, comes shortly after The Globe ran a series on the Internet, which included a piece I wrote about connecting rural communities.
Here's an audio clip of our conversation (near the hotel bar at the Crowne Plaza, which explains the weird background noise).
Tuesday, November 9, 2010 2:20 PM EST
How emerging tablet market will affect tech, telecom
Iain Marlow
Krista Napier, a senior analyst for emerging Canadian technology and digital media at the research and consulting firm IDC, recently completed a report on the tablet market. I took the opportunity to ask her a few questions about the iPad, its coming competitors and what the emerging tablet market means for companies in the tech and telecom world.
Why or how has Apple succeeded with the iPad?
With the iPad, Apple is expanding their product portfolio in an area the company is very familiar with – multimedia, consumer, and experiential devices. It's similar in that sense to other products they produce, where they deliver simple and easy to use yet exceptional experiences on sleek products, with eye-catching marketing. Basically, Apple is good at designing ground-breaking products, and that's exactly what they have done here. Tablets in their PC form have been around for a while but never really took off. They were aimed at business users, were relatively expensive and ran full operating systems. The iPad actually represents a new category of (information technology) products – media tablets. These devices are smaller and less powerful than a full tablet PC, yet they serve different purposes, are more affordable, accessible and “cool” to the average user than tablet PCs.
You say tablets don't have to be an “iPad killer” to be successful. Can you elaborate on that?
Apple has so far been very successful with the iPad and by the end of 2010 will own the majority share of the Canadian market for media tablets. Still, there is a lot of room for competitors. That's because this is a nascent market. By the end of 2010, there will be over 500,000 media tablets shipped in Canada, and that number is expected to grow in the triple digits over 2011. With this growth comes opportunity to specialize and address the needs of key user groups, both business users and consumers. Competing vendors will have to clearly position themselves in the minds of customers, especially when you consider the number of devices we can expect to see in the market over the next 6 – 12 months. We are tracking 17 products that have already been announced, and those are just some of the key ones. The overwhelming selection coupled with the fact that many customers are still unsure as to why they would need or want one of these devices in the first place, will demand education, clear marketing and positioning on the part of vendors to be successful.
Friday, October 29, 2010 3:10 PM EDT
CRTC ruling handcuffs competitive market: Teksavvy
Iain Marlow
The CRTC has varied one of its decisions on an appeal, which means pretty soon Bell will be allowed to charge wholesale Internet service providers – ISPs, such as Primus and TekSavvy – on a usage-based billing model. That means customers of those smaller ISPs will no longer enjoy unlimited Internet plans, will see data caps put in place and possibly higher monthly fees.
The decision, which comes into effect in 90 days, is emblematic of a gradual shift in the way Canadians are paying for Internet services and is not a particularly sharp turn for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, which has made an effort to rely more on market forces in recent years. Nevertheless, this has huge implications for competitive “resellers,” like the two mentioned above, because they bring other services to market (like VoIP) over the networks of the big guys.
Matt Stein, a vice-president of network services at Primus and spokesperson for the Canadian Network Operators Consortium, said the ruling is not a huge surprise.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010 1:42 PM EDT
CRTC holds hearing on fate of rural broadband
Iain Marlow
The future of the Internet in Canada is being shaped in Timmins, Ontario.
On Tuesday, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission began a hearing into whether to make broadband Internet a “basic service” like dial-up Internet in rural and remote areas, where the cost of delivering high-speed Internet is too high for profit-conscious companies.
Monday, October 18, 2010 2:21 PM EDT
More questions than answers when it comes to Canadian wireless pricing
Iain Marlow
I'm a journalist. I ask questions. I leave conclusions to others because conclusions for a journalist are dangerous; they imply a lack of curiosity and do a disservice to people who read my writing in The Globe and Mail and on this website.
That's not to say my reporting isn't informed by facts I've learned along the way, nor to say I don't have suspicions and opinions about the things I write (or tweet). That said, these are a smattering of important questions that are constantly being asked about the Canadian telecommunications industry, and which were asked anew over the weekend and this morning in the wake of yet another report pointing out the high price of Canadian wireless service.
That said, doing what I do and avoiding what I don't do, I'll ask two sets of questions. I'll leave the conclusions for the comments section.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012 12:53 PM EST
Apple awarded patent for V-chip-like filters to block those 'sexting' teens
Shane Dingman
Everyone knows the kids love to send text messages, sometimes they even use foul language or explicit imagery in these written notes. But Apple has had enough of that, and in its continued attempt to prune uncivil and salacious behaviour out of the walled garden of its popular mobile devices (iPhone, et al) it has won a patent application in the U.S. on some technology to strip out, or outright ban, nasty thoughts and words from texts sent to or from Apple gear.
As TechCrunch acknowledges in their post on the patent, the application doesn’t actually use the word “sexting” anywhere. It also pitches this as an app to serve a parental demand.
The summary of the "Text-based communication control for personal communication device" filing reads:
“One problem with text-based communications is that there is no way to monitor and control text communications to make them user appropriate. For example, users such as children may send or receive messages (intentionally or not) with parentally objectionable language.
“A parent could prevent a child user from accessing specific websites, or limit the user to communicating electronically with a limited set of individuals or e-mail addresses. Such solutions, however, still do not address the content of the communications that the child user has with the permitted communicators.”
Hence the need for powerful set software and hardware modify the communications themselves.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010 7:10 PM EDT
Media beware: Interview subjects have an audience, too
Iain Marlow
“In the age of the internet, women in countries far away who used to be the objects of white people’s gaze with no right of reply now have access to the representations that are made of them, and the technological means to answer back.” – statement from a group representing sex workers in India
One of the scariest things that can happen to a journalist – besides being shot at or murdered, which happens occasionally – is when sources or subjects come back at us to vigorously protest the way they appeared in our articles. It doesn't happen that often, but many of us, especially nowadays, are not the callous press-hat-wearing, scoop-hungry Neanderthals that we often seem like in movies. Though, the pressures of deadline and space constraints often means we have to take a chainsaw to nuance.
In the past, across the global north, a source's only real retribution would be the venerable Letter to the Editor, which would take a full 24 hours to appear in the next days paper, in a place much less prominent than the original story. In the global south, subjects sometimes just kill the reporters.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011 11:09 AM EST
Serendipity, nostalgia make Netflix worth the $8
Omar El Akkad
A few weeks ago, we mocked Netflix for their hilariously inept Canadian launch event. We did this because, well, they deserved it.
But behind the PR stunt, there’s an actual service to review. So over the past few days, armed with a free trial subscription, we went about testing the Netflix video streaming service.
The long-and-short of it is this: if you’re looking for TV shows, documentaries or rare gems, Netflix is great. If you’re interested in new releases, look elsewhere.
In the U.S., we’re told Netflix also operates as a sort of mail-order Blockbuster, letting users rent movies and return them through the mail, in addition to streaming content over the Web. In Canada, it’s just the latter. There’s no rental business north of the border. Instead, users pay eight bucks a month for unlimited streaming on their computers, PlayStation 3s, Wiis, and a bunch of other gadgets. Considering you could theoretically do nothing but watch hundreds of TV shows and movies every month, it’s actually not a bad deal.
Globe on Technology Contributors
Omar El Akkad
Omar El Akkad is a reporter with the Globe and Mail's National desk, covering technology and security issues. He has previously worked for Report on Business and the Globe's Ottawa bureau.
Follow me on Twitter: @omarelakkad
Iain Marlow
Iain Marlow is a reporter with the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business, covering telecommunications. Previously, he worked at the Toronto Star. He has a journalism and human rights degree from Carleton University in Ottawa and a masters in international politics from London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.
Follow me on Twitter: @iainmarlow
Michael Snider
Michael Snider started writing about consumer technology at Maclean’s magazine in 2001. He joined the Globe and Mail in 2005 and is the editor of Globetechnology.com.
Follow me on Twitter: @sniderm
