Archive for Nothing to do with Books

2010 Canadian Weblog Awards

January 11, 2010 Nothing to do with Books 3 comments

I’m glad to see all the great nominations for the Canadian Weblog Awards. I’m not sure how they’re arrived at, so I’m going to pay closer attention and find out. I have a few that I’d like to nominate myself, in the future!

There’s no specific “Book Blogs” category, which really could have its own niche, given the volume of good book blogs in this country. But there are still several of these blogs that I should check out regularly.

For example, WordGrrls, a writing blog rather than book blog, which I have read in the past and don’t spend nearly enough time with. Then there’s one that I recognized from my Entrecard days, which I used to visit regularly and haven’t been to in a while: Live From Waterloo, essentially a family blog, but about a family that immigrated to Canada from Argentina. Reading Gabriel’s (the father’s) long story about how the family came here, your jaw just drops at what they went through. But they’re here, and loving it, and I’m so glad.

Michael Geist’s blog is the absolute best thing going, when it comes to discussions of copyright, how the law relates to the internet and e-commerce, privacy concerns, social media, government media paranoia, and so on. Do not miss it.

And I am personally pleased to see that a blog I consult almost every day – the Canadian Freelance Writing Jobs blog – has been nominated in the “Business and Career” and “People’s Choice” categories. Way to go, Angela!

We’ve got some great writers in Canada. I need to bookmark that nominations list, and check out those blogs on a regular basis. Go Canada!

Goodbye Amazon

September 17, 2009 Abominations, Industry News, Nothing to do with Books One comment

AmazonFail

AmazonFail

I hate hate hate empires, and those who try to build them and force people to be enslaved to them.

Therefore as of today I am starting to remove Amazon links and affliliate crap from this blog.

Have a look at the Library Thing blog, and read about how Amazon wants LT basically to be a mouthpiece for Amazon books only, and never point anyone to any other bookseller except on some secondary page somewhere. Library Thing pretty much has no option but to comply with THEIR AMAZON MASTERS because they’ve built their whole system around people being able to display cover photos provided by Amazon. They can’t destroy their own site, so they’re stuck. Amazon wins. Though LT is trying their darnedest to get around the problem as creatively as they can.

I agree with the assessment of things on the LT blog:

Together with a new request-monitoring system, banning iPhone applications that use Amazon data, and much of their work on the Kindle, Amazon is retreating from its historic commitment to simplicity, flexibility and openness. They won through openness. Their data is all over the web, and with it millions of links to Amazon. They won’t benefit from a retreat here.

Amazon believes it has enough of a monopoly now that it can rule with an iron fist and nobody has any recourse but to obey them.

Amazon has gone all corporatist insane, and I want nothing more to do with them if it’s humanly possible to avoid them. Somebody has to fight empires, no matter how inevitable they think they are.

Bollywood video…sort of

September 13, 2009 Amusing and Entertaining, Nothing to do with Books No comments

This is a “nothing to do with books” kind of post. But I’m a big Bollywood fan, and I love this video. 🙂

Users of MS Word are safe for now

September 4, 2009 Industry News, Nothing to do with Books 2 comments

I mentioned back in this post, Microsoft Word to be banned, that a court ruled in late August that Microsoft had engaged in patent infringement with some of the features included in Word, its word processing program. The court in Texas that made the ruling gave Microsoft 60 days to change the program (taking us into late October), or it couldn’t sell the program any more.

A CBC News article today, Microsoft Word sales allowed to continue, reports that a temporary stay of the 60-day injunction has been granted:

The company argued the timeframe to stop selling Word was too short and would do “irreparable harm” to its business. The appeals court granted the stay of the injunction pending a hearing scheduled for Sept. 23.

Considering all the millions of people who use Word, and the multitude of companies that depend on it, there’s no way it will just vanish. But without a temporary stay like this, there could have been an interruption in its availability. At least things will go on as usual while Microsoft and i4i, the company that holds the patent in question, iron out their legal differences.

« Older Entries   Recent Entries »
Related Posts Widget for Blogs by LinkWithin