Category Archives: Media

The bits that move us

Five films from the TIFF

By Ian | September 22, 2009

We saw 5 great films in the Contemporary World Cinema program in this years (2009) Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff).
We started off with a Irish film, Perrier’s Bounty, set in the underside of North Dublin. Great and meaty characters. I hope the DVD has English subtitles and translation so I can understand [...]

Also posted in Movies, Toronto | Leave a comment

Kandyse McClure (BSG’s Anastasia “Dee” Dualla) glamour shots

By Ian | June 30, 2009

Rising star and Actress Kandyse McClure (born Candice McClure) and African-Canadian beauty, know to fans of Sci-Fi/Scy-Fy channels Battlestar Galactica as Anastasia “Dee” Dualla, recently did a shoot in Mexico with photographer Darryl Humphrey, a horse, and not much else! (She may have been filming for TV series “Persons Unknown“)

I’ve been told that the glamour shots [...]

Also posted in Art, Canada, Movies, Sci Fi, TV | Leave a comment

DRM free Songbird Media Player is out of the nest with R1.0!

By Ian | December 2, 2008

in the works since 2005 has SongBird has reached a major milestone with is 1.0 release!!
What is it? A DRM (Digital Restrictions Management, or they “restrict your rights to digits”. ) free, non-proprietary, cross platform, extensible (plug-in services!!), open-source, customizable music player. That’s what!
It’s built atop XULRunner platform (also used by Mozilla [...]

Also posted in Digital Rights & Wrongs, Music, Web Services, XML & RSS | Leave a comment

TinEye Mobile : iPhone visual search for stuff

By Ian | October 1, 2008

as demonstrated during the recent The Amazon Web Services (AWS) StartUp event in Toronto by Idee’s CTO Paul Bloore, TinEye Mobile is soon to be showing up in the iPhone App store to melt your brains… or just take an image of product (a CD, DVD, book or game etc.) and then send you on [...]

Also posted in Code, Startup, Toronto, Written | 1 Comment

3 points towards a new business model for Music and Books.

By Ian | March 16, 2008

Free ebooks appear to boost sales | Blog | Futurismic – There has been a lot of criticism of the practice by some writers and lots of praise from other corners. At the moment, it looks like the practice works.
- Books ebooks business
Put Not Your Faith In Ebook Readers – Frankly, book reading just [...]

Also posted in Culture, Music, Written | Leave a comment

Microsoft Misleads on Copyright Reform

By Ian | February 4, 2008

Via Michael Geist comes word that an fable in “Hill Times (a weekly newspaper for Ottawa’s “savvy political and government insider”) written by Michael Eisen (Microsoft Canada’s Chief Legal Officer) misleads in the service of the “Prentice Canadian DMCA” act it wants to get passed so as justify the digital locks (that don’t work) to [...]

Also posted in Canada, Code, Culture, Digital Rights & Wrongs | 1 Comment

Weird Wonderful Web Links for January 21st

By Ian | January 21, 2008

Dilbert.com >> I’m Incubating my brain out…

- and it hurts
- Startup Humour
CSS Floats Without Text Wrap – Understanding floats is extremely important when creating CSS layouts. One of the trickiest issues when dealing with floats is stopping text from wrapping underneath a floated element.
- css webdesign
The best free web development add-ons for IE 6 [...]

Also posted in Digital Rights & Wrongs, Humour, Lotus Domino, css | Leave a comment

Breakfast with Scot , “out” in the theatres Nov 16 2007

By Ian | November 14, 2007

If you see one “hockey-kids-xmas-comedy-drama about a queer couple who gain custody of an 11 year old boy” this is the movie!! (imdb listing)
You may have already heard about it, based on the book of the same title, from the Toronto International Film Festival or the coverage it has received for having the support of [...]

Also posted in Movies | Leave a comment

Uncrackable DRM is, very likely, Neither.

By Ian | September 11, 2007

The title of the Information Week column by Alexander Wolfe is both provocative and misleading. Microsoft has patented (U.S. Patent 7,266,697) “Stealthy audio watermarking”, which Mr Wolfe suggests could lead to “Uncrackable DRM“.
However even reading the patent’s abstract (”The watermark identifies the content producer, providing a signature that is embedded in the audio signal [...]

Also posted in Digital Rights & Wrongs | Leave a comment

The Friends of the Merril Science Fiction/Anime Flea Market

By Ian | August 29, 2007

Via Greg “Beatiful Code” Wilson :
The Friends of the Merril are having a Flea Market on Saturday September 8th, from 10-4, at the Toronto Reference Library (just north of Bloor on Yonge). Second-hand, collectible, or one-of-a-kind: all sorts of SF and Anime merchandise will be available.
The Friends of the Merril Flea Market is going to [...]

Also posted in Canada, Culture, Sci Fi, Toronto, Written | Leave a comment