a personal blog about technology, communications and other stuff that interests me
PR bloggers David Jones and Leona Hobbs apparently know more about High Road’s speaking engagements than I do. Just saw on their blogs that Leona is speaking at the Wired Woman Toronto event on October 24 – together with High Road co-founder and president Mia Wedgbury. More information about the event here.
A couple posts ago I mentioned Middlesbrough’s CCTV system. CCTV is gaining popularity in Toronto, too. 680 News reported today that Toronto police will roll out 18-20 new cameras, “starting in the Jane and Finch area and northeast Scarborough“.
The 2006 “Fast 50”
Deloitte published its annual list of Fast 50 winners a couple days ago (press release). The full list can be found in Simon Avery’s Globe and Mail article. Here are the top ten winners:
Under-funded nation
The article points out that the level of Canadian venture capital investment today is down to about $1.7 billion from $5 billion in “the boom days of 2000”. According to Deloitte, more than half of the Fast 50 are self-funded and receiving no venture capital support.
“As a nation, Canada is under-funded from a VC perspective, and it’s exacerbated by the tech downturn.”
David Ferguson, managing general partner of VenGrowth Private Equity Partners Inc.
According to an article in the Daily Mail, the Closed Circuit TV in Middlesbrough now features a number of loudspeakers, so control room operators can publicly berate bad behaviour and shame offenders into acting more responsibly.
‘This isn’t about keeping tabs on people, it’s about making the streets safer for the law-abiding majority and helping to change the attitudes of those who cause trouble. It challenges unacceptable behaviour and makes people think twice.’
Ray Bonner, manager of CCTV at the City of Middlesbrough, in Daily Mail, September 16, 2006
Not sure if the clocks are striking thirteen yet (some would probably argue they already did when CCTV was introduced). It’s a debatable innovation and use of security technology but in today’s world, it’s hardly surprising. Let’s see if more cities in the UK will adopt this idea.
Just came across pr-toolbar.de, a free PR Toolbar created by a German agency. The download offering for German PR professionals includes 380 PR links, a PR glossary, RSS feeds with PR news as well as gadgets like cookie cleaner, unified email notification and a chat function. I haven’t downloaded it but it looks like it also includes a couple features that are supposed to generate leads for this agency.
I am not a huge toolbar fan in general because it further diminishes the little screen space I have on my laptop and the new IE7 Beta browser (just like Firefox) has an integrated search box anyway. But it is still a nice marketing and community-building idea.
pr-toolbar.de was developed based on a free toolbar creation service from Conduit, so it would probably be easy to create a Canadian PR toolbar.
Not sure if anybody would be interested. But, just for the sake of an exercise, here’s a quick brainstorm of what could be included.
Yes, there’s plenty more to be found in Canada. But it’s time for dinner. Other ideas anyone?
There will be no logged-out editing and no anonymous editing [in Citizendium]. Anyone may participate, but all must be logged in under their own real names (we will use the honor principle to begin with), and with a working e-mail address. Where Wikipedia shares the culture of anonymity found in the broader Internet, the Citizendium will have a culture of real-world, personal responsibility.
Larry Sanger
Larry Sanger, one of the founders of Wikipedia, has started a new project called Citizendium, which initially is supposed to be a “progressive fork” of Wikipedia. One of the key differences is the inclusion of editors (vs. authors) who must state their credentials on a user profile page. With this system, Citizendium hopes to fight the “widespread anonymity that, according to Sanger, has led to a “troll problem” in Wikipedia. He also want to make Citizendium attractive to academics, “so that they can contribute in a way they feel comfortable with”. He explains his approach in detail in an essay called “Toward a New Compendium of Knowledge“.
Trying to get rid of anonymity and trolls is a good idea. It will bring who-edited-my-wiki-page feuds to an end and make it easier to call out people for editing an entry a certain way. The proposed editorial system could be a challenge, though. Larry Sanger suggests that Citizendium editors and “chief subject editors” act as “facilitators and organizers, not dictators”. I think it is a great idea in theory but in the end, when there are differences in opinion, somebody has to make a decision. But overall, I find the notion of taking personal responsibility for writing or editing entries very appealing.
Larry Sanders wants to have software and servers for Citizendium set up by September 30th.