Canadian Ski News Service – Whistler, B.C.: Extreme skier Brenda Spilker of Bellevue, Wash. says she is “extremely lucky to be alive” following a 50-second “head over heals” tumble down the Harmony Ridge glacier of Whistler Mountain. Spilker claims she was skiing in excess of 120 kilometers an hour at the time of the crash.

She says she was practicing for an appearance in the upcoming Warren Miller ski video – Over the Hill and Beyond.

“It was a beautiful run,” Spilker claims. “All of a sudden, I saw out of the corner of my eye what I’m sure was an orange whistler marmot. He was paralyzed with fear. All he could do was whistle at me. I swerved fast and went over a 50-foot cliff. If I had run over the little guy, he’d just be nothing more than a puddle of Hamburger Helper. I don’t remember what happened next.”

Dr. I.M Doughter of the Whistler Regional Hospital, who treated Spilker, says he’s never heard of anyone surviving an accident on that section of the ridge at those speeds. “Makes you wonder what really happened,” he says. “A most incredible story. What’s an orange whistler marmot? And what’s he doing out in the middle of winter—practicing for the bobsled team?”

Another skier challenged Spilker’s sketchy recollection of the accident. “I saw her go down one of the beginner runs,” says Bob Spencer of Calgary. “She collided with a six year old. Both were oblivious to the world. I mean they were both checked out. I didn’t know you could get hurt going so slow.”

Link to Technology Review: A Portable Refinery Powered by Garbage

Here's something for the backyard...a machine that turns waste into electricity.

Researchers have built and tested for the military a portable machine that efficiently turns waste into electricity.

An energy-from-waste project led by researchers at Purdue University is giving new meaning to the term "military power." Scientists from the university's department of agricultural and biological engineering have developed a portable machine that turns a variety of food waste and inorganic trash into electricity, reducing the amount of diesel fuel and garbage that soldiers in the field must carry with them. [More]

Some great photos of the Quebec City Carnival on Guy Kawaski's blog. It's something that we'd like to attend in the not-so-distant future. Always great to see the pictures of Guy Lafleur and Patrick Roy, two of the greatest hockey players to play in Quebec City.

My Trip to Quebec

Continuing on from Minnesota, I went to Québec for the Garage Canada conference. The Winter Carnival was also going on at the same time. I thought Minnesota was cold, but it was downright balmy compared to Québec. Despite the -40 degree weather, I found many parallels between Québec and my native states of Hawaii and California.

T his really blows my mind. According to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory we have all the tools we need to solve the energy crises right at our hands. All we have to do is switch over to the plug-in hybrid vehicles. The power grid is robust enough to handle the load.  Wished we could get our Camry hybrid converted to a plug-in tomorrow.  Here's what Mark Anderson writes about the issue:

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, managed since its inception as part of the Department of Energy by private contractor Battelle, released a report a week or two ago, which is so simple in its conclusions, and so amazing in its repercussions, that everyone interested in energy should be talking about it.

The report, in summary, says this:

There are about 220MM vehicles in service in the US today. IF all of those were converted to Plugin Hybrid Electric Vehicles (a technology already available), the existing US electrical grid system has enough unused off-hours generating capacity to power 84% of US transport of cars and light trucks.

Today.

 

Link to Strategic News Service Blog » Blog Archives » Solving the Energy Crisis, with No Energy Investment

I just posted some pictures that I took Friday of the aftermath of the wind storm. It's so amazing that more people weren't hurt.

Link to December wind storm pictures

I was really impressed this morning when I noticed that one of my favoroite bloggers -- Loic Le Meur -- had a nice summary of the Future of the Internet II Report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Loic, by the way, is the number one blogger in France.

Turns out that the Pew had a nice summary of the report, complete with byte-size bullet points. In essence, they did the bloggers' work by making it easy for anyone to quote the report succinctly. The PR world has done this type of thing of years, and it works nicely. I've known a couple of reports who made decent livings by rewriting press releases.  As best as I can tell from Technorati, some 71 blogs have quoted the report.

The moral of the story--make it easy for people to use your stuff.

So here's the summary, and let's just say that at least 72 blogs have quoted the report:

• A low-cost global network will be thriving and creating new opportunities in a “flattening” world.
• Humans will remain in charge of technology, even as more activity is automated and “smart agents” proliferate. However, a significant 42% of survey respondents were pessimistic about humans’ ability to control the technology in the future. This significant majority agreed that dangers and dependencies will grow beyond our ability to stay in charge of technology. This was one of the major surprises in the survey.
• Virtual reality will be compelling enough to enhance worker productivity and also spawn new addiction problems.
• Tech “refuseniks” will emerge as a cultural group characterized by their choice to live off the network. Some will do this as a benign way to limit information overload, while others will commit acts of violence and terror against technology-inspired change.
• People will wittingly and unwittingly disclose more about themselves, gaining some benefits in the process even as they lose some privacy.
• English will be a universal language of global communications, but other languages will not be displaced. Indeed, many felt other languages such as Mandarin, would grow in prominence.

Here's a novel idea. Music portal Sellaband lets fans to buy shares in bands. Apparently, some 250 bands have signed up with the portal. One band hopes to raise some $50,000 to fund its next recording. I'm skeptical, but its an interesting idea.

Link to Springwise: Bands funded by their fans | Update

Ken Burns didn't bring his camera to Seattle

He spoke about his upcoming series on World War II that will air sometime next year. The 14-hour series follows the lives of about 50 people in four American cities. The series is all about ordinary people -- not generals or politicians.

Here's my main takeaways:

• His style is all about story telling
• Ordinary people have extraordinary stories
• The country responded to a great challenge when everyone was asked to make sacrifices -- not just a small group like our current situation.
• The World War II generation was indeed the greatest generation

I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to this series. Hopefully PBS will replay his earlier Civial War series on of these days.

In the early 1900s, Canadian prime minister Wilfred Laurier told his fellow countrymen that the "20^th century belongs to Canada". Looks like he wa s off by a century.

Technology analyst Mark Anderson believes that Canada's time may soon be here. In a recent newsletter, Anderson identifies 14 reasons why the future belongs to Canada. Here are the key ones:

Canada looks ahead to the future

• Knows how to balance its own budget
• No military expenses to mention
• First-class educational facilities (can Stephen spell Moose Jaw?)
• Huge oil reserves
• Political stability
• Free trade and active markets
• Vibrant cultural scene
• Good business climate
• Natural beauty
• Lots of land and few immigration problems
• Benign foreign policy

I have to admit that there are times when I'd like to move back to Canada. However, it does get boring living in a place with few problems where everyone is so polite. I wonder if the Canadian dollar will again surpass the U.S. dollar. That hasn't happened since the early 1970s.

If you'd like the entire newsletter, just shoot me an email. Because of copyright considerations, I will be obligated to CC Mark Anderson. He will send you a free month-long subscription.

No I’m not quite that pretentious. I must say that our new Black and Deck cordless lawnmower works real well. It easily cuts the grass on our one-third acre lot in one recharge. It nice not coming back into the house smelling of gas and oil.

24 Volt 19" Cordless Rechargeable Mulching Mower with Bag

Lynn Terpstra, the marketing manager of Crossroads Mall in Bellevue, was awarded Bellevue's first Community Builder Award. I can't think of a better or more deserving person. She is a tireless community worker and a great friend. It was an honor to be invited to the presentation last Wednesday.

Two of the key speakers were Kevin Henry, head of Bellevue community-services diversity programs, and Barb Tuininga, manager of the Crossroads mini city hall.

They described Terpstra as the person who says yes to people and yes to bringing events and programs into the mall and neighborhood. In other words, she makes things happen. Claudia Balducci of the Bellevue City Council called Terpstra the community glue.

From the Seattle Times: Bellevue honors community builder

See Lynn Terprstra photos.

I’m going to try and check this out this weekend at Home Depot. We’re still thinking about buying a Camry hybrid later this year. This type of battery will really give that type of vehicle a real boost in power and gas mileage. Besides weighing less, it also holds a more powerful charge, it also weighs less.

More Powerful Hybrid Batteries

A123 Systems has built a powerful, lightweight lithium-ion battery pack that could lower the price of hybrid vehicles.

In a demonstration at the AABC conference in Baltimore this week, a rechargeable DeWalt reciprocating saw with A123 batteries (top) performed at least as well as a plug-in model by the same company. The rechargeable drill is also lighter than the plug-in version….

I’ve had to log on three times in 15 minutes. That’s hardly enough time to write an email.

Word 2007 is my new blog editing tool. It really is cool—simple to use and looks to be very powerful.

What kind of impact is the Web having on newspapers—an extremely cost one. The New York Times reports that help-wanted ads at the Mercury News have fallen to $18 million a year from more than $118 million. Monster.com and Craigslist.com are having a tremendous impact. 

As a result of falling revenues, the newspaper axed 30 percent of its newsroom staff. Little wonder that McClatchy wants to get rid of the newspaper when it finalizes its takeover of Knight-Ridder. Some media analysts had originally speculated that McClatchy didn’t want any of the Knight-Ridder papers with strong unions. Looks like there are other reasons at work. 

Quote

In Boomtown, but Still Stuck on a Bubble - New York Times

At its peak in 2000, The Mercury News had a Sunday circulation of 326,839 subscribers, according to the newspaper. Last September, the company counted 278,470 Sunday subscribers, a drop of about 15 percent. Revenue from the company's help-wanted ads fell to $18 million a year from more than $118 million, according to the paper. The newsroom was whittled to 280 people from 404, a 30 percent decline.

Well, maybe.

We’ve just bought a Gateway PC with the Windows Media Center OS and all I can say is wow. The dual core machine is extremely fast. I especially like the ability to record TV shows for later playback. With the Xbox Extender, we can even watch content stored on the PC on our flat panel TV. The quality is very good.

We’ve downloaded a number of movies from MovieLink and CinemaNow. I can’t say how much I relish the idea of not making trips to Blockbuster and Hollywood Video.

So what’s the downside to all of this? First the number of movies available for download is limited. This is really hard to understand. So there will be the occasional trip to the video store after all. Damn, I hate those late fees.

Second, the quality of the digital TV really drives home how lousy the quality of the cable service is. Bottom line, I can’t wait for IPTV—digital TV pumped over the Internet. IPTV offers the possibility of extremely high quality video with almost unlimited choices in channels. AT&T has started to roll it out in select markets. I can’t wait until we get it in our area.  

 Dare Obasjano has an excellent trip report  on a talk given by Danah Boyd at  the recent ETech conference. Boyd is a social researcher at Yahoo. She talked about the difficulty in taking Web services global across ethnic and cultural lines. In particular, I liked the section on why some services succeed:

ETech 2006 Trip Report: G/localization: When Global Information and Local Interaction Collide

Craig's List, Flickr and MySpace are examples of a new generation of successful social software. All three services have the following basic characteristics

• Passionate designers and users: The creators of the services are passionate about the service they've created and use it themselves. All three services were seeded by friends and family of the founder(s) who became the foundation of a strong base of passionate users.

• Public Personalities: Tom (MySpace), Stewart (Flickr) and Craig (Craig's List) put a human face on the service by directly interacting with users either in support roles or to give updates on the status of the service.

• Integrated feedback loop: Changes to the sites are driven by customer demand which is often given directly to the people building the products

Just posted on my New Media blog why I think Live.com is the newspaper of the future.