Archive for February, 2010

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Apple Accused Of Using Child Labour

February 27th, 2010

Apple has omitted to using child labor to build its products in china.

Now this really should not come as a shock to anyone.

Granted the children where 15 which are not that young (its legal here in Canada).

Apple says the 11 15 year olds are no longer listed as children either due to new practices or are older.

Apple also says they have drastically changed policy’s for underage people and the factors they work for.

So it’s not all bad.

If you want to read more, the full story is here.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/7330986/Apple-admits-using-child-labour.html

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How To: Use Any Client With Facebook Chat

February 26th, 2010

Nothing is more annoying then your favorite custom messenger not supporting Facebook chat.

Well there is a fix!

Facebook supports jabber, so you can use almost any client that supports the service.

CNET TV has more info and how to set it up.

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Canadian Tech Blogger Will Take Part In Earth 2010

February 25th, 2010

CTB will participate this year for Earth Hour.

For those of you who don’t know what earth hour is, it’s a global event where you turn off your lights in support of climate change.

It started in 2006 in Sydney, Australia and in 2009 reached over 1 BILLION people!

In 2009 Edmonton, Canada (and other Canadian cities) took part in Earth hour.

Coca Cola, Pepsi, Virgin Mobile, and literally thousands of other company’s also took part.

So this year let’s make the voices even louder!

Here is what you do (it’s really simple): turn off your lights for one hour, at 8.30pm, Saturday 27th March 2010.

Note: I have personally participated since 2006.

P.S. I am not the only one taking part…so is Cebu Tech Blogger.

Official 2010 Video:

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Dear United States: The Rest Of The World Wants To Watch TV Shows Free Online

February 25th, 2010

Being in the U.S. is great…you can get all your TV shows online for FREE.

Live outside the U.S? Good luck, almost everything is blocked.

Living in Canada sucks because of U.S. Copyright law…and/or tv networks that just won’t budge.

I have plenty of examples too.

So many show I can’t watch online.

But there is somewhat of a fix.

For FOX/CBS/NBC/ABC there is CTV/CBC/Global/Access so most shows are able to be watched.

DNR: Does not Restrict

So lets see:

  • Cops? Nope icon sad Dear United States: The Rest Of The World Wants To Watch TV Shows Free Online !
  • V?  CTV
  • Simpsons? Global
  • House? Global
  • American Dad? Global
  • Family Guy? Global
  • Cleveland show? Global
  • Heroes? Global
  • 24? Global
  • NCIS? Global
  • NCIS: LA? Global
  • Glee? Global
  • Kitchen Nightmares? Global
  • The Nature Of Things? CBC
  • Human Target? CTV
  • CSI (All versions)? CTV
  • 1000 Ways to die? Spike (DNR)
  • Colbert Report? CTV
  • Daily Show? CTV
  • TMZ? CTV
  • Whale Wars? Nope! (No free version online – iTunes only)
  • AETV? (DNR)
  • Discovery Channel (DNR)
  • History Channel? (DNR)
  • Discovery Channel? (DNR)
  • Comedy? (Redirect)

So most of my shows are online if I choose…but I have to hunt and peck since Hulu does not want to work with Canadian Networks.

Note: Canadian Networks that “host” the American TV shows are actually just bought for $2-3 million ea for usage, so technically it’s not a loophole but rather a make peace payment.

The unfortunate thing is most online steaming boxes (Boxee, Tivo, etc) while work in Canada, they do not know about the Canadian Networks so usually there nothing to watch.

Windows Media Center Online TV has no Canadian/Outside access AT ALL.

So while I can do some work a round’s I wonder how many shows Australians/Europeans watch online shows since well…there not Canada.

The real bad thing is though the Canadian ISP’s…NONE of them offer unlimited bandwidth (except for Yak but it’s limited to a few Providences ((AB/BC)).

I can get unlimited internet that way but 3MB/s its too slow.

So ya, in Canada it’s not easy, so I am envious of Americans who have high (I.E over 40GB/month) bandwidth caps.

While I don’t expect anything to change, I hope this will show just how uneasy it is incase you travel.

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iTunes Song Downloads: Now 10 Billion Strong

February 24th, 2010

Today Apple hit 10 billion song downloads!

apple 10 billion song downloads itunes iTunes Song Downloads: Now 10 Billion Strong

10 Billion and Counting

See it happen:

10 billion song downloads means iTunes is a large success. Guess people do want to pay $1.20 per song (which I do too).

Congrats Apple.

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Wait…What? Google Executives Put In Jail For Failing To Remove A YouTube Video In Enough Time?!

February 24th, 2010

My on my is the world a screwed up place some times.

OK here is the story:

A YouTube video was uploaded of a Kid with Down Syndrome being bullied.

The video went viral but that’s not where things get odd.

Because 4 Google Execs “Failed to remove the video within 6 hours”…3 of them are given 6 month jail terms!

There are 20 hours of video uploaded every second on YouTube so managing video’s is tough.

I am not the only one finding this odd (it is on the top of Reddit mind you!).

While the video was not at all needed on YouTube putting people in Jail because they responded a little to slow is barbaric.

As Tech Dirt put it:

“It’s hard to hear about this ruling and not consider the Italian legal system to be a joke.”

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Yahoo Now Streaming Twitter

February 24th, 2010

First Bing, then Google, and now Yahoo.

Yahoo will slowly be adding Twitter into its searches.

The purpose of this is to deliver real-time results for hot topics (like the Haiti earthquake).

Twitter will be added also the home page, mail, and you can tweet right from Yahoo.

It’s nice that Yahoo is slowly adding Twitter even though they are part of (in some ways) with Microsoft.

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How To: Push Gmail On Your iPhone

February 24th, 2010

The default Gmail setup on the iPhone does not support push (email is auto sent to your device).

But CNET TV has an easy way to get around that.

Watch the video to learn more.

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Top 5 Tools To Track Visits To Your WordPress/Blogspot Blog

February 23rd, 2010

Tracking how many visits you get is a direct reflection of how successful your blog is.

So being able to watch/keep track is key to monitoring your blog.

So here is my favorite 5 blog tracking tools.

1. Woopra

Woopra is a real-time website/blog tracking tool.

I absolutely love it because I can watch live visitors arriving to my blog, and from where.

I can also launch a chat session if I need to.

It is free for blogs that get under 30,000 page views per month.

It supports PHP Forums, Wikimedia, WordPress, Blogspot or anything that accepts script based HTML. Note: Does not work with wordpress.com blogs.

They have pricing plans for larger blogs.

Demo Video:

2. WordPress Stats

WordPress stats is a free visitor tracking tool.

Naturally its only for wordpress.com/wordpress hosted blogs.

It is a simplistic version of Google analytics.

Screenshots can be seen here.

Included for .com blogs, wordpress.org users download the plugin here.

3. Crawl Track

Crawl track is a radically different approach to the stat tracking.

Crawl track is .php based so it can also monitor search engine robot visits as explained in an earlier post of mine.

It can also protect against hacking attempts.

While it’s not the best looking it does have the most function, and doesn’t leave tracking cookies behind.

Since it needs a mysql database, and php it does not work with blogspot nor wordpress.com blogs.

It’s free.

4. Google Analytics

Google analytics is pretty much used by every blog and or website known.

In-fact 85/100 top 100 websites use it.

It shows visitors, time visited, location, can email you .pdf/excel data reports…which is very handy.

It’s also free.

5. Whos.Amung.Us

I’ve used Whos.Amung.Us ever since I started blogging fore a very good reason.

It’s free (paid features available), it’s visible to website visitors, its customizable. has a firefox/chrome plugin, and its a live counter.

While it doesn’t track the stats, nor keep cookies, or really do much it is useful.

It shows the live amount of users online your blog at one time.

The firefox/chrome plugins are useful for viewing stats without having much open.

It’s nice as it allows your blog visitors see how many people are visiting, and from where.

Unlike most of the others the classic button does work with wordpress.com blogs.

So that’s the Top 5 tools to track your website visits, most I use or have used at some time.

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Just how safe is Adobe’s Products? (Interview included)

February 22nd, 2010

Adobe…known for its PDF, its reader, its photoshop, its flash, and naturally its security holes.

So what is adobe doing to fix this, and what do they think needs to be done?

CNET TV has a interview with Brad Arkin Adobe’s director of product security and security.

Watch the video for the interview.

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