Those on twitter will already know that this morning I had the privilege of conducting a press conference with Minister Day about the launch of data.gc.ca - the Federal Government's Open Data portal. For those wanting to learn more about open data and why it matters, I suggest this and this blog post, and…

I'll be joining Treasury Board President Stockwell Day at 10am PST/1pm EST to help make an exciting announcement.

The press release can be found here.

I'll be writing up a reaction later today.

I've been following with great interest the efforts of Intellog Blog's effort's to get the Government of Alberta to gain access to the location of all oil and gas well's in the Western Sedimentary Basin. Their goal is pretty simple, they want to spur research and increase awareness around the economic opportunities, health consequences and environmental implications of the drilling. Such a conversation is, of course, made a whole lot easier if one has actual accurate information to…

"I guess my attack to this has always been from the perspective of are we working in a bubble. In other words, when this was... under this initiative by the President, how quick was the takeup by the population at large? Not by the people that we affectionately call geeks, or people who don't have a life, or don't come up out of the dark, or whatever. The average person walking through Times Square I guess is what I'm trying to say. How quick was their take up, and in fact has…

Have you ever forgotten to take the garbage or recycling out? Wouldn't it be nice if someone sent you a reminder the night before, or the morning of? Maybe an email, or an SMS, or even a phone call?

Now you can set it up so somebody does. Us.

Introducing Recollect: the garbage and recycling collection reminder service.

For People

We've got the garbage schedules for a number of Canadian cities big and small (with…

My gosh there is a lot going on. Republicans - REPUBLICANS(!) who were in charge of America's prison system are warning Canada not to follow the Conservatives plan on prisons, the Prime Minister has renamed the government, after himself and…

Sorry for the cross post - I have this piece today on the opinion page of the Toronto Star. They've actually done a nice graphic for it so do encourage you to check it out.

End the silence on aid

For the past two weeks, Canadians have slowly watched the minister of international development, Bev Oda, implode. Caught in a slowly escalating scandal, it’s become clear that the…

This TEDx talk by Johanna Blakley is pure gold (thank you Jonathan Brun for passing it along). It's a wonderful dissection - all while using the fashion industry as a case study - of how patents and licenses are not only unnecessary for innovation but can actually impede it.

What I found particularly fascinating is Johanna's claim that long ago the US courts decided that…