ian andrew bell

In a week, when Apple FanBoys are lined up outside the Rogers and Fido stores to purchase their iPhones and get locked into Rogers’ draconian service plan for the next three years, yours truly wil be cooling his heels waiting for a shipment from the UK to arrive at his door. In this package, likely a week after the launch, will be contained a couple of 3G iPhones from a friend in London.

This is a critical opportunity for you to vote against Rogers with the only ballot that counts: your wallet. You too will be able to purchase unlocked 3G iPhones from him on eBay about a week later.

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Despite the fact that I often find myself on the opposing end of the table on most of what Microsoft does, I was really hoping to be able to agree with Ballmer on his assertions regarding Microsoft’s rejuvenated focus on search as quoted in today’s Financial Times article. I was hoping that, on the heels of their disastrously failed hostile takeover effort of Yahoo! that MSFT had a plan for Search that extended beyond paying people to use its engine, which has led to some amusing arbitrage opportunities reminiscent of late bubble-era scams.

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“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”

— Confucius

Finally! It looks like Gary Bettman, whose tenure at the NHL was declared an unequivocal failure by the Toronto Globe & Mail, might be hitting the rocks. The Globe refers to a Toronto Star article which points out that, in a 30-team league, Canada’s 6 hockey clubs drive nearly a third of the NHL’s ticket revenue. Even more damning, it looks like the revenue gains that Bettman has been touting the past couple of seasons have come, by as much as half, from the increasing value of the Canadian Dollar.

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Like a lot of folks, I’ve never been a fan of Dominic Hasek. Whether it’s his refusal last season to wear his shoulder pads and chest protector while riding the pine backing up other goalies with the Red Wings, or whether it’s his insane attitude when he is on the ice… there’s just so little to love with him. This morning I read a snippet that really said it all for me about his character:

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Let’s face it. It’s sleek. It’s one of the fastest browsers out there for OS X. It syncs with my .Mac account, so I have a seamless browsing experience on all of my Macs. But, alas, I have a love/hate relationship with OS X Safari. I come back to it every once in a while for a few weeks, have a great time, and then things start turning sour. And by sour, I mean bitter, nasty, and hair-pullingly difficult.

When I get to these moments I invariably go back to Firefox. Firefox and Safari are different in as many ways as they are the same…

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My friend Daniel Gibbons is shopping for a CMS for his new project. He’s posted interesting and in my view fairly accurate comments regarding Drupal and Wordpress. I’m quite the fan of WordPress, have spent a little bit of time with Matt and the Automattic crew and think quite highly of them.. and of course I use it for a bunch of sites, both corporate and personal.

Still, a couple of years ago I recommended that we deploy a Drupal site for EQO, where I was the VP Marketing. As seems to be common with a lot of Drupal projects, there was much forking of code and a great deal of customization required to make the thing feel like a true web interface. As a result it’s been a challenge for EQO to keep their site up-to-date with the latest versions and to reconverge with the growing Drupal codebase.

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I used to have this on my network server somewhere (it’s about 3 years old) but this is something that needs to be shared with the world.

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I keep forgetting to blog about this, or perhaps it’s because I’m ashamed of my wardrobe and bad hair day, but FindFindr did a far-ranging video interview with me on a rooftop in Gastown. I did my best to be interesting. They did their best in the editing room later. Enjoy!

Guess what? I’m a real person. I’ll be at the blogtropol.us lounge @ the Web 2.0 Expo for the next couple of days. Come and meet me and the boys from Something Simpler.

No stick or puck required.