It’s a pretty simple system: You can paste in the email addresses of all the players on your team, input dates of your upcoming games (which is even easier if it’s a recurring event) and the system does the rest to figure out who’s coming and who’s not.

Please do try it out: http://www.rosterbot.com

I got the idea when I became tired of sifting thru all the big long email threads from each of the hockey teams I play on where the team manager is trying to figure out who’ll be coming to the next game. It’s a painful, tedious task that all too quickly fills up Inboxes and Blackberries.

I know I’ve talked to many of you about this project of mine… In many cases, we’ve incorporated some of your feedback into the design. Thanks for that.. and please let me know what you think after fooling around with it for a while.

-Ian.

-Ian.

—=—

http://www.cp.org/bookl.htm

New edition of The Canadian Press Stylebook now available

The Canadian Press has just published the 11th edition of the best-selling CP Stylebook. The Canadian Press Stylebook is the most comprehensive Canadian manual for everyday writing and editing available. It is used in newsrooms and offices across Canada. It is an indispensable guide for journalists, editors, government and corporate communicators, public relations professionals, Web masters and speechwriters.

This is the book that will tell you whether the capital of Newfoundland is Saint John’s or St. John’s. Why Internet is capitalized but e-mail isn’t. Why Canadians write with colour and flavour, not color and flavor.

The CP Stylebook began life more than a half-century ago as a modest little manual for staff at Canada’s national news service. It is still the bible consulted by journalists at CP as they provide thousands of words of copy each day to newspapers, television stations and radio broadcasters. It is required reading at journalism schools.

This latest edition has been updated to reflect the needs of today’s writers, including:

Expanded guidelines on writing for and about the Internet. New chapters on writing headlines and news releases. Sensible guidelines on avoiding sexist and racist language. New legal rulings of relevance to writers. Current listings on countries and territories (including Nunavut). New advice on how to use access-to-information laws. Updated references on everything from the names of Canada’s courts to abbreviations for sports teams. An expanded section on business writing. More illustrations, including colour photos by award-winning journalists.

The 450-page Stylebook also continues to provide easy-to-find answers to hundreds of questions on the mechanics of writing. Do the quotation marks go before the period or after? When do you use a dash and when is it a hyphen? Is it 10 a.m. or 10 o’clock? It’s or its? Yonge Street or Yonge St.? Why is God capitalized but devil isn’t.

It also contains handy reference information of use to journalists: Who is sixth in line to the throne? What is libel? Is the title Rev. used by Buddhists?