The two year Election 2008 television series is coming to an end in less then a month. The world is watching to see who gets voted off the island.

The real political action (IMHO) is what’s happening in the US Congress — which is looking to be heavily Democratic — and the potential for 60 Dem seats in the Senate may usher in an era of activism like the early 60s — particularly with the recent economic melt down.

But that is not as entertaining as the multi station television series about the leadership battles within and now between the Blue team and the Red team.  Even though we are in the middle of our own federal election here in Canada, it seems that more Canadians tuned into the US VP debate then the Canadian leadership debate (they happened at the same time).  We Canadians will only have ourselves to blame if we focus more on the US entertainment export than on our own political process. And even though it does not really matter, I too will follow the story line until Nov 4th.

Today I was talking to someone who had heard about my Identity 2.0 talk but had not seen it. He said he had done a search and I found it odd that he had not seen a link to the video. I Googled my name and the first listing was to my talk. He then mentioned that he used Live Search.  So I went to Live.com and searched for my name. Here is a screen shot of the results:

Given recent developments in my romantic life, this emailed graphic from a friend really resonated for me.

I currently use MarsEdit to write blogs. I would likely write more if it was a better tool, but lots of things are much harder than I think they should be. (like dragging and dropping links and images).

I was just reading a post about Qumana and the promise of dragging and dropping images and links got me all excited. I went to the home page to see this graphic

Happy woman! Nice, cool looking pad! … and check that, she is using a PowerBook! Cool. I can use Qumana with a Mac! … well, that is if I can get the following system requirements listed to work on my PowerBook:

The Qumana application has the following system requirements:

Operating System: Windows(R) XP, Windows(R) 2000, Windows(R) 98

Processor: Intel Pentium or compatible

Memory: Minimum 128Mb

Additional space is needed to store any content you collect.

Internet: An Internet connection is needed for Qumana.

Well, the Intel processor is coming at least. But then my blogging tool (WordPress) is not supported anyways. Boo hoo.

Looks like Microsoft is following the lead of Tim Bray in criticizing the Web 2.0 term. Check out this app shown at PDC, but don’t bother going there if you are running Safari. It does work with Mozilla though. Go figure. It is cool that Microsoft is building Ajax stuff. Perhaps it will run in Safari soon.

In my Identity 2.0 talk I define Web 2.0 as being the difference between DOS and Windows. In DOS we just used one app at a time, APIs were pretty minimal, there was no dynamic linking of data or components. Windows enabled multiple apps to be running in concert, at least most of the time. Web 2.0 is still emerging and as the people at O’Reilly say, it is a meme.

Reid has finally launched something that might make some money over at LinkedIn. We are currently looking for some people at Sxip so we used the service. I have not done much with LinkedIn since I joined back when it first started (thanks Joi!) so thought, heh, perhaps I will flesh out my contact list. I was happy to see I did not have to type them in by hand and could export from my contact list.

7:00 PM PST. Looking at my contact list, I realized that it needed some serious pruning. A few hours later I had a list of people I wanted to stay in contact with and, presto, uploaded them to LinkedIn.

10:07 PM PST. People are accepting my invitations. Nice to be loved.

12:19 AM PST. People are still accepting invitiations. I have over 40 new connections. I guess lots of other people are fiddling with their machines on a cold, February night.

Yes, there is a camera on the phone, but the only way to get the photos off (without emailing them to myself) is to purchase an app. I have yet to figure out how to associate photos with a caller. This is one of those features that you just expect to be there. Sony had it in there palmtops at least a year ago. What was Handspring thinking? … were they thinking? … perhaps that is why they sold to Palm.

I have been talking about having a blog for some time now, and had decided to set one up on blame.ca on my 40th birthday. My 41st is at the end of this month, so I decided I would get to it — so here we are!

Today also was the first day that I have submitted a story to Slashdot. It was on the use of open source in Canadian Enterprises. It was accepted and on reflection I thought how appropriate a story to reference for a Blame Canada blog!

Unfortunately I made the mistake of including my email address. A couple hours later the spam started and I continue to get a daily trickle. I have been practising safe email and until now have not gotten any spam on my personal email account. Now I feel like I have contracted an incurable disease.