406 replies to this topic

[Victoria Watcher]

https://www.vicnews....ault-in-hawaii/

 

 

clearly updated for better clarity.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 02 January 2020 - 02:39 PM.

[Mike K.]

Good lord.

[Victoria Watcher]

this is interesting.

 

 

 

Over the past few years, The Globe has been exploring new ways technology can help you stay in the know with our award-winning journalism. On July 30th, we launched a new audio feature that offers a new way to engage with our articles.

 

Listen to most of our content whenever or wherever you want - you just need an internet connection. Whether you’re cooking dinner or on your commute, hit play and listen to your selected article read out loud. The new listening experience is available in English, French and Mandarin.

 

Built with the help of the Amazon Web Services team and their Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning services, we are the first in Canada to use Amazon Polly Newscaster, a text-to-speech service with real-time translation.

 

We are also launching new bookmarking functionality so that you can make an audio playlist out of saved stories.

 

https://www.theglobe...ch-or-mandarin/

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 04 January 2020 - 07:42 AM.

[Mike K.]

I do that sometimes with my Mac’s built in text reader but it’s horrendous sounding. Apple should invest more resources into that.

[kxl]

Today’s TC, page A4, contains a short piece on the transit bus that was stolen in Surrey. The cited source, the Vancouver is Awesome blog. REALLY?

[Victoria Watcher]

Today’s TC, page A4, contains a short piece on the transit bus that was stolen in Surrey. The cited source, the Vancouver is Awesome blog. REALLY?

 

glacier owns vancouver is awesome.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 04 January 2020 - 11:22 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

The Media Central Corporation Inc. has moved to buy the Vancouver-based Georgia Straight newspaper for $1.25 million.

In addition to the weekly print publication, which began as an anti-establishment newspaper in 1967, Media Central is poised to acquire straight.com and straightcannabis.ca, it announced Monday. 

 

It's the second recent acquisition for the company. Last month, Media Central, which has an address in Vaughn, Ont., said it was acquiring Now Magazine — Toronto's weekly alternative paper — and its website for $2 million.

 

https://www.cbc.ca/n...-deal-1.5416101

[Victoria Watcher]

Postmedia Network Inc. (“Postmedia”) today announced it will be hiring 12 reporters under a federal program to fund journalism in geographical areas of limited news coverage in Canada.

 

 

https://www.business...ity-Journalists

 

the cbc is already the least-watched news in the country.  why would throwing money at local media make it more popular?

[todd]

Yeah the feng shui is all off on CBC or something

[todd]

Was way better in the 80s: https://youtu.be/LThojoM7c0E how come they can’t be cool like BBC’s nuclear countdown https://youtu.be/w2xBTzMQZDM

[AllseeingEye]

Reading this thread makes me think back to the dawn of the early commercialized internet when I was employee # 22 and worked for a truly cutting edge visionary firm here in town called JCI Technologies.

 

JCI ("Jobs Canada Inc") was one of the earliest adopters in North America in creating and promoting digitized advertising in newspapers and specially designed kiosks - specifically to match up job seekers with employers (JobMatch), real estate (RealtyMatch)and automobile sales (AutoMatch) - on the web. Radical stuff 28 years ago.

 

Torstar ("Toronto Star) and Southam were all in and invested heavily in the company from its inception in 1992 to 1996 when it all blew up, thanks primarily to one Baron Black of Crossharbour, aka Conrad Black, who increased his share in Southam from 23% to a controlling 41% - and promptly pulled the plug on JCI because he saw no value and no future in online newspaper advertising. His company, Hollinger, ultimately went public in the US which kick-started a very long chain of legal events signalling the beginning of his publishing downfall. Naturally today he's a fan and apparently a friend of one Donald Trump. Figures.

Edited by AllseeingEye, 31 January 2020 - 07:14 PM.

[Mike K.]

Yeah. Nobody knew what the hell digital anything was back in the 90s. I started my first online business in 97, I think it was, maybe 98. The banks wouldn't even give me a point of sale terminal because they had no idea what an online store was, at least not locally. I finally got a merchant terminal from BMO but they said "you want to do WHAT with it??," and made me jump through some bizarre loopholes. It was quite the thing.

 

Times have sure changed.

[AllseeingEye]

As our founder and CEO said at the time one night he went to bed sitting on $12 million worth of stock, the next day after a conference call with Black's mob in Toronto, he literally had nothing. Resulted in 135 people losing their jobs, close to 100 of those locally. But it was a hell of a ride while it lasted.

 

I remember the day Microsoft announced in late 1994 that two Canadian firms, ours and another in Calgary, had been selected to secure a direct link onto the new Microsoft Network 'superhighway'. We thought we had it made big time, and me sitting on 10,000 JCI shares. We all got uproariously drunk that night. And of course no one had a clue what it actually meant to be on the MSN, lol. Today the last ember of JCI lives on only as part of the code in the Realty.CA real estate database, as the latter purchased that RealtyMatch asset from JCI in its dying days.

Edited by AllseeingEye, 31 January 2020 - 07:53 PM.

[todd]

Yeah. Nobody knew what the hell digital anything was back in the 90s. I started my first online business in 97, I think it was, maybe 98. The banks wouldn't even give me a point of sale terminal because they had no idea what an online store was, at least not locally. I finally got a merchant terminal from BMO but they said "you want to do WHAT with it??," and made me jump through some bizarre loopholes. It was quite the thing.
 
Times have sure changed.

That was about the year I got my first dial-up modem. Uncle tried selling hot sauce on the internet around that time but nobody will ever buy hot sauce off the internet think we still have some, lost his arm so he made a website so people could exchange gloves whatnot since they only need the one, much more successful.

[Rob Randall]

My uncle created an online community in the late 90s. Could have been Zuckerberg long before Facebook but it just never caught on.

 

https://web.archive.....net/enter.html

[Sparky]

Virtualtown ....Priceless.

[Matt R.]

What a bunch of noobs

Matt.

[todd]

I think we still are

[Bernard]

My uncle created an online community in the late 90s. Could have been Zuckerberg long before Facebook but it just never caught on.

 

https://web.archive.....net/enter.html

I tried to do the same in the late 90s when I was part of the group that brought the internet to Lillooet.  Based on playing by the rules (laws and economic) it made no sense to do.   Zuckerberg succeeded from not really caring about ethics etc

[Rob Randall]

^Also I think it was a case of biting off more than you could chew. Back then the assumption was that you needed to leverage cutting edge graphics, you would navigate these virtual online communities like Tomb Raider. Want to talk about that car crash or the fire last night? "Walk" over or click on to the police station. Share a recipe? Walk on over to the community kitchen.

 

But until you had a critical mass of content it was too much work for too little payoff. All the interaction was walled off in these little ghettos.

 

The reality was people just wanted to interact simply. The most popular sites that actually took off were Digg and Reddit and forums like this and later Facebook. Mostly text supplemented with pictures arranged more like a directory than an actual village.

Edited by Rob Randall, 04 February 2020 - 10:29 AM.