Download the CBC TV winter lineup automatically

As Ouimet observes, much of the CBC’s winter television lineup is available for download via Bittorrent, thanks to some thieving television pirates.

But what you may not know is that The Border, Sophie, and jPod (but not MVP) each have corresponding RSS feeds on tvRSS.net.

What does this mean?

If you paste the search-based RSS feed for each show into a program like the free, open-source Miro, you’ve essentially subscribed to the show, and new episodes will be downloaded auto-magically as they’re released.

Wouldn’t it be great if this kind of activity was condoned?

Miro is about to announce their first round of co-branded players. If CBC Television really wanted to transform itself into a forward-thinking public broadcasting service, they’d be on the list. You’d download a CBC-branded player preloaded with subscriptions to the whole lineup. Shows would be distributed cheaply, and live on the hard drives of the taxpayers who funded them. The licensing would all be worked out, and everyone would get paid.

But I’m not holding my breath.

Unlimited EDGE data on your iPhone in Canada

Last August, Jenna and I drove to Somerset Mall in Troy, Michigan to pick up an iPhone. A few weeks later, it was unlocked. Since then, it’s been an amazing phone/iPod/camera/web device. I really love  carrying just one device.

But there’s a problem: Mobile data rates in Canada are atrociously high. Unlimited plans (like the one that comes with the iPhone in the US) just don’t exist north of the border. For many, this limits internet connectivity to WiFi hotspots, which sadly, aren’t everywhere, and aren’t always free. This seriously affects the “always-connected” appeal of the iPhone.

But…

If you’re with Fido, and you sign up for the $18 Value Pack, 12 megabytes of data are included per month. “Hah!” you say, “That’s a paltry amount of data.”

Yes, it is. But here’s the thing: if you sign up for the Value Pack, you get unlimited data during the first four months. Not 12 megabytes. Unlimited.

I signed up a few weeks ago on a monthly package (no contract) and it’s working great. I’ve called back several times to confirm that I am indeed signed up for unlimited browsing, and the answer has always been yes.

This is covered quite thoroughly on HowardForums.  YMMV, but if you have an iPhone in Canada, and want a data plan, this is the way to go (for a few months, anyway).

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night

Free Neighbourhood WiFi at Queen and Parliament

Inspired by Peter Rukavina’s experiments with mesh networking, I ordered three Meraki Minis this week, and installed two of them this morning. One sits on a bookshelf in our living room, and the other points north out our back window.

You can see the status of the network, named Corktown, right here online. And if you’re in the neighbourhood, you’re welcome to use the connection.

I’d love to try and convince other residents and businesses to jump on the mesh networking bandwagon, but I don’t really know how to explain the benefits to them. I’m thinking of a flyer, posted to lamposts at the intersection of Queen and Parliament:

Dear [List of neighbourhood SSIDs here],

You probably pay a lot for high-speed internet. I know I do.

Want to share? Make things cheaper, faster, and better for everyone?

Let’s start a wireless mesh network.

Would you bite? I would, but I’m a geek like that.

Mapping

This weekend, I listened to a pretty great episode of This American Life: Mapping. In the first act, Ira Glass interviews Denis Wood, a cartographer, who creates “maps that are more like novels, trying to describe everyday life.”

Partway through the interview, Ira says of Wood’s work:

It’s interesting. Its taking the premise of a map, which is that it’s a way to describe the world, and then pointing it at things that we usually don’t think of as being mappable.

This immediately reminded me of an interview with Ira in the New York Times Magazine, in which he describes how the storytelling in TAL is different from traditional journalism:

We’re taking the tools of journalism and applying them to people whom you wouldn’t normally apply them to — people who aren’t famous, people who aren’t powerful, people just like you and me.

It seems that Ira really likes this idea of reframing context.