As the summer’s final push to collect forms comes to an end, some are suggesting it could be worse than they thought.
Reports suggest that in previous years census workers would call up a household that had not filled out its mandatory long questionnaire, and then pay a visit – or even several – to make sure it was completed.
But now Statistics Canada is accepting incomplete forms without conducting a follow-up.
Don McLeish, president of the Statistical Society of Canada, says partial responses could cause problems in using the data.”
Will you hire them as your king and queen? Yes, “hire”. For a moment, change your mindset and consider Will and Kate two of the many applicants for the future jobs as our king and queen of Canada. In this article, I plan with deal with the money side of the monarchy business. I will keep this short and in points form. Feel to share your thoughts and insight in the comments.
(note: By the way, we should not forget Kate’s father-in-law and mother-in-law. Yes, I won’t wish ill on anyone, but I believe King Charles and Queen Camilla will necessary come first in line of succession. And yes, Will comes with Charles as a doubled-up-package.)
Assumption:
(note: feel free to correct me if you can provide verifiable gc.ca or reputable newspaper sources, etc)
I will assume/guess the 9-day trip cost $5 million, another $5 million for security, for a total of C$10 million.
Observations:
*) Canadian clothing designers that Kate (and Will) wore put a nice spotlight on Canadian designers. You may not know it before this, but Canadian designers do great work too! Kate wore those Canadian designed clothing because they were well designed and look good on her (not just because they are Canadian designed). Again, this kind of worldwide attention and spotlight meant a lot for those Canadian businesses.
*) To me, “news” are the best form of advertising.
And the amount of positive news generated for tourism purposes around the world is definitely worth multi-millions easily. The businesses visited by Will and Kate should benefit for a long while for their moments with Will & Kate. Read the rest of this entry »
Will and Kate’s visit to Calgary and Canada has finished, now let me reflect on the memories that make me feel #happy/#cool, #sad, and #fail (in the sense that it could have been done better, much better).
My royals #happy/#cool memories
First of all, I want to say I had a great time seeing Will and Kate, a couple that is deeply in love, in Canada. I want to wish them all the happiness in the world. At the same time, I am not a “monarchist” as I stated here in G&M, and I am still impressed by Will’s character: “his ethics, his work as a coast guard rescuer and the couple’s request for charitable donations instead of wedding gifts“.
Here are some official Canadian Heritage official footage where they were much closer than we ever were. (note: it also highlights my problem of people who lined up over-night in the beginning of the line but did not get the blue wristbands as they should.)
I won’t list and comment on all of their other activities, but I want to single out the way their Slave Lake visit was handled, it was superb. I think Will and Kate really care, and I also think they are well served by their close advisors.
By the way, I’ve saved a few #happy memories to share after my #sad memories, you will understand the “why” later.
(note: For my fellow Canadians that think Will and Kate’s visit to Canada wasted our tax dollars, I will write another article to deal with the money side of the monarchy business entitled “Will you hire them as your king and queen?” Stay tune.)
My royals #sad memories
My #sad memories are personal. You may feel differently. You see, even my better half doesn’t share the same impression as she was with me most of the time (except when I lined up for hours for the wristband and when I was reporting at the line up to the purple wristband area).
My #sad and painful memories happened yesterday afternoon at the beginning of the lineup into the purple wristband area. I don’t have the full story so I won’t try judge who are “right” and who are “wrong” but simply stay what and how I feel. It was #sad and painful for me to see my fellow Calgarians/Canadians screaming, yelling, and being extremely rude to each other at the start of the lineup. Read the rest of this entry »
Accounting for time difference and a little bit of cheating, I want to wish The Office a happy 10th anniversary! Thanks Ricky and Stephen for being true to your own sense of what is funny and what is not! For breaking path and redefining what is funny! It will definitely be one of the “classics” that I remember.
“Ricky, 50, is still fond of his iconic comedy creation but admits growing Brent’s trademark goatee for these pictures made him instantly recognisable.
He said: “It feels good to be Brent again – although I left the facial hair to the last minute.
“I get spotted more when I’ve got it – it’s like people need that visual aid to work out where they know me from.
[…] “None of my characters have been as much fun to play as David Brent. People say he was a b****** and the ‘boss from hell’, but he wasn’t. He was just a twit.
“He was a man whose biggest mistake was confusing popularity with respect.”
When The Office first aired on BBC2 on July 9 2001, it was panned by several critics. Read the rest of this entry »
“Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iAd mobile-advertising business has cut rates by as much as 70 percent as some marquee clients are using rival services, two people with knowledge of the matter said, signaling the company is struggling to parlay its technology leadership into success in the ad industry.
When Apple rolled out iAd a year ago, companies such as Citigroup Inc. (C) and J.C. Penney Co. were being charged $1 million or more to run ad campaigns. Today those brands aren’t using iAd, and Apple is offering packages for as little as $300,000, said the people, who asked not to be named because the rates are private.
Even with lower prices, some advertising agencies are balking at iAd’s cost, especially because the promotions only reach Apple users. They’re turning instead to Google Inc. (GOOG)’s AdMob, Millennial Media and Greystripe, which serve a range of devices. That means Apple risks losing ground in a market that will generate $2.5 billion by 2014, according to EMarketer Inc.
“Apple’s closed ecosystem may have been interesting in the short run for advertisers, but in the long run they priced themselves out,” said Thom Kennon, senior vice president of strategy for the Young & Rubicam ad agency in New York.”
“ideas are the currency of the future” - Kevin Roberts
I’ve loved this quote for such a long time that I don’t remember exactly how many years (since the 90s?). I even printed it on an earlier version of my business cards (with credit to Kevin, of course)! So I can’t believe I am just adding it to my list of Quotes I Love now!
Also check out ‘s blog KRConnect for his latest ideas & thinking, including his “Lovemarks“.
Yes, these wristbands are priceless to me. And you won’t find mine for sale on kijiji or eBay!
First of all, I had an unexpected great time and some wonderful memory in lining up for the wristbands along with my fellow Calgarians. All are strangers except three friends that I ran into by accident.
Here are two video reports based on footage filmed Wed July 6th morning.
For some of us who pay attention to Will & Kate, it is because they inspire us a little. Through them, we see a little bit of us, ourselves. Their love is not something unique to them, we can imagine the love they have for each other, exist before we and our loved ones.
Update:
Have a read & check out my video clips in my “Will & Kate in Canada Special” report series,
“Here’s the consortium participation as I understand it. RIM and Ericsson together put up $1.1 billion with Ericsson getting a fully paid-up license to the portfolio while RIM, as a Canadian company like Nortel, gets a paid-up license plus possibly some carry forward operating losses from Nortel, which has plenty of such losses to spare. For RIM the deal might actually have a net zero cost after tax savings, which the Canadian business press hasn’t yet figured out.
Microsoft and Sony put up another $1 billion.
There is a reportedly a side deal for about $400 million with EMC that has the storage company walking with sole ownership of an unspecified subset of the Nortel patents.
Finally Apple put up $2 billion for outright ownership of Nortel’s Long Term Evolution (4G) patents as well as another package of patents supposedly intended to hobble Android.
At the end of the day this deal isn’t about royalties. It is about trying to kill Android.”
Bob has been in the industry for a long time, so there are probably some elements of truth in his report and worth considering. [HT Digital Trends]
I played Go (a board game) almost every day for four of my high school years and often skipping lunch to play! The rules of Go are easy to learn and the game is enjoyable even for young kids (some as young as 6 years old can pick it up quickly). Despite Go‘s seeming simplicity, I think Go takes longer (or is harder) to master than Chess (more on this later). Yesterday (July 2nd), I had the pleasure to visit the Calgary Go Club in Chinatown and attended part of the 2011 CGA Open Go Tournament.
Have a watch of the following highlight video. You will also find a series of interviews I conducted with Calgary Go Club Chair Vincent, a Go instructor (Cathy Li), two advanced Go players (Ryan and Jing Yang), and father of the 10 years old advanced Go player Wanshan Gu (Qiang Gu).
Note: If and when I receive the official results of the CGA Open 2011 from Calgary Go Club Chair Vincent as promised, I will post it here.
Update: I searched and found the CGA Open 2011 results on the Calgary Go Club home page so I’m reposting the results (unofficially here),
2011-07-05
The results are in for the 2011 Canadian Open Go Tournament:
Division (!) First Place (2) Second Place
Group A (1) Jing Yang (2) Ryan Li
Group B (1) Zu Bai (2) Shan Lu
Group C (1)Miki Ishikawa (2) Tony Adria
“A group of six companies — Apple, Microsoft, RIM, EMC, Ericsson and Sony — won the auction of 6,000 Nortel patents and patent applications with a $4.5 billion bid.”
Thanks J.K. This looks cool and very promising. Especially this bit,
“… so Pottermore will be built, in part, by you, the reader”.
I am very excited by what Pottermore can potentially achieve. Now, I have zero inside knowledge of the project but I will try to share with you my thought and ideas on how Pottermore could and should be built. Some cool things can be done? What fun ideas are possible. To start, here are a few random rough ideas.
1) As a design goal, Pottermore should be created with users of all ages and level of sophistications in mind.
Meaning something for younger players to “just play with” and very easy to customize, to create their own special world. And at the same time, also powerful enough for sophisticated users to seriously play to create new “things” (see below).
(side note: The Pottermore design team should help guide the fans away from simply recreating what they have seen in the movies. But it is really up to the fans.)
2) On a small scale, allow sophisticated fans to “create” the look & feel of all notable objects and items in the Harry Potter world (including all the magical objects). Allow the framework for sophisticated fans to “create” their own “enchanted coins” for example.
3) On a bigger scale, allow fans as cooperative community to create all the notable places in the Potter world, rooms, streets, alley, etc together as a team via the site. May be there can be a place where interested fans can come together to help “build” the dinning hall in Hogwarts.
4) Allow enough flexibility, so the popular rendering (look & feel) of an item can be voted upon by members. Very importantly, each and every individual fan created items should be accessible (by links or “ids”) so fans can create their own specialized version of Pottermore experiences and simply see and experience a “popular” version.
5) A fan should be able to “share” her/his Pottermore customization (whatever she/he chooses for the total look and feel) so her/his friends or others in the community can “see” it and then customize base on it. I think it is important and nice to give credit to everyone that help in the process, may be attach these credits/thanks for help in the system somehow.
6) The designers of Pottermore should keep an open mind as they design the systems because, to make Pottermore a success, the system needs to be flexible enough to change and grow with the imagination of the fans.
I look forward to seeing and learning more Pottermore. I hope I will be positively wowed and won’t be disappointed. Will see about that.
Posted by kempton 
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