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NY Times Starts Printing in Toronto

As newspapers struggle to maintain circulation figures, the New York Times is improving its distribution network in Canada.

The Sunday edition of the paper has been available for a long time in various Canadian cities, including home delivery through the Globe and Mail.

Now it's printing copies of its daily national edition in T.O., bringing the number of printing locations in North America to 21.

"The Times's arrangement with Transcontinental (Interweb Toronto, the printer) is one of several print-site expansions slated for the next two years," said Scott Heekin-Canedy, president and general manager of The New York Times, in a news release.

Man Bites Dog, Takes Public Transportation

  Pretend Passengers 
  Originally uploaded by hyku.

Josh Hallett blogged about his experience on the public transportation system in his part of Florida.

The fact that taking a few buses for a day merits a detailed examination of the experience says something about our dependence on the car (or SUV, or minivan, or pickup truck).

I've spent a few years busing it to university and work, riding my bike and walking. But the majority of my school and work life has involved a vehicle, usually driven solo.

Hallett's experience is not surprising. Trying to fit his consulting travel around the transit system resulted in hours of unbillable time spent waiting in bus depots. Most public transit systems are designed to move large numbers of people during rush hour from the suburbs to downtown, or to industrial parks and college campuses. Movement from one suburb to another is sometimes easy, but often it involves a circuitous route. Setting up meetings, then trying to force fit the transit timetable to match your schedule will usually result in wasted time, which Hallett admits when he writes up his experiment.

In the end, a collision involving the bus he was waiting for caused him to miss his connection, which set off a chain reaction of delays. The result was a four hour bus ride home that would have take about 35 25 minutes by car. (See all of Hallett's postings about his experiment.)

(The "Joshworthy" category this is listed under is an inside joke. See the posting and comments on Hallett's Hyku Blog.)

Consumer Guide to Bypassing Phone Tree Hell

Now here's something I'd like to see for Canadian companies. Steve Rubel and Shel Holtz mentioned a web site that gives people tips on how to opt out of an IVR phone system and talk to a real person.

A lot of people have gotten into the habit of dialing 0 when they want to bypass the automated phone system. To combat this impulse, more and more companies are creating complicated opt-out methods.

Enter Paul English, whose IVR Cheat Sheet is a brilliant move of customer activism in the face of annoying technology.

If companies didn't go to such lengths to make it difficult to contact a human being, there would be no need for the Cheat Sheet.

CBC to Add Satellite and Blog

Tod Maffin writes that CBC's foray into satellite radio programming will include a beefed up Radio  3, with an emphasis on Canadian musicians, starting in early December.

As for the web side of things:

"A comprehensive new website will bring together Radio 3’s existing web properties (including newmusiccanada.com, rootsmusiccanada.com, and justconcerts.com), and will feature a CBC Radio 3 blog, as well as an interactive music player that will offer pre-arranged playlists and will allow listeners to customize their own.  Radio 3’s weekly, all-Canadian music podcast – the most popular in the country with more than 650,000 downloads to date – will also continue."

The Radio 3 channel will play 24 hours a day, which Maffin says means lots of opportunities for established and upcoming Canadian musicians to get some play.

CBC is in partnership with Sirius Canada, making up a large part of the Canadian content. There will be 100 stations available by satellite, with 10 of them being Canadian. See November 2 news release.
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Don't Go Cheap on X-Box

Today's launch day for X-Box 360, and the best advice I've read so far is to avoid the plain vanilla version ("core"). As Scott Colbourne of the Globe and Mail noted, you save $100 (Canadian), but you end up with a version of the console that has no hard drive and is a pale shadow of the beast. Save up for the "premium" version. You'll end up spending the extra $100 in accessories eventually, anyway.

Colbourne notes that the "core" version is really just a marketing trick to make it look like there's a cheaper way to own what is essentially a fast multimedia PC that supports high-definition TV. Would you buy a PC without a hard drive?

See Red Herring for a look at Microsoft's $4 billion investment in the original X-Box, and how it plans to wrench a significant portion of the game console market from Sony and the struggling Nintendo.

Cubicle Life: Now We Have Action Figures

I thought this was a gag web site when Judy Gombita forwarded the link, but apparently The Cubes action figures are available for purchase in all their empowered, disincentivized glory.

My favourite is the Sensitivity Consultant action figure.

If any of your action figures come without job titles, or if you want to motivate them by offering them a lateral transfer that will expand their skill set and increase their experience and employability, you can try the Job Title Genherator.

You can buy cubicles and action figures, plus Seattle-based Accoutrements offers a new Break Room and Copy Room. You can even add a Corporate Protester to your own miniature cube farm.

Good thing Judy pointed these out before Christmas...

Nicest Guy on Radio Surfaces in N. Carolina

I used to really enjoy days on CBC's national morning show This Morning when Dick Gordon was the guest host.

He managed to bring civility to the role of asking questions that people don't necessarily want to be asked.

I knew he had joined National Public Radio and was doing a national show, but sort of lost touch until I saw this item about a new show he's working on in the North Carolina area for the local NPR station WUNC, after his national interview show got cancelled. See also the WUNC news release announcing Gordon's pending show.

The plan is to put the resources into developing a strong show, and attract fees from NPR stations across the country that decide to air the show. Gordon expects to get out of the studio for some field reporting in this new venture.

I guess this answers Peter Rukavina's question: Perhaps Dick Gordon will come back to Canada?

Update:  All the English usage sticklers out there will laugh when I say "the morning show This morning" and I describe his show on National Public Radio as "national". Sounds like unnecessary repetition, but there are plenty of NPR shows that aren't national. NPR is more like an affiliation of many local stations that share content. I don't pretend to understand all the details, but suffice it to say shows are only truly national once a critical mass of local stations pick them up.

Potential iTunes DRM Security Issue

You could see this one coming a mile off.

CNet News' Dawn Kawamoto is reporting a security company warning of a flaw in Apple iTunes security. (In an update, she notes it affects only iTunes 6 for Windows.)

Says privacy rights advocate Cory Doctorow:

I'm not surprised. An objective of good security is to protect users from attackers who want to prevent the user from controlling her computer. DRM -- like that in iTunes -- is a system for allowing remote parties (e.g. entertainment companies) to enforce their policy on your computer. Once you design the system to let anyone apart from the owner to control it, you open up the possibility that someone other than the owner will end up controlling it.

On Slashdot, the skeptical readers will wait until they see more proof that the "flaw" poses an actual threat.

Lego Loses Patent Fight - Must Rely on Creativity, Marketing

A recent decision by the Supreme Court of Canada confirms that Lego has no patent protection here as it fights to keep market share. Having had its patent expire, Lego was trying to argue that the shape of the blocks' connecting knobs are distinct and should be treated as a kind of trademark.

But Lego has already been acting like a company that has to outdazzle its competitors, and has been emphasizing tie-ins with Star Wars, Spiderman and other movies in recent years, in an attempt to differentiate itself from Canadian competitor Mega Bloks.

The Montreal-based Mega Bloks is meeting the marketing challenge with tie-ins of its own (including Spiderman). The company says it "has a presence in 14 countries and sales in over a hundred."

Internet and e-commerce lawyer Michael Geist praises the ruling, saying it shows that Canada's top court understands the balance between giving the patent-holder a head start in the market, and a perpetual stranglehold. Says Geist:

"With regard to patents, the court cites with approval language from several years ago that states "patent protection rests on a concept of a bargain between the inventor and the public.  In return for disclosure of the invention to the public, the inventor acquires for a limited time the exclusive right to exploit it.

"On the trademark side, the court also notes the limitations to trademark, stating that "trade-marks law is not intended to prevent the competitive use of utilitarian features of products…In Canada, as in several other countries or regions of the world, this doctrine is a well-settled part of the law of trade-marks.  In the law of intellectual property, it prevents abuses of monopoly positions in respect of products and processes."

For those who speak Lawyer, here is the actual ruling.

See a Fast Company 2001 article on how Lego has struggled to find its niche, despite having owned the niche for decades (via Boing Boing).

Blog Libel Chill

Jeff Jarvis notes that lawsuits and threatened suits against bloggers pose a threat to a group of individuals who have few resources to defend themselves. He suggests some education to help bloggers stay out of trouble.