New Media

The lights went out in Vancouver the other day, as Vancouver blogging maven Miss604 has dutifully reported. It wasn’t too bad, since it happened in the daytime. Some of my buddies ended up going home at nooon that day. My new daytime gig at a downtown Vancouver office where giant servers must be backed up by super-powered generators at all times means I’ll be working through the apocalypse.

Power outages will likely be a regular feature of life in the coming years, as “environmentalists” protest the construction of new clean-energy hydro dams and wind-powered turbines due to the effect on their pristine country views — and these protesters do this knowing full well that not building this infrastructure now, we’ll be importing vast quantities of “dirty” energy from the USA and Alberta for decades to come. Ah, well.

Of course, there are ways we can at least delay the onset of the blackout season with some energy saving tips for the home, courtesy of the David Suzuki Foundation:

1. Place refrigerators out of direct sunlight and away from the stove and other heat-producing appliances.
2. Always run your dishwasher with a full load. Most of the energy used by a dishwasher is spent heating water, and since you can’t decrease the amount of water used per cycle, filling your machine is more effective than running half-loads.
3. Wash clothes in cold water – yes, they will still get clean!

For more tips that will help us avoid the democracy-killing effect of power black-out Mondays, check out the David Suzuki Nature Challenge Newsletter.

Has your grocery bill increased over the past year or so? That’s when I first noticed more media reports linking the high price of fuel to higher prices for loafs of bread, produce, soy milk and such. News about food supply problems in other countries are already linked to this phenomenon.

But in Canada, are we insulated against the worst effects of peak-oil inflation by our ultra-efficient supermarkets? My wife and I have started shopping at the Kingsgate mall Buy-Low Foods supermarket and at Kin’s Farm Market. At Kin’s this weekend, I picked up enough produce to keep us full of goodness for the next ten days or so (two full bags of oranges, peaches, plums, mangos, kiwis, strawberries and mushrooms), all for $13.42. The Buy-Low Foods has good deals like 2.99 for a kg bag of fruits and nuts granola, or $2.99 a pound for orange and yellow peppers.

So it seems us Canadians in the big cities at least can stave off part of the inflationary effects by simply being a little bit more choosey about where we shop if possible.

I’m lucky enough to have a huge amount of choice for my produce in the central Vancouver neighborhood of Mount Pleasant. I wonder how many others are also still finding deals in these supposedly difficult inflationary times — and how many really have been hurting from the indirect effect of producers and truckers getting gouged at the pump.

The extraordinary Canadian consumer revolt against the Rogers iPhone is going strong. As I’ve mentioned on Techvibes (Rogers iPhone Consumer Revolt Wins Concession. But It’s Not Nearly Enough), over 62,000 Canadians have signed a petition at RuinediPhone.com protesting the gouging-style monopoly pricing of the 3G plan. But will the protest peter out as the first early adopters can’t help themselves and grab an iPhone on its launch day tomorrow from a Rogers outlet (Apple has refused to sell the phones from its Canadian Apple stores in disgust at Rogers’ apparent greediness). Consumer revolts are pretty well unheard of in Canada. Has new media made these kinds of protests more likely to happen in future?

Frankly, while it is interesting, I don’t really get this odd little consumer revolt, and wonder why people aren’t getting much more furious about human rights abuses in, say, Zimbabwe.

And isn’t this invention really just for corporate executives who won’t actually be paying for the phone (or the monthly plan) out of their own bank account? Is it all just hype?

I’ll be heading out shortly to Vancouver’s monthly social media marketing extravaganza, social change seminar and blogapalooza, Net Tuesday. Some of my favorite technorati types will be heading up the event, like social media evangelist Dave Olson (AKA Uncle Weed) John Bollwitt and Rob Cottingham. It will be a regular geek-fest (That’s a good thing, people).

Taking part in this kind of activity alongside my fellow bloggers and tech-people, immersed in this Web 2.0 world has been a lot of fun. But thanks to my new gig in the field of web security technology, I’ve been learning a lot about the safety of the architecture we’re using to do our thing. It’s been a wake-up call.

The vast majority of websites are pretty much uncontrolled breeding grounds for hackers to steal the information of anyone who uses the websites. Most organizations and companies haven’t taken even the most basic security measures. (Check out the video below to see a kung fu-style dramatization of the process of hardening one’s website against hackers.

And blogs ain’t immune. I just had my company conduct a website security audit on one of the many blogs I’ve authored (and no, I’m not going to mention which one and put out a welcome mat to cyber criminals) to see if WordPress’ software was vulnerable to hackers.

Turns out, the blog had problems; the test turned up 62 vulnerabilities of varying severity. This is far, far less than a company we recently scanned that is involved with security and privacy issues (the sad, sad website literally had a vulnerability exposed on every single page — we’re talking thousands of openings for hackers to exploit). But it was still pretty alarming.

So here’s the question: at a time when everyone is calling for better protection from corporations and government to protect their information, don’t bloggers also need to be responsible and provide a secure environment for their website visitors? Is it beyond our capabilities (financial, technical), or are we just making excuses that allow cyber criminals to get away with their crimes?

“There was a suicide bombing this morning outside the Indian Embassy and the road to the kite stores was closed.” So much for my friend’s efforts to gather some cultural souvenirs our group‘s community outreach efforts before her latest stint as a human rights worker in Afghanistan ends.

I’ve actually lost count of how many times she’s been over there. She’s doing good work to help the country rebuild its civil society after decades of incessant warfare. The Taliban’s horrific attacks don’t make it easy for the locals who are mostly just trying to survive.

I don’t suppose the latest atrocity from the Taliban will change the minds of their boosters on Canada’s west coast (and they know who they are), who against all facts and logic keep labeling the Taliban a resistance movement.

Borrowing a bit from their rhetoric, this is the chant I’d like to see at the next antiwar rally in Vancouver:

Pakistan out of Afghanistan!
Iran out of Afghanistan!
Taliban out now!
International solidarity with the people of Afghanistan!