The May-June 2010 issue of This Magazine has been on newsstands for a while already, so I apologize that I’m a little late to the party blogging about what you can read in this issue. You can find This in quality bookstores coast to coast, or get every issue without making a special trip by […] More »
If you’re like me and you shudder to think of the store of personal information you’ve inadvertently let loose online, you’ll be happy to know that a few altruistic software programmers are on the case. Four NYU students recently decided they’d had enough of heavily centralized, corporate-minded social networking sites. They took on the task […] More »
This week we learned that government transparency in Canada is in pretty bad shape with the release of the information commissioner’s report. But it’s not all bad news: Two new websites have launched in the past few days that aim to shine a light on the activity of government, civil servants, and elected officials. April […] More »
Back in July of 2009, the Canadian government launched an eight week public consultation on copyright reform. Members of the public were invited to let their will be known surrounding issues such as fair use, copyright terms, ISP neutrality and a host of other issues. With over 8,300 respondents in total an astounding 6183 people […] More »
Sunday morning was dark and my alarm didn’t go off, so I slept in. I was awakened late in the morning to a fellow gringo, my friend Luke, shouting through my window. “Ashley!” he yelled, “wake up, did you hear what happened?” I had heard nothing but silence that day. I let him in and […] More »
UPDATE, Sunday, March 28 — Google has re-scanned the site and the problem is solved. Ads will be back, problem-free, in the next day or so. — If you visited the magazine’s site today using the Firefox or Chrome browsers, you likely saw a window like the one above, warning you that This.org stands accused […] More »
As the internet becomes a global battlefield, a clutch of Canadian programmers are subverting oppressive regimes, aiding online dissidents, and mapping the murky new world of digital geopolitics The Dalai Lama is charged with watching over Buddhist tradition, but on March 29, 2009 The New York Times revealed a shadowy presence was secretly watching him, […] More »
After six years as an online-only webseries, Pure Pwnage — that’s “ownage”, or “supreme dominance of anyone in anything” in square-talk — invades real television tonight when it premieres on cable channel Showcase. A mockumentary-style series about an obsessive Toronto gamer and his entourage of equally oddball friends that began its run in 2004, Pure Pwnage bears […] More »
The March-April 2010 issue of This Magazine will be landing in subscribers’ mailboxes this week and is now on most newsstands coast to coast. (If you haven’t subscribed yet, this is a great time to do it, locking in a great price before the HST comes along. Just sayin’!) As always, the stories will all […] More »
In the Twitter-verse, news spreads fast, is debunked faster, and is retweeted before you can think of something better to say. Gordon Lightfoot can attest to this, I’m sure. So when a long story is slowly told through the 140-character limit, it tends to make people pay attention. That’s what happened when Angie Jackson decided […] More »
The Hub King’s Cross café in London is buzzing today with a new breed of tech geek: consumed not by robots or video games, but African development. This group, about 100-strong, are meeting at the tri-annual Africa Gathering event. And together, through what they call Information and Communication Technologies for Development, or the unwieldy acronym […] More »