Back in 1995, in an off the cuff comment, I suggested that the Government of PEI set up an online digital camera. I’d seen the famous coffee pot camera from the U.K. and figured we might do the same. Much to my surprise, some money flowed out for the project, and PEI got the IslandCam.

The camera has been in place for 6 years now, and has been based in locations as diverse as the Brookvale ski hill and the Marine Atlantic ferry from PEI to New Brunswick. And its hardware has evolved from a complicated (but mostly functional!) jury-rigged Apple QuickTake camera setup to an elegant (and almost completely functional) Axis camera setup.

I’ve never completely understood how wonderful the IslandCam is until this very moment: sitting in a theatre, 1000 km from home, missing my partner and my son, and now able, using this great wireless connection, to call up the IslandCam and see a little bit of my hometown chugging along through its own Saturday.

The wireless panel — John Sculley and Carl Yankowski — have just finished up, and one of their themes was that wireless everywhere has the capacity to grow and foster relationships. They talked about how the successful wireless apps in Japan, Korea and Europe have been SMS-like — sending small messages (60 billion in Europe in 2001) from person to person to “stay in touch.”

I understand.

I needed a laptop for this trip, and I needed it in a hurry. I just couldn’t bring myself to buy one of the generic Compaq or HP or Toshiba laptops from Future Shop or Staples in Charlottetown. So I bought an iBook from Little Mac Shoppe.

For the past three days, this, my chunnel to the Internet has been exclusively through Mac OS X, Apple’s new operating system for the Mac. It is beautiful and intuitive and amazing so far. More later.

One of our morning sessions here at Pop!Tech involved Don Norman and Marc Canter. They were an excellent matching: fire and water. Or oil and water. Or yin and yang. Marc Canter is channelling my friend and colleague Dave Moses. Or vice versa. Great stuff, and perhaps a bit of the “edge” that people at dinner last night thought might be missing from the conference.

By the way, I’m missing Cinemaniax this weekend — the shooting of the initial epsiode of Dave’s new TV series. If you’re around and about Charlottetown, you should check it out. If you’re in the right place at the right time, I imagine it will be self-evident.

I had lunch with Bob Rosenschein from Atomica, which is a product I know primarily from its connection with ActiveWords. If you haven’t tried out Atomica yet, you should: its essence is making every word, everywhere on you computer screen clickable. Bob is an interesting guy, who describes his product well. Check it out.

I have discovered that one of the useful educations of having a child is that you learn how to pee with one hand. This is an invaluable still to have when at a conference and trying to balance laptop and related stuff. Thank you Oliver.