1. What Aliant’s website says about the company’s approach:

We’re one of Canada’s top high-tech companies with subsidiaries around the world. We have 10,000 forward-thinking professionals, each focused on creating new and better ways for customers to communicate, work and live. By combining complete and leading-edge solutions with in-depth knowledge, strong customer relationships, extensive reach and a focus on innovation, Aliant is at the forefront of the communications revolution.

Brother Steve and friend Catherine have spilled the beans on me: today, April 5, 2002, I turn 36.

Thirty-six is one of those strange non-ages, far enough from 30 and 40 to be not closely associated with either. It is three times twelve, which places me 24 years past teenagehood. It’s also half way to 72, which, statistically, places me half way through life.

For as long as I can remember (and I realize that I will sound like an idiot here), I have liked the number 36. I remember in grade 4, learning the “times tables,” feeling a kinship with the number because it was 6x6, 3x12, and 4x9 and all at the same time. So that bodes well for the year ahead.

When my father was 36, it was 1973, and PEI was the “place to be in ‘73.” Not a bad sign either.

New and different things about Upper Canada in 2002:

• There is no more music on AM radio: the AM dial has been almost completely converted to talk-radio format. The most striking and unusual example of this is Mojo Radio, the station formerly known as 640 CHAM. It now bills itself “The World’s First and Only Talk Radio Station for Guys” and its hosts address serious global issues like “Man-bags and the Wussification of Society.” Advertisers tend towards strip clubs, hair-loss clinics and sporting events. In an apparent move to counter this, venerable 1010 CFRB is coujnter-programming “Wednesday Mensday.” Really.
• Shopping malls that used to contain 100 little stores now contain 25 big stores. Yorkdale, for example, used to be a rather dowdy old shopping centre. It’s now host to William Sonoma, Pottery Barn, Eddie Bauer and Indigo, all of which are huge. There appears to be no difference between the stores you find in a mall in Peabody, MA and the stores you find in Toronto, ON.
• On television, all the sportscasters are women. This is probably true on PEI too, as we get the same channels by and large — I just notice it here more because I’m around my sports-loving brothers. Brian Williams and ‘casters of his ilk are now the minority.
• There is still strong competition in the wireless telephone market: Fido, Telus, Bell and Rogers all have kiosks or chichi stores in all the malls, and the emphasis is on small and sexy phones and gimicky rate plans (i.e. “free calling after school”)

Explain this: my Island Tel digital cell phone, which doesn’t work in digital mode in Hamilton and Toronto, does work in digital mode as you drive east up the 401 towards Kingston. Go figure.

You might think that if you have an Island Tel digital phone on PEI, you also have an Island Tel digital phone in Ontario. This is, alas, not the case for the Bell Canada digital network uses a different frequency than the Aliant network, and so you’re stuck with analog service in Ontario unless you have something called a “tri-mode” phone.

The Big Impact of this is that a phone that you might be used to charging once every 3 or 4 days on PEI has to be charged every 8 hours or so when you’re in Ontario because the analog network requires more juice to connect to.

This means that a long work day followed by a night out will outlast your phone.

I’m fairly certain that Island Tel mentions this when you first sign up for digital service, but it bears repeating, esp. because the battery drain is so dramatic.

Hey, CBC web god Mitch Cormier has a website. See pictures of Mitch’s kitchen in living colour and hear tales of his travels across the country.

First there were the “you must pay for your magazines before having a coffee” billboards in the stores, then the censored version of the Internet on the in-store net kiosks, now they’re taking out the comfortable chairs. Is there any reason left to shop at Chapters Indigo?

Their bookstores are now simply shopworn holding pens for poorly trained ill-read staff with a paltry collection of newly released books masquerading as a “huge selection.”

Now that all the fun things about their stores will be gone (stop by, read some magazines, have a coffee, buy some books), why would anyone go there? Go to Amazon.com for selection, and the locals, who still have a soul, for browsing.

Or, better yet, go local for everything. If the Bookmark wasn’t so claustrophobic and the Reading Well not so moldy, we’d be set up pretty well in Charlottetown.

Mom and Dad and I visited the new McDonalds restaurant in Waterdown tonight. This new-style McDonalds has a McCafé section, which tries to be a sort of “Starbucks amidst the hamburgers.” Here’s what went wrong:

• The tasty-looking baked goods in the display case were not, in fact, for sale. The cashier revealed that “they’ve all been in there since we opened; we get the real ones from out back.”
• Said cashier didn’t know what any of said baked goods actually were. This made ordering them difficult, and paying for them more so.
• As a result, Mom ordered what she was told was a butter tart, but was actually a apple square.
• There were no forks. I had to eat my chocolate cake with a plastic spoon. Actual quote from employee I requested a fork from: “I’m not sure; I don’t really know what’s out here.”
• Said chocolate cake was nothing to write home about.
• Dad’s muffin was served to him from the “they’ve all been in there since we opened” display case. Not a Good Sign.
• Said muffin was dry and tasteless.
• They were out of regular coffee, only had decaf.
• Entering all of this into the touch screen on the cash register required significant technical support from the manager.
• The “Cafécinno” that I ordered had none of the refreshing quality of the Tim Horton’s version of same, and all of the consistency of 5W30 motor oil in Fort McMurray in winter. It tasted sort of like old chocolate bars.
• The decor inside this “new edge” McDonalds was, in Dad’s words, “like prison.” I compared it to Martha Stewart meets Ron Thom: grey, severe, metallic.
• As a coup de grace, we were unable to exit the door we entered through without the careful manipulation of a piece of duct tape that was holding the latch open. Lord knows what would have happened if the archival baked goods had caught on fire and we were forced to exit in a hurry.

It’s Chris Cudmore’s birthday today (Monday, March 31). So stop in at Roots on Queen St. and pass along your best wishes.

Open letter to pop-up advertisers.

You’re the people who think that pop-up (or pop-under) ads on the web are the Next Big Thing. You like the fact that they involve more “creative” than regular old banner ads. And you like the fact that clickthru rates are higher than banner ads. And you like the fact that, like television commercials, your home pasture, they are intrusive.

But stop!

You’re wrecking the web, and, in the end, biting the hand that feeds you. By sticking these invasive, non-requested insanities on my screen, you are ruining the web as an easy to navigate information medium. This will only lead to user frustration, and that will lead to fewer web users.

Besides, everyone hates this type of advertising. Hatred leads to negative branding. I sit behind a lot of people, watching them browse the web. They curse and swear when they see this stuff popping up on their screen.

You are creative people. I know you are creative because I see you producing creative work, interesting work, witty work. So it’s time to put on your industry-wide thinking cap, and come up with a way of paying for your part of the web without wrecking the rest of it.