It’s not an easy thing to create a successful neighbourhood hang-out. We used to visit Eddie’s Lunch, on Prince Street in Charlottetown, when we lived on Great George St. seven years ago. At that point it was more of a variety store, and ‘though it had a grill, it was hardly the kind of place you’d want to spend any time. Now we’re back in the neighbourhood, and Eddie’s has become the centre of our life. The variety store side has been stripped back to a bare miniumum — you can buy a quart of milk and a loaf of bread and a small soda pop, but that’s about it — and the grill has expanded threefold. The menu is standard grill fare — eggs for breakfast, burgers for dinner — but also includes a smattering of Lebanese food — shwarma, falafel, hummous, etc. — that rounds things out nicely. They’ve an interesting and ever-changing selection of cold drinks and a staff which is friendly enough to delight but aloof enough to not make you feel uncomfortable eating in what is, in the end, a very small room. They also serve the best hand-cut french fries in Charlottetown. Many’s the night (too many’s the night…) when Catherine and I say to ourselves “let’s go to Eddie’s” at supper time. Highly recommended. Eddie’s Lunch, 37 Prince Street, Charlottetown, PEI.

Although it’s a story that’s been examined a re-examined a million times, I find it interesting to note that in August of 1999 traffic to www.gov.pe.ca was 48% Netscape and 48% Internet Explorer. In August of 2000 it was 28% Netscape and 58% Internet Explorer and this past month it was 25% Netscape and 66% Internet Explorer.

In other words, in two short years, Netscape’s “market share” has gone down 23% and Internet Explorer’s has gone up 18%.

Earlier this week I mentioned my problems with Chapters censoring their in-store Internet terminals. Because Doc Searls’ weblog was one of the sites I couldn’t view, I sent him a carbon copy of the email I sent to Heather Reisman.

In reaction to that, Doc mentioned the incident on his website which, in turn, prompted a man named Buzz Bruggeman to send me an email. Buzz met Doc at last years Pop!Tech conference in Camden, ME. Why he emailed me, I’m not sure. But it was one of those emails that, for some reason, amdist the clutter of the penis enlargement and the interest free loan spam emails, I paid attention to.

Buzz is hawking a nifty little program for Windows called ActiveWords. Buzz’ Big Problem is that he is trying to sell the world a product that the world doesn’t know it needs. In fact he’s trying to sell the world a product that you don’t really know you need until you’re using it. And even then there’s a learning curve. Actually it’s not really a learning curve — it’s more like an “experiencing curve.”

I will not even begin to try and describe what ActiveWords does. Go to their website and download a free trial copy (don’t bother reading the PR on the website; most of it won’t make much sense). Install the program (again, this is a Windows-only program) and take it for a spin. Then you’ll understand.

I’m still learning how to integrate ActiveWords into my workflow. I cam imagine hundreds of ways I will put it to use. It’s one of those rare “shareware” programs that I will actually purchase. Enough said.

Back when I was a wee lad myself, during my one and only year of higher education, I used to look forward to Thursday nights. At 9:00 p.m. (or was it 10?), I would head off to the snack machines and buy myself a bag of chips and an icy cold Fresca, and then adjourn to the Junior Common Room ato watch Hill Street Blues.

I liked Fresca then. But then it went away.

Now it is back: eagle-eyed Catherine spotted a lone bottle of Fresca in the cash-side cooler at Zellers tonight and we agreed to split it. Alas this was not the Fresca of old: first, it was Diet Fresca, and so it had a horrible “sugar free” aftertaste. Also, it appears that in the 16 years since I was in university they have reformulated Fresca so that its taste approximates that of Lemony-fresh Pledge.

Advice: avoid Diet Fresca.

From Susan Arbing: the Iowa Corn Cam. And if you find that interesting, be sure to check out The Amazing Maize Maze, which is the Official Maze of The Old Farmer’s Almanac.

My spritely friend Oliver from California passes along links to live Pig, Cow, Sheep and Goat cameras.

I’ve always condemned the charter airlines (like WestJet and Canada 3000) for advertising cheap fares by using the “one way fare based on return travel” gambit. They advertise a $99 fare to Toronto, but then, in smaller print, tell you that this is the one way fare, but that you have to buy a return ticket. So the real fare is $198.

Until now I hadn’t seen Air Canada adopt this deceptive technique. This changed last night when they announced their latest seat sale.

They’re advertising a one way trip to Boston for $189, a fare which, deep into the fine print, you read is “each way based on return trip travel and may only be purchased on a return basis.” So the real return fare to Boston is $378. This isn’t a bad fare, but it’s not fantastic — I’ve flown with little advance notice in the past year for $490. It’s certainly not a “jaw-dropping” fare, as they suggest on their website.

I wish Air Canada would stop the sneaky tactic; they shouldn’t have to lower themselves into the charter gutter to compete.

It is interesting to note that you can fly to Zurich from Charlottetown for $10 more than it costs to fly to Seattle from Charlottetown.

Not satisfied with the ultimately useless chat I had with Network Solutions about their annoying pop-up ads, I decided to have an ultimately useless telephone call with them.

You can listen to the entire call or the call without the 1:30 of on-hold music) [MP3 stream: you’ll need a player like WinAmp to listen], the highlight of which is the customer service rep telling me “the people you would have to contact about that would be Microsoft.”

I’ve been evaluating Urchin, a web traffic reporting tool, for several clients. Everybody I’ve showed the output to has been impressed: it’s flexible, uses its own database, lets you look at reports and graphs over different periods of time, and has a nice little e-commerce revenue reporting system built in. You can download a trial copy.

Recent search terms that have led people to this website:

• stores for belly dancing outfits in california
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