Yuill.ca

Wired.com, the sister site to the awesome magazine, Wired, has reportedly been blocked in China. While the magazine has been unable to confirm this independently a report from Examiner.com suggests users from Bejing to Shanghi have been unable to connect to the site since Friday.

You can see the news from Wired here but I’ve also reposted the entire story after the link. If you are in China and can confirm this directly with Wired, please do so by e-mailing them. Read More

On October 26, 2009, a new law in Ontario will ban the use of mobile electronic devices including cell phones and mobile media players while behind the wheel. Mathieu Yuill was a guest on Breakfast Television in Toronto on October 20 to discuss some of the products available for consumers so they can continue using their cell phone while driving in a hands-free way.

On this episode I’m talking about HDTV, what to ask the salesperson, the costs involved, what to look for in an HDTV and how to protect your HDTV from a power surge

This episode I was on talking about back to school items. Products featured include: Panasonic Toaster Oven, Toshiba Laptop, HP Laptop, macbook, Samsung Cell Phone, Motorola Cell Phone, HP Camera

Great story from the Unofficial Apple Web Log the other day about a person using MobileMe to help catch the person who stole his iPhone. The story can be found at their Web site, but here it is for your reading enjoyment:

To say that MobileMe hasn’t made everyone happy may be a bit of an understatement. We don’t generally hear from the satisfied customers, but we have received a fair amount of email from dissatisfied users of Apple’s “cloud computing” solution. Given the barrage of negativity, it’s nice to hear a positive take now and then. TUAW reader Rob had just the thing …

While at the dry cleaner one day, Rob’s iPhone was stolen. He immediately chalked it up as gone forever, and proceeded to purchase a brand new one that same evening. It was the next day when unfamiliar contacts began to appear on the new phone. The (not-too-bright) thief was unwittingly supplying him with names and phone numbers of his or her closest friends, via the magic of MobileMe synchronization from the stolen phone to the cloud and eventually to his new phone. “It didn’t take long for me to realize that MobileMe was leading me right to the thief!” wrote Rob.

Thanks to the fact that he caught on to it before he’d had time to remotely disconnect his account, MobileMe provided the groundwork for a little social engineering. Rob made quick work of wrangling a name and phone number from the provided contacts, supplying the police with everything they needed to get Rob his phone back. By the end of the night, he had his original iPhone in his possession.

There you have it, a MobileMe success story! Sure, this doesn’t make up for the problems which have plagued MobileMe, but it’s a great story. The recovered phone is “pretty much brand new,” according to Rob, and is currently up for auction on ebay.

Wikipedia is a free online multi-lingual encyclopedia founded in March 2009 (it was called nupedia then and was only in English). Wikipedia is editable by anyone and in addition to contributing to exisiting entries, users can create entirely new ones.

Consider this: if you wanted to search a printed encyclopedia for information on the 2008 presidential election, you would be almost guaranteed not to find anything. An online encyclopedia, not editable by users … like encyclopedia.com would return entries like “presidential records act” and unrelated material.

However, a search on Wikipedia.org would return a page with information the campaign of both Obama and McCain, what the issues of the day was, election controversies and many other topics relating to the campaign.

Wikipedia.org is free. Access to knowledge is an extremely empowering opportunity and it’s an important cause to support.

Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales said it best:

“Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.”

I encourage you to donate $1, $5, $10, $30 or more to this worthwhile cause.

I was looking forward to quite a few of the sessions at WordCamp Toronto 2008 on a personal level because I have been looking to develop my WordPress skills this past year. I like doing “Internet” things, learning about social media, how they can be used in business, stuff like that.

The sessions that touched on themes and plugins were easily the ones that helped me the most. Just from the stuff I learned this weekend I was able to download the latest WP, install a kick-ass theme, find plenty of amazing plugins and get the site going in just three days. I actually had it up on Monday but the really great plugins that help with stats and contact forms took me another day or so.

Even customizing the theme was a breeze and I had that done Monday evening. I worked on The Courier’s Web site, the student newspaper at Centennial College as a pet project to put what I learned into practice and I’m pretty happy with the results. What do you think?

Melissa and I have been working away at WordCamp Toronto and so far it’s going really well. Joseph Thornley lead us off this morning and was great. WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg was also a big hit.

Rabbis is on stage right now so I’m using my iPhone for this post because he’s using my laptop for his presentation.

Because I’ve been busy organizing WordCamp Toronto with Melissa Feeney since this past April, I haven’t had much time time to sit back and take stock of what I’m actually looking forward to at this weekend’s conference. I am particularly excited about the catering, Fused Network sponsored both lunches and we’ve come up with a heck of a menu for both days. But aside from that, I’m personally really looking forward to the following sessions:

• Joseph Thornley’s session on putting blogs at the centre of social media – I’ll probably be able to put a few of these thoughts into action at work the very next week.
• Matt Mullenweg – basically he’s pretty much responsible for blogging as we know it today so whatever he’s thinking in his head will be good
• Making the most with Plug-ins – I really need to learn what plug-ins could help me improve my blog. From efficiency to maybe adding photos in a better way. I’m hoping I’ll be able to leave this session with some practical tips I can implement here on yuill.ca right away.