Martin Cleaver, masterfully.

1. For sure, I think most quickly and creatively when I talk out loud.
2. And I express most succinctly when I type.
3. Too often I have flourishes of thoughts that I wish I could reclaim.

Sometimes I’ve gone so far as to record them as audio files.
And now, I hope, I’ve found a means to blend these two worlds: MacSpeech Dictate.

We’ll see…

So I went down to the Toronto Eaton Centre Apple Store today and bought MacSpeech. Retail. (I realised that the CAD is doing so pathetically against the USD that even with cheaper software prices in the US this was less expensive to buy in Canada. And, I had to get the packaging because it includes a hardware USB noise cancelling voice-enhancer. When I bought VMware Fusion, for which I had Amazon.com post the CD + packaging to a friend in the US and then got the friend to email me the registration code and throw away the CD etc: insanely cost 50% less than buying online, but, forgive me, I digress. )

I installed MacSpeech this afternoon, tried to set up a profile and it crashed. Repeatedly. For you geeks: SIGBUS. In the background I could see it waiting to update the software, but was unable to do so until I got past the profile set up. Eventually, after giving up on waiting for a reply from @macspeech on twitter, I did discover how to update the software from the MacSpeech site. There’s no “Download” link apparent, but you can find it on http://www.macspeech.com/pages.php?pID=13

So! I have audio recordings, many of them. Some of just me, others of me talking to clients. I want transcripts. Not perfect ones, just transcripts good enough to find the piece of audio that matches a given keyword.

I determined that MacSpeech “doesn’t support” audio files created outside the context of either the supplied headset or one of a set of specific digital voice recorders. Well, I’m not looking for perfect transcripts and, given that I already have the audio files, and have an iPhone so will be using that to record (if at all possible), I want a way to input from plain audio, accepting that the higher the bit rate the better accuracy I can expect.

I’ll find out tomorrow if the following little gem works:

I installed Dictate yesterday, and tested it while recording a podcast with Audacity, using Soundflower and the “Software Playthrough” feature (look in Audio I/O prefs) on Audacity.

I first had to set up a profile with Soundflower (2ch) as the audio device, but Software Playthrough made that work just fine. I was able to read the text in the Dictate window into Audacity, and Dictate picked it all up seamlessly.

A note on practicalities: I had intended to dictate the whole of this blog post, but doing that will have to wait as I am writing this from the comfort of my bed whilst my wife and child are nearby, and sleeping. For now I am typing, inspired by the possibilities. And soon, I’ll dream them too.

I’ve recently teamed up with Stephanie Barnes and Connie Crosby to put together a Toronto-based speaker series aimed at exploring and enhancing the world of the knowledge worker.

Our talk events, Knowledge Workers Toronto, aim at the practices and management to benefit the needs of the worker, such that the worker, and consequently the organizations that hire them, can make sustained and best of their talents. Our aim is to bridge the insights of the worker, corporates and academics in a practical, lighthearted and informative way.

We would appreciate if you would extend our invitation to those in your network who may wish to attend.

Regards and thanks,
Martin

PS. I also run Toronto Wiki Tuesdays, which has a similar format but is focused exclusively on the applications of the wiki paradigm, technologies and culture. More details about our past meetings can be found at http://www.torontowikituesdays.com/ and signed up at http://www.meetup.com/TorontoWikiTuesdays/

–
Martin Cleaver MSc MBA
Principal, http://www.blendedperspectives.com/
Founder, http://www.torontowikituesdays.com/
Publicity chair, http://www.wikisym.org/

———- Forwarded message ———-

New Business Strategy and Networking Meetup Group!
Knowledge Workers Toronto
Knowledge Workers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_worker) are the primary drivers of business activity, with knowledge workers outnumbering non-knowledge workers 4 to 1. The term, defined as one who works primarily with information or one who develops and uses knowledge in the workplace, was coined by Peter Drucker in 1959.

Knowledge workers are faced with high levels of autonomy in their day-to-day work roles yet are expected to pull together en-masse with the rest of the workforce. To thrive in today’s society Knowledge Workers need to be both information and technologically literate.

Come and meet other locals from all knowledge-intensive industries to discuss the goals, issues and opportunities facing knowledge management professionals. Share your experiences of issues and network across industry boundaries.

This group’s first Meetup is already scheduled! Knowledge Workers Toronto

January 28, 2009, Knowledge Worker Meeting, “Expertise Networking” Joel Alleyne — Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Ivan Krsti recently returned from a grueling three-week stay in Peru, where he worked with the Ministry of Education team entrusted with the country’s 260-thousand laptop One Laptop Per Child implementation.

His story highlights how the OLPC project (which I reported on in 2006) is changing culture, getting kids to be more open and sharing as well as giving them much more meaningful avenues to both learn and teach each other.

Here’s an extract of Ivan’s Story. Go read it.

Kids started talking to each other outside of school hours over the mesh, and working together more while in school.

It’s not that the kids are starving, it’s just that they don’t have very much; what they do have, they’re reluctant to share. With the laptops, the kids had to turn to each other to learn how to use them. Then they realized it was easy to send each other pictures and things they’ve written — and it became commonplace. The sharing, asserts Mrs. Cornejo, extended into the physical world, where once jealously-guarded personal items increasingly started being passed around between the kids, if somewhat nervously.

“Children’s fathers used to seethe with fury when the laptops were passed out, because the kids no longer wanted to help work in the field all day,” he continued.

“I didn’t know how we’d stop the fathers from revolting and making the kids return their XOs,” he says, shaking his head slightly. “The kids solved the dilemma for me: they taught their fathers how to use the Internet and a search engine.”

The fathers, I later heard, all decided an education could stop their children from having no choice but to work the field all day as they did. With the laptops in place, the school was no longer a black box whose efficacy had to be taken on faith: the kids could prove they were learning. Schooling had gone open source.

http://radian.org/notebook/astounded-in-arahuay

The power that Rogers exert in the market for wireless, wireless data and broadband internet is utterly ridiculous. The competitive situation for these services in Canada has always been poor, but the situation was made much worse when they bought Microcell.

Since we’ve had GSM monopoly the ONLY way to use innovative GSM products is through Rogers-Fido. Canada has the highest pricing for wireless data in the world. The result is the public shy away from using such products, and a knock-on effect is that this threatens our industry’s willingness to build services upon these products to innovate.

Broadband and wireless data pricing reflects that company’s need for these services are inelastic with respect to price. Rogers are market skimming.

At the very least all the wireless carriers should be made to include their System Access Fees in their advertised price.

http://www.reportonbusiness.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080630.wiphone30/CommentStory/Business/;

Today, the CRTC responded:

Dear Martin Cleaver,

Thank you for your correspondence dated July 2, 2008 regarding Rogers Communications Inc. (“Rogers”).

The Competition Bureau (the “Bureau”) is an independent law enforcement agency that contributes to the prosperity of Canadians by protecting and promoting competitive markets and enabling informed consumer choice. As part of its mandate, the Bureau is responsible for the administration and enforcement of the Competition Act (the “Act”), a federal law that governs most business conduct in Canada. The Act contains both civil and criminal provisions aimed at preventing anti-competitive practices from taking place in the marketplace.

As a general principle, the Bureau does not regulate prices or dictate distribution policies to firms. The purpose of the Act is to ensure that firms do not create, abuse, or artificially maintain their power within a market. However, legitimate exercise of any market power, including setting prices, is not a violation of the Act. In general, businesses are free to set prices as they see fit and let the market determine if these prices are viable and can be sustained.

The abuse of dominance provision of the Act (section 79) seeks to prevent dominant firms from engaging in anti-competitive acts that harm competitors and significantly impact competition in a given market. In order for conduct to violate section 79 of the Act and for the Bureau to obtain an order to stop it, the following three conditions must be met:

(a) one or more person substantially or completely control, throughout Canada or any area thereof, a class or species of business,

(b) that person or those persons have engaged in or are engaging in a practice of anti-competitive acts, and
(c) the practice has had, is having or is likely to have the effect of preventing or lessening competition substantially in a market.

Under paragraph 79(1)(a) of the Act, the Bureau must be able to show that a firm, in this case Rogers, holds a dominant position in a market and that it has used this dominant position to enhance or entrench its market power. Furthermore, under paragraph 79(1)(b) of the Act, the Bureau is required to show that Rogers is engaging in a “practice of anti-competitive acts” with an intended negative effect on a competitor that is predatory, disciplinary or exclusionary.

It is the Bureau’s view that Rogers does not hold a dominant position in the market for mobile wireless telephony services in Canada. Rogers is in direct competition with two other major wireless providers, in addition to a number of smaller carriers, all of whom offer handsets that are functional substitutes for the iPhone. Moreover, Rogers’ recently-announced pricing plans for the iPhone do not constitute an anti-competitive act as these pricing plans do not have an intended negative effect on a competitor that is predatory, disciplinary or exclusionary. Rather, they reflect an attempt by Rogers to market a product consumers find desirable and set prices accordingly. This may ultimately be disciplined by competitor responses, and/or by consumers rejecting such a strategy. In either case, market forces will determine if these prices can be sustained.

For more information on the Bureau’s approach to enforcing section 79 of the Act, please consult our Enforcement Guidelines on the Abuse of Dominance Provisions at http://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/epic/site/cb-bc.nsf/vwapj/aod.pdf/$FILE/aod.pdf.

Again, thank you for taking the time to bring this matter to our attention.

Sincerely,

Stephanie Paolin
Agent du droit de la concurrence | Direction générale des affaires civiles
Competition Law Officer | Civil Matters Branch

If Rogers’ questionable policy of redirecting DNS misses wasn’t already enough, this has got to be:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20824864-URL-Manipulation

What Rogers has done is review the URL structure used by this feature when using the Microsoft Live.com search provider. This particular provider takes what is typed into the address bar, when DNS name resolution fails redirects your entry too:

»search.live.com/results.aspx?q=y···-Address

The important aspect of this URL is the src=IE-Address component. This particular component is what Rogers is using to decide if they should steal the request and redirect it to their own service. If you browse to the link […] your request will be stolen and sent to Rogers.

Rogers has made the decision for all Internet Explorer users to prevent [them] from using the Address Bar searching feature for Live.com. [Rogers] are preventing individuals from accessing a public search engine as intended. This is not only something to be reported to the various sites already mentioned, but to Microsoft and Live.com themselves.

My thanks to Hondra of @fmc-law.com for the post and to Colin Smilie of Refresh Partners for verifying the behaviour.

Speaker: Maury Markowitz

This month’s speaker will be Maury Markowitz, discussing how Wikipedia is addressing the problem of ensuring truth in articles. Maury is a renowned Wikipedia editor with over 1,000 new articles and over 20,000 edits to his name. Maury works at a Toronto hedge fund firm where he is the programmer-on-call.

Note new Location! The Ferret And Firkin
Date: 8 Jul 2008
Time: 6:30 for 7pm

Event Sponsors:

Synopsis

Over the last two years or so the Wikipedia has faced a number of criticisms in the press about its potential inaccuracies. It’s not so much that the Wikipedia is filled with errors, but that it could be filled with errors, and the reader will never know one way or the other.

But over the last year the hue and cry on this topic has almost disappeared. So what happened? And can these methods be further improved?

When and Where:

6:30pm, Tuesday 8th July at 720 Spadina Ave, (just south of Spadina TTC stop on Bloor) in the back room: http://torontodarts.com/featured/ferret.html

Please sign up at

Who should come and why:
Interested in the topic? Got an opinion? Or just interested to network? Come join our community.

• Managers and leaders responsible for applying such questions to the use of wikis in organisations
• Entrepreneurs wanting to use a wiki as the backbone to their site
• Change transformation agents using wikis to instigate organisational transparency using a wiki
• Consultants and designers who build integration, navigation, visuals and plugins
• Wiki contributors, users and wiki gardeners

About Toronto Wiki Tuesdays and Blended Perspectives:

Toronto Wiki Tuesdays has been running since 2005 and has a mandate to spread the word about how a wiki can transform communication in organisations and the nature of business. Toronto Wiki Tuesdays was founded and is run by Martin Cleaver M.Sc. MBA, Head Blender of Blended Perspectives and a Chair of WikiSym, the International Symposium on the use of Wikis.

While the telecoms industry in Canada is widely* criticized as offering poor value** compared to other countries, the huge leveraged revenue streams from those obscene 3 year cellphone plans may be what’s funding the single telco service I am a huge fan of: WiMax***.

* especially by me
** net neutrality issues, system-access fees, extortionate plans for mobile data, typically a 3 year cell phone commitment, use of CDMA technology, no competition for GSM customers
*** technically pre-WiMax

I’ve used a Portable Internet modem since last summer, both at home, and in my bag as the main way I connect to the internet. Last night, I purchased a higher-powered modem with enhanced reception for use at the cottage.

Despite what seemed like Rogers actively doing everything possible to prevent me buying this (at the service availability, billing, and technical support levels) I happily report that I’m now connected. Let me tell you, it’s a world of difference from dial-up.

How did I get on with their Outdoor Modem?

And how come Rogers’ made it so difficult to buy? It’s not like Rogers have avoided taking money from the Canadian public before.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tim Berners-Lee’s intended the web to be writeable by all. Yet, for decades it’s been stuck in a “read mostly” mode. Everyone web surfs, some add content but very few really get to fundamentally re-express and re-structure web content. We know this. We wiki. Problem is, many don’t.

Today marks the launch of the Universal Edit Button. Similar to the orange “radio waves” RSS icon, which alerts the user to the availability of a feed for a site, the Universal Edit Button is an icon to appear in your browser’s location bar to alert that the page is editable.

It is hoped that the icon will draw contributions to wiki-based sites, by serving as a reminder to how changeable they are.

Without further ado:

The green pencil icon has been adopted as the standard icon.

It is presently implemented on:

• Moin Moin 1.7
• Socialtext hosted
• TikiWiki 1.10
• TWiki 4.2
• Wikipedia

For further details, check out http://www.universaleditbutton.org/Universal_Edit_Button.

My thanks to Mark Dilley of AboutUs.org for the reminder to post about it today.

From a conversation on IRC’s #lvm channel:

MartinCleaver_: I have a ext3 in lvm filesystem on an external USB drive. How can I mount this on my mac? I have macfuse installed in case that can help.

Those of you who subscribe to my blog for my wiki-related entries might have noticed an uncanny silence here recently, especially given my position as Chair for Demos and Posters at WikiSym 2008

Well, its not that I’ve been silent. I’ve just been talking in a different room, i.e. on the WikiSym blog! Here’s a round up of the last few. Most are aimed at ensuring the best companies, consultants and researchers come and share their story.

• Wiki farm companies: which are your biggest growing communities?
• Thanks for all the WikiSym Poster Submissions. Deadline extension: June 30th
• Business Intelligence? Competitive Intelligence? WikiSym is where you need to be.
• Integration wikis? Application wikis? Semantic wikis?
• Call to Wiki Vendors: Come and Display Your Wiki Software!
• WikiSym Participants: Skype Chat Channel
• Wikis as Intranets: Come Celebrate Your Success!

Since its inception 4 years ago, WikiSym has attracted the deepest thinkers in the wiki, hypertext and documentation fields. As other industries catch on and wikis are proving their utility as intranets, extranets and in knowledge collection, retention, and dissemination, and core to documentation processes, my goal is to the conference does indeed get representation across the board, everywhere wikis are making an impact.

Periodically I will summarize here on my blog, http://martin.cleaver.org the entries I post for WikiSym. In the meantime, if you want to watch what’s happening closely, please subscribe to the blog feed at http://www.wikisym.org/

WikiSym 2008 will be held in Porto, Portugal Sept 8-10. It’s sure to be both informative and fun!