Rob's blog
Blogging and podcasting NDP campaigns
Several NDP campaigns are blogging, and at least one is podcasting - and I think that deserves some recognition. So this page is going to serve as a repository for the Web 2.0-enabled NDP candidates. I've almost certainly missed some, and others will probably launch...
Talk your way to stardom in Political Idol… or right here
Scott Piatkowski alerted me yesterday to CTV's contest, Political Idol: If you believe you have what it takes, here's how it works: Question Period viewers are asked to send in a minute-long written campaign speech on a topic of their choice to questionperiod@ctv.ca...
Paying attention to B.C.’s child deaths tragedy
Elsewhere in a discussion on the dearth of municipal blogging, some of us toss around the fact that bloggers usually don't do the kind of investigative legwork that reporters do, and can't break stories. Meet a vital exception: Paul Willcocks and his blog, Paying...
Stop me before I early-adopt again!
It's like they're trying to kill me. WordPress (the software that drives this site) has just released a public beta (testing) version. And tantalizingly, they've changed the version number from 1.6 to 2.0. Obviously, you don't need me to spell out what that implies in...
Vancouver elections Saturday, Nov. 19; I’m voting for Vision
I'll be voting for Jim Green and the Vision Vancouver team tomorrow, along with several great folks from COPE. (Disclosure: I've been working for the Vision campaign -- and they've made me proud.) After so many years of watching this city struggle under a wet, grey...
Delays, delays, delays…
Waiting isn't easy... TiVo does a great job of recording and playing video... but when it comes to scheduling the beast, it slows to a crawl. Maybe that's because it has a processor speed of only 50 MHz, and 32 MB of RAM. Your average gaming console (such as...
SpeechList Issue 4: Speech structure 101
SPEECHLIST: WRITING TO BE HEARD Issue 4 - November 14, 2005 by Rob Cottingham https://www.robcottingham.ca/ rob@robcottingham.ca (c) Rob Cottingham 2005 IN THIS ISSUE... Opening words Feature article: Speech structure 101 Catch Rob at the Ragan Speechwriting...
Great overview of some newer polling techniques
Mystery Pollster's look at diverging polling results in the runup to California's various referenda is more than just wholesome political geeky goodness. It's also a quick course in some of the latest polling techniques out there, including online panel surveys....
Side effects of drug industry lobbying may include…
When The Karasik Conspiracy hits bookshelves this September, the plot may sound just a wee bit familiar: a group of shadowy terrorists conspires to murder thousands of Americans by poisoning the medicine they're importing from Canada to beat U.S. drug prices. It...
Blog award season
Any major shift in communication technology goes through these stages: Experimentation Early narrow implementation Establishment of community Enhancement of solidarity in face of establishment backlash Giving awards to ourselves Gosh, is it time for step five again?...
Now that’s what I call social capital
Vancity Credit Union has a dandy idea for extending credit to folks who might normally find it hard to come by: peer lending. From CBC Vancouver: Vancity's Shaheen Tejani says the credit union lends money to groups of people, to allow individuals to start their own...
If I could blog to the animals…
How cool is this? I've been linked to by a Gentoo Penguin webcam blog out of Antarctica! (Apparently they'd been having popup issues thanks to the Webstats4U fiasco reported on here a month ago.) I'm returning the favour by directing you to their post, "When Pengins...
