Rob’s blog
Social Signal: the next step for me, the next step for online collaboration
Big news, amigas and amigos: at the end of this year, I'll be leaving NOW Communications after eight years as their Director of New Media. And I'll be joining Alexandra Samuel full-time in our consulting practice, newly relaunched as Social Signal. Social Signal's...
WordPress to Drupal: a luta continua
I'm considering migrating this site from the superb open-source blogging platform WordPress to the superb open-source content-management system Drupal. It turns out that isn't nearly as simple as it sounds. You would think it would be easy. To move the content, all...
Reporters Without Borders helps bloggers without rights
The fine folks at Reporters Without Borders have written what they call a handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents: Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent...
Open-source travel: Tell Lee and Sachi where to go
When someone tells you they're about to travel to one of your favourite destinations for the first time, the urge to flood them with information -- likes, dislikes, hidden treasures, tourist traps, that restaurant that gave you the runs for a week -- is nearly...
CBC lockout may be the first ever Web 2.0 labour campaign
It's going to be really, really good to have the CBC back. But I'll miss the highly personal style of CBCUnlocked. The corporation's web team would do well to take a close look at what made that site work so well. And I'll also miss the extraordinary efforts of Tod...
Back up
...And the site is back up, now housed with our new hosts. We did, in the end, choose Dreamhost. I was wary given the experience of one of our commenters (and he's no slouch in the tech department), but in the end we were seduced by the large user community and the...
Vanishing act
I'm making a few changes behind the scenes at this site today. There may be a brief outage, sporadic fires, itching and occasional locusts. Definitely occasional locusts. But we'll be back shortly. Thanks for bearing with us.
Is there a zombie computer on the provincial payroll?
I've just been comment-spammed from the IP address 142.22.186.12. What's interesting about that particular address is that it belongs to the British Columbia Systems Corporation... a division of your friendly provincial government. Eeep. I've alerted the authorities....
Found poetry
From my latest deluge of comment spam: "you have a very talented and skilled writting." Wow. Coming from such an accomplished writter, that's quite the compliment.
His master’s voice: Contract Charlie goes live
It's hard to pull off humour in the middle of a pitched labour battle -- the stakes are high, and earnestness has a huge gravitational pull all its own -- but the locked-out CBCniks have done it. Meet Tokyo Rose's match, Contract Charlie: "Contract Charlie", an...
A little upgrade that makes a big difference
Just caught this little nugget on Ryan Boren's WordPress.com blog, tracking the progress of the upcoming WordPress 1.6 release: 1.6 adds.... a nice, compact set of rules that has the advantage of not requiring updates whenever a page is added. htaccess needs to be...
Thinking of blogging? Head to Northern Voice 2006
If you: have heard about blogging, and you're intrigued, have been blogging a little, and you're hungry to do more, or blog like a maniac, and want to meet others like you, then register now for Northern Voice 2006, Canada's blogging conference. Alex and I attended...
Why, yes — I’d LOVE to speak at your event
Public speaking and speechwriting: the essential guides
Looking for advice on public speaking, speechwriting and leadership communications? Here are some of my most comprehensive posts, on topics that people ask me about most often.
