Author Archive
Augmented surveilance getting closer to reality
This week Toronto police proudly announced they would be using face recognition software to identify and catch G20 hooligans. In Tokyo this week, a company announced of new billboards that use cameras to recognize age/sex of passers by and serve-up demographically targeted advertisements. Having networked cameras passively watch us as we move through public spaces [...]
Confessions of a tablet overly early adopter
A friend at lunch the other day showing off his iPad 3G brought back this wave of tender nostalgia. For three years I too carried a tablet around. It was the tablet that time forgot (no not the newton), the original Microsoft full slate tablet PC. That’s me chewing on a tablet pc stylus in [...]
Where the heck is the ad-free “pro” version of streaming sports?
Let me say this. I love being able to stream big events like the Olympics, the America’s cup or the world cup over the internet in HD. As someone who has dumped subscription cable years ago it is a godsend. Occasional glitches/hiccups notwithstanding, HD streaming is fantastic. And it feels like the future. But omg [...]
PowerPoint karaoke is back! PPTKTO #2
After the ridiculous success of last February’s PowerPoint Karaoke #1, Jay and I really had no choice but to do it once again. Powerpoint karaoke is where brave public speakers have 5 minutes to earnestly present an (invariably preposterous, verging on dadaist) slide presentation which they have never seen before in their lives. Here’s some [...]
Things to be afraid of: like Canada’s upcoming copyright bill
Canada hasn’t updated the copyright act in many years. Not for lack of trying. But it so happens that various amendments of varying quality by various governments have died on the order books in the course of various elections. In fact Canada has not yet acted on the US-led WIPO anti-piracy treaty (complete with DRM [...]
Gone Sailing
If you are looking for me, I’ll be back in a few weeks. Catch y’all later : )
Will Tablet Computers Save Us From Vampires?
I don’t know what to say about the state of publishing anymore except to tell you that Penguin sent me (I’m on their blogger list) a list of 10 of their hottest titles for summer 2010. 40% of which concern Vampires. Blood Oath (Christopher Farnsworth, May 2010, HC): The ultimate secret. The ultimate agent. The [...]
Eye-control headphones clearly the best invention of Mobile World Congress
Leave it to the Japanese. I’ve speculated before about what kind of creative sensors you could load in to a mobile device. How about headphones that pick up the tiny electrical impulses emitted by your facial muscles when you move your eyes? Here is a live demo of a Docomo volunteer controlling a cell phone [...]
Why and how to ditch your slow-ass hard drive for an SSD
The setup: Putting it to the test: The Results: SSD are the single best upgrade you can give your computer. This one a Runcore device is even compatible with older 1.8″ PATA drive systems found in common ultra portables like my Dell D430 or the Macbook Air. Remember when Apple was trying to sell SSD [...]
Why it’s Google that needs a Twitter too, more than twitterers need some new g-twitteroo
So what’s the deal with this new Google buzz thing. Google’s core premise is the googlerank, that uncanny linking metric that derives all its notions of web page authority from what other pages and links of authority link to such pages. But, these days, with 90% at best of pages and links on the world [...]
Forget the SuperBowl, the America’s Cup is on
Tonight, right now is the eve of the 33rd America’s Cup. Now two years late, this race is a culmination of 2 years of legal battles between Larry Ellison and Ernesto Bertarelli over the rules, venue, boats and every other aspect you can imagine. What it’s resulted in however is something spectacular for sailing and [...]
Got your ticket yet for PowerPoint Karaoke? [updated]
This Friday, my good friend Jay Goldman and I are organizing Toronto’s first PowerPoint Karaoke event. It’s going to be awesome. From the official description: The Stage is Yours, the Slides Aren’t PowerPoint Karaoke brings presentations from the conference room to the karaoke stage in an entertaining and competitive event. In PowerPoint Karaoke, contestants deliver [...]
In Which Tom attempts to bond two DSL lines into single home internet pipe of great power like Voltron
It really only did take about nine minutes to actually set up. Two DSL lines, one internet connection. Not counting a few later hours of mild swearing and voodoo rituals to get it to work right on all the computers in the house. And not counting the few days it took for the Bell tech [...]
Alternative energy thought of the day
Deep thought of the day: Say you were feeling green. Or lets say you’re just stuck with an unwieldy hydro bill every year and having exhausted any easy options for saving energy, you’re looking for other ways to offset what you draw from the grid. Why go to the trouble of putting solar panels on [...]
The new economics of music publishing
My good friend Graeme recently started a new band with a bunch of his more musically talented friends called the Nobodies. Caught them live last night and they’re pretty awesome. The nobodies just had their first CD professionally produced and mixed. The great thing, Graeme tells me, about starting a band with seven people in [...]
Things you can learn from Google on how to redesign your industry for the web
Have you ever heard Google’s [VP of Product Design] Marissa Mayer talk about product design? Great stuff. From a recent interview with Michael Arrington at this year’s Le Web. Pay attention to this question (about 12min in) about google news and redesigning journalism. If we invented news today as a delivery channel for journalism, through [...]
Tom’s End of 2009 indie music mix
Just under the wire for 2009, I bring you my last of my 2009 music mixes. As always, this is a sort of autobiographical best-of mix featuring the songs that made the biggest rotation in my itunes since the last 6 months or so when I last published a mix. Some great tunes on here. [...]
Fax machines, and PDFs, kicking off the deadmedia watch for 2010
The fax machine was obsolete 15 years ago. When someone says “fax it to me,” I always feel like I’m being punk’d. A fax machine is nothing more than a printer, scanner and an obsolete analog mode that work together to waste time, money, paper and electricity. Documents that are faxed usually start out in [...]
Thomas Purves
is a technology executive specializing digital payment systems, a futurist and sometimes entrepreneur living in the great city of 
