To the dismay of insomniacs and shift workers across the country, CBC Radio One has quietly dropped an unassuming but prized corner of its schedule: the carousel of highlights from public broadcasters around the world that ran from 1 to 5:30 am. CBC Radio Overnight offered listeners welcome—and rare—insight into the perspective on other countries on world news. A  few remnants remain, including a half hour of the BBC at 4 am, and something called The World, at 1 am. Contrarian counts this a big loss....

31 October, 2009

Marcos Weskamp, a design engineer and "self-taught technologist" who likes to play with data visualization, has created a treemap display of Google News. Newsmap shows stories as blocks on a grid. The size of the block reflects a story's rating in Google's search algorithm. The color of a block reflects its broad subject matter (world, national,business, technology, sports, entertainment, health), selectable with tabs along the bottom. The country of origin can be selected from tabs along the top (like the "Can" tab highlighted in the example above). Rolling your cursor over a block produces pop-up text like the white box...

27 October, 2009

The New York Times has corrected its obituary of Donald Marshall, Jr., following remonstrations from Contrarian and from one of the lawyers who represented Marshall before the celebrated inquiry that bears his name. The original Times obit, published in its August 7 edition, two days after Marshall's death, contained the following paragraph: Late on the night of May 28, 1971, Mr. Marshall and a friend, Sandy Seale, went walking in a Sydney park and tried to rob an older man, Roy Ebsary, who drew a knife and killed Mr. Seale. As Contrarian wrote to the obituary's author, William Grimes: The Royal Commission on the...

23 October, 2009

Today's Antigonish by-election is a foregone conclusion. N-dip Moe Smith came within 275 votes of knocking off popular Tando MacIsaac in June's general election. Tando having abandoned the seat so abruptly, and the NDP firmly ensconced in Province House, Smith will take the riding in a walk. Inverness is a different matter. The riding is festooned with election signs in roughly equal numbers. Although then-Premier Rodney MacDonald out-polled his nearest rival by 3,431  votes in June, would-be Tory successor Allan MacMaster is widely expected to place third today. The premier's abandonment of the riding, like Tando's of neighboring Antigonish, will hurt MacMaster,...

20 October, 2009

Contrarian reader Bill Long writes: Thanks for jogging my memory about the amazing Mr. Smith. Back in my introductory days to the interwebs, his site, Nova Scotia's Electronic Attic, was one of the first to boggle my mind at the possibilities for citizen participation in information gathering and dissemination. Good to know he's still kicking. It amazes Contrarian how often Ivan's simple, low-tech, but voluminous site pops up near the top of Google searches on important topics. For example, it edges out Wikipedia for first place in a search for "Nova Scotia history." ...

09 October, 2009

The CBC Radio iPhone app has finally been updated, and now includes live streams from Halifax (and Fredericton and Saint John, but not Sydney or Charlottetown), and from at least one location in every Canadian time zone. The app allows on-demand access to many good CBC Radio shows, but alas, only to "highlights" of Ideas, whose producers have for some reason been glacially slow to grasp the importance of the Internet's time-shifting potential for this program. Hat tip: Scott Gillard....

09 October, 2009

Robert Creighton writes: As happens in most places when Street View goes live, I predict the local media will run around the streets trying to find locals who are outraged at the "invasion of privacy" introduced by this technology. I will be watching Tom Murphy on CBC News as they try to stir up yet another "controversy." Worth noting that the cameras used in UK seem to be much higher resolution than used here. No idea what Tom will do, but in recent weeks, CBC has been conspicuously indulging the hoary tradition whereby old media condemn the moral decay promoted by attractive new-media...

08 October, 2009

Google's Halifax street view feature is now online. Getting there is a little tricky. Here's how: Go to maps.google.ca Enter a specific address in the search box, and press enter. I entered "1726 Hollis St, Halifax, NS B3J 2Y3," which is the address of Province House. A little red-orange teardrop enclosing the letter "A" should show up in the map. Click on it. In the small window that pops up, click on "street view." Voila! Play with the cursor and the arrows in the image. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it is pretty darned cool. Let me know how far it ranges: Dartmouth?...

07 October, 2009

Doug MacKay, who edited the Halifax Daily News in its heyday, writes from Toronto: I am sorry to read that Rosie passed away. From the moment she peed on the editor's carpet, I knew she and her owner were of like mind. A great companion. For the record, Rosie only ever peed on the editor's carpet once, and at a young age. It is acknowledged, however, that the stain never came out, and may have played a role in Transcontinental's subsequent decision to abandon the Burnside location. UPDATE: What is it with beagles and journalists? James Cobb, Automobiles Editor of the New York...

06 October, 2009

Mike deAdder writes about the lot of cartoonists in a era of declining newspapers. Moneyquote: In 1967, Canada's Centennial Year and the year of my birth, Terry "Aislin" Mosher, Canada's pre-eminent editorial cartoonist began his long illustrious career after graduating from École des Beaux-arts in Quebec City. He started at The Montreal Star in 1967, then transferred to The Montreal Gazette in 1972. To this day, he still works for The Gazette. The great Roy Peterson, who retired this year, always called The Vancouver Sun his home, as did The Edmonton Journal's Malcolm Mayes, the Calgary Herald's Vance Rodewalt, and The Province's...

05 October, 2009
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