Freyburg

Yes, pigs are currently cruising through a very, very cold Hades, because Apple is finally releasing the iPhone in Canada, and not only that, it’s the new, improved, 3G iPhone. Due July 11th at Apple Stores, Rogers and Fido outlets, and presumably online. Of course, the potential fly in the ointment of all this mobile love is the big question of what precisely Rogers will charge for an iPhone-centric data plan. I’d like to think the larger opportunity of a game-changing product like the iPhone would jar Rogers to their senses and force them into an unlimited plan for $50 or less…but I’m not holding my breath.

Apple also rolled out Mobile Me, a revamp of the moribund .Mac service which prove to be quite useful (because .Mac certainly wasn’t), and the much awaited App Store, which promises to bring much the same creativity and device-extending goodness as the….uh, jailbreak community has for the last year.

Will I get a new 3G iPhone? it all depends on what Rogers does in terms of a data plan. There’s no point in having always-on connectivity if within a month I’m broke. But if they come to their senses and offer a reasonable rate, I’m most likely in.

While the traditional model of aid for developing countries is to dump a big pile of money into the lap of sometimes questionable governments, it turns out that the key to ending poverty might be to decentralize, lend smaller amounts of money to a larger group of people, and distribute cell phones amongst the poor. That’s subject of Wired founder Kevin Kelly’s blog post, which points to research indicating that democracy is more likely to sprout up when money, resources and communication tools are given out on a many-to-many model rather than a hierarchical, authoritarian approach. I recently had a chance to interview someone at Kiva.org, a microfinancing site, and he reiterated that not only do micro-loans do tangible good but the poorest beneficiaries of the loans are the most likely to pay back their debts.

At any rate, its interesting to see the Internet peer-to-peer model spreading to the developing world at the micro level. At the macro level, as noted in Fareed Zakaria’s “The Post-American World,” developing nations like India and China re already reaping the benefits of outsourcing, connectivity and a global marketplace.

Ah, the Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer. Back in 1982, this was my first taste of computational wizardry, expressed through the glories of 32k Extended memory, 8 colors on screen (at once!), tape drives and poring over BASIC manuals. And amazingly, there’s still a user community out there using these beasts. I still have my CoCo tucked away in a closet, along with my Powerbook 100. What was your first computer?

Purveyor of “meh” videos and net.dilletante Robert Scoble spoke at MediaBistro Circus today, and as Anil Dash reported on Twitter, his half-mad, half-insane information consumption patterns scared the normals but good. After the presentation, rumour has it, Scoble disclosed he’s working on yet another video project (my thoughts on his previous tryouts apparently had no influence on him), this time with the help of Revision3. Here’s the video of Scoble’s presentation, in glorious Conference-O-Vision.

Besides being my go-to source for books and other knowledge, Amazon has also built up an insane amount of infrastructure, and they’ve turned the IT world on its head by using it as a “cloud” that smaller sites can draw from rather than maintaining their own infrastructure. Wired elucidates.

Just to dampen the previous “OMGPARADIGMSHIFTBLURGH” of the previous post, here’s a “whoa, nelly, not so fast, Internet honchos” from the recent Web 2.0 conference.

I cant say any of this is off the mark.

Yes, an Apple IIgs in laptop form. I think I’m in love.

According to a couple of financial analysts, Windows is collapsing under its own weight and may no longer be a viable platform. As a Mac guy, I regard this as fine news, though analysts say a lot of things that don’t actually pan out.

Designer and fellow Vancouver beer n’ tech buddy Dave Shea just had his new Iphone/Touch icons featured on The Unofficial Apple Weblog. Congrats, Dave!