David Akin’s On The Hill

Maybe. Maybe not. I kicked this question around in Saturday's Globe and Mail:

“We've had a big correction in tech, particularly since June. However, what you now have is a trade-off between more attractive valuation but the outlook isn't as rosy as you would have said a year ago,” says Ian Ainsworth, senior vice-president at MacKenzie Financial Corp.
So, is it time to rebalance your equity portfolio, picking up some cheap tech stocks in expectation of better days ahead? Or, is there worse to come for the tech stars, and should you look elsewhere?
Bob McWhirter, president and portfolio manager at Selective Asset Management Inc. says your view on the sector is likely coloured by your outlook for overall markets. As markets move up, tech stocks tend to outperform. But as markets weaken, tech issues tend to get punished a little more than other sectors.
“At the moment, we are cautious with regard to our outlook for 2005,” Mr. McWhirter says. “We think there are pretty good buys within the tech patch, but over all, tech is a market-neutral at best.”
Gavin Graham, vice-president and director of investments at the Guardian Group of Funds, takes an even more bearish view. He says investors may want to look at something other than technology.
“You want to be very cautious. The easy money has been made,” he says. If you want to overweight a particular sector, Mr. Graham likes consumer staples, financials or energy. “All of these are boring. Tech is sexy. But if you'd been boring, you would have made money.”
Mr. Graham believes technology won't be attractive again for another nine months to a year.
Duncan Stewart is not waiting that long. He's in technology full time, running some technology funds at Tera Capital Corp.
Mr. Stewart believes technology should be part of every equity portfolio, if only because the sector makes up about 20 per cent of equity markets and about 20 per cent of economic activity.
“You want to build your portfolio with a certain amount of discipline and even if you really hate a sector, you probably shouldn't zero-weight it. You might half-weight it,” Mr. Stewart says. He suggests that investors might still want to have 5 to 10 per cent of their equity holdings in technology. “Zero-weighting is always incredibly risky because you might be wrong.” [Read the full story]

IBM Canada and Accenture Ltd are hiring thousands this year, I say in today's Globe and Mail. It's a short piece and, among the things I couldn't squeeze in, was the fact that Hewlett-Packard Canada Co., EDS and homegrown tech stars like CGI Group and Cognos are also growing their employee headcount.

Canadian multinational technology companies are adding thousands of employees to their payrolls this year, a sign of an improving environment for the sector in Canada.
“Our business is cooking on all cylinders,” said Bill Morris, Canada manager for Accenture Ltd. of Hamilton, Bermuda. Accenture, which provides technology outsourcing, consulting and integration services, had 3,800 employees in Canada in 2003, and will finish this year with more than 5,000 . . . [Read the full story]

I've enjoyed two great reads from Canadian journalist Clive Thompson in the last couple of weeks and that merits a blog entry. Today, in the New York Times Magazine, Clive writes about the way the U.S. military is using computer games and Silicon Valley programmers to help prepare soldiers for war. I once heard retired U.S. General Paul Gorman speak about some of these issues at a conference I attended a few years ago. He was involved with the America's Army initiative that Clive references.
Using computer games to train soldiers sounds gimmicky. But the U.S. military takes it seriously and so should more of us. Clive sketches out some of the issues that deserve more critical study.
The other piece of Clive's was published a while ago but I just got around to it recently. Writing in The Walrus, Clive profiled the work of a U.S. economist who argues that online gaming creates real economic activity. A great eye-opener of a piece, particularly for those who've never immersed themselves in Everquest and the like.

Industry Canada has a task force, as you may have heard, that is trying to figure out how to cut down on spam in the Canadian Internet space. If you've got an idea, they'd love to hear from you.

The Canadian Intellectual Property Office, an agency within Industry Canada, now has a newsroom at its site.
It's average-to-below-average as a resource for journalists.
There is no RSS feed for new information and no place to sign up for e-mail notification of new resources at the site. Do they really expect that journalists or anyone else interested in CIPO will drop in daily to see if there is anything new there? Note to PR practitioners: Push your stuff out to journalists. RSS is best; e-mail is a close second. Newswires are a distant third. Phone and fax failed to qualify.
The most important thing anyone setting up a Web site for the press can do is to put up a clearly labeled 'Media Contacts' section where they can find the name and phone number of someone they can right now (now means 'now' for the journalist. So if you're a North American West Coast journalist on deadline — say 5 pm PDT — that means there had better be media people answering the phones in New York at 8 pm New York time) for information. Web forms are no good. A journalist on deadline does not want a Web form when an editor is breathing down their neck. They want a real person who can answer their questions.
Journalists who want to contact CIPO have to do a little digging. There is no link at the 'Newsroom' that would direct a visitor to the name and number of a media contact. But journalists aren't (that) stupid. We simply open up a recent press release and, presto, down there at the bottom is a name and a phone number of a communications person.
Still, all I get is a name and phone number. Why doesn't CIPO and Industry Canada generally not include the e-mail address of the press contact. More often than not, all I need is clarification of a single fact on the release. Isn't that more efficiently and quickly handled via e-mail?

Canadian television viewers are not, American readers of this blog will be surprised to learn, able to avail themselves of Fox News. No Canadian cable or satellite TV company has received regulatory permission to carry Fox in Canada. But Canada's cable companies believe that Canadians should be able to watch Bill O'Reilly if we want to and so they have petitioned the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to be able to add Fox to the cable lineup.
In its application, Fox calls itself a cable news network “devoted to delivering objective coverage” of the day's events. I've never watched Fox News but I understand from my American friends that Fox may be stretching it a bit to say it is devoted to “delivering objective coverage.”
Regardless, the CRTC is taking the views of Canadians into account before it rules on the application and, today, a colleague writes to say the CRTC has extended the deadline to receive comments but the deadline is just around the corner — August 23. So, if you have an opinion on whether Fox News ought to be in Canada or not, you'd better tell the CRTC soon how you feel.
From The original notice, with instructions for filing comments”

“The (CRTC) has received two separate requests from the Canadian Cable Television Association (CCTA), acting as the Canadian sponsor, to add two non-Canadian satellite services to the lists of satellite services eligible for distribution on a digital basis (the digital lists). The CCTA described the non-Canadian services as follows:
Fox News: A 24 hour seven day per week national U.S. cable news network devoted to delivering objective coverage of the day's events. The service broadcasts original news and information programs including live breaking news stories and coverage of significant events in the United States and around the world”

Joey's got a great thread going. To introduce a non-Canadian thread to the kind of music that was popular in the mid-to-late eighties, he's asking for suggestions for songs to put on a CD he can send to this friend. He's not looking for the big hits — the Bryan Adams and Tom Cochranes of the world. Instead, he's looking for those offbeat hits that really gave the era its character.
I spent most of the 80s as a club DJ in Guelph, Ontario (first at the Bullring at the University of Guelph and then as the DJ that opened up the Trasheteria on MacDonnell in Guelph). Many have already chimed in at Joey's blog with some of my favourites but here's some more of what I really like from that era. (All but the Slow pick were also dance floor successes, as well, believe it or not).

Blue Peter – “Don't Walk Past” and “Take Me To War”
Slightly retro but fun: FM – “Phasors on Stun”
Martha and the Muffins – “Echo Beach”
Slow – “Have Not Been the Same”
The Government – “Flat Tire”
Diodes – “Tired of Waking Up Tired”
Forgotten Rebels – “Surfing on Heroin
Demics – “New York City”
David Wilcox – “Hypnotizin' Boogie”

Effective with this sentence, Wired News will no longer capitalize the “I” in internet.
At the same time, Web becomes web and Net becomes net.
Why? The simple answer is because there is no earthly reason to capitalize any of these words. Actually, there never was
Wired News Online, August 16, 2004
To which I say, sure there was and still is.
Why capitalize Internet? It is a proper noun and proper nouns are always capitalized. Why should it be a proper noun?

• There is only one Internet and it has special and unique characteristics that differentiate it from other electronic networks. Some other electronic networks that also have special and unique characteristics are proper nouns. E.G. CANet, Arpanet, Internet 2.
• Other electronic networks are not unique. The public switched telephone network, for example, differs in both its physical layer and communication layer from place to place. The Internet is a global network that has unique physical and technological characteristics.
• Like many proper nouns, there is no plural form. You can not speak about Internets.

Why capitalize Web and Net?

• The Net is a short form for Internet. If you capitalize Internet, you should capitalize Net.
• The Web is short for World Wide Web, a specific software application which runs on the Internet. (A style note: Web and Net are not interchangeable. They mean different things.) You would no more say you typed an essay using Microsoft word than you would say you downloaded a web page. Do gamers extoll the virtues of doom, everquest, or pac-man?

Incidentaly, my 1998 Globe and Mail style book has Web and Internet although since that edition was published style mavens at the Globe now prefer Internet and web. The New York Times style gurus, on the other hand, still choose Internet and Web.
The Chicago Manual of Style, incidentally, has some nice entries related to this issue and other quandaries for those trying to use the right style when, for example, reporting on video games in a scholarly or magazine article.
(FWIW, Chicago uses Web site and Internet . . .)
Meanwhile, the Slashdot geeks are kicking this vitally important issue around — and the geeks have some interesting insights.

Apple Computer was first off the mark when it comes to computers you can hold in the palm of your hand. Apple's Newton, though, was too far ahead of its time, the pundits said. I never got to try a Newton. I have, however, used lots of handhelds from Palm, the company that really drove the whole PDA and handheld revolution. Indeed, I still have a functioning original Palm Pilot. (One reason the Newton may have lost out to the Palm Pilot might have been size. Hard to fit a Newton into your shirt pocket.)
Investors and fans of Apple have long wondered why Apple, with its strong history of excellent design, didn't get back into the handheld market. Well, maybe they are. The Register reports that Apple has filed design trademarks for what looks like a wireless tablet, an iBook, if you will, without a keyboard. Apple, as it always does, declines to comment on any products it might or might not be developing.

Today's Globe and Mail has my profile of Mike Thewalt, a physicist at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. Thewalt's a neat guy and his work on the spectroscopy of silicon helped him get the nod as Canada's physicist of the year:

Physicist of the year
Mike Thewalt started out fiddling around with chemistry, but after almost blowing himself up when he was 16, he switched disciplines. It was a good move. His insights into silicon are causing a buzz.
BURNABY, B.C. — Thirty-eight years after he blew up his basement bedroom fiddling with a German chemistry kit, Mike Thewalt scratches his head, grins and tries to explain the wonders of isotopically pure silicon.
Dr. Thewalt is, by trade, an experimental physicist and, by rank, a professor in the physics department at Simon Fraser University. He has been fiddling around for years now with silicon, the world's most common semiconductor.
In fact, he's so good at fiddling around that he is the 2004 winner of the Canadian Association of Physics Medal of Honour, a kind of MVP award for the country's physics establishment ….[Read the full story]

The print version of the story has a great picture of Thewalt in his lab at SFU. It's taken by John Lehmann, who is one of my favourite photographers when it comes to shooting profile shots. Sadly, the article and photo are not on a colour page in the paper (despite advances in newsprint printing technology, they're still rare and expensive) but I suspect what John saw was an even stronger version than what ended up running.