Am I the only one who worries about data?

In grade 5 (this was in the 80s), I was one of perhaps two kids that typed up my projects in a word processor.  Night before a project was due, WordPerfect 4.2 froze on me, and the 286 I was running it on wouldn’t boot again, and my work was lost.  I had actually printed it, and handed in a marked up draft.  But an important lesson was learned, very early - keep backups.  Note here how resilient the daisy-wheel printed draft was, and how fragile the PC was.

Reading these Apple announcements last week….

Apple blows me away.  Everyone’s talking about iPad, and to a lesser extent, iPhone OS4 multi-tasking.

But its iAd that seems like the huge deal to me.

If you’d me asked two weeks ago, I would have said that Google pretty much owns the future of advertising.  People just don’t watch TV or read paper media like they once did, and Google seemed to be the only one that had figured out how to make ad money.

I think Open Street Map is going to become a really big thing.  Wikipedia-like.

What Wikipedia is to Britannica, Open Street Maps is to Teleatlas (provider for Google Maps).  Open Street Maps are end-user created maps.  Street or park missing in your new subdivision?  Just go and add it yourself - no need to wait for Google to map out your neighbourhood.

From what I’ve seen in the last 18 months, I think it will soon be the best, most current map of anywhere.  When I first checked my Toronto address, maybe 18 months ago, the street was mapped, but the street name was incorrect.  By about a year ago, my street was properly labelled, but the Ottawa neighbourhood I grew up in was not.  Now, not only do I see Ottawa suburbs completely mapped, but I see gravel roads in cottage country properly mapped and labeled.  Incredible progress in very little time.

Does anyone recognize this?

Whenever someone asks me if I play video games, I like to say that I stopped playing video games when they started taking up more than 2 floppy disks.  I think I was only a very casual gamer, and as games got bigger, one had to put more time and effort in to them to get more enjoyment out of them.

In 2005, the cost of digital cameras had come down to the point where I could justify one.  I was looking for a point-and-shoot, and for just under $400, I picked up a 3.2 megapixel Canon A75.  It was a great camera - in truth, I didn’t need anything more.

Two years later, my first daughter was born, and soon enough she was walking, then running, and the camera captured every moment.