Vancouver Canucks 2.0
 This article originally appeared in 24hrs Vancouver on November 26, 2008. |
Many credit Barack Obama’s domination of the web as the key to his election success. If web presence has anything to do with the chase of the Stanley Cup, Vancouver Canuck fans had best start planning Lord Stanley’s parade.
From using bloggers as models in their advertising, to a video podcast taking fans behind the scenes, to tools for blogging fans and blogging players, the Vancouver Canucks are “giving it 110%” on the internet.
“The goal is to give our fans a voice and allow them to engage with the team as much as possible,” says Canucks Director of New Media, Kevin Kinghorn. “One of the big things we’ve tried to do this year is create a zone where fans can do that.”
The Fan Zone at Canucks.com is the center of the action featuring fan blogs, podcasts and message boards alongside blogs by players, like Darcy Hordichuck.
“I think doing something like this is good to do for fans because they always like to know more about players and life outside the rink so I’m happy to do this,” writes Hordichuk in a recent entry.
Hordi also has his own website, DarcyHordichuk.com which features fight videos and some blog entries about life in the big leagues.
“I know as a kid growing up, I always wanted to know what dressing rooms looked like, some people like their hockey cards, I wanted to know about the dressing rooms – everyone has their thing, right?”
Hordichuk, and other blogging players like goalie Curtis Sanford, record their entries and then the Canucks new media team transcribes the answers into blog posts.
“That seems to be the easiest way, I’m not really computer survey,” admits Hordichuk.
It also lets the new media team steer the content of the posts by having the players prompted with questions that are sent in by the fans.
While Darcy Hordichuk has had his own website since his days as a minor leaguer with the Orlando Solar Bears, don’t expect to be able to friend him up on Facebook anytime soon.
“I did Facebook, and was a little overwhelmed. I found out every time I’d go to Edmonton or Calgary old friends I’d never seen would come out of the woodwork looking for tickets,” he chuckles. “I try to keep my life simple and I’ve got enough things going on. Facebook can get addicting and take up a lot of your time.”
The Canucks also are producing their own behind the scene podcast made up of a lot of press content and interviews, along with some fun segments with the players. A recent episode had Alex Edler giving Swedish lessons and a future post will feature some of the players playing a Christmas trivia game.
“Fans are really interested, there’s an appetite for info on the players and we’re trying to deliver that,” says Kinghorn.
BLOGOSPHERE BUZZ
Shaquille O’Neal is trying to bring some new media love to his Phoenix Suns. He’s signed on to Twitter and has been trading messages with fans, and mixing in philosophy with his tweets about cheeseburgers. “Treat people as u expect them to be, not how u think they are,” wrote Shaq on the weekend.
Once again, Meg Fowler is a local in the lead for the Canadian Blog Awards. “Canada has such a unique, fresh blogging community — it’s amazing to get a kind little nod amongst such creative people,” says Meg who has made her blogosphere mark with witty haiku and friday love lists to welcome the weekend.
“13668 people are watching puppies sleep,” wrote Darren Barefoot on Monday. It’s true. The Shiba Inu Puppy Cam has become a web sensation with more than 4 million viewers in the past month. It’s simply a web camera pointed at six 7 week old Shiba Inu puppies, that’s it. It will all be over in a week or two as the puppies have all been adopted.
Google has unveiled some very exciting upgrades. If you look under your GMail settings tab you’ll find themes which will let you change the colour palette of your page. Video has also been added to GTalk, look for a video camera next to a contact to let you know they’re online and available for a video chat. The Google Mobile App has added voice search for the iPhone. Now instead of typing in your searches, you can speak them. All the upgrades are free and easy to use.
Apple Sale for Black Friday 2008
Here’s the image in the email that has gone out this week:
What does it mean?
The Apple Insider says:
“We believe ultra-low cost notebooks will be a major draw this Black Friday as vendors look to push volumes and consumers look to trade down given the economic environment,” he wrote in a report to clients Wednesday. “We have not seen any Apple Black Friday ads yet (as is customary), but expect the company to be more aggressive than usual in its one-day sale, perhaps with $100 off a few Mac models and discounts on several iPods.”
Whatever sale comes, expect it only online and only through the US Apple store. Canada isn’t down with Black Friday, although The Brick is trying to start something called Red Friday this week.
The Blog According to Buzz. Spread the word, ya heard?
Common Sense to Shop Online Safely
| This article originally appeared in 24hrs Vancouver on November 19, 2008. |
More and more Canadians are dipping their mouse in the online e-commerce world. A recent StatsCan survey shows nearly half of Canadian internet users made an online purchase in 2007. We bought nearly $13B worth of goods last year, up 61% from the 2005 survey.
While we’re getting more comfortable shopping online, more than 3/4 of us still have nagging thoughts in the back of our mind about credit card use online.
Avoiding the pitfalls in e-commerce requires simple, basic common sense; Dr. Phil styled advice. So instead of talking to internet security experts, I canvassed some online friends for bread and butter basics when it comes to protecting your online identity.
Duane Storey boils it down to simply looking for a web address that starts with https instead of http. The “s” on the end of the address means it’s through a secure socket layer.
“Http is not encrypted,” explains Duane. “So anyone can intercept and read. Https is encrypted, so all traffic is secure and cannot be read if intercepted.”
Brian LeRoux adds another warning, “just because a website utilizes SSL (that little lock in the bottom right of your browser) doesn’t mean you can actually trust the vendor.”
Brian recommends sticking to big name vendors, like Amazon.
Once you know what you want to buy, what you use to buy it also matters. And we mean the browser you’re using to access the web. Brian warns you to stay away from Internet Explorer.
“IE is the most insecure and often attacked web browser. Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome are safer browsers,” he says.
Still nervous? Make sure the website has a phone number, and call to speak with the person.
If handing over your credit card is what makes you uncomfortable, get a separate “online only” credit card with a smaller limit. Since you’ll only be using it for web transactions, it will be easier to track charges that aren’t yours.
Tracking a company’s history should also be part of your buying research. Sites like RipOffReport.com have active message boards where consumers share bad experiences about companies and transactions.
In the end, common sense should reign supreme. As Brian explains: “do not be afraid to do business online: ask your friends, Google the vendor, read the feedback online.”
However, should something happen and your identity gets compromised, the BC Crime Prevention Association has a list of 9 steps you need to take. The first is to make a list of what has been stolen, and track all the activity on those accounts.
Tis the season to be shopping, and some of the best deals of the season are on the web. With some simple common sense, taking part in the e-commerce revolution shouldn’t be a painful experience.
BLOGOSPHERE BUZZ
Barack Obama used the web to get elected, and will keep using it once he’s in office. He now has set up his own YouTube channel and will release weekly statements. Hmm, I wonder if Oprah showed him how to do that? The other “O” has had her own channel since the spring.
Obama, however, won’t be able to take his Blackberry to the Oval Office. The Presidential Records Act makes all correspondence a part of an official record, so Presidents are forced to give up email before entering office. There is talk that Obama will try to keep his Blackberry as a “read only” device, but the Secret Service is said to have security concerns.
Tis the season to grow pointy ears, put on tights and have jingle bells on your toes. Local blogger Gus Fosarolli is happily reminding all the popular Elf Yourself website is back for another round of Holiday fun. The site, from OfficeMax, lets you cut and paste your face on to a dancing elf.
You want to know how Santa knows if you’ve been bad or good? He follows you on Twitter. Both the jolly old elf, and his wife have popped up in the follow accounts of many local twitterers this week. All of a sudden the behviour has changed from naughty to nice.
Building a Diabetes Community Online
| This article originally appeared in 24hrs Vancouver on November 12, 2008. |
Not everything you find on Google can lift your spirits. If the doctor gives you a diagnosis, or if you feel funny symptoms, “Dr Google” is often the first place we turn for a deeper explanation - and it’s not always good news.
It was that way for Kerri Morrone when she turned to the search engine to look for more information about diabetes.
“This whole list of reasons why I was going to die came up,” she laments about her first searches on the disease just 4 years ago. “It was like this depressing laundry list.”
“There has to be a lot of people living with it, not just dying from it,” she thought. “I wanted to find those people, and I couldn’t and it made me crazy.”
So to bring something positive to the table, she started writing her blog, SixUntilMe (referring to the age when she was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes).
“I started a blog about what real life with diabetes was like and other people found me. So I wasn’t the only one looking.”
As many businesses turn to social networks to boost sales and build brands, Manny Hernandez is using the model to build TuDiabetes, an online community for diabetics that borrows from spanish for it’s title (trans: your diabetes).
“Towards the end of 2006, a thought started brewing in my head: the idea of making Social Networks work for things beyond making friends and socializing,” says Manny. “I wondered how I could put Social Networking to the service of a higher cause. I had to get a Social Network for people with diabetes going.”
These kinds of communities are vital for people living with challenges.
When Kerri was younger, she’d go to diabetes camps where other children spoke her language, understood her needs and dealt with the same problems. As she got older and went to college and entered the workforce, people who understood and could support started to dwindle.
“I felt like I was the only diabetic within miles and had no connection with other people who got it,” Kerri remembers. But with the connections she has made through her blogging, the mood changes.
“Yes, I’m a part of a community! These people get it!” she cheers.
Scott Johnson is a columnist at dLife, and has called TuDiabetes: “MySpace on insulin.”
“It is my hope that people who have all types of diabetes, newly diagnosed and veterans alike, moms with gestational diabetes as well as parents of children with diabetes, come on board and engage in a fruitful exchange using all the media that the social network technology puts at our disposal,” writes Manny.
BLOGOSPHERE BUZZ
World Diabetes Day is this Friday. To celebrate, the sails of Canada Place will be one of 500 world monuments to be lit blue to “shine a light on Diabetes.”
Lance Armstrong has two websites to meet his mission of curing cancer. Livestrong.com is a for profit site about healthy living, while Livestrong.org is a non-profit resource for those living with cancer. As Lance said at the Web2.0 Summit in San Francisco last week, “if .com is successful enough, .org will be out of business.”
Last week it was Gears of War 2, tonight the lineups at Future Shop will be for World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King. The game goes on sale tonight at 11:59p at the Broadway and Pine store with events starting at 9 including a costume contest.
If you’re one of the last hold outs on MySpace, there is respite from the loud videos, clashing colour and complete chaos with the launch of MySpace 2.0. With a simple click, the entire MySpace universe gains a certain air of Facebook simplicity.
A Workout for Writers
| This article originally appeared in 24hrs Vancouver on November 5, 2008. |
The internet is all about building communities. Look in the right corners and people with shared interests will gather together on any sorts of topics from dog sweater knitting, to miniature plane building, to parenting children with special needs.
It’s at the core of our being, we want to connect with people who have like minded interests, and the web helps build bridges across distances to bring people together.
Taunt Media’s Protagonize does that for creative writers. The site is a community that allows writers to collaborate on different works as linear fiction (a traditional story) or in choose-your-own-adventure style that allows people to branch stories in different directions, adding layers and depth to the characters and tales.
Created last winter by Founder and Managing Editor, Nick Bouton, the site has made quite a name for itself in the scant 10 months it has been live.
It’s a place where authors can go to get instant feedback on their style and content.
“They treat it like a game almost, it’s just like practicing and improving your writing style,” says Bouton. “Some people use it as an experimental training ground, where they post things that may not be their normal style and there’s some published authors on there that sometimes go anonymous.”
“People who put post stuff, a lot of the time it’s going to get read,” says Nick, who is proud of how his site funnels new posts to make sure they’re available to readers. “They have a feeling that people are actually going to see this stuff and there’s a good chunk of people who are talented writers who are going to see it. So they get a kick out of the creative feedback they get, and the back and forth.”
And now Protagonize has been nominated as one of the Best Social Media Websites in the country for the Canadian New Media Awards set to be handed out in Toronto next week.
The award would be nice publicity for Nick, who, until now, has been spreading the word about his site organically through message boards, Facebook groups and Twitter.
There are two keys that set Protagonize apart from other collaborative writing sites and circles online: membership is free, and the authors control the copyright of their content via Creative Commons licensing.
“For me, the business is about building the community and trying to make income off the site itself, not the work they’re producing.”
The site is a side project for Bouton, something he works at in his spare time, which means many late nights and early mornings managing the comment spam and trolls and coding new features. But as with many who work on the web, it’s all worth it to see people active and participating.
“As long as people enjoy themselves,” he says.
BLOGOSPHERE BUZZ
Protagonize is up against another local for the Excellence in Social Media Website award, Clive Goodson’s Pixton. Pixton is a site where people can create comics, without drawing. All the pieces are online for you to put together to build funny, personal web strips.
You’re a few days behind the rest of the group, but if you’re in to writing, check out NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. Authors are encouraged to crank out 50 000 words of fiction in 30 days (25 now). Last year more than 15 000 completed the challenge.
It’s all about the awards as bloggers nominate friends who in turn will nominate them for the Canadian Blogger Awards. There are more than 2 dozen categories with nominations open until November 22.
Let’s hope many more follow where YVR is leading us - free WiFi. Everywhere. A contract with Telus has just expired and instead of renewing it, the airport has opened their 70 internet attenas to travelers in the international, domestic and south terminals for free.
-
About cyberbuzz
buzz bishop is the host and writer of cyberbuzz, a one minute daily radio feature, and a weekly column in 24hrs, about the internet and wired culture.
buzz takes a quick and youthful look at the online world from the perspective of someone who understands new trends, but still speaks your language.
-
Contact Buzz
