Now here’s a big win for students at Durham College, and hopefully a step for the same change at UOIT. Starting next year, the mobile learning program at Durham College will be dead, and any required computer hardware or software will be the student’s responsibility to acquire. That means no more $1500 per year fee to basically borrow a laptop and its software from the school. It means you will have ownership over what you pay for, andchoice over the laptop and software you use.

Often, the only paid software an academic program needs is Microsoft Office, and paying a one-time fee for a laptop (which you own) and Microsoft Office (which the school bookstore sells for a mere $7 to students) is far cheaper than the recurring $1500/year mobile learning fee paid now. Even in my program, Information Technology, we have made no use of any software installed by the school aside from Microsoft Office. Almost all of our students have formatted their laptops and installed Windows 7 from scratch, and in no case would any of our software require special hardware that was only offered by the university.

Although once intended to be a high-tech advantage distinguishing UOIT/Durham College from other schools, laptops have been easy to come by for years now, and the mobile learning program has just been doing the school more harm than good. Having course material online via WebCT and offering wireless internet access across campus are standard features at all universities these days, and even prospective students know it and aren’t buying the hype. I have some contacts who have worked as tour guides for the schools that found themselves constantly trying to justify this obsolete fee to skeptical prospective students.

Unfortunately, this change only applies to the few Durham College programs that were part of the mobile learning program. Every academic program at UOIT is subject to the mobile learning fee, so we can only hope a similar review of the program is made there.

The related article in The Chronicle, the Durham College newspaper, states that part of the change was thanks to work from the Student Association, so kudos to Amy England and the rest of the SA team for working on this. Now if we can get UOIT’s mobile learning fee axed, students will save $6000 over the course of four years, and we can finally say goodbye to this outdated, costly program.

The theatre has been doing pretty much nothing since it showed up, having had only a few shows over the span of a few years, and there were some legal struggles between the city and theatre owner as well. It’s a fairly new and nice looking building too, so it’s nice to see UOIT take it over.

The back lot is going to be used for a five-storey building, also used by the school for classrooms, offices, and meeting space. The school is also asking for a 99 year lease on a total of 250 parking spaces, which is good news to the many students concerned about the lack of parking in downtown Oshawa.

Making an acquisition like this is a great way to quickly expand the school, and it is not uncommon. I remember when going to Ryerson University that a deal had just been made for the school to even use parts of the newly built AMC Theatre as class space, but I think we’re lucky to have a bit of extra class with the Regent Theatre.

Source: Council OKs transfer of Regent to UOIT (newsdurhamregion.com)

Use the left and right buttons on the edges of the video to switch between my 3 videos. I have Green Eyes, a cover of Billie Jean by Michael Jackson, and a beautiful display of butterfly cut-outs falling on the crowd during Lovers in Japan.

I’ve set up a set on Flickr with screenshots of each page of my apps. If you roll your mouse over any of the app icons on the page, a description of the app and link to its official website (if available) will appear.

Click here to view the set!

The Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act, 1996 (PSSDA) and the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Amendment Act, 2004 were passed to make Ontario’s public sector more open and accountable to taxpayers. The Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act requires organizations that receive public funding from the Province of Ontario to disclose annually the names, positions, salaries and total taxable benefits of employees paid $100,000 or more in a calendar year.

Interestingly enough, this allows you to view the exact salaries of individual professors at colleges and universities across Ontario. You can even see how much your dean or even school president makes! Every professor doesn’t seem to be on the list, but there were more than a few that I knew by name. Turns out the president of UOIT, Ron Bordessa, made $289,499.96 in 2008. Not bad at all!

Click here to view the salaries for the profs at your school, but be warned, the document is huge and might slow down your computer a bit.

Click here to go directly to the photos and videos!

Last night (May 23, 2009) I had the pleasure of seeing Keane perform at The Sound Academy in Toronto, with opening acts Mat Kearney and The Helio Sequence. The energy at the concert was incredible, both from the crowd and the band. Although frontman Tom Chaplin expressed his love for Toronto as he probably does for every city the band visits, you could tell that the band was genuinely taken aback by how loud and appreciative the crowd was. Tom barely had a chance to fit in any words between songs because the audience simply could not stop cheering, and wild chants of the band’s name began several times.

Keane’s performance was as flashy and high-energy as ever, with Tom dancing around the stage, Tim Rice-Oxley throwing all of his weight into the keys that lay before him, Richard Hughes relentlessly beating the drums. This time round, newcomer bassist Jesse Quin joined the perfomance, a musician that recorded with Keane on their latest album Perfect Symmetry. The audience was even treated to a few acoustic sessions, the highlight of which is undoubtedly Tom’s soaring, majestic sounding voice that effortlessly reached higher and higher.

Seeing Keane is an experience that won’t disappoint. Being in a room full of fans at a concert is always a great feeling, but the high energy that already pulses through Keane’s music multiplies tenfold in a room full of fans who are highly passionate about the music.

I’m not a very good photographer and didn’t really have the best view, but I have embedded my collection of photos and videos below. The photos are often blurry but the videos are pretty decent I’d say! To see an overview of all my photos and videos, go directly to the photo set on Flickr. I also have two longer videos uploaded to YouTube of Keane performing “We Might As Well Be Strangers” and “Bedshaped” that you can watch.

This makes sense as the Faculty of Education is currently downtown, and the school plans to move the Faculty of Business downtown in the future (to which there is a Facebook group “protest” against). The relocation was briefly mentioned in the UOIT Master Plan, but with very few details.

But who needs details when you love to complain, right? Regardless, we are all entitled to our opinions, and I choose to take the initial stance of optimism. A lot of people are concerned about parking issues, one-way streets, and a generally unattractive downtown. But if UOIT has spent all this time and money on creating such a great plan for the main campus, does the idea of them leaving the downtown campus as an afterthought make any sense? Considering it will be home to the Business Faculty, one of the largest, if not the largest, faculties on campus, I expect the downtown campus to get the same thorough treatment that the main campus has.

Not only will the downtown campus receive attention from the school, but also businesses. Downtown Oshawa can become a happening place when the right parties become involved (as proven by the success of Isabella’s Chocolate Cafe) and with high student traffic, downtown Oshawa will continue to grow in great ways. One of the things I miss most from attending Ryerson University was the sense that I was in a miniature city of students, but in reality, the school only owns a handful of buildings which are scattered amongst existing businesses in downtown Toronto. Many of these businesses thrived off the student population, like the Thai cuisine I would visit frequently with friends. There were plenty of places to hang out when at school, and I envision the same thing happening in downtown Oshawa with growth driven by an increasing student population. Currently my entire university experience takes place in about 2 or 3 buildings standing next to each other on a campus completely cut off from the rest of society — hardly the campus atmosphere that other universities experience.

So that’s my take on the issue. In the end, any opinion at this point is highly speculative. UOIT hasn’t revealed exactly how much of a focus they are going to have on the downtown campus. In fact, all the speculation is based on a few bullet points in a presentation. Nonetheless, it’s an interesting discussion, so here is a glass-half-full opinion.

Finally this great feature is going to be coming to Canada, as stated in a bunch of news articles. Globe and Mail quotes:

“Using Street View, users can preview holiday accommodation, find meeting spots, explore neighbourhoods and properties, and look up driving directions,” the company said in announcing Street View’s Canadian version.

And if nothing else, it’ll just be cool to explore major Canadian cities in full 3D. I see myself using this when trying to figure out directions and what I should be looking for when going somewhere new. Even better, street view is supported on smart phones like the iPhone, so it is also easily accessible.

UOIT is still no further ahead in their search for a new name. But a recent news article mentions one idea I like a lot.

Another member suggested asking the government for the name University of Ontario, and if it isn’t granted, the school can run institute of technology beside the name in eight-point font.

It drops the IT part, which seems to be the main issue, but still retains enough of the name so that we wouldn’t have to try and build our reputation up from scratch again.

Sounds good to me!

Many see this as Facebook’s attempt to battle the rapid growth of Twitter. It’s well known that Facebook failed in trying to acquire Twitter before, so it obviously sees status updates as very important. But are they really?

Here’s what I think. In my experience, Twitter and Facebook users are usually mutually exclusive (give or take an occasional visit). Chances are when you read this, you weren’t even familiar with Twitter (nerds like me aside). They are different products for different needs. People that use Facebook love it for all the applications, like photos, wall posts, notes, messaging, and countless third-part apps. Many people on Twitter have left Facebook to escape the overload of applications, enjoying the minimalistic microblogging, streamlined interface.

Yet Facebook has tried to bring the minimalism of Twitter to Facebook, which really makes no sense. Nobody ever said “Hey, I want all the applications and great features of Facebook, but lets hide them all away and pretend we only have one feature like Twitter.” What a waste of such a feature-rich web platform! Ultimately the implementation has

THE BOTTOM LINE: Twitter is more about what it isn’t than what it is. Feature-wise, Facebook has nothing to compete with. Mobile notifications and status updates have been in place on Facebook for a long time. This redesign is competing with Twitter in the only way it can: by altering the focus of Facebook to status updates for every user. This in turn is sacrificing user preference and bringing a product that isn’t really Twitter, nor is it focusing on being the feature rich web platform that Facebook should be.

And to finish, here is a hilarious video that pretty much sums up my thoughts about Twitter. As you can probably tell, my preference lies with Facebook. (If you are reading this from Facebook, click here to watch it)

This publicly available board report from the UOIT website reveals the planned student fees for the 2009-2010 school year. The verdict: everything is going up.

Before you get too up in arms about this, read the background section which states that the tuition fees up to 2010 were already decided upon way back in 2006. In addition, the ancillary fees have always increased at a rate consistent with inflation.

It doesn’t lessen the pain on your wallet at all, but it’s good to note that this isn’t anything new, students aren’t having anything pulled over their heads, and as ancillary fee protocols are a provincial requirement, it’s almost definite the same thing is happening at every other school. But if you were looking to figure out how much money you need to save up at your summer job, here’s the info you need.

Help give UOIT the excellent reputation it deserves! A valid UOIT e-mail address is required.

The Globe and Mail want to hear what you have to say about your university – from teaching assistants to technology services, professors to parking, athletics to extracurricular activities.  The data collected will be published in The Globe and Mail and the results will be made available to UOIT to help identify ways to improve your overall educational experience.

Take the survey and you will automatically be entered to win:

One (1) $1,000 cash award

Two (2) $500 cash awards

The Canadian University Report takes just 15 to 20 minutes to complete – but you have to complete the survey before 12:00 midnight, April 30, 2009.

DealExtreme is a great place to buy electronics and accessories with free shipping on all orders worldwide that take about 2 weeks to arrive. Get memory cards, iPod accessories, cell phone cases/headsets, and more for a fraction of the price you pay at Wal-Mart.

However, there are a few things you should avoid, such as the cheap knockoff MP3 players and cell phones that they sell. That being said, you need to use your own discretion on what should and should not be ordered from China. Things like simple cables and cases that sell for $20 in-store are obviously very basic accessories that shouldn’t cost more than a few dollars, so those are safe purchases. Additionally the memory cards sold by DealExtreme are for the most part genuine name-brand products which are also safe.

For more electronics from China, check out FocalPrice and Kaidomain.

Besides that, most other products can be found at competitive prices on eBay, and they can be purchased immediately with the “Buy It Now” option. Health and beauty products in particular can often be found for great prices. For example, try doing a search for the usually overpriced Biore Strips.

If you have any other cheap sources for buying things online, let me know in the comments!

The Mentalists play Kids by MGMT on their iPhones and iPod Touches, using only apps downloaded from the Apple App Store. Apps used Ocarina, Retro Synth, miniSynth, DigiDrummer Lite.  I love MGMT, and I love my iPhone, so naturally I love this video. More than anything, I’m just amazed that music today can even be performed with our cell phones.

“In terms of the ratio of long-term debt to revenues … The worst performers are University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) at 219%, Wilfrid Laurier (WLU) at 87% and Lakehead at 76%”

“If one were to estimate the long-term debt per enrolled student at each university … The highest amounts are for UOIT at about $47,000, Lakehead at $13,500 and WLU at $11,100”

I suppose it’s understandable that UOIT has so much debt, being a new school that is still trying to quickly expand. But with our tuition fees already considerably higher than other schools (my grand total for the year with the laptop fee is about $3000 – $4000 more than what I paid at Ryerson) you would think the school would be doing a bit better financially, although we do have a lower student population. Either way, you can’t help but be a little frightened by how huge the gaps between UOIT in first and Lakehead/Laurier in second are in the above figures.

If you are a web developer, a question that will undoubtedly arise from your clients at some point is how a client’s website can have a higher ranking in Google’s search results. One easy method of landing on the first page is to pay for Google AdWords, Google’s advertising program which allows your website to appear above the results for searches with keywords of your choosing. But if you are looking to land at the top of the actual search results, Google has this video explaining the basics on how it ranks its results. For more tips, Google has today launched a Webmaster Help Channel on YouTube dedicated to helping webmasters optimize and secure their websites for Google and the rest of the web. Google has a range of resources that web developers should check out, including Webmaster Tools, Analytics, and a large library of APIs and code.

A tech pet peeve of mine has always been the common misconception that more megapixels always means a camera with better quality images. This is far from the truth. In this link, a tech blog Gizmodo gives a very technical, yet easy to understand explanation on how digital cameras work and why this simply isn’t the case.

But in case you don’t feel like reading that article, at least consider this. The camera in the iPhone is 2 megapixels, an amount which was considered acceptable not all that long ago and could produce high quality shots. Yet when you view shots such as this one, you see an incredible amount of graininess, washed out colours, and blurs. Megapixels only determine how much detail is being captured in the image at once, and is only really relevant when it comes to making prints. Yet fewer and fewer photos are actually being printed these days, and even when they are, you actually only need a 3 megapixel camera to print a 5” x 7” photo! The standard of 10 megapixels today is actually overkill for most people. (For more megapixel to printing information, click here.)

So next time you purchase a digital camera, just search Google for some reviews first. Many reviews often include sample pictures taken with the camera, which is a great way to get an idea of the picture quality. Additionally, the popular photo sharing site Flickr will usually display technical information about any photo, such as the camera that was used to take it as well as the configured settings.

This includes more trips on the wildly popular routes serving the UOIT and Durham College campus, where buses heading to the campus are often jam-packed during the morning rush. Service along Simcoe Street during peak times will be every 7.5 minutes, up from the current 15, making it the most frequent bus in Durham.

There you go. As a frequent passenger on the Simcoe bus, I can definitely vouch for this need in increased service. The bus is jam-packed not only in the rush hours, but all throughout the day.

It’s a great step in the right direction and we will hopefully see some more changes soon. Personally I’d like to see some entirely new routes, like a one way ride to the Oshawa Centre from the school as currently there is no way to get to the mall unless you transfer buses downtown.

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.

Thomas H. Huxley (1825 – 1895)