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I'm in the process of preparing for my PhD comprehensive exams (or rather my faculty's equivalent). So I'm currently enmeshed in the literature related to my topic - how people use location-based services to make sense of their places.

The majority of physicians I know are very protective of their personal workspace. They do not like outsiders traipsing through their practices, potentially compromising patient privacy. They also do not like having anyone mess with their computers, servers, EMRs, and billing software. After all, if it is not broken, why fix it? In a solo or small medical practice, it can be difficult to justify the expense of regular computer and network maintenance, particularly when it comes at a cost that exceeds the medical practitioners’ hourly revenue-generating capabilities. However, without maintenance, both short- and long-term costs of an EMR can be significantly higher.

Every now and then, you come to a crossroad where you are forced to reinvent your business lest you hit a proverbial wall. You’re not the only one.

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority, the non-profit agency charged with managing the dot-ca domain name, has emerged in recent years as an important voice on Internet governance. Backed by a big bank account - CIRA earns millions of dollars each year for maintaining the domain name registry - it has launched an annual Internet governance forum attended by hundreds of Canadians, partnered with various groups to help small businesses establish an online presence, and sponsored many Canadian Internet-related events.

If you started your website using a ‘Shared Hosting’ solution, you probably did because it was the most affordable option on the table. A Shared Hosting plan can be VERY inexpensive, and can provides the perfect starting point for a small business or personal website, blog, photo gallery or community forum.

Since Canada's Walk of Fame started in Toronto's entertainment district in 1998, I thought it was a great way to recognize the accomplishments of notable Canadians. Canadians don't often value their history and culture and the Walk brings prominence to these contributions.

Consumers have become accustomed to lots of choice for entertainment and information services. Music and movie services offer single downloads and a range of subscription models, while newspapers and magazines sell their content as individual issues or subscriptions on multiple platforms. Yet Canadian cable and satellite providers remain a stubborn holdout.

I'm late in posting this, but the organization Mobile Future every year does a wrap-up of trends in mobile usage. Highly informative and entertaining.

Dropbox announced yesterday they are increasing the amount of free storage one can earn by referring people to the service!

The country’s profes­sional accounting bodies regulating the use of Chartered Accountant, Certified Management Accountant and Certified General Accountant desig­na­tions are currently deep into merger talks, as you might have heard.

Athabasca University, BCcampus, and the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa have joined together to re-launch Creative Commons Canada.

RIM’s co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis clearly did not want to step aside. Lazaridis laid RIM’s foundation and Balsillie helped him build on it, and what they wrought was wonderful and a beacon for Canada’s tech sector.

Leaders across all industries are realizing that product and service quality along with innovation are only as strong as the people and the processes behind it…But, what are the critical components of an effective employee reward and recognition program?…Is there a framework that companies can use to enhance and promote the effectiveness of their current business environment, to drive increased business performance and profitability?

The “consumerization of IT” – or the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend – has emerged front and center, and a lot of CIOs aren’t very happy.  A recent article in Computerworld calls it a “thorn in the side” of most IT departments, and cites complexity, support, and security concerns.

Backblog will be taking a break just after Christmas and we'll be back with fresh news and information in the New Year. We wish all of you a good end to this year and a prosperous and happy start to 2012!

After another couple of month’s silence precipitated by some minor surgery, the holiday season and, quite frankly, too much “same old – same old” news, a couple of articles have caused me to, once again, put my fingers to the keyboard. The first, a blog – unfortunately his last with CIO.com, by Thomas Wailgum, IT in 2020: Will it Even Exist?, and the second by Marilyn Weinstein, again in CIO.com, The Power of IT Drives Businesses Forward. While the two titles might appear contradictory, I felt they were both saying the same thing in somewhat different ways, and that what they were saying is important – although not new.

It has been established that a team leader's ability to create a high level of trust within their team plays a critical role in team effectiveness and sustained levels of team performance. A leader's ability to develop a culture of trust over time within their team is central to enhancing or impeding the teams ability to work effectively together. Behaviour that supports higher levels of trust should be included as an important factor within the performance review process.

Can a business that appears to be healthy acutally be dead? Why do we do the same things and expect different results?

I don't often write about tech based on what I come across via mass media, but this one caught my attention and has triggered a whole bunch of thoughts around innovation. I'll just speak to the kernal idea here, but this sure could spawn a blog of its own - hmmm....

Glen Farrelly did a great job compiling a list of the 15 Canadians who contributed the most to digital media for our November cover story, but I bet many people read the article and said “But what about...?” and “How could you miss...?”

Big news on the open government front where Embassy is reporting that Statistics Canada will make all of its online data free starting early next year.

Steve Jobs died too young and with a great deal of promise unfulfilled. Since the announcement of his passing — a shock, even though we should have been prepared for it — industry watchers, partners, competitors, friends and many, like me, who never met him, have offered tributes to the man who reshaped the computer industry.

The CRTC released its fact-finding report on over-the-top video yesterday.  I'll have more to say on the report in my column next week, but in the meantime the money quote is:

Place is no longer a brackdrop for our information seeking, creation, and sharing. As I have blogged about there are multiple location-based mobile apps. Such apps enable information to be customized based on a user’s geographic position. Various commercial applications and research projects have shown users value geographic relevance in their information seeking scenarios.

Just getting the word out about my next webinar with Focus.com. I'll be presenting along with Polycom on the topic of remote workers.

Using computers to facilitate brainstorming sessions has been (occassionally) talked about in academic and management fields for the last two decades, but I have never heard of it actually implemented in a real-life scenario. Back in 2008, I blogged about the potential and problems of electronic brainstorming, but I haven't encountered the topic subsequently.

Canada was scheduled to complete the digital television transition today [August 31, 2011], with stations switching their over-the-air broadcast signals from analog to digital. The transition represented a tremendous opportunity to advance the Canadian digital agenda leading to higher quality digital over-the-air broadcasts, freed-up spectrum that could be used to facilitate greater telecom competition, and the promise of billions in new revenues to fund a national digital strategy.

The past year has not been kind to Research in Motion Ltd., Canada’s leading technology company. The Waterloo-based maker of the BlackBerry smartphone has seen its share price nosedive in the wake of less than stellar launches of new products such as the Playbook, disappointing earnings guidance, and plans to cut its global workforce.

To most reasonably informed Americans, there are some really basic things that its representatives in government should do, but lack the political will to execute. Without real reform, the middle class will continue to decline, forcing entrepreneurs to go to other markets, and the concentration of wealth in the hands of an increasingly smaller minority of people will accelerate the decline of the American Empire. Here are a few obvious steps that should be taken:

Domain name disputes emerged as one of the first Internet legal issues in the mid-1990s as speculators recognized the value of domain names and the potential to resell them to the highest bidder. The growth of "cybersquatting" led to several unsuccessful attempts to establish a dispute resolution system.

Due to the centenary of media theorist Marshal McLuhan, there has been a flurry of recent coverage and events on his work and life.

I've got some not-so-random thoughts to share from the last 2 days of Cisco C-Scape 2011. I'm not your typical industry analyst, so my take here is a bit different, and I just might get you to see collaboration a bit differently. If you want straight up analyst coverage, just mine the Twitter feeds that have been going non-stop.

Tomorrow is the 100th anniversary of Marshall McLuhan's birthday. To commemorate this milestone and recognize McLuhan's ongoing relevance to communication and media theory, various organizations and people have been holding events or writing about McLuhan. Although McLuhan is generally regarded as Canada's preeminent communication scholar and is still well known for his theories and concepts such "The medium is the message" and the "global village", his role as predictor and shaper of digital technology is less well known.

I looked at this blog's stats recently and noticed my post on Canadian Job Posting Sites for Internet Professionals from 2008 is not only my top blog post of all time but continues to be popular every month. I haven't been on the look-out for a job in ages, but I know some of the sources I previously listed are no longer relevant. So I have updated my list and included it below.

In honour of Canada's birthday, I'm updating my list of Canadian individuals and companies who contributed to digital culture or technology.

Silicon Valley like its metallic namesake is shiny and alluring to those in the tech and digital media sector. In comparisson, Ontario often seems dull and staid. Although Canada has had its share of tech and Net success stories over the years, the news and blogs are saturated with coverage of the happenings in the Valley. Often Canadian tech companies are only covered in mainstream media when they sell out or move down south.