Is there a way to stop "Internet Broken Telephone"?

Broken Telephone. You've heard of that before right? When one person tells a story and the next person re-tells that same story, parts of it change. By the time many people have told the story - the most recent version you hear bears little or no resemblance to the original. You can certainly blame this on creative storytelling - but it's clear that there is something very human about getting things wrong. With the Internet, the broken telephone is taking on a new life with details outright changed or removed.

New and interesting tools - #4 - The Google Edition

Another themed post! This time I look at - Google-related tools. I'm a Google Apps user and use all sorts of their great services. Today I wanted to look at some of the companion tools you'll see for the various Google services available. I tend to gravitate towards free tools - but if, for some reason a tool is not free - I will point that out and fill you in on pricing details. Today I look at tools such as Good Noows, Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer, Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Outlook, .

Use Google Reader on your iPad? Here's how to get the full keyboard support

You just got your shiny new iPad and plugged it in, you even hightailed it to the couch to relax while using it. Your WiFi connection is good, now it's time to check out the news on trusty Google Reader.  To your surprise Google Reader doesn't support keyboard shortcuts, nor does it support the "sent to" menu. Until Google does, here's how to do it (without having to install a paid iPad app).

Calwell Vblog #1 - The G8/G20 protests

Take a look at my first ever Video Blog here:

I speak about a number of G8/G20 issues. The key among them is the handling of protesters by the police and riot cops. There are a number of articles discussion the call for an inquiry into this by the government. This includes the Toronto Star, National Post, CBC, and even on Facebook.

Be the IT Guy: Recovering data from Outlook's OST files

One sort of Voodoo reserved for IT guys is the recovery of certain types of mail data. Outlook keeps mail data in two types of files - the PST (Personal Storage) file and the OST (Offline Storage) file. If you look to Microsoft for the "Official" word on getting mail data out of the OST file, you'll be met with "not possible" or "not supported" or some version of those words. In the world of IT, when you need to get at user's mail data - "not possible" is not going to cut it. Here's how you can get some (or all) the mail data out of OST files.