YouTube Canada is now available. I think having a Canadian version is fantastic: for example having a Canadian-content site works really well for Google News. It provides value to a specific audience instead delivery plain-vanilla to all audiences.

But why don’t they use an actual “.ca” domain. When you go to youtube.ca you get redirected to ca.youtube.com. I suppose there could technical reasons for this. Maybe their technology platform makes it challenging to use anything else but I highly doubt it. If they truly believe that Canadian audiences will value content specific to their community, then they should really celebrate the identity of those customers/users. A “.ca” domain is the way to do that.

I wonder how big a difference it will make for YouTube. Right now the visible differences are that the homepage contains different content and there is a little indicator in the top right of the screen indicating that I am on the Canadian YouTube site. If the existence of the Canadian site change the criteria for deciding which videos are related to each other that would be very cool. The CBC has more coverae on YouTube Canada.

To celebrate the launched of YouTube Canada, here is a video I took in 2006 of the Canada Day Fireworks in Millwoods Park, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

In further preparation for my talk at Netspeed 2007 titled, “Widets, Gadgets, and Badges”, I have created another web badge. This one counts down the days until the Alberta Library Conference (ALC 2008). The ALC mini-badge will display the conference date (April 24) until it is 99 days away. When it is just 99 days away from the conference, it will begin to display a countdown. When it is just one day away, it will display the word “tomorrow” and when the conference is actually on, it will display “ON NOW”.

If you are attending ALC 2008 and have a blog, why not promote the event with this badge?


<a href="http://albertalibraryconference.com/2008/">
<img src="http://winterstorm.ca/alcminibadge.png" title="Countdown to ALC 2008" />
</a>


Netspeed 2007 is just 40 days away. Netspeed is a library technology conference hosted by The Alberta Library. This year it will be held at the Carriage House Inn in Calgary, Alberta. I will be giving a presentation titled, “Web Widgets, Gadgets, and Badges.”

For the occaision, I have created a special badge to countdown the days until the conference. You can add the following HTML to any webpage to display this badge. The image will update itself automatically. Today it displays that there are 40 days left. Tomorrow it will say, “39″ days left.

If you are attending Netspeed 2007 and have a blog, why not promote the event with this badge?


<a href="http://paranoidagnostic.net/category/netspeed2007">
<img src="http://winterstorm.ca/netspeedbadge.png" title="Countdown to Netspeed 2007" />
</a>


I am currently having a surreal system administration experience: I am the sysadmin for a Wiki project in Chinese. I do not read, write, or speak Chinese and the Wiki is intended for use by the local Chinese community and is thus localized in Chinese. This has been the strangest thing for me. When I login to the software, I cannot even read the menus, and there are so many decisions that would normally be trivial that are now strange and difficult.

The project is to catalogue my local public library’s collection of Chinese books in a wiki. The library doesn’t catalogue the foreign language books (probably because it cannot). I am using MediaWiki (same software used for Wikipedia) which already has localization for many languages including at least 5 Chinese options.

One significant problem is trying to choose the right localization. So far, no one I know who actually speaks Mandarin Chinese can tell me what pros and cons there might be to picking one over the other. As a sysadmin, normally it would be my job to tell people what the pros and cons of one technical choice over another are. In this case I feel like I’m in an alternate reality. I am the right person for this job, but also completely unqualified!

MediaWiki seems to be the right choice for this project, not only because of its open editing, version tracking, and simple-but-effective content markup system, but also because it natively understands what an ISBN is. MediaWiki scans any text entered for strings that start with “ISBN” and end with a number and some dashes. If it sees such a string, it turns that into a link to its own internal system for linking to places that can give you more information about an ISBN. This is really good for a book-based library project.

I intend to write another component to magically identify book’s barcodes in the same way it does ISBN numbers, so that we can automatically link to the library’s catalogue. Thus someone can have one click access to putting a hold on an item.

Stranger than all of these other things, is that is a project I created. Normally, I would be writing up all kinds of “about” pages and help for the users. I suppose I will do that in English, but I always hesitate because it is, after all, supposed to be in Chinese. I just hope my translator is good!

Last Saturday (April 28, 2007) I gave a presentation at the Alberta Library Conference (ALC 2007) titled, “How to Get the Technical Support You Need.” I think many, if not most, people have had negative experiences trying to obtain technical support. Contacting a helpdesk leaves people feeling frustrated, ignored, or like they are getting the run-around. After dealing with tech support, people often feel as if they are expected to learn new technical skills or adopt a new language of three letter acronyms just to get a little help.

My presentation rejects the idea that people need to learn technical skills just to get a techie to help them. Instead I introduce management and communication skills that can be used to obtain better tech support.

The presentation is divided into three sections. First, I explain how helpdesks generally work following the Limoncelli (1999) 9-step/4-phase model. Second, I explain how to write a great support request that has enough information that tech support won’t need to ask a lot of question and give you the run-around. Last, I present some rules-of-thumb for effectively managing communication with tech support for those worst-case scenario problems.

All of the ideas are based on my nearly 15 years of experience in giving and getting support. The rules and advice are inspired by some of my worst-cases in getting support and I show how my advanced technical skills are not enough to allow me to get tech support: Managing communication is the key to getting good support.

The slides for my presentation can be downloaded and they contain commentary in the “notes” field that can be viewed or printed if you open the file in Powerpoint or OpenOffice. The presentation is covered by a Creative Commons license and can be redistributed and remixed as long as attribution is provided and you share-alike.