Category Archives: broadband stimulus
Broadband politics in Ottawa and Washington (Part 1)
Ottawa has promised to spend $225 million on the nation’s broadband infrastructure. I’ve been digging around trying to find the details. An advanced search or 2 in Google brought up, uh, me as the top hit. Not a promising sign.
The Economic Action Plan is the dumbed-down Web version of the Flaherty budget tabled in January. From the footers, it looks like the Harper Government got sold the Platinum Social Software Pack by some well-tailored Ottawa consultants who don’t actually know what “social software” means. You can send the Harper Government email, subscribe to their news thingy and paste their RSS feed into your aggregator. You can totally visit them on Facebook, Flickr, Youtube and MySpace. Plus you can follow them on Twitter. OMG.
Get yer mug outta the way. If you’re going to hike your skirt up that far, you better be ready to follow through. Somebody please tell these guys that in a grand plan to rescue our devastated economy, the pages stained with tears, you don’t use social software as a vanity press – all the while keeping vital information hidden from public scrutiny. Vain, moi? Click on the Facebook link: Stephen Harper’s page. Click on the Flickr link: Stephen Harper’s page. Click on the Youtube link: Stephen Harper’s page. Click on the Myspace link: Stephen Harper’s page. This looks like a pattern to me.
After 28 months of trying to be cool, the PM’s Youtube YouTube page has a grand total of 520 (update) 521 subscribers. Compared to what? Compared e.g. to a 17-year-old Canadian guy named Rainey whose “obsession with reptiles” has nearly 10 times as many subs as the PM – 4,896 (update) 4,947 to be exact. Meanwhile, the first pic in the PM’s Flickr photostream is devoted to the Pet Adoption of the Week. These guys even manage to make subscribing to their “ENEWS” sound robotic and surreal:
“Who should subscribe? Anyone interested in receiving, by email, communication material” [emphasis added].
About what, how to adopt Bundy the cat? Read the rest of this entry
