blinkit

Bargains and lack of choice

WMD: I've discovered Costco. I've gone perhaps once before, some years ago, but never shopped on my own. Last week, I embarked on a journey into warehouse land, where I spent $123 to ensure that I have enough tissue, cat litter, garbage bags, porridge, pasta, tomato sauce, tomato paste, whole wheat bread and buns to last me for at least two months. I also have 20 new fancy coat hangars. Just this past weekend, I returned to ensure a similar supply of toilet paper, paper towel, mushroom soup, Raisin Bran and other items. By buying at a wholesale level, I am saving money. But choice of goods is quite constrained. Quality is not assured. The ginger snap cookies I bought will last all week, but they are moderately enjoyable. The cat litter was less than $8 for 50 pounds, and it's subpar. But just one box, about one fourth of the supply I have now, of my regular litter costs $9, so the cat will have to deal with it for the next few weeks. And that's what Costco is about. Note: the tomato sauce is just fine ...

Today's bLINKit: Tor is offering free science fiction and fantasy e-books for download. And need to sync bookmarks over two or more computers using Firefox? Try Foxmarks. I was sceptical, but so far, works well between my main PC and my laptop. And a site with headlines about how Barack Obama has added you as a friend/carries a picture of you in his wallet/thought you could use some chocolate. Click on what you find here and keep clicking.

Canada and saving the Internet

WMD: A column from May based on an interview with Matt Thompson of Savetheinternet.com. Every time I read another story about the shenanigans of companies like Rogers, I shudder:

Big Internet providers control on-ramps to information highway

Bell, Shaw and Telus well-positioned to dictate shaping of Internet in Canada

Barry Link, Vancouver Courier

Published: Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Imagine ordering a pizza over the phone from the locally owned pizza shop a few blocks away. You try calling but find it takes forever to get a dial tone. Frustrated, you hang up and call the nearest pizza chain and are instantly connected.

Now imagine the next day you learn that the chain corporation cut a deal with Telus to provide super quick phone service, while the local guy, as a much smaller pizza maker with limited funds, refused or could not afford to pay for a similar deal and was given an inferior phone line. As a consumer in search of open and equal pizza choices, you'd be outraged. And so would the local guy.

Of course, this scenario is a fantasy. Anyone of us can order from a small independent pizza place as easily as we can call Dominos or Panagos. But according to Internet defenders like Matt Thompson, this kind of imbalance could soon occur on the Internet thanks to the monopolistic cable and telecommunications companies that now control almost all the on-ramps to what we once called the information highway. In the U.S., giant Internet providers want to charge a premium to web destinations which have the potential for high traffic. Those who pay the premium would be offered a fast lane for Internet users to patronize to their websites and services. Those who don't pay the premium will find their traffic relegated to a second tier of inferior service on a bumpy and winding dirt road.

The issue has become known as net neutrality, which Thompson highlights during a talk Friday at VIDFEST, Vancouver's annual geek gathering of digital new media. The Vancouver-born Montreal resident, a consultant with the U.S.-based SavetheInternet.com campaign, will share the podium with John Perry Barlow, the former Grateful Dead member who co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Net neutrality is a complicated issue to wrap our heads around. We gripe about monthly fees for broadband access, but most of us don't care about the technical workings behind the scenes of the Internet as long as we can poke friends on Facebook and watch cats play piano on YouTube.

But the pizza by phone analogy, which Thompson used when I talked to him last week, is useful to remember. The Internet is as much a key part of modern economic and social life as the telephone, Thompson argues. And just as consumers expect certain rights involving phone usage--such as the ability to easily call any number in the phone book--we should expect the same rights online.

Canadian Internet providers such as Shaw and Telus haven't made noises--yet--about providing premium service to web destinations that can afford to pay. But they are messing with the Internet in other ways. Telus infamously blocked a union website to its subscribers during its last labour dispute--the equivalent of cutting off phone service to the union office. Most providers routinely throttle the connection speeds of users who engage in peer-to-peer file trading. And Bell, a major provider in Eastern Canada, recently admitted slowing down connection speeds for third-party providers that legally lease the use of its network.

In the U.S., similar moves by American providers have sent geeks to virtual barricades. Last year, Thompson produced an award-winning online video that was part of a massive campaign to thwart legislation that favoured the giant Internet providers. The campaign went far beyond geekdom to include hundreds of organizations--from conservative Christian lobby groups to artists--and hundreds of thousands of individuals. That same diverse and powerful coalition has a shot at passing genuine net neutrality legislation in the U.S. in coming months.

But in Canada, net neutrality is an emerging issue at best The CRTC has washed its hands of Internet regulation, and Thompson believes the federal Conservatives will let Bell, Shaw and Telus dictate how the Internet will be shaped in this country.

Thompson, who says the economic importance of net neutrality can't be emphasized enough, notes the Internet was built as an open and equal marketplace. Anyone with an idea--or service, company or political position--has just as much a chance of promoting that idea to the world as anyone else.

Thompson hopes Canadians wake up. We developed a plan for the 19th century railway lines which built the country in its early years, he says. We need to have a similar plan "for the most important invention since the printing press, and the public needs to have a role in that plan," he says. If we don't, better start preparing for limited choice in pizza.

See VIDFEST at www.vidfest.com.

Today's bLINKit: Life getting you down? Learn how to do things to make life better, or at least how to repair your roof or dye wool, at Diylife.com.

B.C. will do OK, says Bernard

WMD: Frequent Blinkit reader Bernard weighed on my previous post and column about the economic future for Ireland versus that of B.C. (He sent the comments in on email, since I've turned off comments until I'm satisfied Typepad has dealt with comment spam sufficiently.) We're not going to see a recession in Western  Canada, he says, but Ireland might. His reasons:

1) Ireland has a current account deficit - and it has been high for some years now. We have a surplus.

2) Ireland uses the Euro, but is too small to impact the value of the Euro and therefore interest rates.   Ireland had interest rates that have been too low for about ten years, this has lead to a horrific overpricing of housing because interest rates were too low. We are likely to have this problem in BC and Aberta for the next two to three years as the recession in Ontario and Quebec will lower interest rates in Canada.

3) Ireland has been running a budget deficit for years and a rising national debt. Canada has been the opposite.   Ireland is going to have major governmental financial problems over the next few years. Canada meanwhile will be doing very well.

4) Ireland was built on subsidies coming from the EU that has now come to an end.   In Canada we have no one funding internal subsidy. Canada is also a major global destination of investment dollars.

All I can add is good thing I didn't buy any vacation property in Westport. My thanks to Bernard for the comment. He, of course, is currently best known for singlehandedly boosting fertility rates in B.C. and for his most recent campaign to improve what he says is the miserable state of hospital food in this province.

Today's bLINKit: Apple gets more massive free publicity from a product-blind media, says John Dvorak. Kind of like the Obama campaign.

Economic denial in Westport and B.C.

WMD: My column from last week, musing about economic uncertainty here and in the Emerald Isle. Text follows below:

Economic chill looms heavy over Ireland, Vancouver

Warning signs ignored by many spend-crazy British Columbians

Barry Link, Vancouver Courier

Published: Wednesday, July 09, 2008

"You guys should stop spending money on gadgets," said my father to my brother and me last week. My brother was examining my sleek, video and wireless-enabled MP3 player.

"You're going to need your money for gasoline and food."

My father, in his 80s, doesn't understand why my brother and I are interested in sleek, video and wireless-enabled MP3 players. But he also went through the Depression, the unimaginably bleak 1930s which as far as post-millennial public collective memory goes might as well have been the 1830s. Having grown up on a farm where the family at least had food but no cash, Dad is intimately acquainted with scarcity. His warning about an impending need for thrift, a notion also long disappeared from collective memory, is part of an increasing unease in the land about our economic future. Canadians are wondering if they should be scared.

Gas has gone up dramatically, with signs home heating fuel will follow. Food is more expensive. Last week, I noticed at least two local restaurants near my office had raised prices and, I suspect, cut back on portions.

Car sales are plummeting. Transportation fees for taxis and ferries are going up. Frequent Courier contributor Michael McCarthy, our resident prophet of doom who's been writing about energy issues for years, likes to hammer home the point that this is just the beginning. It's going to get worse.

Oh joy.

I sensed similar unease while visiting Ireland last month. The Irish, a pleasant people who live on a rainy flat bog ringed by mountains and overrun with what seem like hundreds of millions of sheep, are experiencing a hangover after years of partying as the Celtic Tiger. They beat up economically just about everyone for nearly a decade and a half, building up high-tech industry by day while downing gallons of Guinness and Jameson by night. Things were so good that Ireland's traditional population loss through migration reversed itself. E.U. citizens, especially from Eastern Europe, came in droves to take service jobs the locals no longer wanted or needed, which is one reason why many of the servers in restaurants during my trip were Polish, Slovakian or Italian.

Now, the Irish told me, the party is over, and after spending a couple of nights in County Mayo pubs, I believe when the Irish finally leave a party, it really is over. A recession has emptied the kegs and reduced the construction cranes over Dublin to a fraction of their number a few years ago.

But is it a recession, and perhaps merely part of a regular economic cycle, or is it something more profound? And is anyone paying attention to the warning signs? In Westport, a tourist town of 4,000 near Ireland's west coast, the word "bustling" was the only description that fit. The place was alive with pedestrians, cars, trucks, tourist buses and cadres of German, American, and French visitors. The French perpetually smoked, the Americans filled shopping bags and the six Germans at breakfast when I entered the dining room one morning in my B&B looked at me like they'd just committed a major crime. I asked no questions.

If they'd done anything, maybe it was simply to dare enjoy themselves at a time when the economic wheel is turning. Or perhaps their denial was showing. The Irish, too, appear to be in denial. Gas is well over $2 a litre, and has always been pricier than here, but the Irish drive everywhere, and quickly, which is something considering their roads are little wider than the shoulders on the No. 1 Highway. The local newscasts and newspapers were dominated by Ireland's stinging rejection through referendum of greater integration with the E.U. But there was little official talk of economic uncertainty, whereas some of the locals I met were nervous about what lies ahead. This year, the Irish and other Europeans are still going on vacation, moved forward by past financial momentum. But next year, as jobs go, household budgets tighten and prices rise, all bets are off. The Irish might soon want those service jobs back from the immigrant Poles.

We have similar or even greater denial here. In Kelowna last weekend, where everyone is highly pleased with the expensive new bridge spanning Lake Okanagan, I was shocked by the luxurious new condo towers going up. The ambition is to create a Yaletown-like neighbourhood along the waterfront north of the city's downtown.

This is hardly the stuff of food riots. If we're headed to a peak-oil meltdown and a reduced standard of living my father would recognize from 70 years ago, no one--from Galway to Gibsons--is preparing for it.

A berry good feeling; driving in Ireland

WMD: Catching up. Yes, I arrived back in Canada after a successful trip to Ireland. My two last locations visited in Ireland were an archaeological site, at 5,000 years the oldest known farming site in Europe, and Skerries, an incredibly charming seaside resort a short hop north of Dublin. I'll be writing an "official" story about my trip for my employer sometime later this month and will post it here. Note: it will be largely cribbed from posts here, so regular Blinkit readers will see some overlap.

Meantime, I'm enjoying summer, especially the local farms, which in my case are 5 to 10 minutes drive away, a fantastic situation. I've already frozen strawberries for the winter and hope to do the same for some green vegetables, although the search for a suitable small freezer continues to be a bit of a journey. I was all set to buy a 5.5 cubic foot model at Future Shop, but the $55 delivery charge on an item that cost $229 made me choke. I still might get it, thanks to there not being much available in this freezer size, but Costco has a smaller freezer I'm going to check out. It's $199 with delivery included.

Today's bLINKit: If you're driving through Ireland, this trip planner might help. Driving in Ireland requires assistance like this, and a good map, because signs in that country are not always helpful. And the locals, at least in the countryside in the west, tend not to say "take the N51 to get to Dublin" but instead talk in folksy tones about "take the Longford road, which is shorter than the Charlesport road, unless you want more scenery." Which of course has you looking at your map wondering where the heck Longford is. And if you drive, you'll want to know the weather, which in Ireland is one of damp, wet, moist, drenched or flooded.