Real grass at BMO Field ... without screwing the Community

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As a TFC soccer fan, as well as semi-regular community user of BMO Field, I can see both sides of the argument about artificial turf.

For competitive soccer (be it TFC/MLS, or games involving one of Canada's national teams), real grass is by far preferable.

For amateur athletes however, the durability of turf, and the fact that (with an inflatable bubble) it can be used year-round is hard to argue with.

So how to solve this dilemma, and keep both sides happy?

Easy -- move the turf and bubble 800m west! See the image (and click for a larger version).

There's a massive and little-used parking lot at the western end of the Exhibition Grounds. It would easily accomodate a full-sized soccer field, and a new field-house with change facilities. During the summer it would be a round-the-clock outdoor sports facility. And in the colder months, the bubble would ensure a continued heavy schedule of community usage. Overall the community would actually have MORE access, since we wouldn't be blocked on on TFC game days.

As a bonus, the new pitch is located beside a forlorn softball diamond that could be made vital again.

Meanwhile, back at BMO, competitive soccer would be played on the surface it should be played on: natural grass. Canada's Men's and Women's (and Junior and Senior) teams would have a proper home base in heart of Canada's largest city. TFC would be able to attract (amd keep) the bext players in North America, and their winning ways would surely help grow the sport.

Thanks to designer extraordinaire Chris Kirkwood and maps.live.com for help with the photo-stitching.

The missing LCBO store on Roncesvalles

This map shows locations of liquor stores in west-end Toronto. The blue circles are 2km in diameter. The red circle shows the equivalent catchment area for a potential store on Roncesvalles at Howard Park Ave.

The government has a monopoly on liquor sales in Ontario, and so isn't always totally customer-friendly. But but situating store in walkable neighbourhoods, the LCBO can encourage people to shop local. This is not only convenient for consumers, but environmentally friendly, and helpful for other neighbourhood retailers who's success contribute to vibrant and safe streets.

Gmail -- seems to be working

The good news: Gmail seems to be working again.I've been using for the last couple hours in both IE and Firefox. For the last few days I've been getting by in "Basic HTML" mode (never shutting down the browser), but now I seem to have full functionality again.

What still bugs me is that there's no explanation for what went off the rails (ie no response to my trouble ticket).

So anyways, we shall see going forward ...

Gmail -- Still Messed Up

Today I opened a technical trouble ticket with Gmail. Here's what I wrote:

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I can login ok, but after that cannot load pages. This has been getting worse and worse over the last 2 weeks. I blogged here with error screen caps
http://on-theball.blogspot.com/2007/04/gmail-performance-issues.html

Occasionally the system will work for a few clicks, and I can switch to "Basic HTML". With this interface, things work o k. But then when I start up again, I revert to the "Standard" interface, and all the problems resume. I have no problems with Google Calendar -- this problem is with Gmail only. I've used Firefox and IE on XP. I've also tried this under IE at the local library -- same symptoms. Please help.
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I would be prepared to concede that my PC is wacky, but after experiencing the exact same symptoms at my friendly neighbourhood Toronto Public Library, I know something is up!

Gmail performance issues

Gmail is working terribly for me.

It's been sporadically bad over the last 2 weeks, but in the last 24 hours has been almost unusable.

Symptoms:
-generally I can login ok, and get to the Inbox (though even this isn't 100% today)
-from there, its hit or miss whether I can read individual messages
-sometimes I can read a message, but it hangs indefintely when I try to send a reply

There are several error messages, including 717 and 767. These tend to appear after 30-60 secs of waiting.

I normally use Firefox 2.0.0.3 on XP, but I get the same symptoms with Internet Explorer.

I've just joined the Google Groups "Gmail Help" group, and am clearly not the only person experiencing this problem.
See for example #1
See for example #2
Also I will figure out how to formally submit this issue to Gmail

XM-Sirius merger -- why not?

There's been lots of coverage this week of the proposed XM-Sirius satellite radio merger. Of course the approval process will be fraught with all kinds of posturing and inside-the-beltway politicking, none of which I am qualified to comment on.

But what I CAN say is that this is expensive technology, for which there are already viable alternatives. A big debate about these 2 companies truly misses the point about where digital subscription radio is headed. For whatever reason it's an industry that attracts an outsized share of the media spotlight (I think related to the Apollo-era space exploration fantasies of 40 and 50-something male journalists). Anyways, regulators really should just step out of the way!

It's not that the sat radio services aren't any good --I've been a happy XM customer in Canada for the last year. It works well, and delivers solid value (albeit one I would classify as a luxury good). The overall brands of Sirius and XM are of a high quality, and just as importantly they are building meaningful sub-brands (ie the 100 or so channels themselves). Along with customer relationships (ie people willing to pay a premium for commercial free audio content), these are what will retain value in years to come. The satellites themselves will be of marginal significance in the overall digital subscription radio business.

Why you ask? Well think about the competition from ever-popular web radio (programming + brands) combined with mobile phone data networks (billing relationships with customers). In terms of the distribution, today's digital coverage is already quite good in North America, and will only get better. Take for one example Verizon's Wireless Network (choose a heartland state, like say Ohio).

Oh alright there are still rural areas which don't have service, but ONE specialized satellite provider will be able to cover those potential customers for decades to come. For 95% of the population, the mobile phone companies will have coverage AND a strong interest in providing subscription-based entertainment and information services.

In Canada Telus Mobility and XM Radio have been notably ahead of the curve in providing just such a service. XM provides branded channels and music programming, and Telus moves the data (I understand a company called MSpot also provides some infrastructure). I've used this service, and while it has its warts (not enough channels, and too many dropped signals), it points to the way of the future. When you consider the massive investment being made to increase network capacity for purposes of streaming TELEVISION to mobile phones (see MediaFLO and DVB-H), you know that the ground-based data networks will more than suffice to deliver high-quality audio.

So anyways -- no one should get hung up on the disappearance of one satellite radio player. There will be more than enough competition from a variety of players using far more sustainable technology. And that's without even getting started on the iPod alternative ....

Under the Hood: Broadband Video News Powered by RedDot CMS

I was just checking out this presentation by a couple former colleagues. Jonathan and Andre were at the OpenText User conference in Huntington Beach CA. These guys (and several colleagues back at the ranch in Toronto) are doing amazing custom work with the RedDot Web CMS product:
http://www.keebler.net/blog/2007/02/13/presentation-broadband-video-news-powered-by-reddot/

Jonathan in particular is getting to be a RedDot guru, and I gather the presentation was well-received. Here's a summary written by a knowledgeable attendee (who among other things says: "These guys are killer. I feel utterly humbled in their presence. I could only hope we might even attempt some of these things that they make sound like normal practice."):

http://www.sowrey.org/2007/02/13/broadband-video-news-powered-by-reddot-at-summit-2007/

CMS's are notoriously problematic to bring into large organizations, and many such projects fail. It's really good to see the time and effort being put into optimizing a system for the benefit of content managers -- normally the true arbiters of success for a CMS project. The work had also evidently sped up publishing times which is crucial kin the competitive online news field.

I was responsible for technology and operations at CHUM Interactive, and brought in RedDot in 2005. It's a very good product, but out of the box doesn't fully suit the needs of a past-paced 24/7 TV news environment. It's a good thing we started with smaller web sites that had less-exacting requirements. Admittedly our first couple implementations weren't pretty, but we hit our stride after about 6 months. By the spring of 2006 our RedDot-powered sites were quite good (imho).

In retrospect we created conditions for success by training and supporting motivated (and highly capable!) internal staff. Once there were 3 developers knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the product, things really started to cook. They don't all have to be the super-experts Jonathan is, but just need to complement each others skills.

I think CHUM now had the best RedDot practice in Canada, and perhaps even in North America. This is pretty remarkable given that the company is a TV/Radio broadcaster, and does RedDot work strictly to serve internal business needs. The darkish cloud on the horizon is that it may prove difficult in years to come to keep the team intact, as professional services firms will undoubtedly be able to pay more (and offer more varied projects) for this sort of focus and expertise. So for anyone in the media business thinking of standardizing on a web CMS product: don't expect to do it successfully without putting together a highly capable team. And don't expect to keep said team together without some energetic care and feeding!