Be Unreasonable - Aydin Mirzaee’s Take on the World.

Here is the info from the TorrentSpy Team: (pay attention to the bolded text)

Friends of TorrentSpy,

We have decided on our own, not due to any court order or agreement, to bring the Torrentspy.com search engine to an end and thus we permanently closed down worldwide on March 24, 2008.

The legal climate in the USA for copyright, privacy of search requests, and links to torrent files in search results is simply too hostile. We spent the last two years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, defending the rights of our users and ourselves.

Ultimately the Court demanded actions that in our view were inconsistent with our privacy policy, traditional court rules, and International law; therefore, we now feel compelled to provide the ultimate method of privacy protection for our users - permanent shutdown.

It was a wild ride,

The TorrentSpy Team

“Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order [...] and the like.” - Justice William O. Douglas

I’m a big Facebook fan but in the last little while I have been wondering about what Facebook will look like in the future… Just thinking about the advantages of having Facebook (especially with all the new privacy features) for government agencies seems like a godsend. I mean, if you think about it, people “without any coercion” are documenting their every move online… If anyone wanted to track you, wouldn’t the best place be Facebook /Twitter ?

Ok, so, how unreasonable is it to assume that some of the following are possible in the future?

-no passport: why would you use a passport when you can add a “Passport Facebook Application” that will do the same thing? All you’d have to do when you get to the airport is show them your “virtual passport” on your Phone/PDA or perhaps give a secret access code to anyone who wants to check it out (possibly via bluetooth)?

-Facebook pages mandatory: Already, if you don’t want to fall behind in life, you need a facebook profile…. is it unreasonable to assume that one day everyone will be required to have a facebook page? Remember, as we go forward, privacy features will only get better (or so we hope)… so, its not all that unreasonable…

-verify with birth certificate: what if you had to verify your facebook page with your original birth certificate in order to prove your identity? Could your facebook page also act as your birth certificate? what if you were given login access credentials in the hospital when you were born?

-driver’s license: why show your driver’s license when you are standing in line for a 19+ bar/club when you can show your facebook page? yeah, yeah, you can show it when you get pulled over by a cop too…

big brother: Is it also unreasonable to assume that government agencies will be freely able to browse through all of this material online? I for one think that one is not so unreasonable at all…

Anywho… a lot of this stuff sounds ridiculous, I know. But, the world changes fast… I remember when I was first telling people about Facebook in Ottawa, Canada they would say: “why would I join? so people could stalk me?” and now look at where we are… people’s ideas and beliefs are changing.

Aydin.

Posted By: Aydin Mirzaee

3D Browsing is just sooo much fun. It sure beats boring old 2D browsing…. that’s why I really love www.SpaceTime.com. Basically, it is a new browser that you can download that will make your life a whole lot easier and more fun by turning all your web pages into 3D images… You’ve got to try this! Although, of course, it won’t completely replace FireFox for me, but its a start…

For the SpaceTime team, not sure how possible this is, but, can we get SpaceTime as a plugin for FireFox? Perhaps with a button that we can use to turn on and off 3D?  The reason I make this request is because I know you guys listen The last 3 requests I made actually ended up in the product which basically makes me think you guys rock!

Aydin.

Posted By: Aydin Mirzaee.

Everyone knows I love http://www.MeeMix.com. It is an absolutely amazing tool. You basically enter one artist/song you like, and it will continue to play songs that you like all day long. It works in Canada (unlike Pandora), which is awesome.

Recently they’ve added a whole bunch of cool social features where you can add friends that have similar music taste as you do. This is a very cool and addictive feature… I’ve made friends with a bunch of people on the website through these community additions. MeeMix even has Facebook & Twitter integration now… I for one can’t get enough of the music on the site… if you haven’t signed up, you are missing out

Aydin.

Posted By: Aydin Mirzaee

This Monday, we’re holding Ottawa’s favorite Tech Event: DemoCampOttawa!

Marc-Andre and I will be introducing Chide.it on Monday and we hope to get a lot of feedback from the crowd. We want to make Chide.it a great tool for use at DemoCamp / BarCamp / StartupCamp events. Chide.it is a tool to gather feedback. All startups that present at these events want feedback… Chide.it can help capture all this feedback for the presenters

Here is a list of all the presenters on that day:

• chide.it: get feedback. give feedback.
• LoyaltyMatch: Frequent Flier points converted to cash at new shopping marketplace.
• FriendsRoll & TopLinks: Giving new life to the Blogroll
• Globex Pro 3.5: Software suite to ease the daily pains of doing business globally
• Trade Wars Rising Beta MMOG: See the game in development and an engine capable of allowing player-generated games !
• Devshop v2: “Devshop Returns” - a sneak peak at the upcoming product. First time demo’d anywhere.
• FaveQuest facebook app: Version 3 of the facebook video app. You can now create and share your own video channels and we fill them automatically for you from all over the web!

Aydin.

Posted By: Aydin Mirzaee

Well, what else do you call someone who tours the country and holds events at every major city? I thought that’s what Rockstars did… Well, anywho… that’s exactly what Rick Segal is doing He’ll be in Ottawa on the 16th of April to hold a “VC Roundtable.”  If you’re looking to raise money for your startup at any point, this is one of those events that would be useful to you. I’m still uncertain as to whether I’ll make it or not since I may be in NYC at that time… If I can’t make it, I’ll have to drop Rick a line to get some feedback with respect to http://chide.it - but, I hope to be there… Here is some more info:

Ottawa Edition of the VC Round Table

Something’s missing in Canada’s tech community - the chance to informally interact with VCs, learn about what it is exactly that they do and how the funding process works.

The VC Roundtable series aims to fill this gap, by hosting small (free!) get together across Canada’s major cities where Rick Segal, JLA Ventures Partner and VC blogger (http://ricksegal.typepad.com) will walk through what getting involved with VCs is all about.

Rick Segal will be hosting the Ottawa edition of the VC travelling roundtable on April 16^th from 11am to 1pm at everyone’s favourite pub TheClockTower at 575 Bank Street. If you would like to attend sign up on the link below.

In one word, wow!

I’d love to see Facebook implement something like this for viewing its photo albums:

http://www.paulvanroekel.nl/picasa/highslidedemo/

Aydin.

That’s right… according to a TechCrunch Story, Facebook is adding its own instant messaging…

Is this brilliant? Yes. It will be a threat to all the other IM services out there.

What’s my concern?

Please let there be privacy options

Aydin.

Wow! SearchMe.com is like Google, except its 3D! You search for anything you want and then you can browse through the results in the form of screenshots. It reminds me a bit of SpaceTime.com (which I think is very cool btw).

Before I actually used it, I thought that there was now way that I would use this thing on a day to day basis, but it actually is a really good way to search! The only gotcha is that their database isn’t as big as Google’s database Let’s hope they can get there fast

btw, searchme is a Sequoia backed company (so was Google).

Aydin.

Posted By: Aydin Mirzaee

After hearing all of the ads on the radio from Telus, I called them to see what all the commotion was about and ended up upgrading my plan… yes, yes, I know, again
So, what did I get?

$30/month Calling Plan:
150 daytime minutes + unlimited incoming calls + unlimited nights& weekends.
150 minutes is really all I need since I use http://www.bOKnow.com to get as many extra minutes I want to anywhere in North America for about 3 cent/minute. bOKnow also covers my calling needs to Europe with their international rates.

Unlimited Data Plan - $45
Unlimited Web Surfing (which also means unlimited Facebook :)) + Unlimited Text Messaging + VoiceMail + CallerID + Unlimited Email

What’s the Catch?
Well, apparently, when they say “unlimited web surfing”, that doesn’t include “over-the-air downloads”… in other words, if you want to download the facebook/gmail application onto your blackberry, you’ll be charged… or at least that’s what the customer rep told me on the phone… if I’m wrong about this one, let me know After I hung up the phone with the customer rep, I also started wondering if this “unlimited email” actually included downloading attachments… not sure about this… if anyone does know, please leave a comment…

Does Unlimited Data mean the iPhone is coming?
According to Alec, Ottawa’s celebrity blogger, no

Here is the Table from Telus: (click on image to see it in full)

Aydin.

Posted By: Aydin Mirzaee