Well my time is up here are GiantGoat and I got to say it was a great experience. Coop students don’t really know what a place is going to like when they first get to a job. Sometimes you are considered a lower employee that doesn’t get much in the way of real work or on the other hand you could go to a place where you get to do actual work that contributes to both your learning and the company’s products. I would have to say the experience here at GiantGoat has been the latter for the most part. Sure there have been times where I’ve had to do the grunt work that no one else wanted to do but I also got to work on major projects and contribute them. I would have to say that this is a great place to find what working in web development is really about and I know I have taken a lot away from this job. Continue with the great work GiantGoat and keep hiring us coops as you know we are pretty awesome.

September 1, 2010
my iPhone, my terms
Trudy tells me that she is looking at buying an iPhone soon, but where to begin? By now, everybody and their uncle are offering iPhone plans. Since all the major providers support the uber popular smart phone, there is a lot to be decided when it comes to picking a plan for you. Enter myCELLmyTERMS.com. Some of you might have seen them on Dragon’s Den on CBC recently.
This website allows you to build a customized cell phone plan proposal and submit it to all the service providers like Bell and Telus. They will either accept your plan, or reply with a counter-offer.
I created my ideal iPhone plan and released it into the wild to see which provider would bite.
Here are the main specs:
| iPhone 4 16 gb | $110 |
| monthly plan | $50 |
| minutes | 200 |
| contract | no contract |
| data | 0.5 gb |
| caller ID | yes |
| evenings/weekends | 6pm-7am |
As you can tell, I was aiming for the cheapest, no-strings attached iPhone plan possible. Getting a new iPhone for $110 without a contract at only $50/month would be amazing, but of course, very unlikely. But I figured you might as well see what you can get and go from there.
I was surprised at the turn around. I had 2 offers within an hour or so of submitting my proposal.
Here was the best counter-offer I received (from Telus):
| iPhone 4 16 gb | $160 |
| monthly plan | $60 |
| minutes | 350 |
| contract | 3 years |
| data | 6 gb |
| caller ID | yes |
| evenings/weekends | 6pm-7am |
| BONUS | $300 bill credit |
Not bad really. Their offer was $50 more for the actual phone and $10 more per month. Escaping the 3 year contract is just about impossible if you aren’t paying full price for the phone. I was happy to see they offered 150 more minutes than I proposed and their data plan is a whopping 5.5 gb more! I got my evenings and weekends slot too (many providers start at 9pm instead of 6pm). The big surprise was the $300 bill credit bonus. That works out to be about 4 or 5 months free. At this point you can counter-offer their counter-offer and so forth.
This site serves as a pretty useful tool for those of us that want to avoid getting sucked into broad, feature-saturated plans that we really don’t need.
August 30, 2010
What the web looks like
The clever folks at nmap.org downloaded all the icons from the 288 000 most popular sites on the web and scaled them according to the amount of traffic they receive. So to a first order approximation, here’s what the internet looks like:

August 26, 2010
Upcoming events
We’ll be at the 10th Annual Chamber After 5 regional business tradeshow at Bingeman’s in Kitchener, Tuesday, September 21, 2010 4pm to 8pm.
As usual, we’ll be at DemoCamp Guelph in October. We missed the last one, but there’s a decent chance I’ll be presenting at the next one, with a plugin I made for Rapportive.
Also, there’s Ribfest all weekend, where Dave will be pouring beer and our unofficial environmentalist will be manning the Eco Station. Guelph Technology and Design Cluster will be there on Friday.
August 18, 2010
Congratulations to Shopeteer.com!
I would like to send my congratulations to Shopeteer.com on reaching 100 stores! Launched only a couple months ago, the shopping website has quickly added many local businesses into it’s online store front.










