BT Calgary Blogs

We had such a blast hanging out behind the scenes with Cirque du Soleil on BT!  The performers are so talented and the new show KOOZA is absolutely magical.  Thanks to Darya the trapeze artist for lending me her costume and showing me the ropes!

*Good news!* – KOOZA has just added a couple of performances: Friday, October 1^st and Thursday, October 21^st at 4:00pm.  Tickets for all shows including the 2 newly added are available now via  www.cirquedusoleil.com/kooza !

You can see Cirque in Calgary under the trademark blue-and-yellow Grand Chapiteau at Stampede Park until Sunday, October 24.  

Facebook Places has now launched in Canada. It’s an easy way to share your location with friends and family. However the new service also raises privacy concerns. Do you want others to know where you are? Do you want your friends to be able to announce you’re at the pub having a pint? Facebook does have default settings which limits who your check-in information is shared with, but it does have limits. If you want to disable Facebook Places just follow these easy steps.

Once you log into Facebook go to your account menu and choose Privacy Settings. Click the Customize option and then click the “Customize settings” link.

Under the “Things I Share” there are two things you can adjust. By default “Places I check in” should be set to only be visible by your friends. If you want to disable that use the drop down menu and select “Only Me.” This way no one gets your location update.

Below that option is “Include me in ‘People Here Now’ after I check in.” This is enabled by default. This will let people know you’re at a particular location via the location’s page or in a search for people near you. Uncheck “Enable” if you don’t want this.

If you don’t want your friends checking you in for you, go down to the section called “Things Others Share” and find “Friends can check me in to Places.” Set this to “Disabled”. This is an important one! You don’t physically have to be at a location for friends to check you in somewhere. if you don’t want your friends to check you in somewhere you don’t want to be…disable this.

That’s it! Now your location can not be posted on Facebook via Facebook Places.

Well it wasn’t the news Canadians wanted to hear. Research in Motion has pushed back the Canadian launch date of the BlackBerry Torch. All major carriers now say it will be released September 30th if not October 1st. RIM isn’t giving any details as to why which makes me believe it’s either a hardware shortage or firmware issue.

That being said I was able to score a Blackberry Torch directly from RIM a few days ago. I’ve had time to play around with it and get a good feel for the Torch. How does it compare to Apple’s iPhone 4? Does the new 5 megapixel camera take good pictures? What about video quality? Find out below.

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I’ve no doubt that nearly 20 years beyond the fact, Kent Hehr still endures the occasional long night with no sleep, wondering why it had to be him?  Why a random bullet from a drive-by shooting left him a quadraplegic, confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life?  Why urban violence struck him because he was merely a victim of the terrible confluence of  ”wrong time, wrong place?”

Hehr has borne the consequences of that dreadful evening, in October 1991, with a great deal of determination and fortitude.  He  graduated from university in the highest ranks, became a well-known Calgary lawyer, and then latterly, the Liberal MLA for Calgary Buffalo in the Alberta legislature.  His biography would not be out of place in John F. Kennedy’s book titled “Profiles in Courage,” because that’s exactly what Hehr’s profile has been, and in many respects still is.

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I have a bit of a confession to make. While all the rumours have been swirling around the web regarding Netflix coming to Canada, I’ve secretly been testing it out. Netflix gave me early access to the service before its official Canadian launch to get a good feel for how the service works. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to talk about it thanks to Non-Disclosure Acts. Now that the cat is out of the bag and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has made the official announcement, the cone of silence can be lifted and I can give you my thoughts on Netflix’s first venture outside of the US. So how does it compare to service south of the border? Let’s just say this is not the American Netflix you’ve heard so much about.

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Twitter has long been a playground for spammers, trying to entice you to click on links and visit dirty and sometimes malicious websites. Now the fiends have a new trick up their sleeves, by exploiting a security flaw.

By inserting some special code in a tweet, Twitter uses can enable a popup when a mouse is dragged over a URL link. While it can be used for “fun and games” on colleagues and friends, others are using it for other purposes. Some malicious users are creating what are known as “Rainbow Tweets” which are blocks of colour used to hide devious posts, luring people into clicking on them out of sheer curiosity. And of course we have the account hackers who are posting links with the code. If you run your mouse over the affected link your Twitter account will be forced to retweet the link, sending people to malicious sites.

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CALGARY WEATHER
TODAY: 6, Rain/Snow Flurries
TONIGHT: 3, Possible Snow Flurries
TUESDAY: 7, Rain
>Low Pressure…Meets Cool Airmass = a taste of winter….and it’s not even Fall yet!! (Fall arrives Wednesday at 9:09pm) — Look for the ‘turnaround’ starting on Thursday (return to teen temps).
-Meteorologist Andrew Schultz.

We have way too many cards to carry around with us. Loyalty cards, reward cards, airline cards, video store membership cards (you still rent movies right?). Let’s face it, they take up a lot of space in our wallets and purses. Now imagine if you could make them all disappear yet still have those bar codes with you in case you need to use one. Enter Cardstar!

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Those of you who regularly drop in on this space will know I seldom agree with Alberta Liberal leader David Swann, never mind Brian Mason of the NDP.  But their reaction to a freshly minted government report about health care in this province was right on the mark:  lacking substance, airy-fairy, loaded with vague principles, more idle talk, wisps in the health care breeze.

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CALGARY WEATHER
TODAY: 6, Rain (up to 10mm possible)
TONIGHT: 2, Partly Cloudy
FRIDAY: 7, Partly Cloudy
>Consistently – Inconsistent!…Rain today, a one-day break Friday – and then the return of soggy weather by Saturday…I am now looking at designs on building an “Ark” (lol).
-Meteorologist Andrew Schultz.