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Where is Canada’s Hulu?

Way back when Hulu came out I was able to snag an account and actually use the service. This worked because I had internet from AOL giving me an external IP somewhere in the United States.

Hulu is phenomenal. It has so many shows and movies to watch that it’s insane.

Insane = good.

Here in Canada we don’t have a service that’s like Hulu. Essentially here in Canada we have a whole two content companies. One is CTV Globemedia and the other is Global Communications (you can include the CBC too but they are funded by Canadians and already have a pretty good streaming system). They both don’t like each other and they are not interested in sharing media.

In some ways sharing media between those two companies would be a bad thing considering there’s already zero competition in Canada (thanks to our gutless heroes at the CRTC) but to share content on a single website that every Canadian can get to could only help these companies.

What about piracy? It’s no secret that Canadian’s pirate media. Streaming this media online could only help promote these companies’ shows.

I propose that somebody (as I don’t have the means) creates Hulu Canada or Huluhoop or some such thing here in Canada. Get CTV, Global and even the CBC involved.

STOP CHANGING WORLD OF WARCRAFT!

Everyday on the World of Warcraft forums and on fan sites like Wow.com they are always talking about changes to classes in the game. The latest talk is Patch 3.2.

The new patch will add more quests and a new battleground. I don’t mind the new content but I do mind all the changes to classes in every patch. Because of players disagreeing on how much power every class should have Blizzard always changes how the classes work.

One of the biggest changes lately was the complete redesign of the Paladin class. That was released along with the new Wrath of the Lich King expansion. For casual players like myself relearning a class is extremely annoying. I myself can’t devote the time to relearning a class due to my work.

Now they are talking about major changes to the Death Knight. The Paladin and Death Knight are the only two classes I play. I used to play a rogue until the players finally won and got them nerfed to nothing.

I enjoy how the Death Knight class works now. I do enough damage as it works now. I don’t want a change.

I would rather see Blizzard put their time into updating old areas in the game and giving us new content.

Please stop!

Rogers Digital Cable - 2 Week Review

Because of a recent change of position at my job I had to move. Naturally things you look at when you move are cost of rent and setting up your internet, phone and television. At my last place of residence I did not have cable or satellite and was OK without it. This was because I had a roomate that I could do things with if I wanted too.

I decided originally to get a competitions satellite package as I would get a discount on another one of their services. I then found out quickly that my apartment faces the completely wrong direction.

Thus I ordered Rogers Digital Cable. Now, just keep in mind, I don’t get paid to promote these guys so this is completely objective (well maybe a little fanfare).

The Rogers cable guy came and set up the box and extended my cable line. He also set up the universal remote so I can control the TV and the cable box with the one remote instead of two.

After just a few minutes everything was set and it was all working. Read the rest…

Bing - Microsoft Tries Again at the Search Market

Microsoft has made several efforts to rain on Google’s parade in the search field. MSN Search, Live Search, attempt to buy Yahoo! for it’s search engine and now Bing.

Bing has a very clean interface very much like Google’s no nonsense look. When loading up bing.com you are greeted with a search box with a fade in background. It will be nice to see someday if one could customize that background.

When one does a search you are greeted with similar results as Google but instead of putting advertisements or related queries before the search results, Bing moves them to the side so you get the results you were looking for rather than the search engine asking you if you really searched for what you searched.

Bing’s image search is also very good. Though it is basically a new skin on the Live Search interface the Image search is very powerful. Rather than having to flip pages after every 20 results or so all you have to do is scroll down and Bing keeps loading the images as you go.

Bing maps is exactly the same as live maps as far as I can tell except you now have a bing logo instead of Live.

I have been using bing almost exclusively for the last week and I can tell you that if Microsoft can really market this engine I think it really could be real competition for Google.

Give it a try and let us know what you think.

I Strongly Dislike Twitter

At the beginning Twitter was just a geek thing. Everyone in the blogosphere was talking about it but it was not a mainstream thing.

Well now it’s everywhere. Twitter exposure has gotten so extreme that they now have segments about it on CBC Radio One. I’ve even made it to the point where I no longer listen to This Week in Tech with Leo Laporte because they can’t even stop talking about it (except for John Dvorak).

I fail to see what the real importance of this device is. To me just jotting down what I’m doing every five minutes is just stupid. Who really wants to know that I’m heading out to Dairy Queen to get a Strawberry Cheesequake Blizzard? Absolutely no one. And if I wanted someone to know I would have called or emailed them rather than having yet another extra communication channel.

Between blogging, texting, emailing, and just using the phone, I honestly think we have more than enough ways to communicate. Do we really need another?

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We apologize for the recent outtage here at technobabble. We had some issues with our server and have been able to get going with some backups that we made recently.

We are committed to regular tech info updates and will post accordingly.

Jeff B. - Head Editor

The Plunger – A Salute

I know that plungers are typically not something that would be written about here but I have recently been reminded how this simple piece of technology can be useful.

I think the best thing about a plunger is that it’s specifically designed to do one thing which is unlike a lot of today’s technology where everything is designed to do everything (cell phones are a great example).

There are quite the amount of resources out on the internet on how to use a plunger and I won’t link to them now.

Though it is unclear who actually invented the plunger I would like to salute the clever plumber who once thought “Hey, maybe if I push water in and out of the drain of a toilet the clog will clear?”. You know that has to be a special person and we salute you.