I was on CBC today, talking about the government and Twitter. Heritage minister, James Moore, uses the service rather intuitively as a conversation channel with his constituents. Sometimes that pisses people off.

You can listen to the full audio here. I start on at about 1:35….

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Here’s the site we’ve been working on at the NFB for the last while.

Basically, we’re putting a wealth of classic Canadian documentaries and animated films online for free. Films like The Logdriver’s Waltz, Cosmic Zoom, and Neighbours – and a whole slew of films I’m still discovering.

There’s a nice post on Metafilter that’s full of great suggestions on the site. Also Hugh McGuire suggests a few places to start.

They’re all there. They’re not in super-duper HD – but they are higher-quality-than-YouTube and quite suitable for full-screen viewing. We are testing the site, so it’s still in beta mode, but it’s quite functional.

As we’ve been uploading the films, tagging, and rewriting their descriptions for the Web, I haven’t had time to watch many of them. Only this week have I started watching what we have up there. And I’m really… moved by films I’m watching. There are films that make Canadian history riveting (Days of Whiskey Gap) and films that make Canadian art seem profound and mature (Bill Reid).

Oh and here’s my favourite film on the site so far. A gorgeous animated film from the ’60s called, Romance of Transportation in Canada. I first read about it in Cartoon Modern, Amid Amidi’s book about classic animation. Watch the whole thing here… for free.

What do you think of the site? What can we do to improve it?

I’m really thrilled with all the attention identi.ca is getting. Identi.ca is a new open-source microblogging platform. I think we’ve all felt a need for more competition in the microblogging field – rather than depending on a single microblogging company (Twitter).

I’ve also been disappointed with the lack of progress with Twitter. I’ve complained before that while most new applications suffer from feature-creep, Twitter suffers from feature-sleep. They’ve done almost nothing to make the service more useful or compelling since they started. It seems like all their time is spent trying to keep up with the growing demand for their servers.

Feature Idea for identi.ca

Respond to direct messages via email

In Twitter, you often get direct (private) messages sent to you via email. But to respond, you have to log back into Twitter and message that person. If someone is direct messaging me – it means they want to take the conversation off-line. There should be an option in identi.ca to allow users to take their conversations off-line and respond to direct messages via email.

Update: Go read Hugh McGuire’s post, “Why identi.ca matters” - this is basically the post I wanted to write.

This is the MS Internet Explorer download page as seen using… MS Internet Explorer 7.0.

The white text (which you can barely read) says “You are using Internet Explorer 7″.

Too easy a target?

Just chucked it up on Digg.

I’m working on a whole batch of these to offer as a download.

Read my comic, Ojingogo, here.

Check out my full illustration portfolio here.

Man, it’s fun to drool over the Wacom Cintiq 12WX.

Here’s a video review of the sexy little creature.

Just saw this great Facebook tip on Patrick’s blog. Did you know you can block those applications that keep spamming you? From Patrick:

Here’s how you do it:

* Go to the Applications page.
* Browse for the app you want to block, for example SuperWall.
* Look in the right column and at the bottom you’ll find a link “Block Application”.
* Click that and you’re done.

Ahhhh, peace.

I would like to note here that I just coined the term crapplication! Eat that, FunWall!

More on this later, but my pal, Hugh, has just launched EarIdeas – a site which helps to cut a path through the chaos of podcasts. I love listening to podcasts, but it’s too time-consuming to ferret out the good ones each week – and I know I miss a lot of great content. This site could be a solution to that problem.