The Massive Technology Show is looking to kick-off their conference featuring some of Canada’s leaders in business and technology. The 3-part show is on March 28th, 2007, with the trade show being only a part of the event. Do you want to discover what technology can do for your business? Then this is a can’t-miss event! From the homepage:

The Massive Technology Show is a three-part event that provides a user-friendly environment to explore technologies for business. In this action-packed day of interactive exhibits, informative presentations and networking opportunities, companies learn how to achieve their goals faster using technology.

Why Massive?
Massive is not just a trade show. In fact, the tradeshow experience is just one of the benefits we offer our participants. As soon as you sign on with Massive, we actively market your company and its products and services internationally. Through our monthly e-newsletters, poster and flyer campaigns, and our annual publication, Massive Magazine, we ensure that your company stands out as a leader in the technology industry.

Adding to the (personal) interest in the event, Andre Charland of Nitobi and Dave Chalk of Chalk Media. Andre was a big help to Rob and I when we went to Sunnyvale in September of last year, sponsoring our efforts, and Dave was a speaker at UCFV in 2005. Not only was he an amazing speaker, I was actually part of a group that nominated him for an honourary doctorate from UCFV, which he received in June of 2006.

Definitely check out the event if you can, but if not, look in to Nitobi and Chalk Media, two local companies doing great things in tech!

Anyone with one email address is subject to an almost unbearable amount of Viagra, OEM software, and investment opportunity spam. Adding an extra email address to the mailbox or, if you’re really lucky, the task of dealing with generic email addresses like “info” or “sales” will only compound the problem, especially when these are often posted online. As an individual with more email addresses than can be counted on one hand, one of which is posted online and has virtually no spam filtering, I have quickly become the best source for every kind of product known to man - and probably a few unknown ones, too!

Back in October, there was a significant increase in the amount of spam that was being sent throughout the Internet. Increases were suggested to be anywhere from 60%, a somewhat conservative estimate, to 100%, doubling the amount of spam that individuals were receiving. At the time, it was a new kind of spam, image spam, that was causing all the problems. With spam accounting for approximately 80% of all emails sent, it is definitely an epidemic, however, according to a recent article in IT Business, image spam may soon be eliminated from the equation.

Unfortunately, spam is a big business, and I don’t see the problem being fully resolved soon, if ever. I do appreciate the efforts of security companies, and comparing my filtered work email with my unfiltered blog email, I see how useful anti-spam products can be. It just seems like everything is slow and reactive while the spammers are innovative and clever, and driven by dollar signs.

According to a short post on Gizmodo, the recently announced iPhone will be bound for Canada, running on Rogers Wireless‘ GSM network. Although there hasn’t been any set date for the release, it will obviously come after the American release, and as mentioned in the first comment on the article, it could be a 2nd generation version of the device. Actually, going through the comments of the post is quite interesting.

Lately, I’ve been less than impressed with my wireless service packages, with packages in the US seeming to be more competitive than in Canada. I assume it comes down to the numbers. With so many more people using a greater range of wireless products, wireless providers are able to give better deals on the products and services. So what does that mean for a device like the iPhone?

Apple’s previous release, the iPod, has been just as popular in Canada as it has been in the rest of the world, and Canada was recently identified as one of the cheapest places to buy iPonds. That will definitely help the success of the iPhone, but I think people in Canada use their phones differently than their American counterparts. Data transfer costs are still quite hight, and many of the people who choose the iPhone probably won’t use it to its full potential, making it kind of a super-powered cellphone.

With 6.2 million subscribers, the largest subscriber base in Canada, there will definitely be a market for the iPhone; it might even woo a significant number of new customers to the company. But we’ll have to wait and see if it achieves the same level of success as it’s predecessor, the iPod. 

I’m sure this is something that happens quite frequently with lesser-known companies and individuals, and of course there HAS to be all sorts of spam-related pages and updates done. We could even consider the updates that some turkeys would put up. Yet, none of them would be in the same category as what this article suggests.

Apparently, Microsoft offered to pay a blogger to correct errors in some of the articles listed in Wikipedia. Although there are probably valid arguments or reasons that can be put forward as to why the articles may need some adjustment, it seems a little underhanded and sinister to have taken this route to have the changes made. A company like Microsoft could have simply posted their complaints on their own blog, leveraged their influence, and hoped for the masses to come forward on their own to make the changes. The only thing I can compare this to would be the Sony incident with false reviews being provided for their movies.

It’s difficult to not have some sympathy for Microsoft over the articles, as I can only imagine how users may try and paint the software giant and work against their product, however, something like Wikipedia has to remain clean and untouchable, a la Elliot Ness, for it to be the source of public information it should be.

5. MySpace is THEIR Space - Whether or not the recent hiccup in adding widgets to profiles on MySpace was a developer error or not will probably remain a mystery. However, MySpace is, by some accounts, the biggest site on the Internet, and several companies are either capitalizing on that or looking to do so in the future, without giving a cut to the juggernaut. In the end, it is their space, and Industry professionals have suggested some sort of lockdown may eventually take place.

4. OpenID -  I didn’t make it to the OpenID Vancouver Mash Pit (sorry to Lori and the rest of the Sxip crew! ), but Rob was there representing JSR.com. From what I understand, the latest OpenID Spec supported is 1.1, but 2.0 is in pre-draft and will be much better. See Sxip’s post about enabling OpenID on your site here, and click here for information on Drupal and OpenID.

3. Drupal 5 - It’s described by local Drupal supporter Bryght as the latest and most impressive upgrade to date, and may go a long way in helping the average person develop a cutting-edge, interactive website. For more information about Drupal or the release, see Drupal.org. Click here to visit the Bryght site and find out more about their involvement and their Drupal packages.

2. Checkout No Friend of PayPal - There were all sorts of articles posted (links here and here from this post) not too long ago about eBay’s trouble with Google, and it looks like they are competing more fiercely with their rival products, Google Checkout and PayPal. With Google pushing their product on their homepage and search results, and offering a $10 credit for signing up, eBay and PayPal must be taking notice.

1. Major Security Breaches - With up to four different countries, several major retail outlets, one major Canadian bank, and up to three million Canadian identities all involved in this incident, people are definitely talking. It was the opening story last night on The National, and brings to light the lack of any law in Canada forcing disclosure of these types of security breaches.