If there were help desk in Medieval Europe, what issues would they have to handle?

According to a Buffalo, NY TV station "Canadian shoppers have raised the region's sales tax revenue by five per cent".

With the Canadian loonie reaching parity with the US dollar in September, and topping 1.07$ last week, this is only logical.

Via CBC.

Finally, Google announced its mobile strategy.

It is centered around the Open Handset Alliance (OHC), which has members such as HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung, T-Mobile and Sprint. Google's offering is Android, which is a mobile phone software stack licensed under an Open Source licesen (Apache V2).

Rumors are mounting that Google will unveil its gPhone strategy tomorrow.

The buzz says that Google will announce an open source based platform supported via an alliance of most phone manufacturers.

Here are some articles on the topic.

The Canadian Press had an article on how some members of Facebook are finding it annoying to the degree that they leave Facebook altogether.

This article discusses how good video footage is being shot by amateurs. The following high quality macro videography is what caught my eye.

Ants and Bees from youdiejoe on Vimeo.

Hover flies, Bees, and more, camel spider and mantis from Lucasberg on Vimeo.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is set to announce a set of software and services for mobile phones in the next two months. The service will provide search, Gmail, Maps, and YouTube.

Note that Google already acquired Zingku and Jaiku, two mobility oriented web sites recently.

The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and VISA will trial the use mobile phones as wallets in 2008. The trials will be done in Ontario, and will be limited to amounts of $25.

This is finally catching up to what some countries in Scandinavia have.

Via CBC.

Naomi Wolf has a very interesting talk where she explains how fascism starts, and what steps fascist dictators take to convert a democracy into a dictatorship. She explains how these signs are present today in America.

Also check the 10 steps towards fascism.

There are rumors that Rogers will make the Apple iPhone available in Canada by December this year. This is logical, since Rogers is the largest GSM provider in Canada.

The price is said to be $499 CAD with a 3 year contract.