We stayed at the City Inn, which turned out to be a refreshingly modern and simple hotel with free ethernet in the room (courtesy of a lovely pink CAT5 cable). We rallied the troops for a fun night on the town, taking advantage of The Commercial House's pretty fantastic pint, burger, and chips for £4.95. Tuesday morning saw us up bright and early for a walk to the University of Bristol campus, to pay a vist to 3CResearch, a member company doing "convergent technology research for digital media processing and communciations" (in case you're wondering — and I certainly was — the three C's are Communications, Content, and Creativity). We were given a demo of their Visualise project, which delivers streaming video to mobile devices (currently over WiFi but soon over faster and more pervasive delivery channels like HSDPA and WiMax). It was designed to offer a better experience to fans of events like rally racing, which generally involves standing in a cold, wet field for hours on end in the hopes that a car will hurtle past you for an exhilirating 15 seconds. Visualise means you can still stand in the same damp glen, but now you can watch the race from multiple viewpoints on your mobile, as well as peruse stats and driver info (assuming the touchscreen still responds to your frozen fingers). In all seriousness, the technology can be applied to any kind of event and would be great for things like music festivals like Coachella, at which you would need to clone yourself several times over just to catch half the bands you wanted to see. The demo was followed by a presentation by Dr. Geraint Jones about a number of the other 3CResearch projects, including Intelligent Content Based Retrieval (ICBR) (analyze video archives and index based on content, motion, etc.) and Motion Ripper (extract motion data from video and apply captured motion signals to computer animation — i.e.: analyze a video of birds flying and animate an electronic bird). Their research is very interesting, if not entirely cutting edge, but I thought the more interesting part was the conversation which erupted over licensing of technology and how pure research facilities can successfully commercialize their ventures. Sutha suggested they take a look at the MIT Media Lab model, which is basically pay-for-play (i.e.: companies can pay an upfront and quite large fee and then have access to all of the research), and I would think there's a lot to be learned from the MaRS Discovery District and from the University of Toronto's Innovations Group.

We spent the late afternoon and evening at Watershed Media Centre, a facility that reminded me of The Bookshelf in Guelph, a favourite haunt during my University years. Watershed includes a few cinemas, a caf&eaccute; and some meeting facilities, and was our home for a great mini-trade show event which consisted of 40 South West companies meeting and greeting our Canadian crew. Steve Collett (International Trade Advisor from UKTI) started us off, Ian Kelso (from Interactive Ontario) gave a quick state the union of New Media in the New World, and I followed him with a quick Introducing the Canadians rundown of the companies in the mission (and including a photo of a polar bear cub, two bears making out in the woods, and the poster from South Park: draw your own conclusions). I was followed by Mark Leaver (Director of Development from South West Screen), who mirrored Ian's talk but focused on the South West region of the UK, and then we were treated to a fantastic presentation by Adam Montandon, Director of HMC Interactive, who have built some truly amazing interactive experiences for Cadbury's Purple Planet and The Royal Obeservatory. He also has the excuisitely good taste to have fallen in love with a Canadian girl and is working on a (longish) term plan to move to our fair lands to be with her. I cornered him after and insisted that we line up a DemoCamp demo on his next visit, which he heartily agreed to (or maybe defensively, so I'd let him out of the corner — hard to tell). The trade show was a great success and I met a number of interesting people doing interesting things in which we might well take an interest, including John Bradford from jbsh, LLC (who are working on an educational product for the Canadian market), Paul Bason from University College Falmouth (who was delighted by Michael Wesch's latest and who was really interested to hear what we looked for in students and in whether we'd be into a distance-learning based partnership), David Karney from Potential Difference (a swank Bristol web shop who are basically Radiant Core's British counterparts, but on .NET), and James Ovenden from Ball Fusion (who are marketing an amazing video on street soccer skills — check out some of the tricks on their homepage). Apologies to the gentleman from Sanoodi, whose slightly odd application name I've managed to easily remember but whose much less odd personal name I've completely forgotten (owing to his lack of business cards, of course). We had a great chat about his app and where it's headed, and I showed him Toronto's own Planet Eye and the Specialized Riders Club (run by our friend Chris Matthews) for some inspiration. We ended the evening with a delicious dinner for fourteen at the Severn Shed (don't worry Mike: I didn't pick up the tab!), during which I had the pleasure of chatting about documentaries, music, books, and television with Julia Bennett (from White Pine Productions), Jason Krogh (from Zinc Roe), and Paige Chambers (from the Canadian Business College).

Stay tuned for Day 3, which will mostly be a train ride to Glasgow!

Back in early July, I was having a coffee with Ian Forrester from the BBC Backstage at our local Balzac's, when in strode Ian Kelso from Interactive Ontario. Ian to Ian (i2i?) introductions were made, and Mr. Kelso (my former boss from many moons ago!) laughingly suggested that we should join them on the Trade Mission they had just announced so that Mr. Forrester could buy me a coffee in his hometown. And here we are, three months later, sitting in the Tower 1 Meeting Room at The Tower Hotel in London, listening to John Davies, Technology & Strategy Adviser from United Kingdom Trade & Investment, talking about his country's strategic direction.

So, we're here until this afternoon, then off to lovely Bristol for a tour of 3C Research and a mini-trade show, then to beautiful Glasgow on Wednesday for some networking and a tour of the Hillington Innovation Centre on Thursday. I've got a criminally early train on Friday (5:50 am!) back to London, where I will sadly not have coffee with Mr. Forrester (who will be en route to Berlin) but rather lunch with his colleagues, a pint or two with Ian Hayward from Glaxstar (the company, not the alien galaxy), and a lovely dinner with the team from eBay UK (with whom we did the eBay Firefox Companion and are now working on a top secret new project).

I've got my trusty Rebel XTI and have been trying to capture some shots while keeping it out of the rain (no mean feat), which I'll make sure to post and link to. Many thanks to Sutha Kamal for playing tour guide yesterday and showing me around the banks of Thames, the Tate Modern, a few Starbucks (a charming little chain of coffee shops!), an historic pub (Lamb and Flag, which has been around since Charles II), and a great Vietnamese dinner at Cay Tre. More as it happens!

Unfortunately, our evil machinations fall to pieces when wireless gets involved. Our beloved carriers (and I use the term beloved where others might choose different expressions, like 'hated with the strength of a thousand suns'), an oligopoly consisting primarily of Rogers and Bell, and lesserily of Fido (now owned by Rogers) and Telus (who uses Bell's network in our part of the world), have determined that the best long term business strategy for data is to grab all they can while the gettin's good. They complain about having to service one of the largest countries in the world and the cost of equipment and wa-wa-wa, all of which is a pathetic attempt to justify this:

That horrifying graph is courtesy of our good friend Tom Purves and a brilliant bit of original reporting that you won't see in the mainstream media because they're pretty much all owned by Rogers or Bell. Yes folks, that graph actually says that Rwandans can download mobile porn for 4.625% of the price that Canadians can. Now I have nothing against Rwandans and I wish them all the ... content they can consume, but Rwanda is not a member of the G8, nor are they one of the world's leading technology producers. They aren't home to one of the better computer science schools in the world (University of Waterloo), or - perhaps more to the point - RIM, the company that has a virtual stranglehold on the wireless device market to the point that the US government stepped in to their patent lawsuit to keep the network online because they can't function without it.

If I sound a little bitter, it's because I spend a lot of time with my colleagues from the US, and since we're all a bunch of tech people, a big chunk of that time is spent with our BlackBerries and Treos and Qs and Blackjacks and etc. in hand. Our American friends blithely surf the web and show us streaming videos and download music and we sit in the corner, shamefully browsing with images turned off. If you think our data rates are bad at home - and they're almost disfiguringly bad - you should see what we pay when we're roaming.

So how do we fix this? As Tom points out, the problem largely rests in the hands of the CRTC, who are governed by the Canadian Telecommunications Act. Though you wouldn't know it by looking at the millions carriers spend on advertising, there's an almost complete dearth of real competition in the Canadian wireless market (I believe that there's a single carrier in Saskatechwan and Manitoba). We have new 'carriers' (known as Mobile Virtual Network Operators, or MVNOs) appearing, like the oddly named Amp'd, but they aren't really bringing any diversity to the market since they just piggyback on other networks (Amp'd uses Sprint in the US and Telus in Canada). They have to cover the cost of their own network usage in addition to making a profit from your services, so don't look to them to lower rates any time soon. Rogers and Bell charge what they charge precisely because they can charge it; we may rant and rave and post vitriol filled blog posts, but I still cough up $60 a month for data on top of my voice bill and I'll keep doing it if I want mobile service. This isn't limited to data rates, of course. Don't even get me started on how they're screwing us on SMS short codes, although you have to love the "let's hold hands and be friends!" message of the Catch the Code site which makes it sound like the carriers just want you to come and play with sunshine and lollipops all day. You have to pay their consortium an astounding $1500 for the first three months of the 'lease' of your shortcode, which effectively places SMS marketing out of the hands of small businesses who might use it for innovative programs. Now the carriers, bless their cold, slimy, black hearts, are pushing to end net neutrality so they can arbitrarily charge us more for data access whenever they feel like it, all the while pushing new initiatives like being able to video chat or watch YouTube on your mobile phone (I won't give them any link love, so look for Rogers Vision in the Google results). If our government, at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels, is so intent on promoting Canada as a leader in ICT (Information Communication Technology), they need to step in and end this insanity. The current pricing model stifles innovation and virtually guarantees that any exciting new wireless technology developments will not come from Canadian companies because the market and the funding to develop those products will not exist at home. I'm not usually a fan of legislating the rates that companies can charge for their services, but the only way the carriers are going to achieve parity with our cousins to the south is if they get hit with a big stick.

Update: Martin Cleaver has a bunch of great in-depth information about who regulates the carriers (not the CRTC for things like rates), and on how we can get out of this mess. I stand by my statement that the government (in some form) needs to step and in and apply some beat downs, but you should go read his post to be better informed. Thanks Martin!

Turns out that the folks who work at Microsoft are good people! We're particularly enamoured with John Oxley, Director Community Evangelism Microsoft Canada, who graciously ignored the above mentioned glowing fruit and invited yours truly down to Bellevue to participate in the first Microsoft User Experience (UX) Round Table. Despite any harsh criticisms of the past, I'm not above turning a new leaf and it's definitely true that Microsoft's UX Research teams are the hot spot du jour (not disimilar to Xeorx PARC in days of yore). Besides, free trips are always good trips, particularly when accompanied by Mr. David Crow, whose penchant for double bourbons is well known (particularly to my own precious liver who strains vainly to keep up).

We caught an Air Canada flight from Pearson to Settle-Tacoma which turned out to be delayed an hour. The plane was an Embraer 190 which was equipped with the very latest in En Route Inflight Entertainment systems, a topic which I'm becoming increasingly familiar with (see my recent I've-never-even-touched-it review of Virgin America's Red). The E190s feature the Thales Group's TopSeries Inflight Entertainment system, in this case heavily branded with the Air Canada livery and delivered in both English and French. I wasn't able to snap any shots on the way down (I'll try to grab some on the way back), but picture your basic 9" touchscreen embedded in the seat in front of you. These units lacked remotes and many of the features were "Unavailable" (including the Map, News, and Games), though they did feature a USB plug to the left of the screen for charging your ever present array of electronica. Placing the plug at eye level guarantees you'll see it - though the lack of markings might make you hesitate before you plugged in your trusty iPod. Not I! In the interest of journalism, I can confirm that it provides a steady charge but no much else (it might be more natural to place the plug in the armrest, nearer to where the iPod is likely to rest, but progress is progress and who are we to stand in its way?).

The system seemed a little buggy - David's seatmate crashed his twice (though no Blue Screen of Death, so one supposes that it's running on some Linux derivative). There's some markedly weird Information Architecture in the menu system (e.g.: going into the Kids section and selecting Movies drops you into a hidden section of the Movies menu, bizarely merging the first and second level menus), and the touch screens weren't overly responsive (the "Fullscreen" button in movie mode had to be mashed at least three times before it stuck, as did the "Turn off Display" button in the "Screen Brightness" control), but the fact that you can watch or listen to (almost) whatever you'd like elevates airtravel from tedious to almost pleasant. As noted in the review of Red, introducing this kind of tech into a cramped space repleat with expected interactions can bring some unexpected behaviours into play. The screens definitely pumped out a fair amount of heat - noticeable by placing your hand near them - and the cabin was a fair bit warmer than usual, bringing to mind all kinds of stories about library architects not taking into account the weight of books. I also found it surprisingly difficult to settle into Clint Eastwood's excellent Flags of our Fathers after my seatmate started the same film about three minutes before me. Whenever the action lulled, my eyes were inevitably drawn to his screen where the future was foretold in off-colour, angled LCD watching. All the same, the mere fact that I could choose to watch a seemingly unedited print of a great film instead of a heavily censored version or poorly selected rubbish more than made up for it. Sure, it lacks the über cool social chat features and inseat food ordering from Red, but it's aeromiles ahead of craning over heads and seatbacks to see a blown out projection and listening to a tinny soundtrack through a set of hollow rubber tubes.

Further excitement lurked in our shuttle when we blew out a tire on the highway from the airport to the hotel. It was pretty uneventful in the end; a fifteen minute wait on the shoulder until a different van - complete with cracked windshield and flaming skull license plate frame - picked us up. The Westin Bellevue hotel itself is brand new and beautifully decorated and I'm moments away from crashing in the Heavenly Bed. More tomorrow as we start the sessions!