Santa, Please Bring Canada Tech Stuff

Before go any fur­ther I want to first say that I do appre­ci­ate that there’s a lot that’s got­ten bet­ter in our tech lives since our move to Canada. That includes over­all faster Inter­net con­nec­tion speeds,  a great fea­ture from our ISP that for­wards a copy of any tele­phone voice­mail to my email as an attach­ment (and which I can actu­ally open and lis­ten to on my iPhone — FTW!), and a fair amount of free Inter­net Wi-fi in cafés nearby.  I also appre­ci­ate that our online bank­ing works very well (with the excep­tion of not being able to pay US credit card bal­ances from our US dol­lar account, but inter­na­tional rules are rules, I sup­pose), and that pay­ing for pur­chases at your aver­age store or even fast-food chain can almost always be done with your ATM card — some­thing that we could never expect with any reg­u­lar­ity in the US (Is this still the case, US read­ers? I haven’t checked lately.) Now, even the El Gato EyeTV soft­ware on my Mac finally gets list­ings for Cana­dian TV chan­nels (it only took them 4 years with me bug­ging them at every Mac­world Expo for this). Translink has 2 mobile apps for the iPhone (if you count Google as one of them), and buy­ing movie and con­cert tick­ets online is almost some­thing we now take for granted.

How­ever, there are a few things in the tech realm that just plain suck in Canada. I’ve already writ­ten ad nau­seum about cell phone rates being out­ra­geous, but I had got­ten used to that, except for the fact that it keeps mak­ing itself known in all sorts of places, when you least expect it. Like, for instance, Twit­ter, the microblog­ging ser­vice that I some­times post to or use to fol­low the sta­tus of oth­ers. If you live in the US, you’ve prob­a­bly never seen this annoy­ing lit­tle mes­sage in your Twit­ter page:
Twitter Message Gripe

If there were only some way to have that mes­sage go away already… We know, we know, Twit­ter, Cana­dian data rates are pro­hib­i­tively expen­sive for you to send us mes­sages from Twit­ter. At least you could stop adding insult to injury by con­stantly remind­ing us of this fact, and let us turn the stu­pid, ugly thing off.

Other tech things I wish we’d get in Canada? Hey, how about being able to see TV reruns online, via the ser­vice called ‘Hulu’. When­ever I bring up their screen from a Cana­dian Inter­net con­nec­tion I see this:

Hulu.com Message

And of course, our Amazon.ca is only a pale shadow of Amazon.com, with a frac­tion of the selec­tion, and we can’t use Net­flix, Zap­pos, or Mint. Our non-HD TiVo is all but laughed at in Canada (despite the supe­rior inter­face) because the HD TiVo will never be sold here. The rea­son is that it requires Cable­Card, the tech­nol­ogy par­tially adopted in the US that allows you to use a sim­ple mag­netic card to con­nect to HD cable rather than the big, ugly boxes they have here (often bun­dled with ugly, hard-to-use PVRs). I’ve heard that the cur­rent ver­sion of Cable­Card, v. 1.0, is imper­fect because it doesn’t sup­port 2-way com­mu­ni­ca­tion or on-screen guides.

C’mon, Santa. You finally got us the iPhone and an honest-to-goodness Apple store. What about some­thing this year? And Black­ber­ries don’t count, since they come from here (Besides, most folks already know that the Black­berry Storm is an Epic FAIL.) So Mr. Claus, could you see fit to get us v. 2.0 Cable­Card (which fixes the whole 2-way com­mu­ni­ca­tions prob­lem) accepted here in Canada, and that even­tu­ally we once again catch-up to the States? Fail­ing that, Zap­pos, Net­flix or Mint work­ing here wouldn’t be bad, either. Whad­dayasay, Santa?

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By David Drucker | Filed in Canada, Tech, Television | December 22, 2008 11:53 pm

9 Comments to “Santa, Please Bring Canada Tech Stuff”

  1. Avatarnancy
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2008 at 12:16 am
    1

    Hear Hear! btw keep your eye on Pen­ny­min­der as the Cdn answer to Mint.
  2. AvatarRaul
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2008 at 12:16 am
    2

    Dear David,

    It scares me some­times how well you under­stand me. If I had writ­ten a let­ter to Santa, THIS is exactly what I would have asked for. Well, that and a Mac­Book Pro ;)

    My best to you and Pam for Christ­mas and the New Year!
  3. AvatarKaren
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2008 at 1:21 am
    3

    Did you know about canada.zappos.com? I have ordered from them sev­eral times this year and while they don’t have free returns they do have a flat rate for ship­ping. You can also, of course, order from the US site and have your pur­chases sent to Point Roberts.
  4. AvatarDavid Drucker
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2008 at 2:58 am
    4
    Author Comment

    Hi Karen -
    Thanks for the com­ment. I hadn’t heard about canada.zappos.com With­out the free returns, I prob­a­bly can’t take the chance (I have a really bizarre shoe size, 11 1/2 Triple A, and almost noth­ing fits). Good to know about them though.

    We took a trip to Point Roberts (and man, it was really creepy) and con­sid­ered the whole mail­box thing there. I guess that might do the trick for the ship­ping issues for both Net­flix and Zap­pos, but in both cases it sort of ruins the whole con­ve­nience aspect of them (If I can drive 40 min­utes to Point Roberts, I can drive 15 to the near­est video store or the Oak Ridge Mall for shoes).
  5. AvatarWest End Bob
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2008 at 9:14 am
    5

    Great syn­op­sis of cur­rent con­di­tions, David. Thanks!

    Tell me more about this El Gato EyeTv? I see that is the soft­ware ver­sion — what would I need on my Mac­Book to actu­ally use the soft­ware? Would it play on my HDTV with proper con­nec­tions? Sounds ideal for the rare occa­sions I would like to view TV content .…
  6. AvatarDavid Drucker
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2008 at 10:40 am
    6
    Author Comment

    Hi Bob,
    The El Gato EyeTV is soft­ware but you do need hard­ware, which can be from the same com­pany (elgato.com)or oth­ers, which essen­tially con­nects to your TV cable, with the other end con­nected to your USB Port. Here’s the descrip­tion of the flag­ship prod­uct, the EyeTV 250 Plus:

    Watch, record, edit and enjoy TV on your Mac and con­vert ana­log source video to dig­i­tal files. EyeTV 250 Plus receives free over-the-air (OTA) HDTV, Clear QAM, and tra­di­tional ana­log TV. And thanks to EyeTV 250 Plus’ built-in hard­ware encoder, ana­log video is rapidly con­verted to high qual­ity dig­i­tal video with­out using your Mac’s processor.

    EyeTV 250 Plus comes with a com­pos­ite video and S-Video break-out cable. Use it to con­nect a set top box (one that has ana­log out­puts) to watch cable and satel­lite TV on your Mac, con­vert video­tapes to DVD, and con­vert ana­log video to iPod/iPhone/Apple TV for­mats. The included VHS Assis­tant and iPod Assis­tant will guide you through the setup.

    It also comes with the EyeTV Soft­ware, essen­tially turn­ing your Mac into a single-tuner PVR (since you can now sched­ule record­ings, but you can’t watch one pro­gram while record­ing another.) It’s cur­rently sell­ing for $179.
  7. AvatarWest End Bob
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2008 at 12:08 pm
    7

    Thanks, David!
  8. AvatarGene Blishen
    Posted: Jan 2nd, 2009 at 10:23 pm
    8

    So true David. My story is sim­ple. I wanted to buy a Flip Mino last July. No luck. Even if I had it shipped to a friend in Texas my Mas­ter­Card had to have a US domi­cile. The only way I got it was to send my friend the money and have him order it, ship it to him and then up to me. Crazy. Espe­cially when you can ship thou­sands of dol­lars back and forth across the line with­out any prob­lem. Just not $179 for a Flip Mino.
    By the way I love this lit­tle device and now see they have the HD version.
  9. AvatarDavid Drucker
    Posted: Jan 2nd, 2009 at 10:42 pm
    9
    Author Comment

    Hi Gene -
    I was thrilled when my father gave me a Flip Ultra. I would have had to do the same that you did. It’s a blast, and even works north of the 49th Par­al­lel! Imag­ine that!
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