Here’s an interesting post by Ryan Anderson of The New PR.  He discusses the next generation DVD format, where its Toshiba vs Sony for control of high-def home movies, and the relevance the adult entertainment industry could play in the outcome.

He refers to a story on Wired Blog that says the adult industry is practically unanimous in its adoption of Toshiba’s HD-DVD standard.  Due, in no small part, to the fact that Sony refused to license its Blu-ray technology to at least one porn distributor.

Ryan’s post points out that, “Historically, the porn industry has been key in driving the growth in technology of almost every major medium” and “most industry experts agree…that the adult industry was key in securing the success of VHS over the superior betamax format for home use.”

I have heard/read both of these points in the past.

The Associated Press (Gary Gentile) reports that, “Fans of CBS shows will soon be able to slice clips from prime-time shows, send them to friends and even “mash” them together in ways that only a short time ago would have triggered complaints of copyright infringement.”

CBS CEO Leslie Moonves said Tuesday at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that, “his company would embrace products and technologies that allow viewers to “time shift” and “place shift” his network’s shows and interact with them in new ways.”

On Monday, the F-35 Lightning II Joint Stirke Fighter completed its second flight.  Here’s a photo taken during the flight.

Lockheed Martin is one of my clients at Thornley Fallis.

If you missed it last night, check out Rick Mercer’s take on the Federal Accountability Act.  Pretty funny.

I’m not necessarily an Apple guy.  I have a Dell notebook and a Blackberry.  I’ve been considering upgrading to the new Blackberry Pearl, but I may hold off.  Introduced today at the Macworld Conference and Expo, the new iPhone looks really cool.

Apple says:

iPhone combines three products – a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching into one small and lightweight handheld device. iPhone also introduces an entirely new user interface based on a large multi-touch display and pioneering new software, letting you control everything with just your fingers. So it ushers in an era of software power and sophistication never before seen in a mobile device, completely redefining what you can do on a mobile phone.

I’ve been considering advising a client to start a blog.  An “official” blog that fully discloses who’s writing and paying for it.

I turned to a blogger I know, who has been in the sphere for a while, to see what he thought about the idea and whether he saw a negative aspect to doing this that I might not have considered.

I think I got some really good feedback.

I was advised that “official” blogs tend to be regarded with disdain in the blogosphere because part of the attraction of blogs is that they’re informal and honest.  “Official” blogs are generally neither – they can’t be informal for legal reasons and they can’t be completely honest because that’s not the purpose of the blog.

The blogger felt that what blogs/bloggers do best (at this point in their evolution) is call “bullshit” when they see it.  An “official” blog begs to be ridiculed most of the time.

I was referred to the last Canadian federal election campaign to see what was written about the campaign blogs for each party and each candidate – almost uniformly negative.

He suggested that if I/my client was going to run a blog, we’d need to somehow overcome that.  Full disclosure in the header or top sidebar (who’s writing it, who pays the bills, the objective of the blog, etc.) might help.

He also suggested talking about the bad as well as the good, and maybe even having an area for open comments where those who disagree could engage in the debate. 

He thought we’d win over more people by winning an argument with a dissenter on the blog than by putting out one-sided spin.

If we go ahead, we’ll being doing so with this insight in mind.

Taxes, the environment and Afghanistan.  Looking best on two out of three of these issues could be key to winning the next federal election writes Bruce Anderson, President of Decima Research.

When was the last time you arrived for a doctor’s appointment a few minutes early to check-in and complete any paper work, and actually saw the doctor at your scheduled appointment time?

Very rarely? Never? I’ve had to wait half an hour when I was the first appointment of the day?!?!

As a consultant, this drives me crazy.  If I was constantly late for meetings (and significantly late) or always kept clients waiting in our reception area for 15, 30 minutes or more before seeing them, I wouldn’t have clients for very long.

But it’s more than that.  It’s about respecting other people’s time.  Hey Doc, I also have a job to do, appointments to make and personal commitments to keep.

I came down with something on New Year’s Day.  I stayed home from work on Tuesday and Wednesday, but thought I was up to going in on Thursday.  Around midday, I realised I wasn’t up to it, but whatever I had was now starting to drag out, so I decided to go to the doctor.  My doctor (who I started seeing recently is actually pretty good at running on schedule) is closed on Thursday afternoons.  So I went online to look up a walk-in clinic I’d been to before – Appletree. I was going to call and see how long the wait was.

When I found the website, which isn’t anything special, I noticed an icon “Current Wait Times and Locations”.  I clicked on it and wow!!!  They had the approximate wait time to see a doctor at each of their 11 locations in the Ottawa area listed right there on the site.  And it also indicates when (time and date) the wait time for each location was last updated.  I wasn’t ready to leave right away, so I checked back a couple of times and each location updated their wait time pretty regularly.

The location closest to me had a 2 hour wait listed, but the second closest location was only about 30 minutes, so I went to that one.  When I got there, I saw a doctor in, you guessed it, about 30 minutes.  Amazing!

Ottawa has five hospitals.  The General, Civic and Riverside are part of the Ottawa Hospital.  Then there is the Queensway Carleton in the West end and Montfort in the East.  Guess how many list approximate wait times for their Emergency Rooms?  Zero.

If a small network of clinics can offer this service, why can’t any or all of the large hospitals that have significantly greater resources?  Sure you can call, but it would be nice to quickly view and compare the various wait times at several locations to decide where to go.  Maybe drive a little further, but not have to wait as long.

Needless to say, next time I need to see a doctor, my first stop will be www.appletreemedicalgroup.com.

Another note, at the Appletree location I went to on Preston Street, all the Doctor’s had electronic, tablet-style, clipboards used to document the visit and generate prescriptions that both you and the pharmacist can read.

Given the attention Ottawa will pay to the cabinet shuffle, let me offer a slightly different perspective:  the interesting thing was the appointment of the six secretaries of state, and where they went:

The Honourable Jay D. Hill is appointed Secretary of State and Chief Government Whip;

The Honourable Jason Kenney has been sworn in as a member of the Privy Council and is appointed Secretary of State (Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity);

The Honourable Gerry Ritz has been sworn in as a member of the Privy Council and is appointed Secretary of State (Small Business and Tourism);

The Honourable Helena Guergis has been sworn in as a member of the Privy Council and is appointed Secretary of State (Foreign Affairs and International Trade) (Sport); and

The Honourable Christian Paradis has been sworn in as a member of the Privy Council and is appointed Secretary of State (Agriculture).

These six appointments will be working with the following ministers, if my guess is correct:

Mr. Paradis will be working with Minister Strahl, former member of the breakaway DRC;

Ms. Guergis will be working with former PC leader Peter MacKay, former Liberal cabinet minister David Emerson and Minister Oda, who went from no Secretaries of State to two today;

Mr. Ritz will be working with Industry Minister Maxime Bernier;

Mr. Kenney will be working with Minister Oda and (perhaps) Minister Finley;

Mrs. LeBreton will be working with Minister Solberg, and

Mr. Hill is doing the same job as before, just now as a Secretary of State.

It will be interesting to see how these new secretaries of state interact with their Ministers, and how their ministers react to their appointments.  I was expecting to see a secretary of state for the Environment Minister, frankly, but there you have it.

But watch for these secretary of states and their interaction with their ministers …  I, on the other hand, will be writing the SAG awards to complain that Clint Eastwood has been ignored.

So this is my second ‘sports’ post in a row, but as a guy that played about 80 rounds of golf last year, I had to do this one.

Today marks the start of the 2007 PGA Tour Season with the Mercedes-Benz Championship in Hawaii.  This tournament is nice because it’s the only time golf is on TV during prime time on the east coast.

The PGA Tour is going to be different this year because of the introduction of the FedEx Cup.

The idea of the FedEx Cup is to add a season-long, competitive element to golf culminating in end-of-season playoffs, like all other sports.

The season will run January to August (36 events) with players accumulating points to determine playoff seeding for the FedEx Cup.  The Playoffs will consist of four events between late-August and mid-September to determine the winner of the FedEx Cup.  The field in the first week will be the top 144 players, followed by the top 120, then 70 and then 30 in the final week at the Tour Championship.

I’m already a huge golf fan, but I think this is a great idea that will really make those final four weeks very exciting and highly marketable.

The PGA Tour is also doing this because in recent years some of the top players haven’t been playing in some of the big events at the end of the season.  For example, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson did not play in the 2006 Tour Championship.  Large purses are no longer enough to attract the top players, they already have more money than they can spend.  But to compete in a playoff-type format over four weeks to be crowned PGA champion, that might be a draw.  Let’s hope so.