• Michael Geist – Copyright Permission Has No Place in this House
  Canada’s foremost IP commentator wants to know why video from the House of Commons and Senate can’t be used freely for civic purposes. Damn good question.
  (tags: ip politics canada broadcast copyright)

• How to Design for Word-of-Mouth
  It’s maddening to be told, “Go build something viral.” But Joshua Porter has some excellent advice that can at least help you make the most of lightning if and when it strikes.
  (tags: viral marketing howto womm buzz)
• Htmltidy
  A module that helps keep Drupal’s HTML nice and valid. Currently available for 4.6, 4.7 and 5.x.
  (tags: drupal module cms html validation standards)
• HTML corrector
  A module that closes tags in Drupal input fields. This could have saved me some major headaches with Confeederation.
  (tags: drupal module html input format filter)
• Have your subdomains been hijacked?
  Darren Barefoot checked out a random subdomain for his business’s domain name… and discovered a link farm. He’s still not sure who’s to blame…
  (tags: scam domain names registrar subdomains spam linkfarm seo bad darren_barefoot)

Our friends at The Tyee have launched a subscription drive… and they’re using this viral video to support it:

• Affordable Internet Services Online, Inc. – Solar Powered Web Hosting
  Talk about your sun microsystems.
  (tags: energy green webhost solar electricity hosting environmental)

I’m at NetSquared this week in Santa Clara, having a great time, hearing lots of amazing stories…

…but my newly-resuscitated graphics tablet remained in Vancouver, a victim of an overbooked schedule and a deliberately underpacked bag-o’-technology

I’ve wanted to draw this one for a long time. The caption occurred to me nearly a year ago at the beginning of a long walk from a parking lot to a kids’ birthday party.

I didn’t have a notebook handy, so I repeated it over and over to myself so I wouldn’t forget it. I probably looked more than a little crazy to passers-by, muttering “Sometimes you can be so Web 1.0. Sometimes you can be so Web 1.0. Sometimes you can be so Web 1.0.” obsessively.

None of them seemed to take it personally, though.

• AHAH Forms Framework
  A Drupal module that updates forms on the fly with AJAXy goodness — for example, by adding new form fields in response to user input.
  (tags: drupal ajax forms dynamically add fields module framework)

There are few goads to action like seeing someone do very well at an activity you’ve let drop. I’ve been inspired by a friend and accomplished cartoonist, Sarah Leavitt (plug: she sells a hilarious collection of fridge magnets), to break out the sketch pad and markers again.

I’ve cartooned since about Grade 8. My high school physics teacher, Larry Kry, gave me my first serious pen (a Koh-i-noor technical pen, responsible for my ink-stained appearance for most of my time at Gloucester High) and enough encouragement to keep me going for years. Enter my university years, and some of my cartoons got into student newspapers and the occasional activist leaflet. (Plus a drawing of a beaver eating a missile that got a lot of play at Operation Dismantle. I wish I had a few of those stickers left.) And while I was working on Parliament Hill, a number of cartoons found their way into various MPs’ mailings and constituency reports.

In recent years, though, my pen has gone dry. (No need to read some sexual innuendo into that, thank you very much.) Apart from some sporadic doodles from time to time – the sort of thing you do to survive a long meeting, for instance – my sketch book has stayed closed.

But just a brief conversation with Sarah on Friday was enough to spur me to open it again. So, over the next while, you’ll start seeing the results, such as they are. (Plus a brand new category for the blog… way to work out WordPress’s AJAX features, Sarah!)

Here’s the first rough doodle.

• $7B oil refinery won’t face environmental assessment
  300k barrels a day, according to the NDP’s Yvon Godin and Nathan Cullen, but the Harper govt’s waving it through with no review. There are days when I don’t think we’re going to make it.
  (tags: climate_change conservative environment ndp oil)