VANOC's greatest oversight at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics
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| Rick Hansen and Wayne Gretzky |
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| By: David Byrd |
Rick Hansen and Wayne Gretzky are both national heros, without a doubt. Does anyone remember how Rick Hansen ended up in a wheel chair? "He was paralyzed at the age of 15 from being in the back of a pickup truck when it crashed into another car." -Wikipedia. So there's Rick Hansen inside BC Place where he finished his 26-month trek of over 40,000 km through 34 countries almost 23 years before and he sits there as Wayne jumps into the back of a pickup truck to take the torch down to the cauldron in Coal Harbour and light it.
The parallel of being in the back of a pickup truck while Rick's message is to always wear a seat belt, don't drink and drive and be safe while driving seemed to me to be the largest oversight of VANOC and no one noticed.What do you think of this? What was the greatest oversight in your opinion?
Crowd Sourced Olympic Montage Videos UPDATED
I have been troubled about what to write about the Olympics while basking in the short afterglow. I have a few things planned for next week in terms of intellectual discussion and the Olympic movement in general but this week I thought I would leave it to the people who created loved and enjoyed the Olympics to it's fullest. Under each video is a short description of and link to the creator.
Stephen Brunt of the Globe and Mail created this tear jerker of a photo essay of the games.
John Biehler a local citizen journalist and all-round awesome guy made this.
This video was created by AHA MEDIA's Richard Czaban. AHA MEDIA is about exploring mobile media production through New Media cameras. For a better quality version of this video, contact April Smith on Twitter or Facebook.
A tribute to the Canadian Gold Medal hockey team! Lyrics by Ray Blackmore & Produced by Kevin Lambert
This video was posted on Vancity Buzz and is a static video shot of downtown with audio as Canada wins Gold in Men's Ice Hockey. The sound you are hearing in this video is mostly from the LiveCity Yaletown venue in the lower middle of the shot. Check out the video above to experience the noise from inside the venue.
Free Toolkit for Small Business Online
Free tools are vital to the success of any small business. The current growth in free applications and software continues to benefit all businesses. Choosing a few of these tools was a real challenge. These applications assist small business owners with common issues such as web publishing, storage, document creation and editing, communications, marketing and scheduling.
Wordpress and Blogger are the top two online blogging tools which can also be used to create and manage fully funcitoning websites rather easily. If you are looking for an external solution your costs will increase exponentially. Use Google to find great walk-throughs for these free straightforward website solutions.
Dropbox is a storage system (2GB free) for storing files across multiple computers with ease. It allows the user to drop a file in to an internet folder which can be accessed by other computers or even your iPhone/ Blackberry. Dropbox also allows you to invite people to view private files or host files in a public folder accessible to anyone who knows the address. This is great for working with clients or transferring files among a group of people.
Google Docs is a free, web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation and form application offered by Google. Google Docs allows free storage of up to 1GB of data. Google Docs is also a collaborative tool for editing in real time. Documents can be shared, opened, and edited by multiple users at the same time.
Open Office is an offline alternative to Google Docs or Microsoft Office. It is available for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux and most other operating systems. Open Office is free to download and easy to install.
Hootsuite allows a user to measure, monitor and post to social media like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn all from one easy to use dashboard. There is a learning curve when using this incredible free dashboard so watch the short tutorial videos. Social media can be utilized to enhance customer engagement and communications, both internally and externally.
Mail Chimp allows the user to send out 3000 electronic mail outs per month or free for up to 500 subscribers. For a small business an email list is essential but keeping those people engaged and up-to-date with your business is even more important.
Doodle is an easy to use scheduling software. It's great for scheduling meetings. It's hard to explain how easy it makes things until you try it so just click the link above and test out Doodle.
It is important to consider free tools when managing your business.
Originally published in the Vancouver Board of Trade's Sounding Board Magazine.
The Olympic Torch Relay hits its Target
I quickly got over to Willingdon Avenue in Burnaby outside BCIT to tak pics of the torch relay from the street. Thousands of people took to the street to greet the flame as it ran past BCIT. Check out this for more.
You can see all 200 of the photos I took of the torch relay February 11th on Flickr.
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