Hmm, That Looks Familiar

Nothing pisses me off like a rip-off artist.

I usually review the logs for my site on a daily basis, checking to see who’s hitting the site, and where they’re coming from. Today I noticed an odd hit originating from Gordon Edall‘s web site. Edall, apparently a videographer/writer from Toronto, decided he liked my site so much he’d duplicate it to promote himself.

Verbatim.

My site in different clothingDown to the layout, most of the color scheme, and even the names of styles in the Cascading Style Sheet.

To Mr. Edall: Though I understand the difficulty of coming up with your own “look”, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t steal mine.

Needless to say, I will be contacting him shortly.

Update: I contacted Gordon Edall regarding his web site. He was a little surprised that I had already learned about his site, but explained that his site was simply a “test” using Dreamweaver. He promised to take it down in a week.

So, What’s New With You?

It’s been a while since I updated my profile, so now is as good a time as any. The last two months have been hectic, and it’s not like I’m gaining any free time these days.

I quit Infowave on August 25th (as opposed to getting laid off) to start at a new startup in Yaletown called PKI Innovations. Before starting my new job I took three weeks of vacation, one of which was spent in the Rockies on a heli-hiking trip, and visiting my parents in my home town of Cranbrook. The new job is quite interesting, as it focuses on one of my major interests: cryptography. The company is currently working on technology to allow Outlook users to request Digital IDs on behalf of other users, thereby enabling encrypted email communications.

The MP Survey I did has managed to gain some attention, most notably from Hillwatch and the CBC. During my vacation I did an interview with Hour Magazine (published in Montreal), and last week I did a radio interview on the Al Stafford Show for 630 CHED in Edmonton, and have another radio interview this week with CBC Radio Halifax’s Maritime Noon program. Some time in the next two weeks, an article on the survey will also appear in Canadian Business magazine. It’s amazing what a little effort, and a visit by National Security will get you in terms of publicity these days.

My wife’s Sony laptop finally got fixed, and Mark Hanson, the VP of Sony PC Marketing, emailed me to confirm that everything was working properly. I took the opportunity to chew him out for a crappy product, horrible service, and nine months of fighting with Sony to fix a problem they knew about beforehand. It felt good. I’m still getting emails from people who have had the same problem with their VAIO laptop, and I’ve sent every one of them on to talk to the Sony engineer that helped me. That’ll learn’em.

Finally, I started working on a book for New Riders on JXTA, which is taking up all of my free time these days. Today, I’m releasing the first three draft chapters to the JXTA Community to get their input, and provide something back to the community.

And that, in a nutshell, is what’s going on with me.