telegraphjournal.com - Breaking News, New Brunswick, Canada

Death and Taxes

Seems the Canada Revenue Agency is interested in Ebay power sellers (from CTVNews.ca):

Canadians who auction their goods on eBay can now expect to have their personal information released to the Canada Revenue Agency.

The online auction site has sent a letter to affected customers telling them the law now requires it to send the tax agency the names and gross sales figures of so-called "power sellers." These are eBay sellers who make more than US$1,000 a month in sales over three consecutive months on the site.

"While eBay strenuously objects to these requests made by the CRA, we are obliged to comply with the legal ruling," the company said in the letter.

Now, here's my take on this

If you're simply selling some of your old stuff (regardless of its worth) the CRA should have no right to tax you on any revenues you recieve from those sales. They already got thier slice, it's called the GST.

But - if you're using Ebay as an online marketplace for new goods or services you're producing, then that's a different story.

Businesses warming up to iPhone

From CNet.com

Tthe iPhone is making a guerrilla attack on the business world, brought into the corporate world by influential executives, CIOs rethinking their approach to deploying technology, and younger workers who move seamlessly between their personal and business lives.

There are several high-profile businesses, such as Genentech and Disney (both with strong ties to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, of course), that have declared their intentions to work with Apple on deploying iPhones inside their corporations. That seems to be having the effect of increasing the overall number of business smartphone users, however, rather than turning the iPhone into any kind of "BlackBerry killer."

Unless Research In Motion kicks out some serious innovation again, like they did with the originial Blackberry, they are doomed to the slow decline of Palm. The iPhone's progress in its first two years should be a major wake-up call to RIM.

Hat tip to Robin for pointing this story out to me.

Goodbye Moto

From the LA Times Tech Blog

Move over, Motorola. The iPhone has shaved away your lead in the mobile phone market, passing the RAZR to become the top handset purchased by U.S. adult consumers in the third quarter of 2008, according to the research firm NPD Group. The RAZR had held onto the top spot for 12 quarters.

I can't say I'm surprised by these numbers, only by how quickly Apple is becoming a dominant force in the consumer / prosumer handset space.

iPhones twice as reliable as Blackberries

From MobileCrunch, via MacDailyNews.com:

The iPhone is twice as reliable as the Blackberry after one year of ownership, a new study by SquareTrade finds. SquareTrade, which sells extra warranties for cell phones and other devices, looked at the failure rates of 15,000 phones covered under its plans. The malfunction rate for iPhones after one year is 5.6 percent, compared to 11.2 percent for the Blackberry and 16.2 percent for the Treo.

The study projects that the failure rate for the iPhone after two years will be between 9.2 and 11.3 percent, compared to actual two-year failure rates of 14.3 percent for BlackBerries and 21.0 percent for Treos.

Read the full study here.

MobileMe Update

I found an incredibly useful feature in MobileMe / iPhoto this week: Web photo galleries.

Using both my MobileMe account and iPhoto I was able to quickly set up a photo gallery of shots for a project I'm working on. I was also able to password protect it so only authorized team members could view the gallery.

The gallery also allowed team members to upload photos as well as download all photos as a single .zip file.

If you haven't tried out MobileMe yet and you do a lot of photo sharing, I highly recommend giving it a try. Now that MobileMe has been out for several months most, if not all, the bugs and kinks have been worked out.

You can learn more at www.me.com

Is the iPhone recession proof?

From the Globe and Mail:

TORONTO and MONTREAL — As the stock market flailed and the global economy caused consumers to clutch their wallets close to their chests, Jim Dalrymple has not wavered in his Christmas shopping plans.

The Halifax man's wife and 14-year-old daughter will unwrap iPhones this year, the highly coveted Apple gadget that has defied the recent financial downturn by remaining a hot seller, price tag be damned.

The only person in his family who won't have a new phone come Boxing Day is Mr. Dalrymple's teenage son, who is not being overlooked for financial reasons.

“I'm not worried about the money, he just doesn't really care about having a phone right now,” Mr. Dalrymple said. “When he does, I'll get him one too.”

Given that recent surveys have show that consumers view Internet access and cellphones as essential utiliites, I'm not surprised to see demand steady for a device that provides both as well as iPod functionality.

The Slow Decline of Print Media

From the Toronto Star

BOSTON– The Christian Science Monitor said today it will become the first national newspaper to drop its daily print edition and focus on publishing online, succumbing to the financial pressure squeezing its industry harder than ever.

Come April, the Boston-based general-interest paper – founded in 1908 and the winner of seven Pulitzer Prizes – will print only a weekend edition after struggling financially for decades, its editor announced today.

The Monitor's circulation has fallen from a peak of 230,000 in 1970 to about 50,000 now, while its online traffic has soared. The newspaper gets about 5 million page-views per month, compared with about 4 million five years ago and 1 million a decade ago.

Ten years ago when the net started to take off, everyone predicted the death of traditional print media.

But it hasn't happened as quickly as some had prognosticated, leading others to argue that there will always be newspapers.

I'm not so sure anymore.

The paper is not the first but is the most prominent to scale back its print version in favor of online news. In April, The Capital Times, of Madison, Wis., switched to publishing mainly on the Internet. The Daily Telegram, in Superior, Wis., announced in July that it would print only two issues a week and its Web site would become the primary source for daily news. In Ohio, several local papers plan to print their final Monday editions next week.

UPDATE:

I just wanted to add a quick comment to this post on reflection. To be clear, I don't think newspapers are going to disappear overnight now that the net has matured. I suspect it will take another decade, at least for many print publications to move strictly to the web.

I also don't think the organizations themselves will disappear along with their print editions. They'll be markedly different, but then again, the newspaper newsroom of 2008 is markedly different than the one of 1908.

I once wrote that newspapers had a future because technology had not evolved enough to make it easy and convenient to take the net anywhere you wanted to have it. But the rise of full-featured smartphones with web browsing capability and wireless access may mark the beginning of the end for print's advantage in that area.

Praising Rogers

Getting the cable, telephone and high-speed Internet hooked-up has always been among my top three hassles when moving.

But it wasn't a problem this weekend, thanks to some great service from Rogers Communications.

When I called Rogers about two weeks ago to make arrangements to move, the helpful service agent offered me a Saturday afternoon appointment - something I didn't know they provided. This was exceptionally convenient as it allowed me to have all of our services hooked-up the same day that we moved. It also meant I wouldn't have to take time away from work to have it all set up.

The Rogers technician arrived at 4:15 p.m., which was between the allotted window of 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. and quickly had everything up and running.

I've called out Rogers Communications in this blog a few times (iPhone service plans, PVR failures and HD service come to mind) so it's only appropriate that I also praise the company when it does something right.

Apple outselling RIM

From the Financial Post

Apple Inc. sold so many iPhones in its fourth quarter that chief executive Steve Jobs went out of his way to take a rare shot at its biggest wireless competitor -- reigning smartphone champ Research In Motion Ltd.

"I'd like to point out [a] remarkable milestone resulting from iPhone's outstanding performance last quarter," Mr. Jobs said on a conference call with investors yesterday afternoon. "Apple beat RIM."

I've said it before and I'll say it again - unless RIM steps up its game in a big way, it's going to become the next Palm.