Anything Prose

Quebecor Looks at Home-Phone Market

Buy-Back from Carlyle Group

Quebecor Inc. is preparing a new start in the residential- phone market for its telephone unit, Videotron Telecom, after buying back control of the company from U.S. investment firm Carlyle Group, Quebecor said yesterday.

Primus : Téléphonie Internet

Primus lance son service de téléphone Internet

La téléphone résidentielle par Internet a officiellement pris son envol au Canada et au Québec, hier, avec l'introduction du service par Primus Canada. L'arrivéé de ce premier joueur Internet dans la téléphonie locale pourrait mettre de la pression sur les cablodistributeurs.

Primus Canada, une filiale 100 % de la société publique amércaine Primus Telecommunication, offrira le téléphone pour 19,95 $ par mois, une économie de 25 % sur le tarif actuel des Bell, Telus et autres compagnies de tétéphone.

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Vidéotron Telecommunications-(Québécor) will offer a similar service soon. POSTed above from the English website, the company spokesperson states that (before tooling up for the Internet phone business) the company had to buy out the 30% share owned by the Carlyle Group.

Just the name Carlyle Group will ring bells with news hounds who have traced the connection between the Bush family interests and the Ben Laden family investments. I have no idea what you could make of this Québec connection. After all, we are in the realm of global enterprise in telephony and Internet technology. What would you expect, a mom-and-pop operation involving only nationals clustered within one border or another?

(I do know conspiracy-theory buffs who will make ALL the connections and am certain that we have not heard the end of it yet. If they link Carlyle Group to Power Corporation, the thread goes directly to Canada Steamship Lines, to Maurice Strong, to PM Paul Martin . . . A hop skip and a jump and the entire foreign policy of Canada is determined by the Club of Rome.

This is not so funny, I know, but realistically speaking, why not start with, oh, say . . Canada's substantial role in Afghanistan today or Canada's role in influencing civil society in Haiti, where a 48-hour general strike is underway as I write this?

(To translate this article enough to read it in English, follow the tip in the last POST on how to use the Google language tool.)

Blogging School

When I first started to blog, in my case only a couple weeks ago, I began backwards. As a writer and editor, my work keeps me right in the middle of web content issues. But that does not mean I have mastered the first things about coding in HTML or any other language for scripting. About two months ago, my work brought me face-to-face with the process of reading a constant stream of blog and newsite information on a feed reader.

My newbie status in mixing what you need to know with what you want to achieve on the Internet--like many others, maybe even you--hasn't prevented me from getting this far and actually blogging on my own channel.

How was it I entered blogging through the back door? It was by implementing RSS feeds into my email reader. The whole thing pulled me into blogging in the first place.

Apart from work for a TV producer starting a website, I got personally started thanks to the nudging of a friendly editor on line named Amy Gahran. She started lamenting on her ezine (I now read her blog instead) that the whole lexicon of terms surrounding syndicated feeds through XML / RSS was very NERDY--that in order to interest and start to initiate more of the general public to this stuff , we needed to come up with more human and humane names. No more of all this techie language using code words, i.e., if we want to communicate to ordinary folks.

Well, after downloading my reader for RSS, I didn't see it as all that arcane. It just sort of worked. But suddenly, NOW, trying to put code into a typepad blog so I can 'ping' weblog.com, what Amy has been saying is coming back to hit me in the face. Placing a blog roll here was also a lesson: I need to get a blogging education.

However -
Reading Dave Winer--on the pages where he tries to explain an RSS script is like wading through five feet of fresh mud for me. Do not fear, I shall slog on.

To see what Mrs. Amy G. has to say, click HERE

My amusing / frightening experience -
I went to Google to see if there is an online course about blogging that could help.

There are now approximately 550 hits when one enters (in quotes) the terms "blogging school." I want to share two of them, partly because one may prove useful to you as well and mainly because it is frightening and funny at the same time to see what is out there when you cold-call Google with perfectly innocent terms for a relatively banal topic. (See Below)

myRSS: Blogging School Guide to Building A Blog Channel Information

Blog Templates
Dealing With Movable Type
Add a Site
Modify a Site
What's New
What's Cool
Top Rated
Random Link
Blogging Problems
Blogging Software
Blogs You Pay For
Free Blogs
Gossamer Threads Inc.

+++++++++++++++++ THE SECOND hit was way out there in Biggotville:

Dead Man "Blogging: School" Policies Promote Homosexuality

Dead Man Blogging -- my white ass
!!What Crap!! (. . . some of us wish he were, and I don't mean blogging!! It's got nothing to do with religious tolerance and everything to do with being a human being and recognizing what that means . . . enuf !) He continues=

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now ...
robert.williamsonline.us/archives/000082.html - 13k -
(results of googling "Blogging School")

(I bet this guy IS ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED that Jesus Christ was straight !)