Admittedly this has little to do with art, but who could resist republishing that headline? The Toronto Star reports a Canadian study commissioned by the conservative party finds widespread support for Ottawa using Web 2.0 programs and strategies to more effectively reach the population.
“Adoption of Web 2.0 applications represents an opportunity to transform the `face’ of the government of Canada, to make it appear more approachable and more responsive to Canadians,” says the report’s summary.”
Speaking to popular applications explored for use,
“The survey warns that Facebook and YouTube users log on primarily for entertainment and recreation purposes and would not expect, or necessarily want, to meet official government missives in this “private” space.”
I guess there’s some resistance on the part of Canadians in investing tax payer dollars to create a Canadian Public Service Agency fan page, or a policy status widget.
In case anybody thought Steven Harper’s conservative government in Canada has been a relatively benign force in the arena of arts funding think again. According to the Globe and Mail Thursday, proposed changes to the Income Tax Act “would allow the Heritage [and Justice department] to deny tax credits to projects deemed offensive, effectively killing the productions.” I don’t know why these two departments should suddenly have the role of art and film expert thrust upon them when the Canada Council already employs people with that job description. If such a policy were pushed through, these ministers could ultimately trump decisions made by government arts agencies. Toronto lawyer David Zitzerman thinks the news smacks of “closet censorship, suggesting that Academy Award nominees such as Juno might not receive funding under this kind of review process. Certainly the majority of films by internationally acclaimed directors David Cronenberg, and Adam Egoyan would never have been made were this law in place years ago. It’s yet unclear however, just how Strange Brew would register on the Canadian governments moral compass.
Project Runway eliminated my favorite of the two contestants vying for a chance to compete at Bryant Park last night, costume and women’s wear fashion designer Chris March. While the judges don’t like work that looks too familiar, as last night’s episode shows, the commercial viability of the designer as seen in Rami Kashou, man of Greek drapery, as opposed to creative ability and innovative success, ultimately determines who moves on. Certainly, this year’s decision only reaffirms a bias most obviously revealed in Season 2’s win by banal designer Chloe Dao, who ultimately tipped the judges with her speech about her proven success in the market. While you can’t hold Season 2’s results against the judges — all the contestants sucked that year — their recent choice to eliminate Chris March is amongst the worst they’ve made, and notably without the standard guest panelist.
In completely unrelated-to-art news, I just received a service advisory from the MTA informing subscribers that due to weather conditions all scheduled weekend work has been canceled. Is this a hoax? Since when has the rain and snow ever effected public transit positively?
Allow me to take a minute to complain about the idiocy gmail has suddenly taken to assuming of its users. Positive changes to programs do not include adding a feature that allows you to “go to this link” after you’ve attached it to a word in your email. I put it there myself so someone else could look at it, so why would I a) not know how to follow my own link, b) need it again? Also, previously the picture icon of a broken link in the tool bar menu told me with complete clarity how to remove a link I decided I didn’t want. Now, the “remove this link” message serves only to obscure the text I’m writing.
The most annoying added idiot feature however has little to this. Undoubtedly designed by money makers wanting you to stay around longer and click on their ads, a pop up now appears when you click to sign out of your account reading, “Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?” Thanks for your concern gmail, but it’s not like you don’t save my drafts every two seconds (except of course, when I’m writing something long and important and you decide not to work.) I know what I’m doing.
Speaking to the larger philosophies behind Google, the initial success behind the search engine, to my mind, lay in their decision not to try and anticipate what a user might want, but rather assuming we knew best (ie no categories, and filters based the number of links to a particular website.) These new changes seem antithetical to the reasons Google became popular in the first place.
Additional note: I love that gmail is free, but it also means it offers no services when you actually need it. Given my reliance on the service, this does make me a little uncomfortable.
