My Own Pirate Radio

Rogers announced this morning that they finally struck a deal with Apple to support the iPhone in Canada.

We’re thrilled to announce that we have a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to Canada later this year. We can’t tell you any more about it right now, but stay tuned.

So the big questions now are (1) when?, (2) how much?, and (3) which versions of the phone will be supported first (Apple is releasing a new one soon, and many people have brought hacked v1 iPhones from the US to Canada over the last year).

Should be an interesting iPhone vs Blackberry showdown.

Mike Zintel just published a great blog post on Mesh, the project he’s been working on at Microsoft the last few years with Dave Treadwell. Now I know why they couldn’t tell me anything about work, other than cryptic stuff like, "It’s going to be cool," and, "it’s pretty hectic", and "I’ll buy you lunch".

I’ve only read a little on it. I like what I see so far. Pub/sub is great, and anything that makes synch better is good. The key will be to make it truly cross-platform and not too exclusively tied to the cruddy stuff that old-guard Microsoft loves to push: Live IDs (remember Passport, anyone?), Windows, and .NET. Lip service to cross-platform won’t cut it.

In any case, this is going to stir up some much-needed excitement in the MS development community. The PDC this year will surely rock.

I wonder how long until we see the first Mesh iPhone app?

Congratulations to the Mesh team.

P.S. I’d like to take it for a spin, but I decided it’ll have to wait. I lost interest and ran out of time somewhere around 10 minutes into the registration process. Let me guess: nobody on the team has actually tried public signup? It’s a nightmare. To begin with you need a Live ID, which means signing up to MSN, which no developer in their right mind wants to do. (And when will "Live" replace MSN? Sigh.) Then you get hit with the "Please join our waiting list" Mesh page. Then you get dumped on the Microsoft Connection Directory page, whatever the heck that is. No thanks. I need a nap.

Guess I’ll wait for the open beta.

Funny little moment #1: About an hour ago, Katrin and I walked over to the subway station together, and we saw the usual trickle of people returning home from downtown, chatting on their phones, wearing spiffy-looking office duds, and generally looking rather frayed and frazzled. It’s gorgeous spring weather now, with the trees all budding and blooming. Definitely not suit weather, whatever that might be. And I said to Katrin, "Just imagine all these millions of people, putting on their suits every morning and heading in to the office, and all of it just to impress… well, each other." And she smiled.

Funny little moment #2: This morning, we met with an accountant. The moment we sat down, he apologized for not wearing a tie with his suit, to which we said, "errrm… well, we don’t really care about that. We are just hoping you can help us with our taxes.". To which he responded, in a relieved tone, "Oh, good. Because that’s not really how I impress people anymore, anyway." And he smiled.

Do work that you love, and do it well.

All the other stuff will eventually fall into place.

Even if you have to wear a suit.