I wrote last year about the fuel economics that lead me to lease a 2004 Toyota Echo Hatchback. While I don’t have any new info on the fuel economy, I’ve had a few requests since to post an updated review now that I’ve had the car for a while. With the new silverorange stuff website all about product reviews, the time was right for that updated review.
Here then, is my silverorange stuff review of the 2004 Toyota Echo Hatchback.
Working in a place were the peer pressure to purchase new stuff is overwhelming, we have finally found a way to capitalize on our reluctant materialism. The silverorange stuff website is a collection of reviews of stuff that we at silverorange have owned and used.
As the “about silverorange stuff” page describes:
Sites like CNet and DPreview offer extensive and helpful review of thousands of products – we certainly aren’t going to replace sites like these (you’ll notice some of our reviews linking to these sites).
Our reviews will consist mostly of things we research, bought, and have used ourselves. While professional journalists can provide extensive specs, professional photos (we’ll do our best with photos), and review a far wider range of products, we feel there is also value in reviews that start with lines like “I’ve owned this camera for three years?”.
The idea for the site came from already-avid-reviewer and president of the internet, Dan James. Only two days later, we have site a filling up with reviews.
My first contribution is a review of the Salon Premium subscription service. A review of my car and a few others will show up soon.
Nice performance by the band Pilate on CBC (RealVideo)
The latest silverorange client site is out: Hampshire Pewter
This video has been linked all over the place, but it is worth it.
It appears to be a demo for a visual effects company. The video is a commercial for an imaginary robotic police officer. It is one of the best produced visual effects shorts I’ve ever seen. The entire video has the feel of roughly collected news footage, and only in a few unfortunate shots do the visual effects become obvious.
It is creepy, unsettling, and amazing.
Following the updated artwork for the Mozilla Firefox browser, the Mozilla Visual Identity Team has finished new artwork for the Mozilla Thunderbird email client.
Again, the icon was based on sketches by Stephen DesRoches and ideas from the rest of the team and drawn by the talented Jon Hicks (get him something from his wishlist).
We may update the Firefox icon somewhat to better match the new Thunderbird icon. Great work Jon and the rest of the team.
As others on the design team post about the new icon, I’ll keep a running list of their posts here:
A bit from CBC Radio on the bizarre industry of “Christian rock music” (5.5MB MP3)
It is generally understood that sometime in the next few months, our new Prime Minister will call a federal election here in Canada. We’ll have a bit of variation on our standard political fare this time around. The Liberal party is wrapped up in financial scandal, the Conservative party is a newly-formed hybrid of the PC and Alliance parties, and the NDP has a strong new leader.
As always, there will be a few other options on the fringes. Today, I received an email from bass-master (as in guitar, not fish) Matt McQuaid of the Rude Mechanicals (featured in session three of Acts of Volition Radio) pointing out an interestive section of the Green Party of Canada website.
Part of their Platform 2004, The Green Party of Canada site has a section about open source software which reads (bold added):
Open Source Software
In this era of increasing technology dependence, both in business and in daily life, software has become a vital economic resource. Software applications must be trustworthy, reliable and easy-to-use. The Open Source Movement is emerging as a competitive rival to privately developed and marketed software, producing programs of equal or better reliability and security.
The Green Party will:
- Require federal agencies to initiate transitions to open source operating systems and productivity software.
- Make technology that has been developed at public expense, a publicly owned resource. Software that has been developed at taxpayer expense will be released under an open source license, making it free for all Canadians to use.
- Procure only software that stores, loads and transmits information in industry standard formats, for which full technical specifications are available. Procurement of systems that require closed licenses or use vendor-specific formats would be used only if no alternative is available.
- Shorten the length of software patents to seven years. The software business cycle is so fast that longer patents only stifle innovation.
I wondered if they practice what they preach. I then noticed a note at the bottom of their site: “This Site is powered by phpWebSite licensed under the GNU LGPL”. How many political parties have a link to the GPL on their site? While the website is far from standards compliant, it is quite good otherwise.
They pretty much had my vote at this point, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to be voting for some yahoo locally (in Canada, we only vote for the local representative, and not directly for the national leader). An email to their local contact received a speedy and informative reply.
It turns out promising Charlottetown Mayoral candidate from last year, Will McFadden, will be running in my riding (the local website isn’t so good).
Mr. McFadden, you have my vote.
Jon Hicks has something coming soon
The new Amazon search site, A9 (based on Google search results) is all the buzz today. You can read about it at kottke.org, metafilter, and John Battelle’s Searchblog.
For any Firefox users those interested in trying it out, I have put together a quick A9 search plugin for Firefox.
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Install the A9 Search Plugin for Firefox
