April 2008 Archives

Unless Twitter has released how many users they have and I'm not aware of it, then how many users they have is really up for speculation. And there is a lot of speculation going on.

I've read that Twitterholic has guestimated about 12 million users while Twitdir has just over a million in their database. If you do as I did and accidentally click the Google search this site button from the Google Firefox toolbar while on your Twitter home page, you'll get back 3,770,000 users.

I did some simple math based on when I joined and when a friend joined. He joined just about six months later than me. I joined in early May of 2007 and he joined in early December of 2007. According to Twitterholic I was user 5,870,022 while my friend was user 11,197,712. So in the six months between us there about 5 1/2 million new user accounts. That was in December of 2007, and we're now just about May of 2008. So how many news users have they added in the last 5 months? Well you would have to figure at least another 5 million bringing the total to around 16 million. But remember this is based on Twitterholic data. How accurate is it really? I don't know. And how does this mesh with the 3.7 million accounts Google has?

There used to be a time where I would spend nearly a thousand dollars a year buying technical books to help me with my programming skills. But no more.

Over the course of the last two years I've transitioned from buying that technical book from my local bookstore or even online at Amazon or Chapters to using O'Reilly's Safari Books Online service. Before I get into the why I've changed my book buying habit, first let me introduce Safari Books Online.

Safari bills itself as the "e-preference library for programmers and IT professionals". O'Reily Media has brought together some 27 publishing companies including O'Reilly, Sams, Prentice Hall, Que, Addison-Wesley, Microsoft, Adobe etc. into Safari to provide their books to members who pay a monthly or yearly fee.

I have a secret, for the last couple months as a side project we've been crawling Twitter with the idea to create a small niche vertical search of tweets. But the more I come across cools applications like Twitterholic, Tweetstats, Twubble, Tweet Scan, twemes etc. the more I think we can do more with our data. So my question to anyone caring to answer is; If you had a rockin application you'd like to see built for Twitter, what would it be?

You never know, we might just build it.

With all the discussion about the sale of MDA's space division to ATK I thought it might be useful to provide some background documents that explain what Radarsat-2 is and it's impact. Of note, the Canadian Space Agency Departmental Performance Review for 2007 lists the total expected cost of Radarsat-2 to be $421.6 million.

The primary defense capabilities of Radarsat-2 can be found in the incorporation of high resolution imaging Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and the Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI) instruments.

• RADARSAT-2:  Innovation in Earth Observation, MDA


• RADARSAT-2 ground segment, Canadian Journal of  Remote Sensing


• Turning the scientifically possible into the operationally practical: RADARSAT-2 Commercialization plan, Canadian Journal of  Remote Sensing


• Canadian Space Agency 2006-2007 Departmental Performance Report, Canadian Space Agency


• Integration of Space Based Radar in The Coalition Assets Surveillance Architecture - Interoperability, Defense Research and Development Canada, Department of Defense, Canada


• A Simulation Study of Multi-Channel RADARSAT-2 GMTI, Defense Research and Development Canada, Department of Defense, Canada

On March 5th the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology held a hearing chaired by Mr. James Rajotte, member for parliament form Edmonton-Leduc. Witnesses included Mr. Marc Garneau former President, Canadian Space Agency, Mr. Steven Staples, Chair, Rideau Institute on International Affairs, Mr. Michael Byers, Professor, Canada Research Chair (Tierne) in Global Politics and International Law, University of
British Columbia, Mr. Hugh Thompson (Spacecraft systems engineer, MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd.

The attached PDF provides their statements and answers to questions posed by members of the committee.

Here is an excerpt from Mr Steven Staples:

Citing a lack of "net benefit" to Canada it appears, according to the Globe and Mail, that the Canadian Government has rejected the sale of MDA to ATK, for now. And while this is a move I agree with as stated in my earlier posting, I am a little surprised. The Canadian government has never rejected a takeover since the Investment Canada Act went into affect in 1989.

So what does this mean for the deal? Well, Industry Minister Jim Prentice has given ATK 30 days to make its case that the deal should go through. I don't think they can make a case that it would be a "net benefit" for Canada. Radarsat2 is a national security space asset that Canadians paid for and should remain in Canada's control. And while there are jobs at stake, perhaps this case has shown the government that investing in space is important to Canada's interests and that they should try to revive an industry that has been neglected for some time.

It's been almost two months since Alliant Techsystems (ATK) announced they would acquire MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) space division. In that span there's been a lot of discussion in Ottawa about the ramifications of the deal and in particular the access to data from Radarsat2 which was just launched this past December 14th.

There's even been talk of having the federal government not approving the deal and just yesterday the NDP, one of the opposition parties in parliament, threatened to seek legal action to stop the deal.