Next week I'll be headed to Ottawa for my first political convention, the Liberal Biennial Convention. While I've never been active in politics I decided after the last election to be a part of the process to help, in my small way, to get the Liberals moving forward again.

While not politically active I have always exercised my right to vote whether it's a municipal, provincial of federal election. Democracy and the right to vote is not something to take for granted, though many do. The alternative, as we've seen time and again around the world is scary.

First off, Happy New Year! Here's hoping 2012 is a happy, healthy and prosperous year for you. If you're a fan of SpaceRef then 2012 is going to be a great year. I've been working on the business plan for some time and as of today we start executing the new plan.

I'm an early technology adopter so it's no surprise that I have so easily transitioned and adopted ereading. I'll also point out that I'm 47 and that it's around this age that some people become less inclined to learn new technologies. That will never be the case for me.

The Canadian Space Commerce Association (CSCA) will be holding its annual meeting on March 18th in Toronto and my colleagues and I have assembled a great group of speakers to discuss the theme of this years event which is "The Next Breakthrough Space Technologies for Canada".

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives yesterday released a study title "Canada's Housing Bubble - An Accident Waiting to Happen" in which they state that "for the first time in 30 years, six of Canada's hottest real estate markets are in a housing bubble." The study examined trends in house prices in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal and Ottawa between 1980 and 2010.

Brian Weeden of the Secure World Foundation has a very interesting article on The Space Review titled Dancing in the dark: The orbital rendezvous of SJ-12 and SJ-06F which details the apparent on-orbit rendezvous of two Chinese satellites.

"The rendezvous of two Chinese satellites demonstrates that China is broadening its space capabilities, but also touches on the greater issue of perceptions, trust, and safety in space activities that could impact the long-term sustainability of the space regime."

I have to say I'm fairly excited at the news today that Amazon is making available a new instance type for Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service called Cluster Compute Instances. Specifically designed for high performance computing (HPC) applications, I can how this new service will be attractive to new start-ups who need HPC but don't want to spend the considerable money on their infrastructure just yet.

When the New York Times objected officially to Apple about an iPad application called Pulse they shot themselves in the foot. Pulse is an innovative yet simple RSS news aggregator for the iPad.

For whatever reason the New York Times has decided to target Pulse and now perhaps anyone who aggregates their news feeds. According to Kara Swisher at All Things Digital, a Wall Street Journal web site, Apple received a letter from the New York Times which stated that "The New York Times Company believes your application named 'Pulse News Reader' infringes The New York Times Company's rights.".

TechCrunch is reporting that Microsoft could be taking over the search on Apple's iPhone with the upcoming release of the next iPhone operating system. It's become obvious that Apple and Google are clashing these days in several areas including the mobile sector, and now with Google TV, with home entertainment.

Apple does not have search technology of its own and that's a big setback for a company that's repositioned itself the last few years from being primarily a computer hardware company. So what do you do when you don't want a rival to have a foothold in your territory? You turn to a lesser rival, at least in Apple's eye.

I haven't used one and I can't buy one yet, as I'm Canada, but I do have some thoughts on why the iPad will be a success.

It's a Consumer Device not a Geeks Plaything

I've read quite a few reviews on the iPad including the Wall Street Journal's Walter Mossberg's and Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow's and they both touch on the subject but don't quite nail it down.