It’s only fair that the first Olympic gold medal won by a Canadian at a Canadian games goes to a skier.

30 years ago the Crazy Canucks became Canada’s skiing heroes. I remember watching the Lake Placid Winter Olympic Games in 1980 as Steve Podborski took bronze in the men’s downhill (and Ken Read, another of the Crazy Canucks, unfortunately crashed). Forget hockey – flying down a frozen hill at hundreds of miles an hour is what takes guts – you need to be a little crazy. The Canadians came up during a time when European skiers dominated the sport of skiing. Watching fellow Canadians do that – and win medals – was, and still is, inspiring.

Here’s a clip of Steve Podborksi talking about the challenges in 1980, and introducing the course for the 2010 Olympic men’s downhill at Whistler.

Now Alexandre Bilodeau continues the tradition with a gold medal in men’s freestyle moguls, crashing down those bumps like they were just pillows. I’ve skied a few of those – one at a time – and the camera angles don’t show how high the bumps really are.

Bilodeau is on his way to becoming another sports ambassador for Canada, and an inspiration to Canada’s next generations. Asked by NBC’s Today show this morning how he planned to celebrate, he said he’s going to cheer on his teammates who are competing in the next few days.

If you watch the 2010 Winter Olympic Games on TV this month, you’ll see a lot of Vancouver, Canada. Let me warn you now – nothing you see on TV or online can possibly do it justice. This wonderful city has to be experienced in real life.

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WordCamp Miami is in two weeks, and I’ll be one of the speakers. I’ll walk through True/Slant’s editorial workflow, take your questions, and explore some of the customizations we’ve made to WordPress MU.

Image via CrunchBase

I’m also looking forward to the many sessions, and to meeting other WordPress developers. If you’re in South Florida, I hope to see you there. Get your tickets via EventBrite. Other speakers include Jane Wells, and WordPress core developer Mark Jaquith.

The one day conference is being held on the campus of the University of Miami.

Image via Wikipedia

It appears Random House is not eager to go to an agency model or to delay e-book releases.

A poster on the MobileRead forums reported on comments at the American Bookseller Association meeting on Friday:

The only bright spot for Amazon, and Kindle owners, came from Madeline McIntosh, the President of Sales, Operations, and Digital for Random House. She pointed out that publishers “have no real experience at setting retail prices.” She also revealed that one of the reasons Random House had not been party to the iBook Store at launch was because of the pricing issues.

In regards to delayed releasing of ebooks, McIntosh said, “Our current policy is we release e-books at the same time as physical books,” followed by “I haven’t been convinced that it’s good for the author or consumer to delay the release. My fear is that the consumer who has fully embraced the technology will buy another e-book that is available or lose interest altogether. What if I train the consumer that the best scenario is to get it free?”

via MobileRead Forums

Image by oskay via Flickr

The recent e-book dispute between Amazon and Macmillan is far from over.

Macmillan books, both e-book and traditional paper, are still unavailable at time of this writing on Amazon.com, except through Amazon’s third-party sellers. And Macmillan e-books, and the iPad, are not yet available for sale from Apple, Inc.

Who will prevail? Will e-book prices go up? Will book pricing be controlled by a few publishers? Will consumers buy fewer e-books? Will this help authors? Is this even legal?

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