Mark Evans

Early-Morning, Pre-Hockey Thoughts

I can’t decide whether to laugh or cry that the Italian government is apparently prepared to introduce a new law that could force call bloggers to register with the state - something that could require them to pay some kind of fee (tax?) even if they’re not a commercial operation. Luca Filigheddu, a well-known Italian blogger, calls it an “absurd” idea. It may stupid but if you hit all those bloggers with a $1/month fee, you could be talking about some serious taxation coin given how many people are jumping on the blog bandwagon. Note to super-cash-strapped city of Toronto politicians: don’t even think about it.

Meanwhile, there’s only one day left before the launch of Leopard. Are you stoked or what? Oh, you’re a Vista/XP user; I guess you’ll be happy to avoid the hype-o-rama, the Steve Jobs Aura and line-ups. If you haven’t already got the scoop on all the new features, the New York Times’ David Pogue covers them off. His assessment: “Leopard is powerful, polished and carefully conceived. Happy surprises, and very few disappointments, lie around every corner. This Leopard has more than 300 new spots — and most of them are bright ones.” The WSJ’s Walter Mossberg also has nice thing to say.

And if anyone wasn’t aware of it already, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is a multi-billionaire. Funny math ratio for the day: Zuckerberg has a age to billionaire ratio of about 4:1 (four years for every billion dollars he’s worth on paper). If you still need the news on the Facebook-Microsoft deal, the entire blogosphere seemed to write about it. One that grabbed my attention - other than the one I did looking at how much Zuckerberg could be worth - is Epicenter’s contention that Microsoft underpaid for Facebook.

Okay, time to hit the ice. Later.