The end of the calendar year always generates lists and rankings and reviews that try and make sense of the twelve months past. One set of lists I've really enjoyed this year are the collections of viral videos. I think 2008 will be regarded as a turning point when it comes to a lot of things, including the influence and reach of online videos.

What makes a video viral is its infectiousness, and the degree to which people spontaneously share them with friends and strangers alike. However one key trend I've noticed is the increasing amount of attention and resources that traditional media properties and empires have put into creating and launching viral media. When you look at the top 10 lists a lot of the videos are produced by or even clips from mainstream sources.

There's nothing wrong with this of course, it just demonstrates that online video is ready for prime time. Yet we can't lose sight of the true potential of viral media which is a leveling effect that allows anyone to potentially create a video that gets millions of views. An important thing to watch in the months to come is the degree or extent to which average folk are still able to produce and launch viral videos.

With that in mind, here are my top 5 picks in reverse order:

A subject I've been passionate about for some time is the issue of universal access to the Internet. By this I refer not just to the actual connection, but also the social infrastructure that allows for intelligent use.

Recently President-elect Barack Obama reiterated his committment to ensure that all Americans have high-speed access to the Internet, and while here in Canada our urban centres are well connected, many of our rural communities are not.

What has always frustrated me about this issue is the techno-centric approach that government policy and advocates have focused on. The idea that the Internet is just a series of tubes is something that is easy to laugh at, yet it accurately reflects the utilitarian culture we ascribe to it.

I always couple culture with technology in the same light as political economy, and what access strategies generally lack is a focus on education, literacy, and creating local capcity to maintain the infrastructure required to get communities connected.

There's a chicken and egg scenario with rural broadband access in which companies are unwilling to invest unless there is demand and yet the demand may not exist due to a lack of awareness.

Similarly I think there's a need to grow your own Internet, invest in local infrastructure, and create the demand from the inside out.

It's been a really long week for me, and the country as a whole. I've been working really hard, on a ton of exciting projects. So, too, have the political parties in this country. All of them are coming closer than ever to achieving their agenda and creating a new type of government for Canadians.

On the one hand you have the Conservative party, about whose now-successful efforts at consolidating their hold on power I've been writing quite a bit.

On the other hand, you have a newly formed coalition that evokes strong emotion on all sides, and for the first time in a while genuinely threatens the otherwise arrogant Stephen Harper.

Now that parliament has been prorogued, the campaign for power moves into uncharted waters. While we're not in an election (yet), the airwaves are full of political ads, the media is talking about polls, and the internet is alive with the buzz of politics.

To some extent, the government has home field advantage, in that they can still govern, and appear to be hard at work navigating Canadians out of an economic maelstrom.

The coalition parties have their work cut out for them. Their challenge will be to stay in the news while the government bunkers down and hopes Canadians grow tired of the drama.

The key to the coalition's success is unity. But that doesn't mean there can't be dissent. Part of their strength lies in their diversity, and this diversity originates in the cities of Canada.

So it would seem as if the Tories are too clever by half, and their arrogance has been the primary protagonist in their defeat. The opposition parties are in the last stages of forming a new coalition government. However the Tories do have a few tricks in their bag, and will do everything they can to resist their fall, including potentially proroguing parliament until the new year.

Yet the door is open and the opportunity for a new political era in Canadian politics is upon us. The Conservative party regards this as an attack from the left, however I think a more accurate description of this conflict is of an urban uprising.

It is often taken for granted that Canadian politics is regional, what with the Bloc Quebecois consistently dominating Quebec and the Conservatives dominating the West.

Yet the real divide is urban vs rural, with the last two elections virtually shutting the Tories out of major Canadian cities, in west, central, and eastern Canada. Even urban Alberta had a few non-Tory MPs elected.

The irony of course is that cities are where the action is, the engine of the global economy, and the front line for the pains and gains that result. In Canada the federal government has either treated the cities with neglect or disdain, limiting and restraining their potential.

Now that this same government teeters on the brink of collapse, their reactionary language will lead them to accuse the opposition of staging a coup d'etat, of hijacking the government for their own agenda.

Well that agenda is the urban agenda, and what we might be witnessing here is the rise of the city state, at least the Canadian version, i.e. non-violent and still within a geographically broad national federation.

So the Conservative Party of Canada have enacted a ridiculous strategy of playing chicken while the economy teeters on the brink, and I'm left wondering, are they too clever by half?

While I do realize that the Harrisites are gaining influence in the PMO, and that their Machiavellian nature should not be underestimated, I still assumed that Harper and the people around him were smarter than this.

Couched in an economic statement that includes government spending cuts, the Government is literally trying to bankrupt the opposition parties. An anti-democratic move unto itself, but one so crazy I kind of wonder if the Tories themselves actually expect it to pass.

Perhaps the government is actually engineering it's own defeat. Upset with their inability to obtain a majority to weather the economic storm, they are playing a wicked kind of end game that is both awesomely stupid and fiendishly clever. Either they will successfully bankrupt and cripple the infrastructure of opposing parties, or their government will be defeated and a new coalition comprised of Liberals, NDP, and BQ will form a new government.

In no way do I, or the Conservatives think there will be an election. The last election was a total waste, with horrible turnout, and calling another would inevitably draw the wrath of pretty much everybody.

While I've been using Twitter for some time now, I keep switching up how I use the service, and I still feel I'm not at the desired configuration.

Initially I used it like anyone else, following people I found interesting, as well as anyone who decided to follow me. For the first few weeks this was fine, although I was only following a handful of people, who themselves were only tweeting occasionally.

Problems arose as I followed more people and the volume of tweets started getting higher and higher. Not only could I not keep up with it all, but it seemed that every time I logged in to check what was going on the chatter all seemed like blather and banality.

At my peak I was following and being followed by several hundred people and while I knew there were gems out there, for the most part it all seemed like nonsense to me. While I can be verbose in person, I usually don't have a lot to say online, and so my tweets are rather infrequent.

I realized what I was looking for was a means of reconfiguring my twitter use and constantly tweaking how I interact with the twittersphere.

I cover a lot of subjects on my weekly CBC Radio column, and I'm always fascinated by which ones garner the greatest listener response. Something that is particularly interesting to me, and apparently a lot of listeners, is the upcoming explosion of wireless devices making use of the spectrum called White Space.

For those who missed it, or want to hear it again, you can download my CBC Radio Toronto appearance on Metro Morning with Andy Barrie.

And these are some of the articles that came out around the time of the announcement.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/05/fcc_approves_white_spaces/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7709775.stm
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/06/BUDO13VRLV.D...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/technology/internet/05spectrum.html
http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_Google_Prepares_Its_Strategy_For_Attackin...

If you're a friend of mine on Facebook I have a video on my profile from Newsworld that was recorded in the spring on the same subject.

I've always enjoyed comparative analysis. Constantly juxtaposing and contrasting things, using similes and metaphors by any means necessary. My ongoing free association always involves bringing two things together, no matter how obscure.

Lately I've been rather obsessed with motorcycles, explicitly my own, and for the last six weeks this has been my primary point of reference. I also enjoy (though am far from obsessed with) video games, and I've recently completed playing one of the latest Star Wars games called The Force Unleashed.

For the last six weeks I've been making an effort to go riding almost every day. In early September I got my first motorcycle, a 1999 BMW F650 a/k/a Funduro. David and I both took the Humber College motorcycle course, and he also bought a BMW motorcycle, a 1983 R65.

The primary purpose of my daily riding has been to learn and improve my skills while being exposed to real traffic situations. I live in downtown Toronto, so no matter where I go I'm encountering unexpected events and drivers who don't deserve to be on the road. Some days my rides are relatively brief, say down to the CBC Broadcast Centre, and other days I have the time to ride outside of the city and into the country and broader bio-region.

The secondary purpose of my rides therefore has been to explore my region and see more of my city. When I first got my driver's license only 3 years ago, I started taking drives to the suburbs to see parts of the city I had never visited due to growing up downtown. Now that I have a bike I'm inclined to go even further, and my trips have taken me from the urban environment, to the suburbs, on to exurbs, and finally into farm land.

What has surprised me most is just how far you have to go to get out of the city. I used to joke that Peterborough was a suburb of Toronto, and while that is not exactly true, Toronto sure stretches far and wide.

Purists of course try to argue that Toronto ends at Steeles, or even older city borders such as North York, or cultural borders like Bloor, College, and even Queen. What you realize of course as you travel further and further away is that it's all Toronto, a seemingly endless sprawl of city.

Well that was a complete waste of time. Another Canadian Election has come and gone and I'm not sure I can tell the difference. With historically low voter turnout we're returning to another minority government where the Tories have the most seats in parliament, and the NDP and Liberal party combined do not have enough to stop them. So once again expect dysfunction as the Bloc hold the balance of power.

Was anything at all accomplished by that election? I suppose on the one hand it might mean we won't have another for a little while. Otherwise I think the main loser will be the environment, since the spin will be that the Liberal Green Shift didn't fly so therefore Canadians don't care if their planet goes to shit. This is of course not the case, but expect some spin to go this way.

I think the reality is that everyone lost this election. Harper failed to get his majority, Dion failed to make any gains, Layton failed at his new and more aggressive election strategy, and May failed to get a seat, although I doubt that was ever her intention. I myself also failed in my meager attempt to make two predictions, both of which were wrong. Perhaps only Duceppe won as he had the lowest performance expectations going in.