There has been a lot of buzz recently on the internets regarding the eventual buyout of Flickr, either by Google, Yahoo!, or any other major web company. According to Matt over at FlickrCentral:

Yahoo! is either buying or not buying flickr.

In the same thread over at FlickrCentral, Caterina says:

We talked to a guy at Business 2.0 back in November or December — that was the start of all these rumors — and we got the sense he was fishing for a story that wasn’t there.

Of course this doesn’t surprise me anymore. Reporters have quoted Stewart as saying something I said, quoted me as saying the opposite of what I said, omitted the material part of what I said and published just the subordinate clauses….

But it’s still kind of fun having all these people talking about us. Makes us feel like the popular kids at high school. Who’s dating who!!!!

In response to all these rumors, the folks at Flickr had a little fun and changed the logo this morning, which shocked me at first, but upon closer inspection, I realized the amazing humor in the change. Sadly, its back to normal now, but a lot of people have things to say about it.

In all seriousness, I can see how a buyout of Flickr is a sound business move for all parties. The larger company gets a large, creative and passionate user base, a great social networking tool, and some innovative and well-thought out technology, while Flickr gets much needed funding and access to resources such as photo-printing services and more.

As much as I love Google, they already have Picasa and Hello.com, which are both now really well integrated with Blogger. Do they need something like Flickr? Probably not. Yahoo! on the other hand, doesn’t have much of a networking interface with Yahoo! Photos, and the user base of Flickr would come in handy.

Ideally, Apple would buy out Flickr, but they’re more of the kind of company that would build an application rather than purchasing one to go with iPhoto. So in the end, I think if anyone is going to buy Flickr, it will be Yahoo!, and as long as they let Ludicorp still manage everything, I don’t see how this is going to be bad for us Flickr users.

I guess now we just wait and see.

What: Canada in the World
When: February 16-18, 2005
Where: Hotel Omni Mont-Royal, Montreal
Who: McGill Institute for the Study of Canada

Attending the Canada in the World conference was an enlightening experience, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to hear the many panelists and speakers that shared their views during the conference. However, a few thoughts come to mind as I look upon the three days in retrospect.

First, the domain of foreign policy is very male-dominated. Though a good number of the participants of the conference were women, the speakers and panelists were almost exclusively men, with a few exceptions. In addition, there was a serious lack of persons of color represented at the conference in general. This doesn’t bode well for the domain of foreign service in Canada, because the lack of cultural diversity will translate into a lack of diversity of perspective, background, viewpoints and vision that comes from having people of different cultural and social contexts. Perhaps the first problem that the Canadian foreign service needs to address is the notion of the foreign service as “old white man’s club” and try to foster interest in foreign policy in the growing multicultural public.

The conference was eye-opening, but it also had a negative view as to the current status of Canada’s role in the world. Sadly, the prevailing solutions for Canada’s foreing policy crisis coming from most of the speakers lay in the domain of militarization. Increasing Canada’s defense spending, focusing less on humanitarian efforts, and aligning ourselves with the United States of America are at the forefront of the experts’ opinions for revamping the current system.

This military and government-based approach is disappointing. Luckily, David Eaves and Parker Mitchell, who infused youth into the proceedings, and a few select others, showed some optimism and constructive thought. They showed how individual Canadians have the power to make a difference, how the true goodwill of the people who populate this country will power our foreign policy and our international standing.

I came out of the conference invigorated, not because of the so-called experts who wanted to talk about Canada in the world, but because of the people who are actually going out and showing the world what Canada really stands for.