Derrick Penner
Sun

Google, the giant of Internet search engines, has launched a Canadian version of its Google Finance website to challenge rivals such as Yahoo in the field of business information.

Google knew Canadians wanted a nation-specific Internet information source because they formed the second-biggest group of users on its American website, according to Google software engineer Dion Loy.

Loy added that in user surveys, “the No. 1 request [from non-U.S. users] was ‘give us something localized in our own country,’ “

Google launched Google Finance Canada Wednesday. Google Finance U.S. went online in 2006.

“It’s an important product for Google,” Loy said. “It’s only been around for a year-and-a-half, but it’s showing very good growth and picking up a lot of steam.”

Loy added that Google has tried to make its site stand out by putting in interactive stock charts that link big moves in stock prices to news about significant events, and adding information about mutual funds.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

LIKE SECOND-HAND SMOKE: Indoor air pollution levels increase 5-fold with the machines

JANE KAY
Province

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE— Scripps Howard

If you work near certain models of laser printers, you might be breathing the same amount of ultra-fine particle pollution as if a smoker were puffing away in the next cubicle, according to a study by Australian scientists.

In one of the first studies of laser printers in a work setting, researchers found that some models are sources of ultrafine particles that contribute to indoor air pollution. Breathing tiny particles can cause respiratory irritation and more severe illnesses such as heart disease and cancer.

Almost half of the laser printers tested in the study emitted tiny particles of toner-like material, sending out concentrations ranging from low to high, according to the study findings published online yesterday for the American Chemical Society’s journal Environmental Science and Technology.

The worst printers released amounts of ultra-fine particles rivalling plumes of second-hand smoke. When inhaled, the particles — tiny flecks between 100 and 1,000 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair — can work their way deep into the lungs, leading to heart and lung disease, scientists say.

Laser printers in the study were manufactured by Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba, Ricoh and Canon. All use toner, a powder, instead of ink.

Neither the state nor federal governments regulate indoor air pollution, even though most people spend about 90 per cent of their lives inside buildings.

“If a printer operates in an indoor environment, the concentration of ultrafine particles would be of the same order of magnitude as if there was secondhand smoke in a similar environment,” said author Lidia Morawska, director of the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health at Queensland University of Technology in an interview from Brisbane.

“Even very small concentrations can be related to health hazards,” she said. “Where the concentrations are significantly elevated means there is potentially a considerable hazard.”

A worker’s exposure level depends on the effectiveness of the building’s ventilation. The study also found that during work hours, printer use caused indoor air pollution to increase fivefold.

Study results imply that “concentration levels in an office can be reduced by a proper choice of printers,” Morawska said.

Some printer manufacturers responded that their products meet safety and health requirements. HP officials, for example, said they are reviewing the study and have been conducting their own tests.

Costs covered by levy on new merchandise

Cheryl Chan
Province

A B.C.-wide electronics recycling program starting tomorrow will provide a proper place for e-waste.

Old and broken electronics such as computers, laptops, printers and faxes can be left at recycling depots for free, instead of being dumped in landfills.

The cost will be passed on to consumers who will pay a levy of $10 to $45 on new electronics purchases.

“Landfills are not appropriate places for electronics,” said Malcolm Harvey of Encorp, a non-profit stewardship corporation running the Return-It electronics program.

“There’s toxic materials in electronics that could potentially leak out, like lead and mercury.”

The program will also prevent obsolete equipment being shipped to countries such as China or

Nigeria, where they are recycled “in the most appalling conditions,” said Harvey.

About a quarter of B.C. households have old tech equipment gathering dust, he said. In its first year, Encorp expects to receive about 10,000 tonnes of electronics junk.

Victoria’s Hartland landfill receives about 2,000 tonnes of e-waste annually, representing one to two per cent of its total intake, he said.

E-waste dumped in Greater Vancouver Regional District landfills has ballooned from 2,100 tonnes in 1998 to 20,000 tonnes in 2005. This breaks down to about 8,000 tonnes in computers, 3,000 tonnes in monitors, 2,000 tonnes in printers and 7,000 tonnes in TVs, said GVRD engineer Ken Carrusca.

People can bring in their old equipment to one of 70 recycling depots across the province. Three firms will handle the recycling, salvaging usable metal and plastic parts and disposing of hazardous materials safely. Privacy will be the consumer’s responsibility, Harvey said, advising people to “delete the hard drives before bringing it in for recycling.”

Most retailers, covering 80 per cent of the B.C. market, have signed up for the program.

Consumers say they wouldn’t mind paying the additional fee.

“I think it’s fantastic,” said Mike Holmberg, 27, who just bought a “completely unnecessary” 22-inch computer monitor to hook up to his stereo. “I love pay-by-use, especially for unnecessary things like alcohol and cigarettes.”

Even if he bought the monitor tomorrow, Holmberg said he wouldn’t mind paying the $12 levy “if it was invisible rather than at the till.”

David Taylor, 41, of Vancouver also agrees with the levy.

“I was recently at the [Kent Avenue] transfer station and there were piles of appliances and computers,” Taylor said. “People trade things in quicker than they should. I think in a way as consumers we should be penalized for over-spending and buying more than we need.”

– – –

WHAT’S COVERED

THE ENVIRONMENTAL HANDLING FEE WILL BE CHARGED ON THE SALE OF NEW ELECTRONICS:

– Televisions: $15 to $45, depending on size

– Desktop computers (includes CPUs, mouse, keyboards and cables): $10

– Computer monitors: $12

– Notebook computers (includes laptops, notebook and tablet PCs): $5

– Printers and fax machines: $8

NOT INCLUDED:

– CD players

– VHS and DVD players

– Cellphones

– Cordless phones

– Photocopiers

– Radios

– Computers and TVs that are part of or built in to vehicles, marine vessels or commercial/industrial equipment.

 

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

B.C. could become first Canadian province to give key data to mapping service

Marke Andrews
Sun

The British Columbia government has been meeting with representatives from Google Earth on an initiative whereby the government will supply updated information about the province for Google Earth and Google Maps, the online 3D-mapping system used by 250 million people worldwide.

In a Friday address at GeoWeb 2007 and later in an interview, Google Earth chief technology officer Michael Jones said Google Earth has been in talks with the provincial government, and if the initiative goes ahead B.C. would be the first Canadian province to supply information on such things as traffic and mineral resources to the mapping service.

“The provincial government has been talking with us about providing data so that all citizens in the province who use our service will have the best possible data,” said Jones.

Jones met Thursday with Agriculture and Lands Minister Pat Bell to discuss the initiative.

Google Earth relies on Web users and organizations to supply information about specific areas of their maps. This includes transit information — a hit on a button for the Google map of Seattle will show you which buses run on which streets, where they go, and when they reach specific bus stops.

Government input could include information on highway construction projects, so local residents and visitors to the area would know where they might encounter a delay. In the case of B.C., Google could also have access to the data and images banked in the Integrated Land and Resource Registry, which gives detailed information about all areas of the province.

“We’ve been working very closely with Google and Google Earth in establishing a link into our database system, which will provide much higher-quality video images,” said Bell in a telephone interview. “Our database is far more current and of higher quality than the existing database that Google Earth uses.

“We are very close to concluding a deal with Google Earth.”

Bell said such a link could create opportunities for the tourism industry, and provide visitors and locals alike with detailed information about areas of the province.

Some municipalities are already doing this. Jones said Nanaimo is the most active city in the world when it comes to supplying geographic data to Google Earth. He predicted there will be a time when municipal, provincial and federal geographic information will be shared universally.

“With Nanaimo, they have mapped nearly every conceivable thing using Google Earth and Google Maps,” said Jones. “Their citizens have more information about their city than the people of San Francisco.”

Jones has been a pioneer with Web cartography. He was one of the founders of Keyhole, a mapping service that made its name during the Gulf War, when CNN used its maps to show where the action was. Google Earth bought Keyhole in 2004, and Jones became the CTO of Google Earth, using information in Google Earth maps so that Web users can zoom in on specific areas.

The service, which is free to basic users (more sophisticated versions, Google Earth Plus and Google Earth Pro, are available for an annual fee), is used for many mundane tasks (zooming in to find one’s home on a city street), but can also be used for such things as planning vacations, or studying an area with the idea of starting a business there.

Jones recalls a trip to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where a man told him how his 13-year-old daughter had used Google Earth to map out the family’s vacation to Indonesia — all this done before Google Earth information was available in the girl’s native language.

“That notion is exactly why we started the company,” said Jones. “It means that regular people’s lives are improved.”

Google relies on users to add information to their maps. Hours after the oil pipeline rupture Tuesday in Burnaby, for instance, a web user supplied information on what streets were affected by the oil spill.

Google Earth and Google Maps are free to Web browsers. People can pay $20 US a year for the more sophisticated Google Earth Plus, or $400 US a year for Google Earth Pro, whose users include realtors, architects, surveyors and search-and-rescue organizations. The rest of Google income comes from ads on the map page, ads that do not intrude into the maps.

Jones resists the ideas of advertisers buying billboards on the maps themselves.

“That’s the first thing venture capitalists suggested to us,” said Jones. “It would be like the movie Blade Runner where signs were floating by with ads on them. To me, that’s just no good.”

Jones said a better system would be to have maps provide links to commercial outlets. If, for example, a tourist in Vancouver needed new sandals, he could hit a button that would list all the shoe stores near his hotel. National Geographic Magazine has flags all over Google Earth maps that, with a click of the button, lead browsers to an article about that particular area of the world. National Geographic does not pay anything for this.

“We’re happy to help people in the world read their stories,” says Jones. “People don’t pay Google to be found in the web search. You just exist and we find you.”

Bell said he hopes working with Google will lead to a stronger B.C. presence by the Web company.

“There’s nothing I’d like better than to attract Google to a major office in British Columbia,” said Bell.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Julie Steenhuysen
Sun

CHICAGO — Suspended in laser light, thousands of atoms pair up and dance, each moving in perfect counterpoint to its partner.

They are the building blocks of what may one day become an enormously powerful quantum computer capable of solving in seconds problems that take today’s fastest machines years to crack, U.S. physicists said on Wednesday.

“You can do the equivalent of multiple classical calculations at the same time in the quantum world,” said Trey Porto, a researcher with the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology or NIST, whose work appears in the journal Nature.

Porto and colleagues have coaxed pairs of super-cold rubidium atoms to repeatedly swap positions, a feat that could make them useful for storing and processing data in quantum computers.

In today’s computers, the smallest unit of storage is a binary digit or bit, which can only have two values — zero or one. These form the basis of information storage in digital computing.

“In the quantum world, instead of just the possibilities of zeros and ones, you have a range of possibilities,” Porto said in a telephone interview.

Quantum bits or qubits can also oscillate between the zero and one positions. This flexibility could allow for many calculations to be carried out simultaneously.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Edward C. Baig
USA Today

Ever want a friend’s opinion before buying an outfit, but the buddy whose advice you cherish is not with you in the store? Wish you could share your kid’s Little League game as it’s happening with grandparents who live far away?

Now, you can call them on your cellphone and show them live, streaming video of what you are seeing — while continuing to carry on a conversation. These and other scenarios make up the pitch for a first-of-its-kind service launched this week by AT&T (T) called Video Share.

The service mostly worked as promised in my New York City tests with two compatible Samsung phones. But while the potential is there, the initial service is costly, the quality of the experience is far from perfect, and you and the person you are talking to must have access to AT&T’s fastest, so-called 3G, or third-generation, network. That ruled out testing in and around my New Jersey neighborhood. AT&T says 3G service is available in nearly 160 markets nationwide.

Here’s a closer look:

•What you’ll need. Video Share works with one of four handsets, including the pair I tested with a colleague, the $150 Samsung 717 and $100 Samsung 727. The other compatible phones are the Samsung Sync and the LG CU500, each $50. (All prices are with a two-year contract and mail-in rebate; further discounts are available online.) AT&T says more phones that take advantage of Video Share are coming. You and the person you are sharing video with both must be using one of these phones during a call.

 

•Starting the video. You make a phone call as usual. If you are in a 3G environment, a Video Share prompt will automatically appear on the phone. A tiny 3G status indicator lets you know you’re in 3G territory. If not, you’ll see an “E” representing the slower AT&T Edge data network; Video Share will not be an option. AT&T’s 3G network is based on the geeky-sounding UMTS/HSDPA standards, which permit simultaneous transmission of voice and video.

Only, sometimes the Video Share option was not offered even when I was supposedly in a 3G coverage area. Turning the device off and on again provided a quick fix, like it sometimes does when rebooting a computer. The Video Share option was presented the next time I was on a call.

While on a call, either party can initiate a video session. The person who does so will see an “Establishing a Video Connection” message while waiting for the other person to accept the “(So and so) Wants To Share Video With You” invitation. Once accepted, video from your phone’s camera will be seen on both your device and the other person’s display. Since the whole idea of this exercise is to keep your eyes glued to the screen, the speakerphone turns on by default.

But while the audio conversation is two way, the video is only one way. That means both parties see only the video captured by the person who initiated the video session. You can switch off by shutting down one video feed in favor of the stream from the other phone. AT&T isn’t tipping its hand on when two-way video will be available. For now, you can also save a recording of the video when you are done, possibly to upload to the Web (though not a seamless process).

•The experience. We’re not exactly talking high-definition video here, or even TV-quality video. It’s grainy and choppy. But you can at least make out what is happening on screen. For example, I was able to read newspaper headlines.

I experienced far bigger problems with the speakerphone; there was a lot of background noise, and my colleague and I often talked over each other.

•Pricing. AT&T is offering two expensive monthly Video Share plans. A $5 plan gives you just 25 Video Share minutes a month, with each additional minute billed at 30 cents. A $10 plan gives you 60 Video Share minutes, with each additional minute costing 25 cents. Video Share minutes are charged only to the sender. You can also pay 35 cents a minute on a per-use basis.

•Where this is headed. AT&T says the new service is just the beginning. In the company’s vision of the future, you’ll eventually be able to receive Video Share calls on your PC or TV screen. “This is a very rich area for innovation,” says David Christopher, chief marketing officer of AT&T’s wireless unit. For now, Video Share does give you the sense of “being there.” But the service could be cheaper, and the video and audio quality better.

Sun

1. Sansa Shaker MP3 Player, $45 Cdn

Cute and low-cost — what more do you need for the junior audiophile? Comes in pink or blue with a 512 MB SanDisk SD memory card and you can add more. It also has two headphone jacks so friends can share music. The best part is the shaker — a snap of the wrist flips the player to the next song. Or change tunes and the volume with the colourful controller bands. Runs on one AAA battery that powers up to 15 hours of music time with the headphones, although you can also listen to music through the speaker.

2. Sanyo 7050 mobile phone and walkie-talkie, from $130 Cdn

When you head out into the wilderness, the last thing you need is a wimpy phone that will give up the ghost the first time you drop it. Not that we’re suggesting you put this to the test, but Sanyo’s 7050 combination phone and walkie-talkie is dubbed as “ultra rugged,” built to military standards with excellent shock absorption and the ability to withstand dust, shock and vibration. It has GPS — another useful feature when you’re gadding about the middle of nowhere — Bluetooth technology, a speakerphone and a long-life battery. Available through Bell Mobility at bell.ca/wireless at $130 with a three-year contract; up to $330 with no contract.

3. Sony PlayStation Portable Entertainment Packs, $230 Cdn

Sony has streamlined its PSP system, making it lighter and slimmer than the original. The new PSPs, which will be available starting in September, weigh a third less than the current model. The portable game machine will be sold only in two special editions bundled with games and accessories. The “Ice Silver” version will be included in September’s Daxter PSP entertainment pack, followed by the October launch of the Star Wars collector’s edition “Ceramic White” in the Star Wars Battlefront PSP entertainment pack.

4. Laptop Desk Futura, $30 US

For the mobile warrior, the laptop desk turns your lap into an ergonomic platform. The Futura also folds into a wedge-shaped stand to put under a laptop on a desk. The new Futura — building on earlier versions — has open ventilation slots to help cool your laptop and an air space to let cool air circulate underneath it. It comes in a range of bright colours to liven your mobile workspace. Available through laptopdesk.net.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

Job puts him in the vanguard of computer games

Jack Keating
Province

The world’s largest software company came north of the U.S. border to find the man to run its booming interactive entertainment business.

“I’m euphoric about the new position,” said Don Mattrick, the Vancouver-born-and-raised computer wizard hired yesterday by Microsoft to be senior vice-president of the IEB division of the company.

Mattrick, who started his own video-game company at age 18, went on to become one of B.C.’s most successful businessmen.

He is a former president of Burnaby-based Electronic Arts Inc., a company named B.C.’s exporter of the year in 2004 under Mattrick’s leadership.

Mattrick, 43, is excited to be part of a company that is “a leader in sort of the next generation of video-game hardware.”

“Microsoft is a company that has more assets, more talent and more capabilities in the entertainment space than any other company on the planet,” said Mattrick, whose EA company generated sales of about $1 billion a year.

“So that’s what’s exciting for me is the chance to be part of that leadership team.”

Mattrick joined Electronic Arts in 1991 when the company purchased Distinctive Software Inc., the firm he founded 23 years ago.

While at EA, he worked on popular game franchises such as Need for Speed, Harry Potter and The Sims.

Although financially set for life, Mattrick decided to take on this new challenge because of his love for computer games.

“The best motivation is passion,” said Mattrick, who will work out of both Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., headquarters and Vancouver.

“And for me I love the entertainment space. I love trading new types of products, new types of experiences.

“A chance to sort of run the leading video-game hardware platform in the world . . . it was just a once- in-a-lifetime opportunity that I just couldn’t pass up.”

Mattrick had been working with the senior management team at Microsoft since February as an adviser over strategy and innovation for the entertainment group.

He replaces Peter Moore, who has moved back to the San Francisco area.

“While Peter will certainly be missed, we are delighted to have one of the industry’s most talented and passionate veterans on board to lead the business,” said Robbie Bach, president of Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft. “Don is well-known and respected throughout the industry for his deep knowledge, technical expertise and management savvy.”

© The Vancouver Province 2007

Cellphone service prices could make Apple’s new toy unaffordable in Canada, experts say

Fiona Anderson
Sun

While the hype for iPhones has Canadians anxious to give them a go, they may have a long wait, as the price of cellphone service in Canada makes iPhones unaffordable, according to academics.

Apple sells experiences, not products, says Richard Smith, a professor with the school of communication at Simon Fraser University. And the experience of an iPhone is to get access to unlimited data without worrying how much each download costs, he said.

In the United States, AT&T has won the exclusive right to service iPhones with phone service that includes unlimited data starting at $59.99 US a month. The plans get more expensive as voice minutes increase, but the data (e-mail and web access) in all plans remains unlimited. Smith tags the data portion at $20 US a month because that’s what current AT&T customers have to pay to upgrade their service to an iPhone.

Canadian cellphone companies don’t have any plans that come even close to that, Smith said. For $20 Cdn a cellphone user in Canada may get about five megabytes of downloading capability.

“That’s not even a song,” he said.

And one video download from YouTube would max out many plans, he said.

BCE Inc. spokesman Jeff Meerman called the AT&T rate “extremely aggressive.” But AT&T can do that in part because it doesn’t have to subsidize the phone purchase, Meerman said. When it does, like with its BlackBerry plan, then the costs between the two companies are more aligned, with AT&T charging $70 US for its plan, similar to Bell’s $70 Cdn plan.

That plan only includes four MB of data, which Meerman said would be enough for the average user.

Telus spokesman Jim Johannsson pointed to Telus’s Spark 25 package as its best offering for unlimited Web access. For $25 a month users can browse to over 200 selected sites.

But the key to the AT&T plan is the unlimited data, Smith says, and four MB or access to 200 websites doesn’t do that. And while Canadians may not use much data, that’s because data is so expensive they are constantly worried about going over their limit.

Apple is trying to change that by making consumers no longer worry about limits, and yet not pay a fortune, Smith said. And that type of plan just isn’t available to Canadian cellphone users. Plans with anything close to unlimited data access would cost about $100 a month, Smith said.

So until Canadian companies can offer cheaper plans so that everyone will want one, iPhone won’t be coming to Canada, Smith said.

“Apple would never agree to deliver a phone that people couldn’t use,” Smith said.

Meanwhile, companies in Europe will have no problem offering a plan along the lines of AT&T’s, so iPhone will likely launch there first, he said.

Michael Geist, Canada research chair of Internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, has calculated that a Rogers plan equivalent to the cheapest AT&T plan would cost about $300 a month. He picked Rogers because right now only Rogers, which uses a GSM (global system for mobile communication) network, could service the iPhone. Both Bell and Telus operate on CDMA (code division multiplex access).

For $295, Rogers provides 500 MB of data download, not quite unlimited, but more than enough for most people. Cheaper plans with less downloading are available, but they may also have fewer voice minutes.

Both Smith and Geist call the high cost of Canadian data plans Canada’s “dirty little secret.” And both blamed a lack of competition in the industry for the high prices.

Most data users in Canada — those who surf the Web or download e-mails — are high-end users who have their costs paid by their employer or company, like BlackBerry owners, Smith said. And they don’t care about the costs.

And while Apple is trying to make that kind of use accessible to everyone, Canadian companies will be reluctant to offer the kind of pricing AT&T is offering, he said.

“Why would you lower prices for something that hardly anybody buys and the only people that do buy it are your best customers that will pay anything for it?” Smith asked.

Geist called it a chicken-and-egg problem — prices are so high that most people don’t use their cellphones for data, and so companies say there isn’t the demand.

But demand is changing.

“And, unfortunately, the Canadian market at the moment is ill-suited to adapt,” Geist said.

Last week, Research in Motion — the creator of the BlackBerry — said companies could sell eight to nine times as many BlackBerrys each week if the price for data service in Canada matched what consumers paid in Europe.

But Telus’s Johannsson said it is premature to speculate on what Canadian companies would charge to provide service for an iPhone or to say it would be prohibitively expensive.

“[Smith] is right. Right now there is no plan in Canada that compares to AT&T’s plan for the iPhone,” Johannsson said. “But that’s because the iPhone isn’t a reality in Canada yet. And when those discussions [happen], then we can start talking about what the pricing may look like.”

And while Telus isn’t currently capable of providing iPhone service, the company could adopt GSM technology that would enable it to do so. Or iPhone could come out with a CDMA-capable phone.

Johannsson refused to say whether Telus was considering adding GSM to its network. But if it were capable of servicing iPhone, it would look at creating a rate that was market sensitive, like it has with other products, Johannsson said. For example, Telus introduced live-streaming television on its cellphones at a fixed cost for unlimited use because if the company charged by the megabyte it “would kill the market,” Johannsson said.

So if Telus can get into the iPhone market it will look “at creating a rate that would be attractive to the market and that would meet the needs of consumers,” he added.

“Because the last thing you want to do is introduce something to the market that is unaffordable,” he said.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Doctors warn public about electronic devices after man hurt by bolt in Burnaby

Gerry Bellett
Sun

Note to self: Remove iPod earphones when sheltering from a thunderstorm. And oh, don’t be talking on that mobile phone while there’s thunder and lightning about.

What happened to a 37-year-old jogger caught in a thunderstorm in a Burnaby park in June 2005 explains why.

He was hit by lightning, which is bad enough, but unfortunately he was standing under a tree listening to music on his iPod, according to an account published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine.

His injuries were far worse than they might have been had he not been so attached to his iPod, says Vancouver General Hospital radiologist Dr. Eric Heffernan.

“Most people hit by lightning get away with minor burns. It’s because skin is highly resistant and stops electricity from entering the body. It’s called the flash-over effect, although it can stop your heart and kill you, as between five to 10 per cent of people struck by lightning die each year,” Heffernan said Wednesday.

“But in this case, the patient had earphones on and had been sweating from jogging so this was a case of disrupted flash-over. The earphones transmitted the electrical current into his head. It’s the first time we’ve had a recorded case of such an incident involving a person wearing headphones and we think the public should be warned,” Heffernan said.

Heffernan said it isn’t just iPods that pose a risk but any music player or similar device with headphones — even cellphones — can cause similar injuries if they are being used by someone hit by lightning.

The article in the medical journal was written by Heffernan and his colleagues in Vancouver General’s radiology department, Dr. Peter Munk and Dr. Luck Louis.

They could find only one other account of someone being hit by lightning while wearing an iPod.

“There was someone in Colorado that was hit, but this only resulted in minor burns and it wasn’t a recorded case,” Heffernan said.

The injuries suffered by the unidentified Lower Mainland jogger were significant.

He was brought into the emergency department and was sent to radiology for a scan that disclosed multiple injuries to his head. The lightning strike had left burns to his chest, neck and face with the burns tracing the position of the earphones.

The patient’s eardrums were ruptured and tiny bones in his middle ears dislocated. His jawbone was broken in four places and both jaws were dislocated, likely due to his jaw muscles contracting violently from electrical shock.

The man’s hearing has been significantly reduced. He has lost half of his hearing and can’t hear high-frequency sounds even with hearing aids.

But he still goes jogging, according to Heffernan, and he’s got another iPod to replace the one that was fried.

“I think he leaves it at home now when he’s jogging,” he said.

Heffernan, who doesn’t jog and says he wouldn’t go out of doors in thunderstorms with or without an iPod, has some advice for those who do.

“If you’re caught in a thunderstorm, make sure your iPod isn’t in contact with your skin and remove the earphones from your ear,” he said.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007