We've been bursting at the seams to tell you, and finally we can: mesh is back! "Canada's Web conference" will be held again at MaRS in Toronto on May 30-31. Check out Mathew Ingram's post on the mesh blog for more details, although we're not quite ready to start selling tickets yet. In the meantime, we'd like to give everyone an opportunity to get together to talk about what's happening on the Web (and give us some input about mesh '07) so we're hosting an after-work meet-up at the Irish Embassy pub on Nov. 15. As an added bonus, you'll also get to meet the b5media gang, including Darren Rowse and Duncan Riley, who will be in town from Australia (we haven't told them about the frigid weather yet!). If you've got any comments, insight, feedback, suggestions about mesh '07, feel free to pass 'em along. For anyone interested in listening to last year's keynotes, we've finally got podcasts available on the mesh site.
Update: More mesh enthusiasm can be found from Mathew, Stuart, Rob and Mike...:)

For all of us techno-geeks obsessed with gadgets and having a big, honking connection to the Web, the New York Times has a fascinating story about North Korea, which isn't connected to the Internet at all (although some high-power politicians apparently have access). Can you imagine a world with no e-mail, no Google, no YouTube, no Daily Show clips? There's a wonderful quote from Julien Pain, head of the Internet desk at Reporters Without Borders, who describes North Korea as "by far the worst Internet black hole". One more thing, North Korea banned cell phones in 2004.