J-Links for July 13: Explosion at Shaw HQ; Reflection from former bloggers; What paywalls look like in Scandinavian countries

In Canadian media:

Explosion at Shaw Communications headquarters in Calgary

An explosion in an electrical room at Calgary’s Shaw Communications headquarters on Wednesday affected radio stations, Internet service, hospital computers, government networks and phone service—leaving 30,000 customers unable to call 911 had they needed to. Nobody was hurt in the explosion.

Big time bloggers shut down blogs, not enough time or money

Vivian Kruase, Daniel Fontaine and Sean Holman have more in common than that they are all successful B.C. bloggers — now they are all retired bloggers who found that there wasn’t enough time or money to keep their blogs online. The three bloggers, who have other jobs, were on Vancouver radio show, the Bill Good Show yesterday to talk about what goes into running a blog.

Bell launches ‘Bell Viewer’s Guide’ for Olympic Games

Bell’s Viewer’s Guide is an interactive schedule of the London 2012 Olympic Games, which aims to simplify the schedule of the Games for fans. It can be accessed by computer, smartphone or tablet and organizes the events by date, time and medal event and will update users when an event is live.

In international media:

Scandinavian papers test out paywalls, in all its forms

From “hard” paywalls (where users pay for almost all online content) to “plus models” (paying for an area with features and more in-depth pieces), newspapers in Scandinavian countries have started charging their readers for its online content. Journalism.co.uk’s article explores the various paywall methods papers in Norway, Sweden and Denmark have chosen to use and why.

Today’s read:

Chuckwagon race at Calgary Stampede leaves two horses dead, one injured

Although there was no collision, three horses are left dead and one injured after a lead horse went down, bringing others with it during a Chuckwagon race at the Calgary Stampede last night. No humans were hurt, however two horses had to be euthanized due to injures and the third requires surgery.