A small startup in Waterloo is testing the waters with an online service that aims to bridge the digital-analogue divide by turning the weekly checkins, photos, tweets and blogs of social media savvy parents into a printed story sheet delivered by mail to their children's grandparents.

The service, dubbed Flockwire, is Inflolabs second attempt to closing this particular gap. The company won a number of awards with their debut offering photoflo which allowed users to send digital images directly from their computers to their grandparent's TV by deploying an interesting an inexpensive piece of equipment called Raspberry Pi. But despite testing well, the group ran into some trouble during deployment with their core demographic. Many retirement residences are still slow to adopt WiFi — the backbone delivery mechanism for the service — into their operations. The availability of WiFi, the reliability of onsite technical support and installing the hardware ultimately forced the group to rethink their offering.

A political movement whose members would cheer the death of an uninsured patient seems like something that Canadians can band together to dislike.

But what influence does the Tea Party actually have north of the border?

Those watching the Ontario provincial election unfold might be led to believe that it represents a colossal threat. Former premiers Bob Rae and Ernie Eves both recently evoked the movement in their criticism of the direction that right-of-centre politics have taken in Canada.

WIth their help, Conservative leader Tim Hudak has been branded by the Liberal war room as "Tea Party Tim." Of course, the only real menace to Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty is the notion that his constituents will express their displeasure at the ballot box.

Still, it's telling that the readiest shorthand to undermine Hudak with needs to be imported from another country. Vague allusions of bad spelling, casual racism and messianic faith in Sarah Palin are somehow enough to dissuade Ontario from voting in someone new.

No matter how many citizen journalism startups, free blogging tools and social media platforms are out there, the internet still lacks the power of a printing press.

Sarah Thomson, publisher of Women's Post, certainly understands the clout of her little-known magazine over online outlet. Why would she leverage its cover for her second annual election bid? Because the tactic worked when she used the forum to proclaim herself "Toronto's next mayor."

Running for the provincial Liberals in the NDP stronghold of Trinity-Spadina, where she has a slightly greater chance of winning — which may not be saying much — the distribution of her latest issue to homes around the riding has led bigger outlets to speculate whether the tactic is ethical.

None of this attention would've emerged if Thomson's alleged dream diary, about the choice between "Stability or Risk" at the helm of Ontario, been a blog post or Facebook note. The perception that comes with the front page of something (it's "The Post!") is still more valuable for the voters she wants to reach.

The Toronto Star has concurrently backed a community blogger project for the provincial election, Speak Your Mind, on the premise that every one of 107 ridings could use a volunteer correspondent to herd the online discussion. But the website commissioned to coordinate the contributions, The Mark News, has struggled to establish influence by providing a wider forum for professional pontification. Websites built on telling people what they should think simply aren't worth very much on their own.