Friday 28 September 2007

Whose Got The Monopoly Money Now!


After years of apologising for the Canadian dollar...our time has come.

Thursday 27 September 2007

Thought Of The Day


Technology sometimes makes me feel like I am in kindergarten and I can't get my crayons to work.

Monday 24 September 2007

Mybloglog's Been Yahoothanized

*Argh* You would think after all the years, all the partnerships, all the product launches that Yahoo could get the migration thing down.

Case and point - Mybloglog. So I ended up not having my computer this weekend where I have all my auto passwords saved. I go to mybloglog to log in to check my stats (which I paid for) and what do I get? Please enter your Yahoo ID.

Well I don't have one. It doesn't really explain why i need one - it doesn't say for current mybloglog users click here. Actually it says very little. When i try to figure it out (using google's search engine of course) I find this page.

It's all upside down and backwards if you ask me. I should be able to sign in using my normal user id and THEN I should be able to create a Yahoo ID that they could then merge together. But it should be up to me which ID i use. I mean for goodness sake, I have about 1000 user names and passwords - the last thing i need is to remember one more. Blogger (aka Google) doesn’t force me to use a gmail account. Why does Yahoo?

Back home and safe with my auto saved passwords I finally get access again... at least for now. But it's just a matter of time before something happens and I'll have to decide keep mybloglog with a forced Yahoo ID or get rid of it and move on. I'm leaning towards the latter. As one person said to me not so very long ago...Mybloglog? I kinda lost interest in them as soon as they were bought by Yahoo. Hum.. I wonder why....

Sunday 23 September 2007

There's Something About Gimpie

I knew there was something I liked about Gimpie Australia where we spent a couple weeks of our holiday visiting Peter's family. Found in the headlines of the Gimpie Times.

Too few cared to fight drug abuse

12.09.2007

GYMPIE anti-drug volunteers were forced to return a major grant because too few people cared enough to make the system work, Gympie MP David Gibson said yesterday.....read full story

Now if only we could get a correspondent from the Daily Show to go and have a visit to put a deeper context to this obviously important story about democracy in action.

Friday 21 September 2007

Wiki Style Editing: My Readers

I just wanted to thank all the people who read my blog and send notes along to me about my grammar and spelling errors. Truthfully, I write most blog posts in about 5 minutes and while i try to do a quick check, I often miss things.

It's probably just part of a new networked laziness - the notion that I count on others but I have to say, I love wiki style editing.....so collaborative ☺

Thursday 20 September 2007

The Reading On The Toilet Replacement: Daily Lit

Just bumped into DailyLit, a site that Fred Wilson mentioned in a posting on platforms.

What is it? A site that basically gives you snippets of books through email..

According to the site:

"1. Why read books by email?

Because if you are like us, you spend hours each day reading email but don't find the time to read books. DailyLit brings books right into your inbox in convenient small messages that take less than 5 minutes to read."

I still remember complaining to my ridiculously well read older brother that I couldn't get through James Joyce’s Ulysses ...he suggested that I try reading it five minutes at a time on the toilet. I never did get to that (i know too much information) but I'm thinking maybe Daily Lit could be a good reading on the toilet replacement?

Heard It Through The Grapevine

Thought I would start a new segment today called "Heard It Through The Grapevine". I get to hear amusing stories all the time (well, at least i find them amusing) and thought it would be fun to pass some of them along. Of course, the names have all changed and are appropriately vague to protect the innocent. ;-)

On discussing the potential of doing Web marketing with a VERY Sr. campaigner with one of the major political parties in Ontario, the Sr. Campaigner said:

(and this is a paraphrase)

"Oh I don't think the Internet is very important to us. I am more comfortable reading AM talk radio transcripts [in order to gauge public opinion], than a survey of Internet Blogs … 1 or 2 elections from now [aka 10 yrs from now], things will be different."

Gives new meaning to the term Sr. doesn't it?

(ps. to those with feed readers, the person in question sent me a more accurate quote so i updated it)

Wednesday 19 September 2007

Facebook Ad Targeting


Here's a good reason for better facebook ad targeting. Right next to a group message from the Canadian women entrepreneur group I’m a member of.....Nice....

Tuesday 18 September 2007

Women Who Risk: Questioning The Questioning

Tara Hunt had put a list together a while back about women founders of tech companies. Here she writes an article on the O'Reilly network questioning the consistent questioning of why there aren't more women in technology (and points out that there are many more than people realize or give credit). Have a read for yourself here.

Thursday 13 September 2007

Dilbert On Marketing

We just get no respect...no respect i tell you! :)

Dalton McGuinty Doesn't Have An Email Address

UPDATE: Great news for the continued push for more open Gov't - The Premier now has a working email address dalton@ontario.ca as well as a twitter account @Dalton_MCguinty


I tried to email the Premier. I cc:d Mayor Miller because I had gotten on the Mayor's case about the real estate taxes and a number of concerns I have about over at city hall. One thing I couldn't disagree with any of our local councilors about however, is their commentary at the lack of funding from both the Federal and Provincial levels of government.

Now I don't usually blog about politics. Not my thing. But the lack of understanding about network culture just amazes me over there at the Liberal party.

Not only doesn't Dalton McGuinty not have a facebook profile (like John Tory does) but as well, you can't email him. That seems pretty basic to me. You know, EMAIL. Clearly at one time you must have been able to as he has an email address (Dalton.McGuinty@premier.gov.on.ca) that has been disabled. When you send him an email there you get this:

"To send your thoughts and suggestions to Premier McGuinty, please visit http://www.premier.gov.on.ca/feedback/ and resend your message through the secure online form. Note this e-mail account is no longer monitored."

Ok, so you go to that site, you can cut and paste a message into a Web form with the caveat that:

"If my message back to you contains personal information, the government's privacy rules require that I send you my reply by regular mail. In this case, you'll be asked to provide your postal address or you can provide it now."

Wow time to change those rules. But that's not all. Dalton's site while very designy doesn't have a blog or even a way to send a message. If you want to contact him, it tells you to go to the Liberal Party Site. That's where they pretend to have a blog
except that it doesn't have an archive, it doesn't allow comments and pretty much just looks like a regular static designed webpage to me (unless they built it using wordpress or something?).

So i can email (and get a response) from almost any CEO of any company here or in the US (i am assuming excepting Steve Jobs) and I can't email Dalton? What kinda democracy is this anyway. What kind of conversation is he really trying to have? Looks like a one way broadcasted carefully edited PR type conversation if you ask me.

Not good enough Dalton. Try again.

Saturday 8 September 2007

User Generated Marital Conflict?

Anecdotally i have been hearing a number stories about the technology divide and how it is impacting relationships. What seems to be at issue is the divide between personal (and probably generational) comfort levels with transparency.

I might be fine putting up my pictures on the Web through ucaster, Flikr, Facebook etc. but are the people in my photos ok with that?

It's even causing marital strife with couples who have radically different ideas about privacy and what is or isn't considered public property.

Kinda makes you wish for the days when it was just about marrying outside of your faith and arguing over what your going to tell the kids when they grow up about God!

 
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