that canadian girl

Category: Blogging & Online Media

  • The Twitter backlash begins: Welcome to a world of pain and spam

    A couple of days ago, Hugh quit Twitter to work on writing his book. Now I’m considering quitting Twitter, but nobody’s signed me up for a book.

    The reason? Spam, spam, eggs, bacon and spam. Well, without the eggs or the bacon. The sheer volume of new followers I’m getting these days who are blatantly spammers is getting increasingly frustrating. Sure, I can block them one by one, or simply ignore them, but if Twitter could implement a “flag as spam” a la Blogspot, then we could help each other and avoid 10,000 other users getting the same spammy follower message.

    Such a pain, Twitter spam takes over my inbox

    To add to the frustration, a friend pointed out that spam followers could very well use your RSS feed to create random copy for spam emails or blog comments in the future. I haven’t come across it yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s already happening.

    I guess for now, the less drastic route for me to take will be to create a rule where all notifications of new followers will go straight into a mark-as-read folder. It won’t solve the problem that my feed could end up as spam material for some unscrupulous asshole out there, but it’ll have to do for now.

    What this means is that if you start following me and you want to have a conversation, you’ll need to send me a message @vero for me to react and add you as well. Crappy, but it’s the best solution I can think of.

    Anyone got a better idea?

  • Upgrade to WordPress 2.5 or stay in the dark, says Technorati

    A short word of advice to fellow WordPress users. Not only is WordPress 2.5 so awesomely great that you should upgrade immediately, even if it was just for the beautifully refreshed admin area (after years of staring at the same old UI, it’s so good to see a new one!) but you should upgrade if you want to keep appearing in Technorati.

    Good ol’ Technorati, one of the largest blog directories on the web, has announced that, due to some security issues with older versions of WordPress, you need to upgrade to the latest version in order to continue being indexed.

    Because of this ongoing problem, we’re discontinuing processing crawls of blogs that exhibit common symptoms of being compromised. We strongly recommend upgrading your WordPress installation. Even if you haven’t been afflicted by a compromise, by the time you are aware that you have been a number of negative consequences may have already occurred (for instance, flagged spam by Technorati, Google or Yahoo!) — this has been reported by many WordPress users.

    This will be interesting to watch, seeing as even large blogs like TechCrunch haven’t gotten around to updating yet. Many less techy users will have to wait until their hosting’s control panel updates the Fantastico scripts to contain the latest version of WordPress. Considering the millions of ghost town blogs currently listed on Technorati, I wonder whether this will become a huge Spring Cleaning of all the unloved, dead blogs across the web. This might just turn out to be a good thing…

    So, go on, get off your butt and upgrade WordPress to the latest version, and tell those around you to do the same!

  • It's my blog's birthday: That Canadian Girl 4 years on

    Cake!I find it hard to believe that this blog is now four whole years of age. It certainly wasn’t my first blog – the first would probably trace back to around 2000, but was a poor excuse for a blog. It was, however, the first WordPress blog where I actually bothered buying a real domain name rather than a borrowed subdomain on someone else’s dodgy hosting, and it’s the first time I made an effort to scrap some thoughts together on a somewhat regular basis.

    The first post was something to do with There.com, an early sibling of Second Life, the kind of avatar-based online world I’ve never had much interest in. A random start, but a start nonetheless.

    Now, four years on, I can hardly imagine my life without blogging. It’s shaped much of what my career has become, giving me the fun experience of writing for Shiny Shiny a few times and resulting in getting headhunted to become a corporate blogger for Taptu a year ago.

    Since those days, blogging has become pretty mainstream, both to my pleasure and dismay. It’s great to see so many people picking up a hobby once reserved for nerds who knew how to clunk together some HTML and update pages manually. Unfortunately, so many people also get the wrong end of the stick. I can’t judge personal bloggers, because it’s entirely up to them to write how they like and when they like. It’s the marketers, the CEOs, the business people who’ve decided to pick up blogging – I wish I could lend them a hand, help them make sense of blogs, which are so much more than just an online marketing platform.

    But at least, at the very least, they are picking up on these new technologies. You gotta start somewhere, after all. You fall over the first few times you ride your bike, but you learn. Hopefully, I can help these marketers stop falling off their bikes. (Oh now that was a funny mental picture for me. Was it good for you?)

    So, four years then… I might not be willing to raise little sprogs of my own any time soon, but my blog, that’s my baby. Happy birthday, little one!

    Looking back:

  • Gary Vaynerchuk: Tech World 2008 = Hip Hop 1985

    Gary Vaynerchuk, for those who don’t yet know him, is the guy behind, in front and all around Wine Library TV. He’s a raving looney, a totally loveable geek but most of all, a rough diamond of community relations amongst the world of overly polished marketing bullshit. He says things as they are and has marked me enough during SXSWi this year that I’ve got a couple of things he’s said up on my board of inspirational quotes in the office. (Thank you Gary, genuinely!)

    He also agreed with me that making your own wine is a bad idea, mmmkay dad?

    PS – I want my own WLTV sweatband bracelet thinger!

  • SXSWi 2008: "The Future of Corporate Blogs" panel notes

    These aren’t the tidiest notes, and I even failed on jotting down exactly who was speaking but there are a few useful points in there… Thanks to Lionel for the insight on how Dell dealt with feedback in the early days.

    The Future of Corporate Blogs
    (more…)

  • Hippie 2.0: Reflecting upon SXSW 2008

    South by SouthWest is over. Well, the interactive bit is anyways. Music is clearly still going strong, as I witnessed walking down 6th Street and lucking out on seeing Simian Mobile Disco at La Zona Rosa with a few of the geeks still left in town.

    Reflecting upon the past week, it’s comforting to see a clear sense of community amongst the geeks. Topics that kept reoccurring were ones of social capital, change and collaboration. The jaded half of me couldn’t help but snicker. Is this hippie 2.0* or something?

    Don’t get me wrong, I find this “Let’s hug, love and help each other” attitude immensely endearing and refreshing, but I can’t help but be tickled by some of the more naive ideas that were exchanged over the course of the week. Not every single one of our ideas will live on past the panels, not every one of our harebrained startup ideas will become the next Facebook and not every suggestion is revolutionary. But it doesn’t matter, it’s motivating to be surrounded by people with faith in their ideas and seemingly endless energy to turn them into reality.

    So if it’s up to me, I’ll be attending SXSWi again next year. The panels may not all have been oh-so-fabulous, but regardless, meeting so many new people is an injection of energy, if nothing else.

    I now need to somehow make sense of this creative energy and communicate it to my team at work. I’m not sure I can express it in words. Maybe I need a Kumbaya 2.0 to express my feelings?

    [* I seemingly didn’t coin the word, as it comes up on the Interweb in a different context, but I think it’s terribly fitting here as well.]

  • Pepsmedia gets a new look for 2008

    New Pepsmedia site for 2008With the beginning of a new year comes a brand new look for our Pepsmedia website.

    We’ve been so privileged to have the opportunity to work with interesting, open (and sometimes challenging) clients in recent months, and they have kept us so busy that we’d neglected to update our own portfolio.

    I’m looking forward to seeing what 2008 will bring!

  • Travel Blog Carnival: The World Keeps On Spinning

    This week, it is my honour to be hosting the second Travel Blog Carnival, launched last week by Darren at Travel-Rants. Last week, Europe a la Carte‘s Karen hosted the first carnival. Without further ado, here are my favourite submissions this week.

    First, brand new blog J Top Ten publishes the Top 5 biggest comparisons between South California and North California. Having never been, I was surprised by the seemingly significant differences in culture between what’s known to a geek like me as Silicon Valley in the North and the much-caricatured Hollywood further South.

    Next, the Travel Advice and Guides in the Nordic Region blog confirms my suspicion that the Swedes are a bit mad. “Local officials have now given permission for construction of the worlds largest Elk.” Yes, you’ve read this right. An elk, towering 45 meters tall, containing conference rooms, exhibition halls, a restaurant, with an outdoor cafe on top of the antlers, to top it all off. Please, please tell me the exit isn’t at the rear…

    Hole in the Donut’s Barbara Weibel writes this week about her experiences in street crossing across the world. From the madness of Indian streets where there simply are no rules to the unbelievably organised Singaporean roads. I’ll certainly be following her advice when I find myself on a new street corner; “When traveling in unfamiliar places is to watch the locals and do as they do, because they’ve definitely figured out the order of things.”

    And finally, Foxnomad makes his predictions on what 2008 will hold for travellers. Rising airline prices, the advent of greener travel and third-world trips becoming more attractive are only some of his predictions. Only time will tell how close Foxnomad will be! All I hope is that he is wrong about his prediction on the likely increase in terrorist activity on tourist destinations.

    Want to take part in the next Travel Blog Carnival? You can submit any travel related posts which you’ve written in the last 7 days to blog.carnival(at)gmail.com.

  • Blog Topic Challenge: "Favourite tools for getting things done"

    Jane Dallaway suggested that I write about apps that help me get things done. As a Mac user, I love to try out new applications written by smaller developers, so I thought I’d share the list of everything I use regularly, so go have a look at my profile on IUseThis.

    I’ll go in more details on best GTD tools in the near future, for tonight, I’m just checking in and sharing this with you!

    MacHeist Bundle

    While we’re on the topic, I thought I’d flag up a GREAT deal on MacHeist. Ten apps for $49 is simply fantastic, especially since 25% goes directly to charity. If you’re a Mac user, I highly recommend having a look at this offer before it runs out!

  • Blog Topic Challenge: International Boredom Day

    Today, a certain friend of mine spotted a three year old entry on my blog named “International Boredom Day” and suggested I should write an update about it. While it’s not a written suggestion, it’s good enough for me today 🙂

    Indeed, tomorrow, we shall be celebrating 3 years since I pronounced January 9th International Boredom Day. I suppose that on the day I wrote the entry in question, I could’ve done all sorts of productive things but instead had a nap, read a book, lazed around a little. That’s a luxury I hardly even dream of these days! What I’d give for one day where I have time to be bored.

    Don’t get me wrong, I love my fast-paced exciting life and don’t want to give up any of my projects, but there’s a part of me that envies my boss for his two weeks in Sri Lanka spent meditating and doing yoga over Christmas. Sounds like bliss! (Not the yoga part, I would probably break in two if I tried doing yoga, but the meditation, relaxation bit.)

    I have a theory that the older you grow, the faster time flies. I call it the Theory of Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Stuff. (A beer to whoever can place this quote) So in the past 3 years, I’m convinced days have gotten shorter! It’s harder to find time to sleep, and almost impossible to get everything done at work and at home while keeping some sane Me-time every so often for reading an embarrassingly cheesy novel or watching a bad movie like… Robocop or Hackers…

    So while I don’t have an answer on how to MAKE time, all I can say is that International Boredom Day is no longer in existence in my mind.

    This Blog Topic Challenge is turning out to be harder than I thought – especially with the mad evenings we’ve recently had. But I’m still up for it! Entries still welcome to help me make up a whole month’s worth of suggestions!