that canadian girl

Latest adventures…

  • Ask.com Information Revolution campaign

    Since Ask.com’s good old Jeeves was fired a few months ago, it’s been clear that something was brewing behind closed doors and that a great relaunch was bound to happen soon.

    It’s now happened. A viral, out-of-the-box, really groundbreaking campaign about an information revolution. At least, that’s how it sounded back in the boardroom where the ideas took shape.

    Ask.com Information Revolution campaignIn reality, it’s one of the most blatant cases of astroturfing I’ve seen in the past few years. It presents itself as some sort of underground social movement, shrouded in mystery. [Disclaimer: Keeping in mind that I don’t live in London and my exposure to the campaign is limited to the banners on blogs I read, and these pictures snapped on the street and on the tube by some Londoners.]

    The Wall Street Journal weighs in:

    The online discussion has been dominated by people complaining they’ve been misled. “I thought this may be an informative Web site about how information is used on the Internet,” said one posting last week. “Instead I discover it’s just a cheap ploy for an inferior search engine.” The six-week campaign is designed to lift Ask.com’s profile in the U.K., where it trails Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. The Ask.com network, a unit of New York’s IAC/InterActiveCorp, was used for 4.3% of all Internet searches in the U.K. in January, according to comScore Networks Inc.

    Fallon says it expected some criticism but felt there was little to lose, because Google is so much bigger. [via Search Engine Land]

    Support for the campaign has been scarce so far. The campaign has been called a “load of drivel” and the agency producing it “cynical, manipulative hacks”. Some go as far as saying that Ask.com expected things to turn sour, figuring that bad publicity is better than no publicity at all.

    Not so sure about that. If all it leads to is a couple of attempts at using Ask.com, when the user is already in a mindframe where they feel betrayed and bullsh***ed by the company in question, the likelihood of this user leaving with a positive, “yes, I think I’ll use them again” attitude is somewhere between unlikely and simply laughable.

    Time will tell whether this campaign yields any positive visibility for Ask.com, but at the moment, it’s a bit on the ugly side… A bit of a shame, but really, if Ask.com felt that the right way to spark new interest in its search engine was to be deceitful and lie to its users, then it’s getting what it deserves!

    [Cross posted from Focus on Them]

  • Oh yes, it's a Good Friday

    A week ago, I was talking about feeling on cloud nine and here’s one reason!

    Tadah! New car, a lovely shiny, 5-miles-on-the-clock Ford Ka Zetec Climate. It’s got a mighty 70 horsepower, and it looks dead sexy with L plates on. (Don’t worry, that last bit won’t last too long…)

    I’m so incredibly pleased with it, and after Andrew waxed it nicely this afternoon, it’s shinier than ever!

  • Links of the day

    A few worthy business-oriented reads for today:

    Have a good Easter weekend!

  • Google TiSP: Free Wireless Broadband

    Just a quickie to highlight the second April Fool’s joke, Google TiSP, its new FREE in-home wireless broadband service. Easy, user-friendly system! 😉

    Google TiSP

  • Google Mail Paper now available in the UK

    Lately, I’ve been getting a bit sick of staring at a screen all day. Email in, email out, do this, do that. Blergh!

    But looks like Google has solved my problem, again! Gmail Paper is a new service, just arrived to the UK after some US trials, which allows you to request paper copies of your emails. These are delivered in 2-4 business days, leaving you the alternative of reading all your mail on paper.

    And for those who are concerned about the environment, you needn’t worry, they thought of everything. “Gmail Paper is made out of 96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum, and thus, actually helps the environment. For every Gmail Paper we produce, the environment gets incrementally healthier.”

  • Quick note: Doctor Who on Saturday night, 7pm

    Since I feel BBC have done a pretty poor job of announcing the new season of Doctor Who, I wanted to post a quickie to say it’s starting this Saturday at 7pm on BBC One. Set your Sky Plus boxes, Tivos or clear your calendar for the evening and get ready for a new season with the Doctor, his new assistant, some Daleks and (hopefully) a few Jack Harkness appearances! 😉

  • Spending the week on Cloud Nine

    When I was a kid, I used to get this feeling all the time. This floating feeling that life’s great, like you could explode if it gets any better. As grownups, we’re busy, stressed, worried over all sorts of trivial and not-so-trivial stuff, and we rarely, if ever, get that floaty feeling anymore.

    However, in the past week or two, a number of positive things have happened, big and small, which have just kept me in that great mood. Some are as simple as losing a couple of pounds after feeling really bloated for ages, having something surprisingly tasty for lunch and the weather being as lovely as it was on Monday and Tuesday (even though it’s now rubbish).

    On Tuesday, an article I wrote on the Seven Deadly Sins of Email Marketing Management was published on Digital Web. Then yesterday, like the cherry on the sundae, it featured on the Campaign Monitor blog. (Cheers for the mention, Dave!)

    There have been a few other fortuitous events, which I’m sure I’ll be able to get into at a later date, but generally, it’s the small things that are keeping me in such a fab mood.

  • Active Hotels joins the blogging world

    While we’re on the topic of travel blogging, I couldn’t help but introduce the Active Hotels blog, which we launched in February.

    As you may or may not know, I send the Active Hotels weekly newsletter, in which I try to cram as many good travel deals as I can find.

    Active Hotels NewsletterBut recently, I’ve been coming across tons of last second wicked deals which would have quickly evaporated before the next newsletter went out. And by wicked deals, I mean, even I was baffled by the rates and would eye my calendar for a free weekend to go laze around in some of the posh spa hotels I found.

    After scratching our heads about the best way to tell people about these deals without filling their inboxes with daily emails, we thought a blog would be a great place to start. Between the blog and RSS feed, hopefully we’d manage to use it as a good way to converse with our past and future guests.

    It’s only a humble little WordPress blog and there’s still a whiff of fresh paint in the air, but I hope we can make it a good spot to find deals and some rants and reviews on all things travel-related, so feel free to stop by and say hi!

  • International Shut Down Day?

    Can you cope without your computer for one day?

    That’s the question Shutdownday.org is asking. They are encouraging everyone to switch off for 24 hours, on the 24th March 2007, and so far 13% are already admitting they cannot go without their computer on Saturday.

    I have yet to tick the red or grey box – I’d like to spend the day away from the computer, but as it’s my bread and butter, we’ll just have to see!

    Going online daily to read the news, check the weather, catch up with people and to blog has been part of my life for the best of 13 or 14 years now, and I could probably count the number of days I haven’t used a computer in all those years on a few hands. There’s no denying it, it’s an integral part of my life.

    So more power to you if you can take part in Saturday’s Shutdown Day, but in my case, a no-technology day needs to be planned ahead to get work and personal projects out of the way first.

    Sad unh?

  • Around the world in as long as you like

    I love travelling, world history, new exotic food, but I sadly spend very little time seeing the world. So I live vicariously through some of my favourite travel blogs.

    Darren at Travel Rants is organising a Blog-a-thon Challenge, with the aim of getting new travel writers to come out of the woodwork.

    Tell your family, friends, anyone you know about the Travel Rants Blog-a-thon. Write a blog post [article] that will be useful, interesting, or humorous for travellers / consumers and you could win yourself a cool €200 worth [or equivalent US$, £’s etc.] of Amazon vouchers donated by SA-Venues.com.

    So if you fancy yourself as a travel writer or want to share some of your past unique travel experiences (some of my Namibian friends’ childhood stories and my sister’s many South American trips come to mind here!), visit Darren’s blog and read up on the challenge.