that canadian girl

Latest adventures…

  • Google gets it right (again)

    If you’re a Gmail user, you’ll know what I’m about to say. (And if you’re not, do yourself a favour and drop me a line so I can send you an invite, Gmail is just great!)

    So, as I was saying, another feature in Gmail, another weapon to Google’s arsenal. Google Chat has only been live for the masses for a few days, but it’s already been very popular.

    Google <3 YouGranted, like any other company, Google fails on some new features or products (Google Base for example?), when it gets it right, it gets it REALLY right. Google Chat is a clean simple limited-features chat client, that can be used from within Gmail, discreet and requiring no special downloaded software. It doesn’t do MSN Messenger’s song and dance, but I think that’s why I like it so much.

    Reminiscent of the good old IRC/ASCII art days, the official Google Blog shows us how to share the love.

  • Eww! don't touch that mouse!

    As if I wasn’t paranoid enough about using other people’s pens because I know I always end up chewing them, touching doorknobs because I don’t know what’s been on them before, and just generally hating shared bathrooms, this Korean research confirms that cyber cafes are dirty ming-holes too.

    Computer mouses found in cyber cafes have been ranked as the second most bacteria-infested items in a list of commonly touched objects.

    The survey, carried out by the Korea Consumer Protection Board, found shopping cart handles to be the worst of the worst. Typically, they contain an average of 1100 colony forming units (CFU) of bacteria per 10 sq cm.

    The detected bugs include all kinds of bacteria including pathogenic ones.

    The Dirty Half Dozen:
    1. Shopping cart handles – 1100 CFU per 10 sq cm
    2. Internet café computer mouse – 690
    3. Bus hand straps – 380 (yes it said bush, but I corrected the typo to save you the inane comments)
    4. Public toilet handles and door knobs – 340.
    5. Lift buttons at 130
    6. Train hand straps – 86

    (Found via Digg, quality reading for the entire family!)

  • Smoking ban on the horizon

    The Beebs reports: “Health campaigners have welcomed a vote paving the way for a ban on smoking in all pubs, clubs and restaurants in England from the summer of 2007.

    MPs voted on Tuesday by a margin of 200 votes to impose a ban on smoking in all enclosed spaces, despite months of wrangling over the issue.”

    So… this means we’ll smell even more of curry at the end of the night, since smoke won’t cover the stench?

    Nah, joking aside, that’s great news. Never thought a country like Britain would see the smoky haze of its pubs clear up, but it seems to be heading in that direction! Pub landlords, get your carpet washers and scrubbers out, because smoke won’t hide the fact that your beer-drenched carpet stinks now!

  • New school crop circles

    When Yorkshire farmers get bored, this is what happens…

    Exploitation of Google Maps technology at its best!

    Warning: Mother, avert your eyes, it’s a little bit rude! 😉

  • Akismet, I love you!

    The new integrated spam filter for WordPress is absolutely brilliant. In the past few days, it’s picked up nearly 300 spam messages, and since I installed it a few weeks ago, it’s nearly 800 indecent spam messages.

    It’s saved me so much box-ticking time, since it picks up 99% of the spam I’ve been getting and WordPress has put the other 1% in moderation. What a wonderful thing spam filters are!

  • Permission marketing

    Permission marketing is when you give a company the right to use your email address and send you newsletters or other mail of interest. You know, that time you ticked the box to opt-in to that newsletter? Or more likely these days, the time you forgot to tick the “No I do not wish to receive…”?

    A fair share of companies using permission-based marketing know where to draw the line between mailing customers with interesting offers and thinly disguised spam, indiscriminate to whether it’s what you signed up for. But some don’t. And some really, really don’t.

    Sainsbury’s is one of them these days. Yes I have Nectar card and yes I shop at Sainsbury’s (too often…), but NO, I do not want 3 emails from Sains in 24 hours!

    Let me give you the play by play:
    Yesterday afternoon, I received an email telling me I’ve got to hurry because I can only buy overpriced roses for another three days, otherwise I’ve missed my chance to tell my loved one that I love ’em for a year. Because you know, you only say it once a year. With very expensive red roses. And a rose-shaped Toblerone.

    Then at 3pm today, I was told “Dozen red roses now only £25, hurry only 2 days to order”. Think maybe yesterday’s email wasn’t naggy enough and you needed to push it again and prompt me again, telling me the exact same thing you said yesterday?

    And finally at 5:30pm today, it was Rob Crumbie (do you pronounce that “crummy”?) and Kelly Holmes thanking me for taking part in Active Kids last year (oh really?) and pushing this year’s scheme. Sure it’s a good cause, but you’ve already spammed me so much, I don’t wanna hear it.

    So… Sainsbury’s now has a mail rule set against it and it won’t see the light of my inbox again. Do not pass Go and go straight to jail. Or junk folder in this case.

    Moral of the story is, if I gave you permission to mail me, I didn’t give you permission to go crazy and spam.

  • Superbowl commercials

    I’m not American. I don’t “get” American football. But most of all, I don’t get the Superbowl hype, or the willingness of American enterprises to blow millions on 30-second adverts every year.

    While I do understand that it’s a once-a-year chance to reach a demographic group and hit it hard, it’s still fascinating to see the price paid go up every year. This year, the average cost was $2.5 million per 30 second clip though I’m sure some advertisers paid handsomely more to get the best spots (ie. during the first third when people aren’t getting fidgety yet and taking so many bathroom breaks, food breaks, etc…).

    So if like me, you’re only interested in seeing the ad breaks to see whether Americans managed to pull off anything clever this year, you’ll find the ads on Google Video’s Superbowl page. I haven’t watched them yet, so I’ll come back with feedback once I have!

  • Baking cookies

    So today, I could’ve done like any other Sunday and sat around watching tv, recovering from whatever we did on Saturday (which, in this instance, wasn’t much to be honest) and thinking about work the next day.

    …nothing quite like the smell of nice fresh homebaked peanut butter cookies…

    Granted I still ended up doing a bit of work (tsk tsk!), but I reconnected with my kitchen, by baking cookies and, for once, doing something in there just for the hell of it. I spent most of the time daydreaming of a bigger kitchen and wondering how fat my ass would get if I ate the two batches of peanut butter cookies I made. But I had fun doing something simple, unexpensive and mighty relaxing. It’s got to be cheaper than going to therapy, and probably more effective!

    And it’s nice to have fun on a Sunday.

  • Hey lagerboy…

    The best poster ever!

    lagerboyposter.jpg

    I saw the poster at a pub near work before Christmas, came back from holidays and the poster was on the wall in the office. My guess is someone nicked it from the pub a couple of days before Christmas… but now it’s temptation on a daily basis, even at 10am, all we can think is beeeeer, sweet sweet beeeeer!

  • Wooh, post saved!

    The Micfo server swap tried to get rid of the Broadways nonsense I posted last night, but thanks to Firefox cache, I managed to find a near-finished saved post! Woohoo!

    Take THAT, Micfo! The Interweeb may have been better off without my post but I insist, it’s my right to pollute and write complete rubbish!