Category: How I love the Interwebs

Worlds collide

I have a confession to make. I wanted to tell you before somebody else did, or before you figured it out for yourself. I knew I couldn’t keep it a secret much longer.

You see, I’ve been cheating on you. I have another blog.

*waits for gasp of dismay and betrayal*

Don’t worry, you’ll always be my first bloggy love. But I needed somewhere to put my ongoing research into the field of government communications and social media, and no amount of non-sequiturs and failed segue attempts could bridge that in with Tristan’s potty adventures and #26.

I wanted to tell you about it because it’s becoming increasingly difficult to lead this double bloggy life. I went to this absolutely fabulous meet-up yesterday of people who are interested in public relations and social media, and I was having a massive identity crisis the whole night. I earned my blogging “street cred” here, but my professional blog stuff is over on the other blog. Every time I joined in the conversation, I vacillated between veteran mommy-blogger and newbie communications blogger. As if I don’t have a hard enough time keeping track of just one identity!

And then there was the sharing of information. I have government of Canada business cards with the standard contact info on them, but no URL; and I have my funky little Moo cards with pictures of the boys from my Flickr account and this URL. (Love love LOVE my Moo cards!!) Which is more likely to give me professional credibility: a biz card with a URL scrawled across the white space in the middle, or a picture of Simon colouring Easter eggs or both boys in the bathtub with my blog title and URL on the back? Of course, I went with the Moo cards, because in the end it’s all about my boys, isn’t it?

So I figured I’d let you in on my secret bloggy life now, because it’s getting increasingly difficult to keep the two blogs separate. I have no intention of linking back here from there, as the goal of the blog is more to be used as an internal collaboration tool, but if you’re interested in the intersection of government communication and social media, feel free to stop by for a visit.

But, um, please keep in mind that many big bosses above me, who are responsible for important things like my paycheque and my computer access, will be following the comments on that blog. As opposed to here, where they probably also read but with a lot less scrutiny and a lack of proprietary interest. I’m just sayin’.

So, without further ado (and you know how I love the ado), I present for your link-surfing pleasure, the Canadian Cybrarian.

International delurking week

Hey you! Yes, you! The one who sashays over here, checks out what’s new, and leaves without a peep. I’m talking to YOU!

I see you visiting, you know. I wonder who you are, and why you visit, and whether you like what you are reading. I wonder why you come often, but never say hello.

Well, this week is International Delurking Week, and you are morally obligated to leave a comment. It doesn’t have to be a pithy comment, or a witty comment, or a verbose comment. Just say hello, for goodness sake. I don’t ask much (okay, so that’s a lie, I shamelessly ask for stuff all the time), but today I’m asking, nay impelling you, to give up a little comment in return.


(Props to Paper Napkin for the idea, and the funky graphic. Go say hello to Sheryl and pick up a graphic of your own!)

Now go forth and comment on all your favourite blogs. Share the bloggy love!

I’m hardly surprised

As seen at Mimilou and Angry Pregnant Lawyer:

The True Neurotic
You scored 65 anxiety, 87 awkwardness, and 70 neuroticism!
Congratulations, you are The True Neurotic, you nail-biting, conflict-avoiding worrier, you. You’re plagued by self-doubt and anxiety, which makes social activity hard–even though you may be well-liked, you feel under a storm of silent criticism. It doesn’t help that people give you funny looks for organizing all your pens by color or sharpening your gnawed pencils to a delicate point.

Your high anxiety score implies that you are unable to relax, worry about the future often, and probably are plagued by irrational fears and self-doubt.

Your high awkwardness score implies that you are socially inept, probably stick out from the crowd, and feel uncomfortable in large groups of people, such as at parties.

Your high neuroticism score implies that you exhibit neurotic behaviors–probably organization, fanatic obsessions (can you recite the entire first LOTR movie?), repetitive mantras, constant checking, or orderly rituals.

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

free online dating free online dating
You scored higher than 99% on anxiety

free online dating free online dating
You scored higher than 99% on awkwardness

free online dating free online dating
You scored higher than 99% on neuroticism

Link: The Neurotic Test

The iPod knows all!

Can’t remember where I saw this originally, but I know Phantom Scribbler and Scrivenings have done it. I’ve had it bookmarked since before I got my iPod, but just stumbled across it when cleaning up some old files. And since we’re on vacation this week, it’s a perfect time to drag out an old meme everybody on the interwebs except me has done!

Go to your music player of choice and put it on shuffle. Say the following questions aloud, and press play. Use the song title as the answer to the question. NO CHEATING.

How does the world see you?
Everybody Wants to Rule the World – Tears for Fears
(no, really!!)

Will I have a happy life?
Gift Shop – The Tragically Hip
(hey, as my mother always said – if love me, buy me things!)

What do my friends really think of me?
Poets – The Tragically Hip
(I swear, I am NOT making this shit up!)

Do people secretly lust after me?
You are the Sunshine of my Life – Stevie Wonder
(we walked down the aisle to this song – maybe this signifies the end of lust??)

How can I make myself happy?
I don’t like Mondays – The Boomtown Rats
(Given. So I should avoid Mondays?)

What should I do with my life?
Hello City – Barenaked Ladies
(That’s a bit more cryptic, isn’t it? This song is about Halifax. I am NOT moving to Halifax, no offense to the Haligonians in the audience. Nor, for that matter, do I plan to spend any more time than necessary as a bare naked lady.)

Will I ever have children?
Twist my Arm – The Tragically Hip
(The Hip answers are all the cleverest ones, aren’t they? Maybe it’s a sign. I’ve always had a musical crush on Gord Downie.)

What is some good advice for me?
Fly from Heaven – Toad the Wet Sprocket
(Um – I think I’ll just leave that one alone.)

How will I be remembered?
Hot Child in the City – Nick Guilder
(okay, I may be remembered for any one of a thousand things, but all modesty aside, “hot” will never be one of them. And I’m fine with that.)

What is my signature dancing song?
She Loves me like a Rock – Paul Simon
(hey, it’s got a good beat at least…)

What do I think my current theme song is?
Pretty in Pink – The Psychedelic Furs
(okay, that was weird enough to make the hair on the back of my arms stand up)

What does everyone else think my current theme song is?
Home for a Rest – Spirit of the West
(appropriate after a weekend visiting my brother’s family)

What song will play at my funeral?
It’s a Kind of Magic – Queen
(should have been “who wants to live forever” if we’re doing Queen.)

What type of men/women do you like?
Men: Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of – U2
Women: Somebody Told Me – The Killers

What is my day going to be like?
The one I Love – R.E.M.
(well, I’m spending the day with the ones I loves)

That was fun! Let me know if you haven’t done it and you decide to play along!

Festive cocktail party comment game

I’m so excited! Today is the kids’ Christmas party at work, one of my favourite parts of the holiday season. Beloved is bringing the boys in within the hour.

I’ve learned my lesson after last year’s Santa gift fiasco, and this year Santa will give them each the same toy. Not only that, but Santa himself will be presenting (get it? yuk yuk yuk) the one thing they both consistently asked for this year: Lightning McQueen and Mater from the movie Cars. The sum of their hearts’ desires in less than $10 worth of dinky cars… directly from Santa himself. I can’t wait!

So, to celebrate the season, and because it’s Friday and I’ve got nothing else in my bag of tricks, and because I’ve been enjoying your collective company so much this week, let’s play the cocktail party comment game, with a holiday twist. It’s simple: each person who comments will answer the question in the comment directly before theirs, and then pose a question of their own for the next person. Each comment will have an answer, then a question. Try to keep it on a festive theme. For example, what’s your favourite Christmas song? What’s the best gift you ever got? What was the most embarrassing Christmas moment ever?

Here’s a Christmas anecdote to start us off. I was probably six or seven years old. Just before Christmas, a lot of the presents were under the tree already, and I was snooping through them. I picked one up and realized I could see through the paper. I was horrified to realize it was a Jamie Sommers/Bionic Woman doll. I think I had expressed a passing interest in it at one point, but by that Christmas I didn’t want it anymore. I was so disappointed not only to have ruined the surprise, but to know I was getting something I didn’t really want. Because she was slightly larger than the other Barbies, and because I didn’t really like her, and because what I had really been coveting was a Ken doll – which I never got, by the way – from that point on I always made Jamie Summers be the boy doll. And to this day, I never snoop in my Christmas gifts. Never.

Now it’s your turn. What’s the best gift you’ve ever given?

The year in review

Filched from Angry Pregnant Lawyer. The year in review, by posting the first sentence of the first blog post of each month of 2006.

  1. What happened to my baby?
  2. Although today is Simon’s birthday (and thank you for all the birthday wishes!), we celebrated it with the family last Saturday.
  3. Sorry about yesterday’s blatant cry for sympathy.
  4. Last week after I posted about demanding public funding for IVF, I exchanged a series of e-mails with Janet, a regular blog reader from elsewhere in Ontario.
  5. Today’s review is being written not at the 10-pages-in point, but after I have read the whole book.
  6. Marla wrote a great, rambling post the other day (you think I ramble? You ain’t seen from ramble ‘till you’ve been to Marla’s place) about how ideas for a blog post just jumped out and hurled themselves at her over the course of a rather strange afternoon.
  7. I’m never going to get around to writing the epic post that sums up our sojourn in la Belle Province, so I’ve decided to cover it in a series of vignettes instead.
  8. I’ve spent a lot of this past week and a half pretty much obsessed with my breasts.
  9. I can see you rolling your eyes.
  10. Eight days.
  11. The boys had a terrific halloween, and by extension, so did I.
  12. All I can say at this point is thank the deity of your choice that November is finally over.

It has an oddly poetic narrative, don’t you think?

Blog payola

I’ve been doing a lot of research on the bigger world of blogs lately, and I’ve been seeing some interesting stuff. And not interesting in a good way, either.

A while ago, I declared blog an ad-free zone. I’m content with the decision, and haven’t regretted it. I also turned down a few product review opportunities, just because I was still trying to find my comfort zone with the whole viral marketing thing. I wanted to make sure that I was being completely transparent. For example, I accepted the free phone (a phone I’m not hugely thrilled with, to tell you the truth, but free is free!) for blogging about it, but I think I was honest about the whole process of how I came to have the phone and why I was blogging about it. Same with the books I’ve reviewed – I’ve made an effort to tell you when I’ve received a review copy from a publisher, and when I’m doing a review just because the book inspired me to do one. (Feel free to call me on it if you disagree – I always like to think the best of myself, despite evidence to the contrary!)

I’m thinking about all this after reading about services like PayPerPost. Have you read about this? Advertisers pay to post details of their ‘opportunity’ to a forum, and bloggers snatch up what seems to be a finite number of opportunities, then write a post about the product or service – and get paid to do so. I followed one set of links back to a low-traffic, low-ecosystem blog who posted about a Harry Potter audio book and is bragging in her sidebar – but not in the post itself – to have made more than $800 in a few months through PayPerPost.

Since its launch this summer, PayPerPost has been roundly criticised by many in the blogosphere for its lack of a disclosure policy. In other words, you aren’t required to mention anywhere in your post that you were getting compensated to flog a product on your blog. In response to that criticism, PayPerPost launched a new website called DisclosurePolicy.org , which TechCrunch compared to big tobacco companies funding addiction research: “they are creating a distraction, designed to keep the buzz about PayPerPost going strong, as well as to move people’s attention away from the core issue of blogger disclosure of product shilling.”

In a related story, Jason Calacanis, former General Manager of Netscape and CEO of Weblogs, Inc., is following rumours that users are being paid to ‘digg’ stories. (Digg is a way to rank news stories and web pages by allowing users to ‘digg’ or ‘bury’ an item.)

Every day, it seems like there are more ways that marketers are finding ways to influence (I thought about using the world ‘infiltrate’ instead of ‘influence’) the blogosphere. Personally, I find initiatives like this extremely distasteful. Call me a purist, but when I read a blog post, or see something has been conferred a certain status by a group of users, I’d still like to believe it’s on the basis of merit and not remuneration from a faceless marketer. On the flip side, it gives me faith in the power of the blogosphere to see that these services are being exposed by the very network they are trying to manipulate.

I’m still struggling with my own comfort level on accepting products or reviewing services. I suppose a blog with my readership numbers and links is considered moderately influential, and I get a couple of requests for pitches every month. I consider each one carefully, even the simple “link to my site” ones, but haven’t taken up anyone recently simply because I’m not sure where to draw my line in the sand. I wish there was a handbook for this somewhere!

Bear with me and we’ll muddle through it together. I can promise you this, though: if I’m getting any benefit from a product or service or link I promote here, I promise I’ll tell you about it. Hey, it’s not much, but it’s a start.

A little something for everybody

I can’t even remember the last time we had a ramble around here. I’ve got a whole bunch of flotsam and pretty pieces of beach glass that I’ve collected, but I have no idea what to do with them. So, I’ll drop them unceremoniously into a single post and let you make something of it.

First, if you haven’t been there already, you should go check out Nancy’s blog. She’s doing a fun Christmas craft or activity every day leading up to December 24.

Second, speaking of holiday activities, my Christmas lights really hate me this year. Or is it the other way around? Back in November, when I was still pregnant, I found myself on a step-ladder hanging the outdoor lights. It was only after about 40 minutes, when I got all the way to the end of the string and my arms were aching from being lifted over my head for so long, that I realized I had started at the wrong end. I had to pull them all back down and re-hang them with the plug on the end nearest the receptacle and not furthest from it. I only mention it now because yesterday I noticed one of our three strings of indoor tree lights was not working. After some fidgeting, I decided the string was officially dead, and needed to be replaced. Of course, this was the middle string. So I very carefully unstrung it, trying hard not to dislodge too many ornaments, and very carefully wove a new string into more or less the same space. When I plugged it in, another string of lights died. When I tested the removed string, it worked fine. So I unstrung a SECOND string of lights and restrung the original string. With all the shifting and yanking and replacing of ornaments, the tree looks like it was decorated by a band of blind monkeys, but at least the lights are working. For now.

Third, some tips from the peanut gallery. Fryman sent me this article in the Globe and Mail about how 96% of Canadian women contribute to the control the family finances, and the vast majority, 63%, have sole control. I have to admit, even though in my house I have pretty much sole control over the finances, I was still surprised to see the figure as high as 63%. Does that figure surprise you?

Fourth, also from the peanut gallery, this amusing link from the one and only Marla. I’ve been trying for days to come up with a post witty enough to support it, but I have failed abjectly. Therefore, I simply ask you to try to imagine taking a refreshing walk along the beach and finding thousands of bags of Doritos, washed up like 200 gram beached whales. Go ahead, if you can make something funnier out of this, be my guest!

Fifth, for those of you who came of age watching television in the 1980s (like me), I offer you the 50 greatest television commercials from the 80s.

And finally, a follow-up to my horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad day. This morning in his Action Line column in the Citizen, columnist Tony Côté addressed my request for his help to find, repay and recognize the kindness of that cab driver who was so kind to me. Well, not so much addressed it as, much to my surprise, simply reprinted my entire e-mail to him (complete with my full name and all – and I mean all – of the gory details, including the miscarriage, the forgotten wallet and the tears) pretty much verbatim. I was hoping he might help me find my way to a real person at Blue Line who could put me in touch with the cabbie, but it looks like I’ll have to keep trying that avenue on my own. Instead, my most humiliating day is now available to a much wider audience than I could have ever reached through blog. Oy, how do I get myself into these things?

Our national preoccupations

You know I’m intrigued by the differences between Canadian and Americans; you know I’m mesmerized by search results. Many of you know I even have a vested interest in taxation.

How then could I leave unblogged this article in the Globe and Mail that intersects so many of my bloggy fascinations. It compares the top search terms from 2006 on Yahoo! and Yahoo! Canada.

Here’s a list of the 10 most popular search terms on Yahoo! Canada in 2006:

NHL
FIFA World Cup
American Idol
Rock Star Supernova
WWE
Neopets
Revenue Canada
Days of Our Lives
Environment Canada
Jessica Simpson

And here, by contrast, is a list of the U.S.’s top 10 Yahoo! searches in 2006:

Britney Spears
WWE
Shakira
Jessica Simpson
Paris Hilton
American Idol
Beyoncé Knowles
Chris Brown
Pamela Anderson
Lindsay Lohan

I’m not sure whether to feel smug or ashamed. I mean, it’s not pretty that seven of the top ten American searches are for the female celebrity flavour of the month, but it is also rather embarrassing (if not telling) that the top ten Canadian preoccupations in 2006 include hockey, weather, taxation, soap operas and – neopets??