Hey, Google Analytics: Canada is not the 51st state (yet)

As a Canadian, I'm often pointing out Canadians and Canadians' achievements to my British colleagues. I'm sure they're sick of it by now. If you know a Canadian, you'll know I am not alone in this obsession.

Why do we do it?

We do it because we live all our lives in the shadow of the most powerful country on earth. We are innundated by US news, culture, music, movies, finance, business, politics etc. We're just looking for a little way to be noticed. So, when we have our chance we jump on it. That's why we bother pointing out that Michael J Fox, Christopher Plummer and more recently Ryan Gosling is Canadian (even though he's probably spent most his life in the US). It's our little way of jumping up and saying "we exist".

In Canada, we amuse ourselves by watching episodes of Rick Mercer's Talking to Americans and sharing stories of injustices to Canada's pride.

Today, even Rick Mercer's antics can't bring a smile to my face due to this Canadian injustice. Yes, it's true GOOGLE of all companies has committed the biggest sin. They have decided that Canada is not quite big enough to have their own map in Real Time Google Analytics.

Let' me expand. I work in the internet. I was investigating the origin of the visitors that visit our website using Google Analytics. As a Canadian, I was particularly interested in the Canadian cities where our visitors were from at that moment.

So, here is what happened I clicked on the link "Canada". On the left hand side of the screen I saw a list of familiar city names such as Calgary, Toronto, Vancouver, Richmond Hill (a suburb of Toronto), Guelph, Grand Prairie, Unionville and many more. Seeing those names made me feel close to home. Yet, when I cast my eye on the accompanying map, it wasn't a map of Canada at all. It was a map of the United States of America. What the ****? See for yourself ...

In case you are not familiar with the Canadian map, this is NOT a map of Canada. This is the map of Canada.

I'm sure you will recognize the first map as a map of the mighty United States of America. Yet, all the cities are floating in a blue sea north of the US border.

I guess it has finally come to pass, Canada is just the 51st state of the US. Please Google, sort that out to make this Canadian a little bit happier.

What is your porn name?

I thought that title might get a little interest. As it turns out my alternate names range based on my anagram are:

Della Sir Owl to Ladle Sir Owl to Ordeal Wills to Dare Ill Slow

So, what's your alternate name?

Dalston Street Artist -Stewy - Does Tea Parties

The building across from us is the canvas for various graffiti artists. I captured some little men back in 2007 and J posted another find on his blog. Usually, the moment someone tags it, the authorities come in and paint over it.

About 3 weeks ago, I woke up to a horse outside of my window. Unlike our home in Primrose Hill, it wasn't a real horse, but it was still beautiful. Here's what it looked like:

there was a frog too.

About a week later, a horn was added and it became a unicorn. Unfortunately, I was a little slow to capture that transition on film because not more than a few days later some wings were added. I made sure I got that one on film (*ahem* digital I should say)

I was planning on making a short post about this unexpected surprise and that would be that. However, last weekend, a little tea shop and art installation (Urban Fog) popped up beside my winged unicorn in a soon-to-be renovated building. It turns out Stewy (see more of his work here) collaborated with the team at Urban Fog and added some animals announcing the tea house. I thought I would document these wonderful additions here as I am sure it will all soon disappear when the renovations begin.

More about the Tea House ...

The owner - Zoe - decided to use the space to create a wonderful fabric installation. It feels like you are inside a modern day cave with little cubby holes where you can sit, enjoy music and tea. You can read more about the concept and installation on their website.

So, if you're in Dalston before May 21, 2011, you should check out Stewy's and Urban Fog's work. (opening times are on their website)

My Beautiful Network of Professional Contacts

Last year Dopplr sent to its users a beautiful map which outlined their business travel for the previous year. Here is an example of the map they did for Barak Obama for 2009. As you can see it was a really beautiful way of presenting data.

It seems that Linkedin has been taking a page from Dopplr's playbook. And, they've done a brilliant job. I now have a visual map of my Linkedin connections. The colours represent connected networks. If you create your own, you will see that you can decide who the colours represent by scrolling over the dots to expose the individual people.

(click here to see it life-size)

I was surprised to see that the majority of my connections in Linkedin were associated with my time at Yahoo! This is incredible given it was only 2 years of my rather lengthy career. I guess I made lots of contacts during that time.

I'm now thinking I love my map so much I might make a set of MOO business cards with my personal map printed on them.

Go on make your own!

Me. Me. Me. Me.

Who Me?

Yesterday I was meant to speak about social media and MOO at a conference in Germany. Unfortunately, the snow in Frankfurt kept me from attending. I was rather bummed as I had worked hard on the presentation ON THE WEEKEND! Oh well.

I found this cartoon in a recent Marketing Week and felt it actually provides all the rules of social media and brands. Hey, brands and people for that matter.

How influential are you?

Fast Company is running an interesting experiment called the Influence Project. Evidently they are attempting to see who is the most influential person online. You would think that would be rather obvious, it has to be Ashton Kutcher and his 5 million+ followers.

It seems that influence is calculated on the number of people one can influence to sign up for the Influence Project.I have signed up as I was rather curious how it works. To date, I haven't managed to influence ONE person to do the same.

Now if you are curious and want to sign up for the project than please do click my link and show that I can influence ONE person on this interweb. If nothing else you can get your photo in Fast Company's magazine when the project is done.

The Project is in Flash (big surprise) and as a result, I had a hard time screengrabbing a shot of the collage of photos. It's probably best to visit the site yourself.

This project actually reminds me of a business version of the Dorito competition where J was a finalist. That is the winner was not based on the best ad but rather whether he was good at getting people to vote. (remember? I think I asked all of you to vote).

Happy 80th Birthday Barbie!

My Aunt's 80th birthday was on Sunday. Sadly, we weren't there to celebrate. And as she has just got a new red convertible, it'll be even harder than usual to keep up with this crazy lady.

Enjoy the new wheels!!