Kerstin Baker-Ash

Holiday Detour

The best laid plans and all that...

Really, we did have the best laid plans. We arrived in Philadelphia for our friend Michael's wedding to Remi - a lovely celebration that incorporated the richness of their heritage with modern, personal elements. The chuppah (wedding canopy) was especially moving; Michael and Remi were wrapped in her grandfather's tallis (prayer shawl), connecting them to family and friends but sharing an intimate moment in the midst of their wedding. Since Michael is one of my oldest and dearest friends, it was an honor to be a part of such a great celebration.

So our best laid plans were to get up in the morning, meet a friend for lunch, drive up to Montreal, spend a couple of days there and see some friends, then drive back to Toronto to spend time with my family. We spent an afternoon with my grandparents, having lunch and sorting out a cell phone contract (yes, my 85-year-old grandparents have a cell phone, although neither texts and them picking up the phone is sometimes hit or miss). We had dinner with my brother, took care of some errands, and then hit the hay. When we woke up the morning after the wedding to watch the news and get ready to head north, we did a weather and relaxation shuffle.

I'm no great converter of Fahrenheit to Celsius, but I do know that if somewhere is 85 degrees, it's hot, and if somewhere it's 55 degrees, it's not. Waking up on that sweltering Philadelphia morning, we threw caution to the wind (and threw out our plans), and made a plan to head to Florida.

I know it's a bit different, Montreal and Florida, so let me explain. I've been bugging James about a proper sit-on-a-beach-and-read vacation, and he's responded with some gentle nagging about Disney World. The last time I was at Disney World, I was precisely 12 and a half years old (it was my "half birthday"), I was with the Toronto Childrens Chorus on a tour of Florida and wore a fanny pack with light blue jeans (as evidenced by the photo on the right - I'm the kid wearing a backwards baseball cap in the middle, and my brother is rocking the jean jacket on the right; what the contents of the brown bags are is a complete mystery), and really thought I had jumped very clear of the Disney bus. My husband, on the other hand, spent several summer vacations in central Florida and was keen to show me what I had missed all those years ago.

With a GPS and updated wardrobe (thank goodness), we set out on I-95. We tried to push through as much as possible, clapping whenever we crossed a state line (and not clapping when we accidentally drove into New Jersey). We spent the night in Savannah, Georgia - neither of us had been there and James had never set foot in Peach paradise - and spent the morning there before continuing our drive and crossing one final state line.

We got do Disney very quickly, and stopped only once in Jacksonville to put some gas in the bug-splattered car. For those readers who know us, we've not always been known as the plan-in-advance people; we left our hotel plans to chance and were incredibly delighted by what we were able to get.

I can't say how much we're enjoying Disney. Staying at the resort is a post on its own, and the parks we've done so far (Epcot and Hollywood Studios/MGM) have been brilliant. We've taken loads of photos, videos and collected all the little bits (as well as my epic spanking on the golf course by a much more capable James) - a video recap is already in the works. I'll leave it at that so far, because there's so much more to say and it would take an hour just to go through all the fun things we've done, and I want to save it for the mega holiday post.

Sometimes, you have to roll with a bit of a chance. We've not been doing that for a while, and the excitement of picking a spot on the map and going for it will not likely be repeated for a long time to come. It's nice to be able to do this spontaneous vacation and hang out with each other, and I'm looking forward to seeing my family on the weekend.

PPC Hero and Holiday Hijinx

In preparation for my upcoming holiday, I've not really had much time to blog, take photos or do any new videos (well, there's one new video, but I can't talk about it because the person I'm making it for reads this blog).

I'm very chuffed (that's happy in American) that a post of mine was accepted on the PPC Hero blog, run by the folks at Hanapin Marketing. I wrote about five essential tips, tools and tricks for the multimarket account manager - from an English-language perspective. More and more in this economy, marketers are looking to expand to "low hanging fruit" - in this example, an easy cross-border setup between the United States and Canada. I've talked about potential pitfalls in language differences, and also some free tools you can put in your belt to make your multimarket campaigns easier. In case you're just starting out in search engine marketing, the PPC Hero blog is regarded by many to be one of the great authorities on pay per click marketing (and even got a mention from industry great David Szetela at SES New York in March).

What does our schedule look like?

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

April 24 - 26th

A friend's wedding, and also a morning with an SEM guru herself. Neither my husband or I have been to Philadelphia before, so we're looking forward to it.

Montréal, Québec

April 26th - 28th

Home of the Habs (boo!) and French Canadian goodness, it's a city I last visited on way back in 1990-something. James is looking forward to the Poutine.

Toronto, Ontario

April 28th - May 5th

So it's not as exciting a place to visit as Montréal or Philadelphia, but it's my hometown and the city we lived in for three years. Seeing my grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles, cousins and friends is always a big highlight; little things like Swiss Pidge, movie nights with my brother or seeing my beloved Loon Lake recharge our batteries.

So, there it is. A-guide-to-when-we're-not-going-to-be-in-our-house-so-you-can-steal-stuff post. And if you're in Toronto and I've missed you off my visiting list, tell me so we can have a coffee and a catch up.

New Flip Mino HD

After umming and ahhhing about it for some time, we finally took the plunge and bought a Flip Mino HD. The delay in making a final decision stemmed from whether or not we could really get that much out of it, and how handy it could be in situations where it might be neat to take a quick video. We have an HD camcorder which we use for more lengthy shots (birthdays, weddings, etc) but wanted something I could carry around in my purse and whip out at a moment's notice. The Flip fit the bill nicely.

It's not too jerky (we also bought a Joby Gorillapod for stability while bike riding or in the car) and does great with contrasting colors. I gave it a try with some flowers in our backyard for closeups, but there isn't a macro function and it seemed blurry and unable to focus. That's fine for us - we're really not looking for that in a grab-n-go camera - but you'll be disappointed if you wanted to take shots of bugs roaming around leaves.

The functionality is intuitive; you can't really miss that big, red, push me button which starts and stops filming. The sound extracted from a rather tiny microphone is impressive. When we went for a walk in the woods to test the sound, the playback on birds chirping was amazing. On the flip side, be aware that if it's windy or an airplane is flying overhead, the mic will pick that up as well. 

Keeping in mind that YouTube significantly degraded the quality of the film (next stop, Vimeo), here's our first little test (complete with the required "quick, get the camera out" deer moment):

The original looks great in iMovie. The next job will be to upload a new video to Vimeo to see how the Flip handles itself there. While we might bring along our camcorder to our friend Michael's wedding next weekend, the Flip will definitely come in handy during the hora.

Blogcations and Vacations

April has been a funny month so far. The financial year came to a screeching halt on March 31st, and since then it's been a bit of a sweep up at work and at home. From my first opportunity to say Bircas HaChama (I'm one of those people whose age closely matches up with when Bircas HaChama is recited - you figure it out) to going offline for several days last week and this week; my blog has been sorely neglected for the past few weeks.

I can't promise much in the way of blogging until after Cinco de Mayo (why say May 5th when you can say Cinco de Mayo!?). We're looking forward to a much needed break, starting off with one of my oldest friend's wedding in Philadelphia. Scooting up to Montréal (you know, because it's there) and taking the 401 all the way back to the T-dot to visit with my family and friends. I haven't been back since October, so we're prepared for some traditional visit-stuffing.

I also have a nice big red hat to go with my nice big red dress. It allows for the appropriate covering of hair, but adds some definite pieces of flair. I'm not a big girly dresser upper, but I do like the occasional opportunity to wear pretty dresses and pretty hats to go with them. Hey - if I dress up a total of twice a year, I might as well make it good, eh?

We're also trying to organize seeing as many friends and family as possible, but still have a bit of "us time" as well. My grandparents, who aren't really able to travel, take priority number one as they're only able to see us when we come to Canada. I have a big, spread out family, so our trips back home usually involve shuttling between Toronto, Muskoka, Eastern and Western Ontario to get our visits in.

If you're in these North American hubs of culture and goodness and want to meet up for coffee, let us know:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: April 24th - April 26th

Montréal, Québec: April 27th - April 28th

Ottawa/Toronto/Waterloo/Barrie, Ontario: April 29th - May 5th

I will model the hat on request.

HSBC: No "goodservice" in Sight

In the past few years, companies reaching out to a new generation of consumers have oft-used "search for" slogans in their above the line communication.Orange's poorly planned "I am" campaign has presumably taught us that in order to make sure you're searchable on the terms you're telling people to search on, you have to do a little behind the scenes legwork beforehand. Sadly, one advertiser that has followed Orange's example of putting the cart before the horse is HSBC. 

HSBC's new outdoor campaign suggests that instead of calling their 0800 number (that's like a 1-800 number for the Yanks and Canucks among you), you should search on "goodservice". The first result is poor; Google suggests an alternative spelling, and returns two top results from Canada, as well as a "goodservice" result from a Portuguese site. HSBC could've got around this by using paid search as a bridge until their SEO ramps up, but instead Audley Travel are they only ones showing up in sponsored links:

Fair enough that Google suggests I've made a spelling mistake, so I searched on "good service" with a space in between:

HSBC doesn't pop up anywhere. In fact, the first instance where they do show up is... nowhere. They're not to be found in natural or paid search results. Duncan Bloor first wrote about HSBC's goodservice campaign nearly two months ago, and they did seem to be using paid search to prop up their abysmal SEO. However, someone has massively dropped the ball and either let PPC budget run out or not ramp up a successful SEO strategy.

Thanks to my colleague, Jonathan Keane, for spotting this search #fail.

The Blessing of the Sun

This morning, I participated in a once-in-28-years event, the Birkat Hachama or Blessing of the Sun. In Judaism, there exists a belief that when the vernal equinox occurs on a Tuesday at sundown, it has returned to the place it was at the time of creation; the blessing is then recited on Wednesday morning. About 15 of us gathered this morning in a private garden in South Kensington, joining people around the world to make the blessing on the Sun - a moving experience given that we ranged from a toddler's first birkat hachama, students who would be fifty years old for their next, and an elderly couple.

The weather didn't disappoint. Surrounded by blooming cherry trees, standing on dewy grass and squinting in the sun, we recited:

ברוך אתה ה' אלהינו מלך העולם עושה מעשה בראשית

I'm old enough for this to me my second birkat hachama, but young enough to not be able to remember that far back. Thinking forward to 28 years from now, I wonder what I will have achieved, what my children will have achieved, and how I will be living my life approaching my seventh decade.

I didn't really take any photos or video, but I found a video of a beautiful birkat hachama ceremony in Nava Tehila, Jerusalem:

Contrast that to the birkat hachama of 1981; it's a trip back in time for some (especially those who long for the days of Farrah Fawcett hair), but the ceremony has stayed the same throughout the years. If you're of a North or South American persuasion, you still have time to go to a birkat hachama gathering near you. Chabad has a handy event finder, and I would highly recommend dragging yourself out of bed - you've got the next 28 years to sleep in!

Tonight, Passover begins so I won't be online until Saturday evening. I apologize in advance for any e-mails that go unanswered or blog comments that go unnoticed. Wishing everyone a happy long weekend, and chag kasher v'sameach!

CADIE - Intelligent April Fools' Day from Google

Sewing together all the unique and wonderful elements of the social web, Google engineers have designed a highly intelligent tasked-array system called CADIE. She has her own YouTube channel, a blog incorporating the best LOLcats has to offer, and even finds herself on a US Navy submarine in Google Earth.

 

CADIE has determined, through extensive analyzing of Google's worldwide index, that she <3 Pandas. She has already racked up an impressive 1771 friends (as of 9.33 BST) through Google Friend Connect, and we wait with bated breath to see what social rules CADIE will parse next. According to the monograph, CADIE simultaneously analyzes interconnected evolving agents, proballistic Bayesian domains and a realistic world from which to learn. The result? I heart Pandas, OMG and a lot of LOLing can be found - typical of online social environments such as MySpace or Facebook.

Also on tap from Google's worldwide offices, gBall - vibrating to let you know if agents or talent scouts want to speak to you at a cost of $10 per kick (SEM nerd lolz), and AutoPilot - an ingenious way to stay on top of your 419 scam e-mails:

 

Happy April Fools' Day.