The wonderful team at Wikio gave me a sneak preview at the July rankings for the UK Tech blogs. Amongst the ranks are some of the usual suspects and, just off-the-podium, yours truly coming in at #29 30 this month - up by a smashing 81 places from last month!

Fingers crossed you’ll see That Canadian Girl in the Top 20 next month.

Wikio Top 20 UK Tech Blogs

[Update: Wikio even gives That Canadian Girl a mention in the July top blogs review. What an honour, thank you Wikio!]

Natalie Dee draws really cute stuff.

I’m a bit torn.

Poke, a digital agency in London, created this funky campaign for Orange mobile’s Pay As You Go tariffs - you know, the raccoon, camel, canary and dolphin balloons? Yeah, well, if you see a camel called Vero fly by, don’t adjust your medication - it’s just me floating by.

The campaign involves floating from one website to the next, in a StumbleUpon random-new-site manner, using your air canister to boost yourself along. You pick up stars, more air canisters and rainbows along the way. All this nonsense for the sake of an Ibiza holiday for the winner.

It’s cute, it’s entertaining, but my one gripe is that the entire site was developed as a gigantor Flash animation. I’ve been known to whinge about Flash before, and I’m just not a fan of sites that have no deep-linking or easy ways to navigate. Plus, it makes my Mac whirr itself into a frenzy!

But I just can’t help it, I keep on travelling! So go on, Boost my Camel, baby!

Quick post to tell readers that things do happen up here in Cambridge, interesting things!

Cory Doctorow is a blogger, science fiction writer and journalist. He is an editor of Boing Boing, the 11th best blog in the world (according to Time Magazine). He was the 2006-2007 Canadian Fulbright Chair in Public Diplomacy at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. He founded the software company Opencola which was later sold to the Open Text Corporation. He also writes regularly for The Guardian newspaper

Cory will be speaking for one hour at 5:30pm on July 22nd 2008 at ARM, 110 Fulbourn Road, Cambridge CB1 9NJ. Robinson College, Grange Road, Cambridge, CB3 9AN.

If you’re thinking of coming to Cambridge for this, get in touch and we’ll make an evening of it.

When designing a new site feature or planning a new campaign, I always create with a rule of thumb in mind: “Lower cognitive friction and make it as effortless as possible for the user to participate.” Less fields in the signup form, less clicks to a destination, a better FAQ page…

Then I heard Ted Hunt from Innocent Drinks, during Fuel Conference on Friday, who talked about the +400,000 hats that were knitted during The Big Knit campaign for the Age Concern charity.

Knitting. Four hundred thousand hats.

Nobody’s getting paid to do this, and some participants even learned to knit specifically for the occasion. That’s when it struck me; far more important than reducing friction to participation is engaging the community so that they’re willing to do something crazy - like knitting hats - to support your cause.

“Someone just knocked on the door to deliver a parcel, kids shouted “Dad can you sign, we haven’t got signatures yet..”..funny, v funny!”

- Kevin Dixie, on Twitter

Doing my usual news browsing while having a morning coffee and trying to wake up, I came across a video of Rory Cellan Jones making a clown of himself doing something I’d expect a 5 year old to do with ease. He was evaluating the benefits of the “new idea” that is the milk bag, as an alternative to glass bottles and plastic pints which are the norm in the UK.

First off, Rory, I’m not sure what kind of bizarre contraption you bought but if you’d bought a straightforward milk bag jug, like the one on your right here, you would have been done in about 3 seconds flat.

Step 1: Put milk bag (which in my lifetime, I’ve rarely seen leaking) into the jug.
Step 2: Snip the corner of the bag by holding the very corner and using scissors or these tiny fridge-magnet bag clippers.
Step 3: Pour the milk into the glass.
Step 4: Drink milk.

It’s far from new, it’s been the most common way to buy milk in Canada for my entire 26 years of life. The milk comes in a bag of 3x 1.3 liters transparent bags, and the best part is that these milk bags make the sturdiest lunch snack bags ever afterwards and create a hell of a lot less waste than bottles or plastic containers.

So it’s happened. Saint Jobs announced the Second Coming of his child, the Holy iPhone.

Like Ben, I sat in front of my MacBook watching MacRumors, TUAW and Cali Lewis liveblog and report on the Keynote. Unlike Brian, I wasn’t mad (or privileged) enough to attend the Keynote at the Moscone Center, in SF.

Keynotes are a bit like circus acts. The event is rehearsed to the second, we all watch and wait with bated breath for the grandiose final scene, wondering whether anyone’s going to fall flat on their face along the way. While the keynote was light on substance, the short of it is the new iPhone hardware includes 3G, GPS, and there are a number of software changes - MobileMe particularly appeals to me.

However, the biggest change isn’t in the physical device. It’s all in the perception. Last time around, Apple was looking for early adopters, geeks and IWOOTs* to test-run their product in a giant, live usability testing session. Now that they’ve been able to watch us use the device, it’s time to reach out to the normobs with lower upfront costs. While the tariffs are still in the upper end of the scale, unlimited data makes it completely worthwhile.

As an existing user, I’m grateful that under O2’s reign I’m not given the “brand new customers only” treatment. I can upgrade without getting stung for breaking my contract. All first generation owners shedding their skin in prep for the Second Coming means there’ll be a number of orphaned first-generation iPhones floating around. Mine, for example, will most likely find a new home with my father-in-law, Roy. I’m curious to see what the trickle-down impact of giving second hand iPhones to unlikely buyers like Roy will have on the profile of future buyers.

I think Apple will continue to own marginal marketshare, because the iPhone remains too expensive, too complex and too closed for most, but it’s about to take a significant leap ahead. Are you jumping with me? Or kicking back and shaking your head at the fangirl* that I am?
[* Def. IWOOT: "I want one of those", otherwise known as saddos like me who can't resist the latest gadget, even at exorbitant prices.]
[* A fangirl who began supporting Apple back in 1986 when it definitely wasn't cool to own a Mac!]

[Cross-posted to the Taptu blog]

A few moments ago, I subscribed to the 4mations “Keep me updated” mailing list, out of curiosity of what it’ll turn out to be (how did I get there anyway?!)

I’ve got a past in email marketing so even though that subscribing should, in theory, be fine, I hesitated. I’m aware of how dodgy or how careless/naive some senders can be - recently, it took me a battle with an agency that shall remain nameless before they acknowledged that I’d requested repeatedly to be unsubscribed, so things like that peeve me off.

But I subscribed. And it was immediately followed by the familiar green tick mark from Campaign Monitor confirming I was subscribed.

And you know what? I definitely had a fuzzy feeling inside thinking “yup, I can trust this sender. Even if they write total rubbish, I’m confident I can unsubscribe, should there be a need.” I bet you I would’ve bypassed the hesitation had the subscribe field been accompanied by the Campaign Monitor tick. Think that could help increase subscriptions or give users confidence?

What brands do that for you? What logos give you the confidence to hand over money, personal details or your precious time?

It’s Sunday and I’ve got tons to do, but I couldn’t help taking a break to make some yummy homemade chicken nuggets. These were inspired by a Sainsbury’s recipe I found a few years ago when they started making these tiny meal ideas cards you can pick up on your way out. It’s evolved a bit since, getting tastier every single time we have them.

The chicken nuggets are as healthy as you want to make them, and leave plenty of room for creativity - and whatever you have in your cupboards.

Vero’s homemade chicken nuggets

Ingredients

• Chicken strips, chopped into large bite size pieces
• Plain fat free yogurt
• Juice of half a lime or lemon
• Fresh mint or coriander, chopped finely
• Bread, preferably a little bit on the dry side
• A handful of crisps of your choice (I usually use Pringles)
• Parmesan, grated
• A bit of your favourite spices (I put in sweet smoked paprika, Aromat salt and pepper

Let’s get cookin’

Turn the oven on to 190 degrees celcius and find yourself a baking tray. Mix the yogurt, lime/lemon juice and mint/coriander and set aside in a bowl.

Put your stale bread, crisps, Parmesan cheese and spices into a food processor and whizz to turn into breadcrumbs.

Now, time to start the action chain. Take your pieces of chicken, dip them into the herbified yogurt, then into the breadcrumbs. Cover with breadcrumbs and press the mountain on top of the chicken to make sure it’s well covered. Put the piece down on the baking tray. Continue until you’ve done all the pieces.

Put in the oven and turn after about 10 minutes. Usually, I leave them in for about 15 minutes, but all depending on the size of the pieces and the mood your oven is in, you may need more or less. Just cut one piece in half when you suspect it might be ready, and for Dog’s sake, don’t leave them in til they go dry!
Enjoy with some Fiery Guava sauce or some fresh yogurt and mint sauce. (Just don’t reuse the one you used to cover the raw chicken in, that’s not good for you!)

What’s that I hear you say? Om nom nom nom! That’s right!