I used to have a very simple morning routine. Get the paper from the porch & sit down to read it with a cup of coffee. A great start to the day. For the past few months, that’s all changed. The paper is pretty much forgotten and the first thing I do in the morning over a cup of coffee is check out the photos that Commander Chris Hadfield is tweeting out from space.
Police in BC are trying to make a change in the laws regarding drivers and the use of hand-held electronic devices. Right now, if you are caught, you will be fined $167—the police want that to change so that fines for a first offense are increased, then the second time you get caught, you lose your cell phone for 24 hours. Get caught again and lose it for five days.
Would that make us all think twice about picking up the phone while we are driving?
It’s spring-cleaning time at Facebook and they’re making a big change to how we see our updates from friends and pages we follow each today. Today they revealed the new layout and design for the Facebook news feed and it can be summed up in one word:
Visual.
The revised news feed is less cluttered, more visual, and definitely eye-catching. Photos and images are the focus of how the new layout has been designed and for me, it’s a massive improvement.
When you hear the words "School Science Fair" you probably think about baking soda volcanoes, right? Not anymore. Kids are getting more creative with science fair projects and a 13-year-old student in California recently made headlines when she launched her Hello Kitty doll into space. Yes, space.
This is the kind of homework kids can really get excited about.
I have to admit that I love the ads of Super Bowl. I’m one of those people that watches them on YouTube for days after the game is actually over. This year was no different and there were a lot of good commercials, but two ads that got a large amount of attention could only be labelled under “Battle Of The Smartphones.”
Samsung vs. Blackberry.
Both companies had great commercials and they were very different, which got my tiny techy mind ticking.
The Super Bowl is known as much for it’s TV advertising as it is for the game itself. The average cost of a 30 second TV commercial during the Super Bowl this year was $4 million.
I’ll do the math for you. That’s roughly $133,333.33 per second. Seriously expensive.
Approximately 250,000 Twitter users have had their online security compromised after a cyber-hack in which hackers may have gained access to user names, session tokens, encrypted passwords and email addresses.
If you weren’t already aware, YMC has an amazing Pinterest page with almost 60 boards and more pins that I should really be counting. Those rumours of me walking into my #Pintervention one day are there for a reason, you know.
We’ve seen such amazing pins this month on Pinterest, I wanted to share a few of my favourites with you, as well as tell you about our three newest boards that we’ve added to our collection.
We discovered that as parents, we are ALL rock stars.
Meet Miguel Valenzuela. He’s an American living in Hokksund, Norway and a dad of two girls. One day his kids inspired him to create something amazing with LEGO—a robot that makes pancakes.
And not just everyday round pancakes either, you can program this amazing little invention to make pancakes of different shapes and even have them spell out a word.
BAM! All of a sudden this morning, my Twitter and Facebook feeds were full of posts about ING Direct.
What?
It’s all about an ad that ING Direct has recently promoted for RSP season. The tone of the ad is dark and at first glance, you’d think it was talking about something very serious, but it’s actually a tongue-in-cheek satire about the anxiety of RSP season. After the ad first aired, it didn’t take long for Canadians to speak up at the insensitive parallels between the tone of this ad and the underlying comparison to the effects of mental illness.
Sometimes everything comes at you at once, like a perfect storm of stress. Parenting, work, life, kids, and even mundane little things like tasks to do around the house can get to a person sometimes, especially after a crazy holiday season like Christmas.
The other day I ordered a pizza and when they asked me for my name, I spelled it wrong.
I’ve said it before, Instagram is one of my favourite photography apps. It’s safe to say I love it, and judging from my Instagram profile page, it ranks right up there with Pinterest on the GigaMom addiction scale.
Online shopping has been on my mind a lot lately. The holiday shopping season is here (let’s face it, it arrived the day after Halloween), and it’s impossible to go out to a shopping mall anywhere right now without seeing frenzied people rushing about trying to cross items off their Christmas lists. Along with other things that can stress a person out at this time of year, the added insanity of battling through throngs of people at a store can actually push a person to the limit.
Frenzied shopping? Packed parking lots? Crazy crowds? No thanks.
I’m going to cut right to the chase. Watch this entire video:
Are you angry now? If you are, you’re not alone. All of a sudden this brave woman has a small virtual army behind her fight for her business and her fiance’s life.
It’s late on a Monday night as I’m typing this, not my usual time for writing, but I just went through the day’s mail at our house and discovered a scam letter that I need to warn you about.
It also just so happens that an old episode of Columbo has also come on, so I’m feeling particularly “sleuthy” right now...
If you get a letter from a company called Domain Registry of Canada, do yourself a favour and shred it right away. They’re trying to scam you.
The news spread swiftly yesterday, which is pretty much the norm for anything being discussed on social media. Unwanted, harassing tweets from a 52-year-old Ontario man had resulted in him being changed with Criminal Harassment.
That’s pretty serious stuff.
The last tweet sent out by the accused, known as @greg_a_elliott, seemed foreboding:
There’s a song in my head today. It’s an old song—about 20 years old, and it’s called “The Bug.” Two lines of this song, in particular, have been repeating in my techy brain for the past several hours.
Sometimes you’re the windshield, Sometimes you’re the bug.
That pretty much sums up my day tech-wise yesterday. The tech gods were not smiling upon me and I ended up feeling like the smushed bug on a windshield.
As part of The Best Job Evah, I use a huge range of social media platforms every day. Hands down, two of my favourites are Instagram and Pinterest. As it turns out, both of these faves made some changes this week that have users clapping and smiling.
