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Tips for avoiding social media compulsion
Jun 3, 2010 | Career
Chris Brogan's blog post, Your Blog is Not Your Job, contains some great tips on how keep blogging and social media from overtaking your primary work and focus. These include: Use an egg timer. If you’re going to venture out onto Twitter, time it. Keep a sticky note...
Can a mobile phone make you sane instead of crazy?
Jun 3, 2010 | Self
Aaron Bellve of Spit, Bristle and Fury (killer blog title, BTW!) has a thoughtful post about an NPR story on the dawn of therapy by mobile phone. Cell phones, rather than augmenting our human encounters, are replacing them and in something as complex, sensitive and...
Now on Oprah.com: Life passages online, plus an empty nest bonus
Jun 2, 2010 | Family, Oprah.com, Published
My latest blog post for Oprah.com talks about ways to get support during life passages. Whether you’re celebrating milestones like the birth of a baby, a marriage or a birthday, or confronting challenges like death or illness, I’ve got some pointers on how the web can help. This post looks at one passage in particular: your newly empty nest.
The virtues of losing touch
Jun 1, 2010 | Relationships
Google Buzz got slammed for prepopulating its users' friends lists based on their most frequent email correspondents. Facebook has taken heat for privacy settings that default to a high level of sharing. So what's the big deal about sharing stuff with people you know...
For Oprah.com: Should you get an iPad for kids?
May 31, 2010 | Family, Tech advice, Top Family Posts, Oprah.com
This post for Oprah.com lists the 5 questions to ask about using an iPad for kids, so you can decide whether to get one for your family.
5 solutions to hyperthinking and hypertasking
May 31, 2010 | Productivity
While working my way through the consultation paper on Canada's Digital Advantage, I found myself: investigating the best way to copy and paste text from a PDF to Evernote, leading to an open browser window with a series of tabs about various options for Mac/Evernote...
On the limitations of dotcom culture
May 31, 2010 | Community
Graham Hatch's blog post about privacy issues at Google and Facebook includes some interesting musings on the dotcom world: I’ve long had a sense that there is an assumption in the dotcom world which deems that because they are inventing the future they don’t really...
How to extend Canada’s “digital advantage” beyond the digital economy
May 29, 2010 | Community, How to build community online
How to turn the digital economy into a driver of business growth and community development.
My latest for Oprah.com: Is an iPad Right for Your Family?
May 19, 2010 | Zone, Family, Oprah.com, Published
"I got an iPad!" my daughter announces to a friend. "No honey, I got an iPad," I remind her. The argument over who the iPad belongs to is just one of the many wrinkles in our new life as The iPad Family. Self-serve movie watching, GodFinger addiction, bedtime stories...
The problem with social media “reputation management”
May 17, 2010 | Career
If you've been tracking the rise of social media services, you may have noticed how many are pitched as reputation management. "Reputation" is really just an efficient way of saying "what other people think about you". And if you look at just about any spiritual...