The Post-Christmas Review

The stockings are packed up for yet another year. The recycling is almost complete. Toys are being played with, and a few of them have broken.

Learnings to share over this Christmas:

1. The Creative Zen Stone Plus MP3 Players never worked. Not once. Don't get them. Don't try them. Leave them in the store. You can charge them till the cows come home, and they will still never work.
   
2. Pizzaville, from *It was a rainy day in Pizzaville* is going through some cost cutting measures and has now taken my postal code out of their serving area. You have no idea how disappointing that is. It's worse than not getting a pony for Christmas.
3. Do *NOT* ignore the best before date on Eggnog. Ever.
4. Wash red things before you wear them. Nuff said.

Happy New Year!!

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What I learned from My Cabbie

I had to take my first cab last night - all the way up to the north country, from the south, downtown core. It was complicated. It took 3 tries to find a cabbie who would go to the north. Most don't have winter tires. Some don't take credit cards, some simply just won't go above the 401.

And then my savior - a wee independent who accepted all my demands - credit card *and* north. It was going to be a long drive, what, with the belly of bevvies sloshing through me. :-)

I proceeded to pepper my savior with hundreds of questions:

1. How many cabs in his *company* - just 2.
2. How much does it cost to be a cabbie? The general rental for the car is $75/day + gas + insurance. HOLY! The cab owner is making a zillion dollars! And if you are a brand new driver, you have to pay $80/day!
3. How long is the shift? About 12 hours. You can go home in the middle if you want, if you've made enough to cover the cost of the car and the gas. Most days, they just make enough to cover the rental. Some days you can make quite a bit more, but not always.
4. Is the cab owner nice? Ehhh, he's from Ghana. I don't know whether that is *yes* or a *no*, but it keeps me quiet in the back seat for a bit, trying to figure it out.
5. Is he ready for Christmas? Almost. I'm pretty sure this is a universal answer for *No*, but no one wants to admit it.
6. Does he take vacation? No - only Christmas Day is the day he's not going to work.

Questions I wanted to ask but didn't want to freak out the driver:

1. Have you ever had to press the emergency button, alerting people that you were in danger?
2. Have you ever had someone ride and dash?
3. Has anyone ever thrown up in your backseat?
4. Who pays for damages?

Somehow. my cabbie, who has only be in Canada for 7 years - he and his wife immigrated from India and now have 2 kids and live in the east end of the city, is able to support a family of 4 on his cab driving. I am still trying to figure out the finances on that one.

All things aside - it was a good drive, I got home safe, and virtually sober. My cabbie got a good tip. :-)

Technorati Tags: Toronto Cabs

iTunes Gift Card - Quite Possibly the Perfect Pressie

Just got my first Amex statement.
I’m embarrassed about the wee $0.99 charges that litter the bill like puppy footprints on a clean floor.
There isn’t many, less than 10. But there’s got to be a better way. I wish I could set up iTunes so that I could put a “Buy Julie a Song” link on facebook, or jules.ca - Imagine how neat that would be?
Heck - you can’t even buy a coffee for $0.99.  But you could sure put a smile on someones face for a LONG time, if you bought them a song.

Hmmmm - buying a smile for a song(tm). I like that.

The only feature that comes close to what I want is the iTunes Allowance. But get this - when I try to set up an allowance, it doesn’t let me - you can’t set an allowance for yourself. Cripes!!! I’m stuck with puppy prints of iTunes song purchases on my Amex statement forever. I wonder if I can buy myself a gift card. Likely not. Grrr.

You can only set up allowances for other people. But it still doesn’t let me get other people to contribute ;-) Heh. Still - I’d love to purchase songs for other like-minded people - this doesn’t have to be a one way street :-)

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Blackberry in Korea?

There are times when I'm a little too Canada-centric.  It didn't occur to me today that there are places that just don't love the wee Blackberry as much as we do in Canada... In reading a snippet from the Korea Times, my interest was piqued by an article outlining the pressure that the Canadian Chamber of Commerce would like to apply to Korea.

TELUS International is one of the sole distributors of Blackberrys (if not the only one) in South Korea - and one of the bits that makes it difficult to gain any foothold is the fact that the South Korean government has a requirement that all smartphones carry a software standard called WIPI (Wireless Internet Platform for Interoperability).  I don't yet know much about WIPI, perhaps it's a *good* thing to enforce, perhaps it's simply just a method to control the wireless infrastructure of a nation?



Canada Wants Korea Lift Ban on Blackberry(The Korea Times)

``Blackberry is the signature high-tech product of Canada,'' Terry Tuharsky, the chairman of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Korea, said in his meeting with The Korea Times on Tuesday, which was one of his numerous interviews with Korean and foreign press this week.``I want to ask you how Korean politicians will act if Canada does not allow Samsung or Hyundai to sell their products,'' he said, adding that ``the storm is brewing'' in Canada already.

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Teleworking, Work-Life Balance and the Future

There seems to be an emerging trend. Yesterday my boss sent me an article on the Globe and Mail about AT&T employees being called back to the cubicles from teleworking. Today I stumble across an interesting Wikinomics article on working at home vs working at theoffice, and the blurry line between working and personal time.

It’s funny that folks are pointing to the AT&T announcement - holding it up as a shiny example of corporate culture. Ahem. Don’t get me wrong, I love AT&T. But think about this - with likely over 300,000 employees in North America alone, the age of their workforce probably leans towards the folks who are in their last 10 years of employment. Now is the timewhen they should be utterly embracing the idea of teleworking, if only to be sure that they are in a strong position to attract new talent.  My gut says that they were just early in moving towards teleworking, and the folks that they were targeting were well set in their ways as to what worked best for them for productivity. Let me tell you, I was a manager of a 50+ smartie, and tried to get him to work from home when weather was inclement, or traffic was going to be horrendous, and I couldn’t break himfrom the need to be *in the office*. No way, No how, No Chance in France.

We are in the midst of a changing workforce generation.  More folks are entering the workforce with new and different expectations than those on the verge of existing the workforce.  Folks who are used to, and enjoy, being connected 7/27.  Folks who can easily multi-task and have no problem acknowledging that their work styles are just as productive as some else’s if they work from 3pm to 2 am.

The Wikinomics article has neato graphs on hours of work vs hours of personal time. Right now, as an average, we’re working approx 40 hours/week with 20 hours/week of personal time. In the ’90s, we were working 50 hour weeks, with 20 hours of personal time. That’s a difference of 10 hours lost/found in a decade. Did we just sleep less in the ’90s? :-)

Are we more productive now? Maybe.

Do we work more now, but at times when it’s most productive/convenient according to our lifestyles? In the ’90s, I didn’t have a berry. I didn’t have a laptop, and I didn’t have VPN access.  If I didn’t get something done during the day, it waited until the next day. Now, I have the luxury? obligation? of being able to work on critical bits and pieces at home, either until I pass out for exhaustion, or finish the job.

I appreciate the ability to telework, but I also appreciate and welcome office atmosphere at times. I’m certainly more productive in my virtual office, with no loud co-workers, or distractions, or the ability to get up and walk over to see what my Boss is up to. But being able to sit down with someone else, and bounce ideas and diagrams and theories around is certainly valuable, when the schedule permits. Perhaps it’s not a return to the cubicle that AT&T needs, perhaps it’s simply the realization that thenew, emerging generation of workers is simply better suited to juggling work and life together. With the changing of workforce generations, now is *not* the time to revert back to the golden cubicle days of yore.

Technorati Tags: AT&T, Wikinomics, Teleworking

Facebook Feature Wishlist

Jeff Pulver’s got an awesome commentary of invisibleness on Facebook.  The idea being that you could be visible to some, and invisible to others. Like pseudo-lurking, if you will.  Instant Messenger apps have this, why couldn’t Facebook?  Considering the multitudes who use this app, for both work and play, there’s bound to be a time when you wished you could be invisible (Hi Boss!)

I miss the music features of IM - knowing what someone is listening to - sure, there are likely thousands of Facebook apps that support that, but the trick is you have to be using the same music app that your friends are, and more likely than not, it’s not sending a mini-news feed on what they’ve got in their headphones.

I love Iotum’s Free Conference Calls on Facebook - imagine if you could twist that up a notch and have the app do video calls as well? Mmmmm….

What sorts of things would be on your wishlist?

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Jeff Pulver, Iotum

Email Hoax du Jour

There’s nothing that cheers a body up more than debunking forwarded e-mails  on a Monday afternoon…
I got this lovely ditty today, and the only reason I opened it was blind curiosity (I know - shame on me)

Sender: mcox5@wi.rr.com

Subject: We are Canadians Born here
Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 14:07:51 -0600
Subject: We are Canadians Born here 

Bruce Allan is on the 2010 Olympic Committee and new Canadians (specifically Hindi’s/ Indian’s) want him fired for his recent comments outlined below;  
“Subject: Our National Anthem I am sorry, but after hearing they want to sing the National Anthem in Hindi - enough is enough. Nowhere or at no other time in our nation’s history, did they sing it in Italian, Japanese, Polish, Irish (Celtic), German, Portuguese, Greek, or any other language because of immigration. It was written in English, adapted into co-founding French, and should be sung word for word the way it was written. The news broadcasts even gave the Hindi version translation which was not even close to our National Anthem. 

I am not sorry if this offends anyone, this is MY COUNTRY - IF IT IS YOUR COUNTRY SPEAK UP —— please pass this along.I am not against immigration — just come through like everyone else. Get a sponsor; have a place to lay your head; have a job; pay your taxes, live by the rules AND LEARN THE LANGUAGE as all other immigrants have in the past — and LONG LIVE CANADA!”   It’s time we all get behind Bruce Allen, and scrap this Political Correctness crap.  His comments were anything but racist, but there are far too many overly sensitive ‘New Canadians’ that are trying to change everything we hold dear. ARE WE PART OF THE PROBLEM !!!!  Think about this: If you don’t want to forward this for fear of offending someone,will we still be the Country of Choice and still be CANADA if we continue to make the changes forced on us by the people from other countries who have come to live in CANADA because it is the Country of Choice?????Think about it!        

IMMIGRANTS, NOT CANADIAN’S, MUST ADAPT.It is Time for CANADA to speak up. If you agree – pass his along; if you don’t agree — delete it and reap the ill wind because of your complacency!

*************************************************************************************************************** Now - I don’t have any political stand - for or against Bruce Allan, and I’m also not weighing in on anthems, immigration or rabid nationalism. My rant is all about folks who seldom think twice before forwarding on incendiary emails to all their friends in their address book.

My response to this SPAM:

Hi there (names removed to protect the innocent) - and to the rest of the people who have this email in your inbox.

I think you may want to look a little more closely before passing along incendiary SPAM.

The spam you forwarded, from Marion (god bless her, she doesn’t know that her email address has been hijacked by whomever is trying to stir up Canadians, yet again with comments about Immigrants and Nationality

If anyone cares to google the email address for dear Marion - mcox5@wi.rr.com….You will find this:
http://212.14.5.125/~ptforum/viewtopic.php?p=11376&sid=c3b468c2a66c4e29d0686cbcfde57467

Let me save you the time and tell you what’s at that URL.
What you will find is a database of credit card numbers and personal information for folks who’ve had their online and personal identity hacked. My guess is that Marion’s identity has been hacked, and her email address hijacked.  Anyone want to guess why someone would steal your identity, hijack your email address to send this note?

Chances are it’s all fake - and the originator doesn’t want to be identified.

Please feel free to  forward THIS email to all your friends in your address book.  Perhaps with more knowledge, and a better understanding, we can cut down on the crap that falls into our inboxes.  The next time you get email like this - please take a few moments to verify its authenticity before spamming your friends.

Thanks,
Julie
<
—
http://wow.jules.ca
http://www.floobergeist.ca
http://northofthe49th.wordpress.com

Are The Internets Safe?

The first Christmas dinner of the year included an interesting conversation that the Wiz and I had with some friends of the family.  Both the Wiz and I are consummate on-line shoppers - he's more eBay than I am, but I can find things FAST and check out and be onto new adventures.This year, we only bought one thing in a store. And that's because we had to pick it up, (gee thanks Canadian Tire).  That being said - we were able to pinpoint the availability of a specific, purple bicycle using the Canadian Tire site.  Everything else was bought on-line, and delivered to the house. Spectacular.When we were amazing the dinner guests with tales of on-line adventures, one big question kept repeating itself - But Is it Safe?And the only response we could come up with is that it's not any less safe than shopping in real life, and likely may even be more safe, since there's no creepy person standing near you, to peek at your credit card info or your debit pin. Heck - if you shopped in real life last Dec-Jan at Winners, Home Sense or TJ Max, you were completely busted. Your credit cards were cancelled, and really bad things (tm) happened to you.  I've been shopping on-line for a handful of years now. I hate malls. I detest lines.  Strangers with coughs make me cringe.Give me a couch, a laptop and a credit card any day.

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Tags: on-lineshopping, internets, e-commerce

My iTouch Wishlist

Is it wrong to wish that I could *right click* with my iTouch?

Would that sentiment make Steve Jobs cringe and furrow a brow at me?

• Why can’t I turn web apps into icons on the *desktop*?
• Why can’t i get photos or any other images from someplace other than iTunes?
  
• Why can’t i have a flickr application?
• Why can’t my Blackberry wall charger work for the iTouch? I’ve even got a Berry charger that’s USB compatible, so I can use the USB charging cord that came with the iTouch.
• What happens when you hack up an iTouch? Am I just going to do it so that I can get the Etch-a-Sketch application? I’ve done stranger things for less… :-)

I am still bonding, and i think I’m falling in love with the iTouch… but you know chicks - always trying to *change* a new partner and make them better ;-)

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Tags: iTouch, iPod, Apple, Hack

11 Sleeps Until Christmas

And until then, an whole roster full of Christmas activities.

• lunch today
• trim the tree on saturday
• pre-christmas party on sunday
• work christmas next thursday
• family christmas next saturday
• family christmas on christmas day
• family christmas on boxing day

New Years Plans: Sleep.:-)

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The Very Lovely iPod Touch

 The third trip to the mailbox proved fruitful. The iPod Touch I won by participating in Iotum’s Facebook Free Conference Call contest arrived safely yesterday! Oh and she’s gorgeous.People are right. It’s a very neat device. But it’s the wifi that makes it all the more powerful. I sat in my library for over an hour last night, just sampling songs, deciding on which new tunes were worthy of downloading. At $0.99 a pop, you just don’t want to download willy nilly. :-) I loved the screen resolution on the Youtube videos, the sound quality is astounding. The browsing, once I got the hang of the *pinching* is amazing. Upside:

1. Great sound quality - even with the included earbuds - the sound was fantastic. Even with a yicky, low quality mp3 i pulled off my home music library, the Touch made it sound quite reasonable!!
2. Great resolution. Holy Great resolution. I could play Halo on this puppy.
3. Really good app integration with the Safari Web Browser
4. The touch screen is very cool. The first question the wiz had was “where’s the stylus?” :-)
5. I love that there’s a decent display on how much memory is available vs used.

Downside:

1. Not thrilled about only being able to link to 5 computers. I’m between computer purchases, and know that in the next year, there’s going to be atleast 2 more new computers to link to.  What happens when you reach your maximum?  Can you reset?
2. I wish there was better integration with Flickr.
3. Every app I’ve found is played inside the browser, I wish there were more standalone apps.
4. The keyboard takes some getting used to - and i don’t even have very overweight fingers…
5. iTunes wants to sync everything on my laptop with the Touch, and it takes some muscling around to stop that sort of behaviour ;-)
6. I wish the contacts and calendar would sync with Google, instead of outlook….

Wow - now i want to hack it all up and make it do nutty things. Thank you Iotum!!!!!

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Tags: Iotum, Facebook Free Conference Calls, iPod, iTouch, Touch

Flock Rocks with Facebook

Upgrading to Flock 1.0.3 completely changed my morning, transforming it into a lovely experience - full of balloons and ponies and candy floss.Wow - why did I wait!  I’ve been using an older 0.09 version, stubbornly.New Flock, supercharged Flock, has just rocked my socks off with it’s integration of Facebook.

It can track and show and remind me of all sorts of neat tidbits about my friends.It does a nutty good job of media, blog editing and even the main *My World* default start page is good, I’ve got to admit. Tracking stuff in an RSS reader, recently viewed sites and Flickr accounts.

I grabbed the screenshot on the left with just a *print screen* and pasted it into the Flock blog editor - and magical things happened - a Flickr dialog box opened, and asked me a few things, and then the Flock editor turned the screen capture into a .JPG, uploaded it to Flickr and referenced it here!  Can you believe that?!?!? I’m not even kidding.

I know - I know - it’s a big step - after all, most folks have just recently gotten brave enough to switch up IE for Firefox. But whoa - Flock Rocks. I wouldn’t lead you astray. I even like it more than Opera. (Sorry Opera - seeing some incompatibility issues still)

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Tags: Flock, Firefox, Facebook

It's Not a Goodbye, Sweet Carolyn

I toast  you - you priceless, amazing, beautiful, hilarious, feisty and ferociously loyal woman. With a great, lovely glass of red wine. I know you are approving of the vin rouge.

You, craver of life and adventures.

You of the contagious, infectious laugh and gentle touch.

You, champion of what is true and right and good.

You, fighter of evil and no-goodniks.

You, not afraid to stand up for what you believe in, and for who you believe in; consequences be damned.  

You, scoffer of politics, and flaunter of goodness. You, possessor of confidence and conviction.

You, fearless speaker, fearless mentor and fearless friend. You bring out the best in everyone, and you don’t even mean to. With your laugh, your touch and your spirit, you have the magic gift that makes everyone feel smarter, braver, prettier, stronger, faster and happier - just knowing you makes people simply better persons.

Today you move from present tense to past tense. And that is a terribly shitty, yes, utterly shitty tense to have to move to. It matters not. You will always be in the present to all the people who love you .

Love,

Jules 

HOLY CATS! iPod Anticipation!

I've got it bad.

iPod Anticipation. But thanks to Iotum's Free Conference Call Application on Facebook, I'm going to be set up nicely!  I WON!!!!

It was karma.  I was looking for a reason to try out Free Conference Calls - and voila! Impetus, fate, incentive - you name it, the bells all rang a few weeks ago. I set up a conference call with my boss! On Facebook! Nothing like testing and playing with technology. I'm fairly certain it's in my job description. :-) Fairly.

 Alec Saunders has more of the details - it's impolite for a gurl to toot her own horn too much. :-) What can I say - the Free Conference Call Application completely rocked my socks off. Thank you Alec!!!!!

Webkinz Redux

It's been over 6 months since I last wrote about Webkinz - Crack for Kids, and the debilitating obsession that can happen with kids and on-line gaming. Still, that article is being referred to in the news. In August, the UK Guardian picked it up... Last week, it was The Age, in Australia, who referenced my wee article. And a few days later, The Sydney Herald...  Folks continue to leave comments and it looks like the original tide of love for Webkinz type applications is starting to turn. NBC has a story in May, and I can only make the reasonable assumption that they borrowed the *Crack for Kids* tagline ;-)

That being said Dave Barry compares Webkinz to South Florida Crack. :-) And he did it in Feb of 2007.

The Funky Flea - Shopping and Shipping in the 21st Century

Christmas is nutty. It’s a perfectly good excuse to buy lots of lovely pressies, and make sure that something gets tucked away for yourself as well. Heck, the shopping is good, the dollar is strong and more often than not, the price is right.

I am a big fan of The Funky Flea - and am waiting patiently (or not so patiently, as I am Instant Gratification Girl) for an outstanding quilt.

The only downside to the Flea is that they don’t yet have tracking for shipments, and I realize now how fundamentally important that feature has become in the online retail world. The other night, the wiz was able to pinpoint the exact arrivals of 4 pressies, and we made arrangements to make sure that one or the other of us was home to accept delivery and ply the *reindeer* with bottled water and goodies. I like our UPS guy. :-) I fee like he should come to our Christmas, he knows what everyone’s getting….

I remember a time, way back when - and folks thought that the internet was going to mark an end to postal services; what, with everyone getting all cosy with email.  Who would have thought that the internet would have created an even BIGGER dependance on postal, expedited delivery and private shipping? I even get online catalogs snail-mailed to me now, that I pour over with a cuppa Earl, marking and circling the interesting finds, and ordering them online when ready. It’s a lovely setup. Thank heavens for UPS and Canada Post and FedEx.
:-)

Tis the season.