Monthly Archives: November 2011
The Blinking Black Line
Blogging, like any other media, requires a topic. This sounds really obvious. You’re probably thinking, “Ted, why are you even telling me this?” It almost goes without saying.
But how many of you reading this have sat down to write a blog post and you just end up staring at that little blinking black line?
What am I going to blog about today?
The blinking black line represents that moment where you sit down to blog and you feel like you have nothing to talk about. Having a clearly defined topic for your blog is the first step to curing blogger’s block. If you’ve got a subject that you always blog about, you just need to keep expanding on it. The more you blog, the easier that will eventually become.
But not everybody does that. A lot of people have more open, free-form blogs. That’s not a recipe for disaster. Not at all. But in that case, it’s all about the personality. Your blog really shouldn’t be about you but you should come through in your blog. If you get good at it, people begin to recognize the way you write.
It’s all about inspiration. Sometimes you just need a little help to find a topic to discuss. This is where social media can come in handy!
I’ve found so many stories for Talknowledgy, either the blog or the radio show, on Twitter. Following people who blog or report about the same thing you like to discuss may seem like cheating, but it’s all about your angle. Your readers want to know what you think about the news of the day, within the bailiwick of your blog. Keep an eye out on what’s up, and you’ll never have a shortage of topics to discuss.
But Talknowledgy is, at its heart, a news program. That may not work for you. Why not reach out to friends on Facebook for ideas? Your friends are always posting different things they think are interesting. Do you have several friends sharing the same video or article? There’s a topic!
I’ve found Google+ to be a great resource for funny pictures. My Google+ stream is filled with gif after gif. Your weekly funny picture blog post could benefit from a backlog of great material!
Brainstorming is a process that can take many forms. Generally people do it in groups, and social media can provide a group right at your fingertips. Send out a message on your favourite platform and see if you get a response. Run with it. Bounce your ideas off of readers and non-readers alike. You might even get some new readers out of it.
If you’re really stuck, you can always hit the random article button on Wikipedia.
Just get those fingers tapping on the keys. See what comes out. It may not be great, so draft that and refine it. Work on it and make it better. Sometimes a straight up stream of consciousness can provide insights into something to say.
But never forget to keep your eventual post on-topic. You always want to bring it back to the foundation of the blog.
Next week! My blog on José Eduardo dos Santos.
-Ted
Shopping Online
’tis the season for holiday shopping and what better time than Cyber Monday to talk about the risks of buying presents over the internet, and how to protect yourself?
One risk: Not getting into the holiday spirit because you won't get to see department store decorations! Solution: See above.
Black Friday saw consumers cramming into big box retailers, and Small Business Saturday encouraged shoppers to spend their money at local businesses. Today, we’re encouraged to take our gift-buying online. Whatever your preferred shopping destination, it’s not hard to imagine why making your purchasesonline might pose the most risk (sure, you could get trampled or pepper-sprayed on Black Friday, but the odds of that happening are a lot lower than getting your information stolen on Cyber Monday). So here’s a few tips to help keep you safe if you shop online this holiday season:
Use a Credit Card
While your gut reaction might be to avoid using a credit card, if you keep an eye on your statements and report any fraudulent purchases it is much safer than using debit online. Also, you can buy pre-paid credit cards that have a set limit on them, further minimizing your risk. Some sites will allow you to use gift cards as well, so consider doing that where possible.
Security Software
Have some type of malware protection for your computer. This goes double if you’re shopping using someone else’s wireless network, or a public access network. Also, make sure the software is up to date.
Trust No-One
Ok, what I really mean to say here is: if you’re sent a link by a friend for a product on a website, go to the site yourself and find the product there yourself. Scammers are especially active today, and will try to take over people’s accounts so they can dupe the friends and family of their victim. It may look like a perfectly innocent link, but it could be directing you to a fake site that will install malware and you may not even realize it until much later.
Furthermore, be careful of the retailers that you deal with online. I stick to mostly the big, name-brand ones because they have a trustworthy reputation (places like Amazon, and ThinkGeek). Smaller companies aren’t bad necessarily, but if you’re unfamiliar with their reputation look it up or ask other people if they’ve dealt with the company before.
Final note on this section: don’t look at an advertisement offering an iPad 2 for $19.34 and expect that it must be a perfectly legitimate offer and nothing could possibly go wrong. Because…
If It’s Too Good To Be True…
It probably is. Whether it’s a ridiculous price, or the seller has the hottest holiday gadget in stock on Christmas Eve, or they’re offering free, overnight, international shipping…be wary, and start looking elsewhere.
Shopping online can be fun, and you can get some really great deals. But the important thing to remember is there’s a responsible way to do it, and you need to make sure your information is safe this holiday season.
Happy shopping! And be sure to tell us about any hot deals you got on tech items during Cyber Monday!
-PG
The Butler Did It: Personal Assistants on your Smartphone
Not too long ago, Apple released the iPhone 4S. It was pretty underground. You’ve probably never heard of it.
I wrote an article about how wowed I was by its Siri technology. It looked really cool. I loved the idea of a device that reminded me of the computer from Star Trek. I just ask it a question and it gives me an answer. That’s cool! Boys, girls… Get fitted for your jumpsuits — It’s the future!
We're all going to look like this one day.
The only downside for me, at the time, was the fact that I was a Blackberry owner. I just got the phone, I’m on contract so upgrades would be really costly, no new iPhone for me right away. I love my 9800 Torch, don’t get me wrong, but it didn’t have Siri. I couldn’t talk into it in my best Patrick Stewart impression and say, “Computer. Tell me the current temperature in Ottawa” and have it give me a response.
But then a wonderful thing happened!
Oh right.
Well, okay, maybe it wasn’t so wonderful if your phone didn’t work. If you were an Apple or Android person you probably enjoyed using your smartphone in the face of your Blackberry owning friends, but for those of us rockin’ out with RIM it was kind of annoying.
But to get to the wonderful part, we got a bunch of free apps as an apology! It reminded me of Nintendo’s Ambassador program for the 3DS. I’m swimming in free downloadable software!
One of those free Blackberry apps is Vlingo, a personal assistant app like Siri. I had it on my phone for about a week before I started using it. I’ve been playing around with it for the last couple of days and I’ve made a few observations about these types of apps.
First: I have no idea what to ask this thing! The last two times I used it, I asked for the current temperature and then what the conversion from Fahrenheit to Celsius was for that temperature. I’ve also posted a couple of Facebook Status updates. Before that I asked for the current temperature.
But I’ve only done it in places where it’s quiet or if I’m outside and nobody’s around. For some reason I have this feeling that talking into my phone looks weird. That’s probably more of a problem with me, though.
I feel like such a nerd.
Second: Mostly Vlingo just seems to direct me to Google, as if it’s my own personal LMGTFY app. I can already go to Google. I suppose I didn’t have to type it. That’s handy in the cold.
Aside from that, it’ll open my other apps fairly easily by just saying the name. It removes the need to touch the phone anywhere other than the activation button, which on the Blackberry is the convenience key. So now I don’t need to use my touch screen. The touch screen that was kind of the whole point of getting a Torch at the time.
It can also read my texts and e-mails to me, but I don’t drive, so I figure that’ll just annoy people on the bus. And I can speak the words I want to type into it, removing the keyboard, the other reason to get a Blackberry.
Basically, it makes your phone more hands-free. Or at least more fingers-free. You can use voice to do what you’d normal do through keystrokes and touchpad interaction. It’s kind of gimmicky, and I’m not sure I see myself changing all of my phone habits for this one app.
But then again… it is the future!
-Ted.
The News Breaks On Twitter…
…but if you’re The Associated Press apparently you’d rather it didn’t. This week, the news agency warned some of its staff about tweeting a story using their @AP account before putting it out on the news wires (basically, a service that newspapers, radio stations, TV stations, and other news organizations pay for to offer them national and international coverage). And while this may seem backwards or draconian, it actually makes a lot of sense.
AP is meant to be a ‘not-for-profit cooperative’ (and it should be noted in the above article the BBC had a Reuters employee comment and they asked one of their own employees, but the situation is very different at a for-profit broadcaster and a state broadcast than at a wire service agency). If AP has the scoop on a breaking news story, that’s great! They should then share it with their paid subscribers so those groups can relay it to their listeners. Which is what they do.
The issue is when they serve their subscribers over social media, who are not paying for this information, first. Of course it’s the information age and some things will be picked up before they can send out the needed info to the media outlets. But that being said, if an AP editor sees an important story come through that may not have reached every ear or eyeball yet, the quickest way to pass it along will be to get it to the news outlets who can then rebroadcast it to their listeners in whatever way they choose (including over Twitter).
It should be noted the Associated Press takes Twitter seriously. Their account is verified. They tweet several times an hour, and post corrections when needed (though I notice they don’t delete the incorrect tweets). In their bio, they mention the account is manned 24/7 which is good because you know it’s reliable and not just extra duties being added to existing employees who may have other things to worry about. They’ve even set up lists for their reporters so you can search by topic and find their staff (though remember what I said about lists…always better to make your own) and they provide any breaking or event coverage while the main account focuses on big announcements and published stories. And while it may be a monologue, and they don’t use hashtags, they still have over 625,000 followers.
The gut reaction is to assume they are stifling creativity or ‘against’ progress. If this were a for-profit news agency, I might agree. The only thing I could suggest (and this would be hard in a world of 140 characters) is for AP to tell its Twitter follows “Tune to your local AP affiliate” (for more on this story). Certainly they should still post the news to Twitter for people who work in the business and want to stay up to date while they’re out of the office (if for no one else). But as long as that’s after it’s been sent to newsrooms around the world, then there’s no issue.
What do you think of the Associated Press’ social media policy? Let us know in the comments.
-PG
Not an actual AP reporter.
