I am finally soaking in Twitter for all its worth. I talked about this a few weeks ago but I am really seeing the benefits now. All I have to do is open my Twitter account and start reading.
I follow about 380 people who tell me all that I need to know on a second-by-second basis about politics, current events, business, technology, health, food, theater, fashion, economics, music, pop culture, the arts, city news, publishing, and entertainment. Continue reading
A few years ago, I challenged my daughter Whitney to buy a Father’s Day gift for Eliot from the both of us that would give him a renewed interest in photography. He had been interested in photography most of his adult life but really didn’t keep up with all the digital aspects of it. Whitney suggested getting him a gift certificate to the International Center of Photography where he could take courses, but I said with our extensive travel schedule he would probably miss a number of classes. Continue reading
I have always been a Peeping Tom. I can spend hours looking out my window into the lives of others. I did it as a kid too. My bedroom window growing up had a bird’s eye view of the neighborhood. I knew the comings and goings of everyone.
I daydreamed for hours. Other than the shower, I did my best thinking looking out the window. That is all part of being a New Yorker. You get the best ideas from watching other people. Continue reading
At 65, many of us are winding down. We have either retired or are planning to retire.
Not my friend Al Kahn. He is starting all over again, not only personally but professionally as well. I want to tell his story because I feel it is very inspiring to many of us who want to continue our careers without giving age another thought.
“Back in the day . . . “I love that expression, but it also startles me a lot. Just this morning I passed a hotel guest looking up the definition of a word in a humongous printed dictionary. I am spending the weekend at a 240-year-old Inn in Stockbridge, MA. The Red Lion Inn has all of the modern conveniences yet is decorated like it’s “back in the day.”
I watched the stranger looking up that word in the hotel lobby for 15 minutes and almost had a meltdown. He obviously couldn’t find it. “Where is your smartphone?” I wanted to scream. “You could have typed that word into Google, even spelled it wrong, and could have had successful results in less than 10 seconds.”
More and more people are including a disclaimer in their emails that excuses them from typos. They claim they have fat fingers and it is impossible for them to type without many mistakes.
I am happy to announce to all my fat-fingered friends that a new type of keyboard is under development that will give you the feel of a typewriter without the tap, tap, tap that used to drive us all crazy. It is being designed for smartphones and tablets.
In case you missed seeing the meteor that blazed across the western Siberian sky Friday, click on the video below. I just had to include it in DigiDame. It exploded with the force of 20 atomic bombs. More than 1,000 people were injured as it blasted out windows and spread panic in a city of one million.
Eliot is big on greeting cards. I am not. Of course I would feel terrible if I didn’t get one from Eliot on my birthday or Valentine’s Day. If you really think about it, you realize what a big waste of money they are. Five dollars for a card that gets read for exactly five seconds. You spend at least 15 minutes picking it out and the receiver reads it once and then displays it on a mantle for a few days or just throws it on the kitchen table. In either case, the card that meant so much looks like a dusty, faded piece of paper a few weeks later. Then it gets dumped or thrown in a drawer, never to be seen again.
Passengers aboard the fire-damaged Carnival Triumph cruise ship set up a makeshift tent city on the vessel’s deck
A gal who used to work for me (decades ago), Leeann Lavin, just posted this on Facebook. “Listening to the updates on the stranded Carnival Cruise Line, Triumph, gives a whole new meaning to the name ‘poop deck.’ “
Facebook has had to face the death question 30 million times since its inception. Yes, 30 million users have died worldwide. Closer to home, 580,000 users died last year in the United States as compared to three million worldwide. Those statistics are being given out by sources close to Facebook.
Unbeknownst to many of us, Facebook actually has guidelines for pages belonging to the deceased. There is a whole story about it that you will find fascinating if you just press here. The reason why this topic is so interesting is because a social media platform like Facebook has its own postmortem rituals much like real life. Wait a minute, did I say that? Facebook to many people is real life or to many better than the life they have to face every day when they are offline.
DigiDame 