Monthly Archives: August 2013

Tech-Inspired Words

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Miley Cyrus Twerking at the MTV Video Music Awards

Many baby boomers are very proud of their vocabulary skills. However, in this day and age a lot of new words are being born on the Internet. Here are some words the Oxford English Dictionary added recently.

Twerking: Dancing in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and squatting.

Click and Collect: When you buy something on the Internet and then pick it up in person so you don’t have to wait for delivery.

Derp: A stupid action.

Digital Detox: A period of time when a person refrains from using electronics products.

Selfie: A picture you take of yourself, usually with a smartphone.

Happy Birthday Eliot

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Scenes from a Birthday Celebration

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Dinner at Mr. Chow, Miami Beach, FL

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Group shot on boat

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Whitney, all smiles

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Howard and Eliot looking for dolphins

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Steve, Fredrick, and Andrew

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Steve and Williams

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Me, Williams, and Ruth

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Williams posing as JT

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Fredrick and Andrew at the steering wheel

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Our condo, far right

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DigiDame

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Fredrick posing on top of party boat

Made In USA

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For the last six months, I have had one of the most difficult assignments of my PR career. We were commissioned to get PR for RELM Wireless, a land mobile radio manufacturer. The radios are used by first responders: EMS, fire, police.

RELM is a 65-year old public company that only manufactures in the U.S. All of its competition manufactures offshore. Everything about the company is American: its products, its quality control, its manufacturing facilities, its company offices. RELM has excellent quality and is extremely competitively priced.

Does anyone care? We are all screaming that we need more jobs in the United States and our own government is giving foreign companies the contracts for LMRs. These are the radios that first responders use to protect all of us from terrorists, fires, and disastrous events. Just the other day, the U.S. State Department gave a $50 million order to Kenwood. When RELM asked why they chose Kenwood instead of them, the answer was “Oh, we have been doing business with them for years.”

Our client became unglued. The CEO of RELM wrote a very aggressive letter to the State Department ridiculing their out-of-touch, out-of-date business practices. No answer. I tried to get the story in the press about how we all say we need more jobs in America, yet our own government hands over the $50 million order to an Asian company. So far, very little coverage.

It all comes down to bureaucracy. No one wants to make a change. If predecessors at government agencies bought Asian, the new buyers want to do the same. It all sounds so ridiculous, but that is exactly what happens.

How do you feel about this? Shed some light.

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I Did Not Have Sex with that Woman

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I found this quote on Google images.

I hate a bad liar. If you are going to lie, then take the time to think about what you are doing. The worst thing you can do is get caught. You lose all credibility.

As a professional pitch person, I really dislike when someone says something and then can’t back it up. I get accused of lying because I am in the business of making things or concepts look large and exciting. Yes, there are times certain people need a little boost to make a decision, but I don’t go too far off from the truth.

On the other hand, I know people who underestimate, are not enthusiastic, downplay, and don’t share info. While that is not lying, I don’t think that is fair either. When they misinterpret a situation, that can be just as damaging.

Why am I bothering with all this? I just found out about two digital projects that will be able to decipher lies and bullshit. Just think of them as meters.

I am not allowed to say another word. But be afraid. Be very afraid. This may change everything,

As soon as they become public, you will be the first to know.

How you can tell if someone is lying

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Exit Plan

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One of the worst things about getting stuck with our car on the side of the road last week was not knowing where we were. In case you need a refresher, Eliot and I were driving south on the Sprain Brook Parkway last Wednesday in Westchester when our car just died.

When you drive long distances on a highway, you never know the activity, or lack thereof, at each exit. It might as well be a foreign country. There are billboards and highway information signs that spell out the big commercial enterprises, but that’s about it.

When the mechanic who helped us suggested that we drive to the next exit once the car started again, I went into a complete panic. He was going in one direction, we in another. What would happen to us if we were alone and nothing was there?

Worry no more everyone. The iExit Interstate Exit Guide app takes all the guesswork out of road trip pit stops. Hallelujah! We have been saved!

The iExit app identifies what restaurants, gas stations, hotels, and other services are available at each exit by name. It lets you search up to 100 exits ahead or even in another state for trip planning. It also allows you to filter by categories and brand/company names, and even to search for campgrounds and diesel or alternative fuels. iExit offers specialized information for RVers and truckers, including parking and where to find scales. And if all you’re looking for is a quick break, it also lists rest areas.

A “lite” version of iExit Guide is free for Android and iOS (iPhone, iPad), and the full version is currently $.99 for iOS.

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What Does “DigiDame” Have to Do with It?

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Tina Turner

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Tina and Oprah

At 73, Tina Turner, singer, dancer, author, choreographer, and actress, is the happiest she has ever been. She loves her age, how she feels, and the fact that she has absolutely no schedule to follow. She is fully retired and never plans to sing or dance professionally again.

Oprah interviewed Tina on her OWN channel last night while most of the music world was focused on the MTV Video Music Awards. I DVR’d Tina’s interview because I knew she would dispense great life lessons for all of us. I took it upon myself to watch the interview and then report back to you.While there is no purely digital aspect to this post, there are wise thoughts pertaining to us seniors that can enrich the latter years of our lives.

We all know that the first half of Tina’s life was living hell because of her association with Ike Turner. She was physically abused as his girlfriend and later as his wife. In those years she felt she didn’t have the strength and wherewithal to leave.

She stayed focused and always knew there were better days ahead. She has been living the good life for decades.

She recently got married to her boyfriend of 27 years, Erwin Bach, a well-to-do music producer 17 years her junior. She told Oprah the reason she got married now was because she wanted Erwin to have “a say” in her finances if something happened to her. She felt it wasn’t fair to live with someone for a long time and not give that person some control. He wanted her to have the same privilege with his money, too.

Recently the couple divested themselves of everything costly. They live a beautiful life but didn’t want the same overhead as they had had for decades. She still lives large, but nowhere near like they did before. She now feels totally liberated.

The biggest revelation was that she desires nothing. Yes, she has her beautiful home, a car, and jewelry. Yet, her biggest goal was to make enough money to take care of some loved ones and be comfortable.That had been a goal since the beginning of her career.

She quickly admits that the last few years of touring was a big drain on her. She was okay for the first song, but then she would sweat and be in physical pain. Her body started to pull back. Tina admits she couldn’t hit the high notes anymore. She claims she couldn’t wait to retire. She worked hard her whole life. She had to make sure her loved ones and the charities she supported would be taken care of financially. She has no regrets and no desire for the limelight anymore.

“I am at a stage in my life where I am totally happy. I accomplished what I wanted to do in life. I now have a great man in my life, great friends, and good health. I never really knew what happiness was. You can’t get it from a new dress, a new car, or a new house. Those are material things. You get happiness from within. When I get up in the morning, I sit for awhile to mediate. It is at that time of day that I am the happiest because I am free. No place to run to.”

Oprah asked Tina what she thought her legacy was. She immediately answered, “Endurance! I had to stay focused. No drinking, no smoking, no drugs. I stayed on course from the beginning to the end.”

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Erwin and Tina today.

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Erwin and Tina when they first met.

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Tina and Erwin at their recent wedding.

MTV Video Music Awards

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Eliot and I are probably the only ones in the DigiDame community who watched the MTV Video Music Awards held, for the first time, at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. I wanted to make sure all my readers had the opportunity to see some of the most notable talent of the night. Let the youngsters know we are hip too.

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Lady GaGa’s first appearance since her hip operation

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Taylor Swift all grown up

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Miley Cyrus showing off her new image

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Justin Beiber’s girl friend Selena Gomez

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Robin Thicke

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Justin Timberlake

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Timberlake with his former group, ‘NSync

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One Direction

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Bruno Mars

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Katie Perry

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Brooklyn Bridge all lit up

Technology Grows Up With Us

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A few years ago, I was chatting with friends, who were around my age, about the day we all will not be able to drive anymore. The topic was really about whether we will be smart enough to know when to stop.

Too many older people keep driving even though they can’t see or hear. The other day I thought Eliot and I might have reached that point when our 25-year-old SEL Mercedes all of a sudden lost power when we were driving back home on the Sprain Brook Parkway in Westchester. We had just left a funeral of a dear friend, Irv Shaw, who had died at 99.

We feel the same kind of vulnerability over losing our faculties as when our dependable “wheels” suddenly died. Eliot keeps all our cars in the best of shape, so we were pretty upset to be stranded with cars whizzing by so closely. Two hours later, with the help of a roadside towing company, we were back in business.

We are city people. Automobiles are not part of our daily lives like most folks. Even though we own three cars, two in Miami, we take cabs everywhere. I envision that, some day, someone else will have to do the driving for us.

I just found out that Google has been thinking about the same thing. As we all know, the Internet giant has been working on self-driving cars for quite some time. Now, word has it that Google is thinking about a “robo-taxi” service, a self-driving car that would pick us up and drop us off at various destinations. Google said that, at first, “a human would need to be behind the wheel just in case, but that could easily change as the tech progresses and becomes more reliable.”

As I have said many times before, this is the best time to be in your golden years.

IPhone Doubles as a Stun Gun

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You are not going to believe this. Your smartphone can now double as a stun gun. I kid you not. It is still difficult for me to understand how law enforcement agencies are going to let us all walk around with stun guns. So far no one seems to be stopping it.

A company called Yellow Jacket introduced the world’s first smartphone stun gun case in 2012, initially for iPhone 4. Priced at $140, the stun gun has an output of 650,000 volts at 0.8 milliamps, which the company said should be “painful, but not harmful.”

A few days ago, business friend Roy Furchgott of The New York Times tested and reviewed the Yellow Jacket. He said,

“I zapped myself on the inside of my forearm, which [had been] suggested because it has relatively few nerve endings. There was a stinging sensation and I felt an electrical shock travel to my wrist. The shock was really more startling than painful. It was no worse than when I have mistakenly bumped into an electric horse fence, or when [I was a child and] someone persuaded me to test a 9-volt battery by touching it to my tongue. Twenty-four hours after I zapped myself, there were small red marks where the electrodes had touched me.”

How bizarre is that?

Roy goes on to explain, “Using the stun gun requires some preparation. You have to remove a safety cover from the electrodes, which need to touch skin to be really effective. Next, turn on the switch that arms the stun gun, and then press the illuminated blue button.”

If all that is not clear, I have included two videos that demonstrate how the smartphone stun gun case works. The case is available for only the iPhone 4 and 4S because they are the most populous models. The company says that cases for the iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S4 are in the works.

The Yellow Jacket also has a powerful battery that will work as backup to increase the phone’s talk time.

There is something very odd about mixing a stun gun with an extended battery life. Double whammy.

The “Sitting Disease”

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I am the last person in the world who should be writing about this subject. I am sure I sit more than most. I just found out that 86% of American workers also sit all day for their jobs.

Our sitting doesn’t end there. The Internet has added many more hours of sitting after work while we send emails, post on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, play games, do research, shop, and watch web movies.

Ergotron, a manufacturer of digital display mounting and mobility products, did a study that showed that we sit more than 13 hours a day.

The scientific community is now very concerned about the “sitting disease.” They claim a sedentary lifestyle jeopardizes your health, especially as you get older.

JustStand.org, associated with Ergotron, claims prolonged sitting increases the risk of cancer, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and even death. Here are other shocking statistics:

People who sit for more than 11 hours a day have a 40 percent increased risk of death in the next three years, compared with people who sit for four hours or less.

Workers who have held sedentary roles for more than 10 years have twice the risk of colon cancer.

The longer people sit, the shorter their lifespans, even if they exercise regularly.

Sitting for long periods may also affect the development of musculoskeletal disorders.

JustStand.org reminds everyone not to let the idea of sitting disease scare you.

Being aware of your health and how sitting affects it can help reduce the risk of the diseases that a sedentary lifestyle can bring, and being more active can have the added perk of better health and fitness, as well as weight loss.

Okay, couch potatoes (me), are we ready to do something about this?
Hmmm!