Category Archives: digital

Remind Me to Watch It

Posted on by
2

20131018-184600.jpg

I can remember the time that I spent hours scouring through TV Guide on Fridays marking off which new and old TV shows I wanted to watch for the week ahead. Then I would make lists so I could map out when I had to be in front of the TV. Most of the time I forgot to check the lists.

Some things never change. I am great at making lists for all of my activities, but rarely refer to them. I must have a “list” phobia of some kind. I guess that is why the DVR was invented.

There are many times, however, that I want to see a TV show when it first airs. I want to be part of the “in crowd” that talks about it the next day. Now I can, without preparing a list. There is a new app that will take care of it.

Called NextGuide, the new app is from Dijit, a San Francisco-based company. Dijit is a service that adds a “Remind Me to Watch It” button to a TV show’s website. Currently Fox, BBC America, and TruTV (formerly Court TV) have the feature.

The first thing you do is download the NextGuide app on your smartphone. Then visit the websites for your favorite shows, click on the button for NextGuide (usually located on the top of the site), and then you will receive reminders via email or on the NextGuide app. You decide which way you want to be reminded when you register. You will be notified 30 minutes before air time.

Don’t worry that your favorite shows are not part of this system. Dozens are being added all the time and new networks are signing contracts now.

NextGuide is a win-win for the networks as well. TV shows need increased audiences and reminders are a good way to boost traffic. I have to go now. I am busy looking for all the “Remind Me to Watch It” buttons.

Martha Stewart Questions Blogger Validity

Posted on by
1


I fell in love with Martha Stewart, the businesswoman, the moment I met her. I love her even more today after I heard a recent TV interview where she gave her opinion about bloggers.

Not everyone has the nerve to publicly say what’s on their mind. Martha has never been shy. She doesn’t give much merit to bloggers. A blogger is someone like me who shares thoughts about life, current events, hobbies, professions, art, movies, food, fashion, tech, and an endless number of topics. Sometimes CEO’s have blog posts where they update the world about the state of their companies.

Most bloggers do not have any journalism background yet they are quick to offer opinions, reviews, guidance on product and services. Year after year, many bloggers have gained notoriety and business respect. That really bothers Martha. She feels that most of them don’t have skills or training. They just blah, blah all the time without the benefit of a high authority guiding them.

I deal with the top 50 to 100 bloggers in the music, tech, art, politics, beauty, and fashion businesses. Many of them are self-appointed authorities that somehow managed to get a following. They police themselves.

It’s a whole new world out there. Some bloggers are now considered industry celebrities. The Internet has provided a world stage where anyone can have 15 minutes of fame

Now You Can Transfer Money Via Email

Posted on by
1

20131016-212013.jpg

Goodbye Western Union, Hello Square Cash. Transferring money used to be one royal pain. Western Union did their best to expedite, but there were so many steps to get this done. I used to cringe if someone asked me to send them some dough. The money wasn’t the problem. It was just a time-consuming assignment.

Now a new service, Square Cash, lets you transfer money with just a few clicks on your computer. Square Cash is an offspring of Square, Inc., the swiping device that allows merchants to accept credit cards on smartphones and tablets.

Square Cash allows you to send up to $2,500 a week to friends and family in several transactions or all at once using debit cards from Visa or MasterCard.

Square Cash is very simple to use. It’s all done by email. The following is Tech Crunch’s explanation of how it works.

“The sender simply emails the person they want to send the money to with the amount of money either in the subject or body of the email and CC’s cash@square.com. If the sender has not already added his or her debit card, then Square will instruct the sender to register a debit card on a web page with just the card number, billing ZIP code and the expiration date. The recipient will immediately get another email from Square telling them that they have received money from the sender with a link to add the recipient’s debit card, billing ZIP, and expiration date.

Once they type in their debit card information, this begins the transfer, which takes one to two business days. We’re told that the recipient has up to 14 days to enter the debit card and receive the money, and the recipient will get reminders every other day via email.”

There are other services that allow you to transfer money, but most tech writers believe this is the easiest to use.

Here are links to: AllthingsD, Tech Crunch, and USA Today with additional pertinent information about Square Cash.

Watch a video that explains it all.

20131016-212031.jpg

Doc Internet

Posted on by
Reply

20131015-230512.jpg

When Eliot first told me his groin area was swollen, I didn’t hesitate a minute to contact my family doctor. I simply sent Dr. Bruce Yaffe an email repeating what Eliot told me. Within 15 minutes, the good doctor sent an email back saying he wanted to see Eliot immediately. Within two hours Eliot was examined and the verdict was in: a hernia.

I did a Mexican hat dance right on the spot because my imagination had me thinking much worse. Thank goodness for email. I had a direct line to my doctor. Years ago, I waited four days for my doctor to call me back when I had stomach pains. I just couldn’t get him on the phone. The receptionist kept asking me if it was an emergency. It wasn’t, so I just kept on waiting.

Today no one waits. The Internet has trained us all to expect instant gratification. That’s why most of you will be happy to hear about a new Internet service that connects consumers directly to physicians via mobile devices for advice. Now I know a number of you are rolling your eyes because you want to see a doctor face-to-face. To those people I say, there is a time and place for everything. The ability to talk to a doctor in record speed should lead to a general diagnosis and next step precautions. They even provide prescriptions. Weird I know, but this is the direction the world is going.

CNET recently did a story about the telemedicine physicians at American Well, which recently announced a $49 10-minute video chat with doctors online and via mobile phones and tablets in 44 states and Washington, D.C. To better understand how this works and how doctors are able to make diagnoses, be sure to read the story because it spells out legalities, insurances, and how it works.

The American Well app is free and available on the Apple App Store and on Google Play.

Best Prices at the Best Restaurants

Posted on by
3

20131014-205527.jpg

20131014-205540.jpg

I don’t mind spending a buck. In fact, Eliot and I tend to overspend for most things we buy. By overspend, I mean that we don’t go out of our way to squeeze the seller for the best possible price on every purchase we make.

The only time I get nuts about a price is when I fly or stay at a hotel. It feels so unsettling to learn that the person sitting next to me on the airplane paid a lot less because of some deal we missed. The same thing happens when friends stay at the same hotel as we do but manage to get it at a much lower rate. I really feel cheated and it ruins my good time.

That’s why I was so excited to learn about www.savored.com, which is owned by Groupon. The site offers deep discounts on high-end restaurants across the country if you book through them. Our friends Ron and Chuck told us about this restaurant site, The last two times we went out to dinner with them, they made the reservations through the Savored website. When the check came, the tally was 30-per-cent lower than it was listed on the menu.

I was so wowed. We go out five nights a week. We could use a little help with prices. High-end restaurants love Savored because the site fills tables that would otherwise go unseated.

Savored is currently available in 10 cities: New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Denver.

Happy dining — much cheaper!

20131014-205553.jpg

20131014-205601.jpg

Showtime’s Homeland Offers Extended Plot Lines on Audible

Posted on by
Reply

20131013-223057.jpg

Damian Lewis

Showtime’s Homeland is about to change TV watching forever. For the first time ever, an actor, Damian Lewis, who plays Nicholas Brody, will be recording complementary material related to major plot lines that will only be available on Audible.com.

That means directly after tonight’s episode (Sunday, October 13), fans can hear a free 30-minute extended story performed by Damian Lewis. There is a lot of speculation as to what he may talk about. My sources say most of the recording will give further insight into his mysterious character.

This development is unbelievable news for everyone who loves watching TV. So many times I feel a character has not been developed enough in an hour dedicated to complex story lines. Audiences can go away frustrated and confused.

I am hoping these supplemental audios really turn out to be a true value added rather than some commercial enterprise. 20th Century Fox has teamed up with Audible.com on this new venture. No one is saying who approached whom with this idea, but other Homeland characters are said to be preparing more audio segments.

Watch for other shows as well to copy this idea. In my book, that is good news both for audiences like me and for Audible. I have been telling you all to listen to books on Audible.com for over a year. More and more people will become familiar with Audible if they take advantage of this offer. That has to be a big sales generator for the audio book app, which is owned by Amazon.

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

Posted on by
1

20131012-225943.jpg

I can’t wait until October 15. The print, Kindle, and Audible editions of “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon” will become available. I love biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. The book is going to tell all of us who don’t know much about Bezos just how he built a $75 billion empire.

The book was written by Brad Stone, a senior writer for Bloomberg Businessweek. I know Brad from his days at The New York Times when he covered technology. He is extremely well respected and very precise, so this book is going to be as close to accurate as you can get.

Bezos was not interested in being interviewed, but he didn’t stop Stone from speaking to hundreds of his closest contacts. As I read an excerpt of the book, featured recently in Businessweek, I soon started to see some uncanny similarities between Bezos and Steve Jobs.

1) No level of tolerance and humiliate those who screw up.

2) Never met their real fathers.

3) Very peculiar. Amazon office desks are repurposed doors. Jobs lived in a house with no furniture.

Amazon will shortly be celebrating its 20th anniversary. Stone says “Amazon rivals Wal-Mart as a store, Apple as a device maker, and IBM as a data services company.”

“In the past few months, Amazon has launched a marketplace in India, opened a website to sell high-end art, introduced another Kindle reading device and three tablet computers, made plans to announce a set-top box for televisions, and funded the pilot episodes of more than a dozen TV shows. Amazon’s marketplace hosts the storefronts of countless smaller retailers; Amazon Web Services handles the computer infrastructure of thousands of technology companies, universities, and government agencies.”

Bezos, 49, surprised everyone last August when he personally bought The Washington Post. He believes he can turn the newspaper around. He also spends one day each week heading his own private rocket ship company, Blue Origin, which seeks to lower the cost of space travel.

Stone’s book is going to be a great read. I look forward to finding out more about Bezos and how he became one of the biggest successes in the digital marketplace.

20131012-225958.jpg

Apple’s Digital Playground

Posted on by
Reply

20131011-155511.jpg

Every time I hear that a child under 10 years of age is going to visit us, I spend hours thinking about entertaining things to do. Years ago, we went to a playground, the Children’s Museum, a musical for kids, or a sporting event. Those days are completely over for me since I visited a few Apple stores recently.

Apple is becoming the new digital playground for children. It has reconfigured the layout of its stores to accommodate children from three to pre-teen, depending on the size of the store. Apple has designated work tables for different age groups. I got a tremendous amount of pleasure watching these kids totally absorbed in the programs they were working on, which only proves that if you give someone something that he or she is interested in, that person can stayed focused for a very long time. This has nothing to do with a high IQ or better education.

While some grandparents feel technology is killing the social structure for the younger set, I believe the opposite. Bring two people together with a common denominator and a love fest will develop on its own. I have had bonding conversations with people 40 years younger than I am because we both liked the same app.

Most of you do not realize that Apple has free workshops for children comprising hardware and software instruction, youth programs, and one-on-one coaching. Did you know about The Apple Camp for kids ages 8 to 12? It teaches the ins and outs of iMovie and how to make your own films. The free three-day session, held at the Apple Store, leads up to an Apple Camp Film Festival where campers debut their masterpieces. I wish I were young again.

Apple also launched a Kids App Store. It’s not a separate mobile application. It’s a brand new section within the Apple App Store itself featuring a “Kids” category where apps are broken down by age range.

This section of the store separates apps into three age ranges: five and under, between six and eight, and between nine and eleven.

It’s wonderful being a youngster today. I hope they take advantage of everything being offered to them.

20131011-154941.jpg

20131011-155003.jpg

20131011-155140.jpg

20131011-155214.jpg

Reboot Your Thinking

Posted on by
3

20131010-212619.jpg

Mike Rowe (wearing the cap) and Mary Sullivan with the Zedge team, Brian Payne and Jonathan Reich. I took the picture.

I finally had the luncheon meeting today that I have been waiting for since I saw Mike Rowe on “Real Time with Bill Maher” several months ago. Mike is the creator and executive producer of Discovery Channel’s Emmy-nominated series “Dirty Jobs With Mike Rowe.”

Mike was on Bill’s show to shed light on the three million perfectly good jobs in America that no one seems to want. Mike started a foundation called Profoundly Disconnected “to challenge the absurd belief that a four-year degree is the only path to success.”

Mike adds that we have a trillion dollars in student loans and record high unemployment. “Yet there are young folks who would rather live at home with their parents and watch TV all day than take a job they feel is beneath them. Boy, are they wrong.” Many of these jobs require skilled training and pay $75,000 the first year or two. After that you are looking at $150,000 or better.

The reason I was meeting with Mike, his business manager Mary Sullivan, and my clients Jonathan Reich (the boss) and Brian Payne of Zedge is that we have 75 million Zedge users who can help raise money to pay for technical school scholarships. Zedge is one of the most popular apps on mobile devices. It has the largest variety of ringtones, wallpaper, and video games.

Mike is the real deal. He has spent years traveling the country and working on more than 200 jobs that most people run away from: coal mining, roustabouting, maggot farming, and sheep castrating.

His foundation mikeroweWORKS says of Mike:

Without any formal training he began his career as a professional musician, faking his way into the Baltimore Opera, and earning his union card in the process.

Soon thereafter, he crashed an audition for the QVC Cable Shopping Channel, where he was immediately hired to sell dubious merchandise in the middle of the night. There, he impersonated a host for nearly three years, spending most of his tenure on double-secret probation, while learning the ins and outs of live television. After that, he worked when he felt like it, narrating, writing, acting, and hosting programs like “Worst Case Scenario” for TBS, “On-Air TV” for American Airlines, “The Most” for History (formerly The History Channel), “No Relation” for Fox, and “New York Expeditions” for PBS.

Hopefully, Zedge will become a “good cause” marketing partner of mikeroweWORKS. Zedge has a very active website, a million fans on Facebook and Twitter, and one of the most popular apps on the Google and Apple Stores. One major brand with one household name can make for some very productive times ahead. Stay tuned.

More On Mike
Birthdate: March 18, 1962

Hails From: Baltimore, MD

Marital Status: Single (but taken)

Current Residence: San Francisco, CA

Interests/Hobbies: Reading, writing, and a bit of running.

On Hosting “Dirty Jobs”: “Be careful what you wish for.”

Photo Plastic Surgery

Posted on by
3

20131009-225229.jpg

20131009-225239.jpg

You can improve your looks with Facetune — or not!

Let’s face it, the DigiDame crowd is not getting younger. It’s getting more and more difficult to look in the mirror or have our picture taken. Who are those older people staring back at us? We don’t like what we see. The usual comments are: “My neck got so droopy.” “Look at the bags under my eyes.” “I used to be taller.”

At some point, we all need someone to doctor our photos just like magazines do for fashion models. The practicality of that happening is highly impractical. Don’t despair. There is a solution. An app called Facetune can help us look our very best, minimize the wrinkles and erase the blemishes, Facetune is similar to Photoshop but much easier for us to use. It’s also geared for mobile phone photos.

The app is available on the iPad and iPhone for $3.99 each. It features many of the options offered by Photoshop. You will have a great creative experience trying out all of the different tools. Touch the button for “Whiten” and rub your finger over your teeth, and voilà! The whitest smile you have ever seen. There are other buttons that let you remove blemishes, diminish dark circles, smooth skin and create many effects that normally were only reserved for Photoshop to master.

When you select any of the Facetune tools, you get simple instructions on how to use them. There are links to videos with step-by-step instructions as well.

Now go have your picture taken.