Category Archives: senior lifestyle

This Is Not a Mahjong Tile

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If I misplace my iPhone one more time, Eliot is going to have me committed. I neatly place it in the pocket of my handbag every time I use it. Somehow, some way, it falls out into the major portion of my handbag or it slides deeper into the pocket. Either way, I go into a complete panic looking for it. If I lose it, my life gets interrupted in ways I don’t even want to think about. Yes, I have everything backed up. I even have an iPad Mini with all of the same information. That’s not the point.

The last time this happened to me was just last Friday. Eliot and I were getting out of the taxi at the Delta terminal at JFK. Before the cab pulled away, I double checked to make sure I had my iPhone. I asked Eliot not to let the driver move the cab until I found it. Just the opposite happened. The driver quickly pulled away and, of course, my iPhone was no where to be found.

I had a total panic attack on the sidewalk. Surrounded by all of our luggage, we started ripping my handbag apart. Eliot said, “I know it’s in there.” I was doubtful. We finally found it on its side, deeper into the seam than ever before. We were both relieved and couldn’t wait to get a drink. I decided right then and there that I was buying several tracker Tiles when they finally make their debut.

Tile is a new product that combines tiny plastic tags with a companion smartphone app and locates lost stuff. The Tile itself is a little larger than a postage stamp. It costs $19 for one, or $50 for a set of four. The Tile will locate anything I don’t want to lose. It can be affixed with a two-sided adhesive strip to a computer or a TV remote, or, using a built-in loop, it can be fastened to a key chain. If any item is lost, the Tile iPhone app will give visual “warmer, warmer” directions to the object within a 50-to-150-foot range. A tiny speaker inside each Tile emits a little beep, helping me zero in once I am close.

Tiles last a year on a single battery after which they must be replaced. The company raised more than $2.5 million in pre-orders. I guess I’m not the only one losing things.

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Open Table Aims to Give You Control of the Check

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Open Table, the online website that lets you book tables at most restaurants, must be reading the minds of many diners. They are working diligently on a software program that will allow patrons to pay for their checks within an Android or iPhone app. I also found out, from some business friends close to the San Francisco company, that Open Table is also experimenting with a new software program that may even allow us to order our food from our smartphones in order to bypass the waitstaff.

Personally, I am not sure how I feel about that. There are pros and cons. There is no question that a good waiter or waitress can enhance the dining experience immensely. However, lately I have seen the reverse. Many times over the last few years, I have been totally frustrated when three people out of a foursome are brought their plates leaving one person hanging and feeling victimized, or when the waiter serves me my friend’s meal and gives her mine, or when you ask for milk for your coffee and he delivers it ten minutes too late.

Maybe I am just getting older and have less tolerance. I remember fine dining being fine. Today, I recommend a restaurant to folks and I worry more about whether the service will be good than the taste of the food. I am hopeful that Open Table’s new program is a decent remedy, although I am also concerned about people losing their jobs.

So far, Open Table’s software will focus on allowing diners to pay for the meal on their phone. At the end of the meal, they will be able to review the check, add a tip, and then pay for it with a touch of a button.

OpenTable has 28,000 restaurants and 450 million diners worldwide. It generates most of its revenues from monthly subscription fees from restaurants.

OpenTable will be adding convenient features more and more as a result of its $11 million acquisition in June of Just Chalo, a mobile payments processor specializing in restaurants.

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Let Your Email Do the Walking

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20130803-182113.jpgHoward Margolis.

I am writing you from Lisbon, Portugal. We flew here last night with a stopover in Madrid. We are on a two-week holiday. We stay in Lisbon for four days, then start an AMA Waterways River Cruise for seven nights on the Douro River. We finish up in Madrid for a few days.

I was rushing around like crazy to get certain work done so I didn’t have a lot of tedious work to attend to while we were traveling. We have complimentary wireless Internet everywhere we are staying, so I can keep an eye on my work.

Just when I thought I had everything wrapped up before the trip, I received a call in the middle of last week from my El Paso, TX, client saying they wanted to do a press party in late September in NYC for their new line of Revlon hair appliances. They needed us to secure a location ASAP and draft a proposal along with budgets.

I didn’t want to assign this task to anyone else at HWH because they are all loaded up with other deadline work. I am a big believer in blasting out emails to lots of potential sources to ask for help. My idea this time was to get one of the big name real estate brokers in Manhattan to provide us with an extraordinary apartment to hold the event. I wanted to find a very alluring place that would attract the press.

It took a few hours to target the right brokers, another 15 minutes to write the pitch, and then seconds to blast the email request. Within a half hour, I had positive replies from some of the most successful agents in the city including several from TV shows “Million Dollar Listing” and “Selling New York.”

There was one location that intrigued me the most. I immediately answered the email from that power broker who responded. It took a few emails back and forth on Wednesday afternoon to seal the deal followed by a confirmation phone call. Howard Margolis from Douglas Elliman agreed to meet me at the penthouse apartment on Friday seven hours before my flight for Lisbon took off.

I fell in love with the site, we schmoozed for a half hour, agreed to do other projects like this one in the future, and established what I believe will be a long working relationship.

Before email, this task would have taken me days to do and miles of pavement to pound. I may not be a lot of things, but I certainly am the master of email.

Here is the penthouse with terrace I secured, Be sure to click on the arrow below the picture to see the entire extravaganza.

Meet the broker I am working with Howard Margolis.

Broker Margolis also flies his own plane.

Views from our hotel room.

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Videograms for Trigger Happy People

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This is so perfect for everyone who loves to share photos on any platform. Instead of sending stills as if they were a piece of art open to interpretation, put your subject matter in a video slide show with music and text.

I get no less than 10 to 20 photos a day from folks showing off their grandchildren, kids, pets, six pack, a flower, a bird, and yes, even a meal they made. I do the same to others.

Then one day on Facebook, I spotted a Videogram that Dr. Jay Gottlieb of Miramar, Florida, posted of his infant granddaughters. Just a few minutes later my friend Steve emailed me to say that Jay’s Videogram would make a perfect subject for a DigiDame post. I quickly added it to my list. Jay, a dermatologist, is the father of Amy Greenberg, married to Lonny, son of my friends Myra and Gary Greenberg. Get that? It doesn’t matter.

Instead of the usual silent presentation of a photo share, Jay jazzed it up. So can you. Go to Videogram by Shutterfly and learn more. Between the video that Shutterfly uses for a demo, above, and Jay’s, I think you’ll agree his is the better one.

It’s simple to make a Videogram:

1) Add photos/video clips
2) Select a style/theme
3) Choose a soundtrack

Videograms area available in three resolutions:

•360p – This web-quality loads quickly and is ideal for watching on your mobile devices or sharing on social media sites.

•480p – This TV-quality video is great for burning to a DVD or watching on a higher resolution monitor or flat screen TV.

•720p – This HD-quality video makes everything look crisper and better. Ideal for high-definition monitors and devices.

Have a great time snapping away.

Twitter News

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A look inside Twitter. Just wanted to share these posts. You never know what you might find.

Goldie Hawn (@goldiehawn)
7/30/13, 5:28 PM
We have lost my old friend Eileen Brennan. No one ever made me laugh more! Now I cry. Please keep singing darling from on high. Rest

Mother Jones (@MotherJones)
7/31/13, 7:02 AM
In just the past two years, natural disasters have cost the Treasury $188 billion—nearly $2 billion a week mojo.ly/14coSKi

The New York Times (@nytimes)
7/31/13, 6:38 AM
Stephen King’s Family Business nyti.ms/1cnqce4

Richard Branson (@richardbranson)
7/31/13, 7:02 AM
If you don’t have time for the small things, you won’t have time for the big things virg.in/ats

TODAY (@todayshow)
7/31/13, 7:26 AM
Traveler abandons bags at airport over hefty fees: on.today.com/13mko1a

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
7/31/13, 8:16 AM
Poll numbers have nosedived for pervert NYC mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner- good news for New York!

GigaOM (@gigaom)
7/31/13, 10:05 AM
Starbucks will get speedier, Google-powered free Wi-Fi wp.me/p10LZV-2PjY

Yahoo! News (@YahooNews)
7/31/13, 10:11 AM
McCain says if Hillary Clinton runs against Rand Paul in 2016, he’d have a tough time voting: yhoo.it/166GYt9

Mashable (@mashable)
7/31/13, 10:13 AM
20 Colorful Bits of Graffiti That Make The World More Beautiful on.mash.to/17i5jLA pic.twitter.com/h

Huffington Post (@HuffingtonPost) 7/31/13, 10:20 AM
How best friends make life better, even when you really don’t want them to (GIFS) huff.to/1cbKh8P

Telephone Calls Are Passé

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Have you noticed that more and more of your friends are not calling you anymore? And that instead they are texting? Yes, even those 50-plus have fallen into the texting trap.

First it started with your kids, and now it has spread to your contemporaries. Texting has now become the preferred communications tool. I’ve sometimes thought that some of my friends text because they just want to look cool.

Then I received a text from my 83-year-old, very successful client, who doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone. I asked him why he sent a text rather than call me, and he was blunt: “I said what I had to say, and I didn’t want to spend anymore time on the topic.”

I almost laughed in his face. I couldn’t believe my ears. This wasn’t a kid speaking. And he was dead serious. In the age of the Internet, he was telling me, every minute counts. While he would have loved schmoozing with me, he just didn’t have the time. The Internet has doubled the work and doubled the opportunity for everyone.

People don’t want to pass the time of day on the phone. They want short, precise communications. They want to get in and get out. It’s kind of insulting, but it’s the way of the world. If you have a better explanation let me know.

Be sure to watch the above video. A very strange dude spells it out for us.

Watch Out For Those Redheads

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Shea Allen

Redheads are redheads. We speak our minds! I have spent most of my life as a redhead. Today, I wanted to tell you about a redhead you probably never heard of, but who made headlines recently because of the remarks she made on her personal blog. Shea Allen is a Huntsville, Alabama investigative reporter for TV station WAAY-31, who lost her job this week because someone ratted her out.

Allen made the classic mistake of thinking her personal blog was personal. There is no such thing. When someone writes something on the Internet, it is open for the world to see. That goes for Facebook, Twitter, message boards, and blogs like this one. Stop thinking that you should be able to personally express yourself without consequence. If you make a personal remark, readers react. They don’t differentiate. Look at the nasty editorial reactions that have already started

There is no wiggle room. Allen found that out the hard way. Her TV bosses cut her loose once they learned about some personal remarks. There were a few no-no’s including her claim to have “gone bra-less” during on-air appearances. For those who want to argue that Allen should have freedom of speech, I say there is no such thing when you are a public figure. See her video defense now on Huffington Post.

People follow you everywhere on the Internet. Allen should have known better. Allen posted “Confessions of a Red-Headed Reporter” last Tuesday. Station managers called her to a meeting about the blog on Friday morning to bid her farewell. No discussions, no drama, just goodbye.

Here are the 10 career confessions on Shea’s personal blog that got her into trouble. Number six is a doozy.

1. I’ve gone bra-less during a live broadcast and no one was the wiser.

2. My best sources are the ones who secretly have a crush on me.

3. I am better live when I have no script and no idea what I’m talking about.

4. I’ve mastered the ability to contort my body into a position that makes me appear much skinnier in front of the camera than I actually am.

5. I hate the right side of my face.

6. I’m frightened of old people and I refuse to do stories involving them or the places they reside.

7. Happy, fluffy, rainbow stories about good things make me depressed.

8. I’ve taken naps in the news car.

9. If you ramble and I deem you unnecessary for my story, I’ll stop recording but let you think otherwise.

10. I’ve stolen mail and then put it back. (maybe)

Let me know what you think.

Read, Listen, Read, Listen, Read, Listen, Done!

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Sometimes I feel like I have a keen intuition. Maybe we all have it, and I just exercise my sixth sense more than others. It mostly applies to technology. I use certain gadgets or software more than others. All of a sudden I find myself saying, “This device is wonderful but wouldn’t it be great if it had this blah-blah feature?”

Within a year or two, the bonus feature I was hoping for magically appears. Just like that. It’s as if someone up there is listening to me. It’s happened to me a number of times, but today was a biggie.

Maybe you already know about this, but I didn’t. For years I have been a member of Audible, a service that allows me to listen to books on my mobile devices. Amazon bought Audible a few years ago.

For the last year or two, I have been buying the Audible version of what I want to listen to in addition to the print edition. Call it indulgence, but I like to go back and forth from the audio to the written word and then back again. It all depends on my mood or what I am doing: the treadmill, the couch, the shower, the bed.

Lately, I have this sense of urgency to get as many books done as quickly as possible because my “to read” list is getting longer and longer. I don’t want to waste time with one format. I want to listen to the book on airplanes, when I exercise, in the bath, in the car, and when I wait for an appointment. After I listen to the book for an hour, I yearn for print. So I go back and forth.

The trouble is finding my last place in print when I leave the audio book. I can spend ten minutes looking for it in the book or on Kindle. Audible now has a feature called Whispersync for Voice. It syncs audiobooks both among devices and with Kindle e-books, whether they are on your Kindle device or Apple and Android Kindle apps. Users can now easily switch between the Audible and Kindle versions of select books without losing their place.

When users buy the Kindle version of a book, they receive a discount on the Audible version. Soon we will be able to buy a bundle of the two. Until then, this is a very exciting development in multi-media reading.

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With a Click of the Flix

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Every time I go to the movies, I wonder why I don’t go more often. A lot of people our age, 50-plus, feel Hollywood is not gearing movies for us. That may be true. But every time I go to the movie theater, I see at least two flicks that appeal to me in the coming attractions.

Friday we saw Blue Jasmine and The Attack. It was quite a double feature. We loved both. By the time we got home, we were totally wiped out from the powerful character studies. During the coming attractions, I spotted another one coming up. Keri Russell will be starring in Austenland, a romantic comedy about a young gal who is obsessed with Jane Austen.

Then I got deluged with movies that appeal to a more mature crowd. I started using Flixster, a movie app that quickly tells me what is playing in my neighborhood (no matter where I am) and what’s in the art houses. Flixster allows me to tag favorites, plus it shows movie trailers, what movies are coming up, and what titles others are watching.

One fast look at Flixster and I already spotted Still Mine, a movie in the Paris Theater across from the Plaza Hotel, about a couple in their twilight years. Then there is Fill the Void and The Way, Way Back. These are all for us.

Yes, there will be dry spells at the theater, but at least Flixster keeps us updated all the time.

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Mixing Pleasure with Good Work

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Peter Greenberg

I think as you get older you can really appreciate traveling to far away places more than you did when you were younger. There is something gratifying about going from your world to another world and pretending you lived there your whole life. You try to immerse yourself in the local culture in an attempt to be one of the crowd.

Now, Peter Greenberg (no relationship to my pal Steve) reveals a new way to soak in each destination through something he calls as “voluntourism.” Before I get into voluntourism, let me tell you about the source.

Peter Greenberg is one of the best known travel news journalists. He is Travel Editor for CBS News, appearing on CBS This Morning, CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley, and CBS Sunday Morning. An Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter and producer, Peter was named one of the most influential people in travel by Travel Weekly, along with Al Gore, Bill Marriott, and Richard Branson. Catch him online.

Greenberg explains that more and more cruise lines are offering the chance to give back to local communities during your trip. The same thing is going to happen through tour groups and travel sites.

Right now you can check out the opportunities through Crystal Cruises, Semester at Sea, and Hope Floats.

The participating charities are a few miles away from group destinations. They usually last four hours. You might question why you would ever spend valuable time during a vacation on volunteer work. The answer is pretty simple. You meet some of the most interesting people in the world when you least expect it. Let’s all try it once.