Category Archives: senior lifestyle

American Idol Now Has An App

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At the end of my workday I just want to blitz. If I am not going out. I go home, get undressed, put on a muu muu, and stretch out on the couch. Don’t bother me, don’t ask me to make decisions, just let me go into a semi-conscious state.

Most of the time I like to watch TV. If I fall asleep, all the better. I have my list of TV shows that I enjoy. My DVR allows me, to be me, and not miss a thing. I used to love watching American Idol but no more. It just took up so much of my time.

I thought I was rid of AI till I learned about a new its new app for iOS and Android. The free app allows you to access show content, past highlights, contestant performances and behind-the-scenes footage. We will now be able to follow real-time conversations and interact with other fans on Facebook and Twitter. We will also be able to vote for our favorite contestants via the AT&T American Idol voting platform on the app.

Don’t let me get started again. I need to focus on the Kardashians. What a life!

Dear Loyal Readers

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We’ve come a long way together .

I want to start by thanking you for reading DigiDame. To date, I have written 312 blog posts, one post per day, seven days a week. It’s been hard work. But now, glutton for punishment that I am, I want to publish more than once a day.

The reason is that I really need to start focusing on building my daily uniques (daily visitor statistics). So I may (may is the operative word) start posting interesting stories several times a day to share all the interesting bits I come across in the course of my work.

Why am I telling you this? First, I believe the inner workings of the digital community will continue to be of interest to you. Secondly, I’d like to ask you the favor of clicking through to the DigiDame website, http://www.digidame.com, instead of just reading posts in your email notification. This will increase my uniques, and my prospects for establishing DigiDame as an influential blog.

I am told that the more I post, and the more keywords I tag, the more additional eyeballs I will get. And hopefully, the better up-to-date you will be! We will learn more as I increase the posts.

Usually, I post before 11:59 pm every night so that WordPress can send out DigiDame to my subscribers in the wee hours of the morning. The additional posts may arrive at any time of the day, so keep an eye out.

Please remember to visit http://www.digidame.com each day. Links and videos will work better, the posts look better there, and, best of all for me, my numbers will go up!

Thanks in advance for supporting me and DigiDame.

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Would you like to go back?

Interesting Facts you can learn from YouTube

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I am going to let the videos speak for themselves with a little comment from me.


Have you ever questioned the intelligence of the Chinese?


SphereTones is a visual instrument in Google Play.


HP certified trainer shows us how easy it is to wrap a scooter with the new HP Air Release Cast Vinyl Wrap film, printed with HP Latex technology.


Surfing a 100-foot wave in Portugal is his idea of fun.


The most dangerous places on Earth.

Let Your Fingers Do The Translating

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The Translator Pen

The Translator Pen

Another view

Another view

Every time Eliot and I visit Miami we ask each other why we haven’t spent the time to learn Spanish. Our Spanish friends know how to speak English so what is wrong with us?  We also want to learn Italian and French. Now that we are in our 60s we are more eager to learn than ever. When we discussed this with our friends Howard and Rene the other day, they suggested apps on the iPhone and Android that actually translate words and sentences for you in both text and audio. We love that but when you are reading a newspaper or magazine in a foreign language, it takes too long to type in or verbally say a sentence and then get the translation.

Today I heard about The Ivy Guide. Still in prototype form, this device fits over pens and pencils, scans words and projects the translation directly onto the page while you are reading. Now, that is a wow factor. The concept is still being worked on but I think we are getting closer to mass production because more and more tech news sites are writing about it. Details about The Ivy Guide are very limited. All the media knows so far is that the scanner tip adjusts to any writing tool. While pressing the translating button, readers can underline text. The translated words are then projected on the page. See the picture above to get a visual impression of what I am talking about. The USB is for data storage that can be transferred to your laptop while it is being re-charged.

I will let you know the minute I hear the release date of the product. No one has any info about how many languages and the price. One thing is for sure, many of us will not leave home without it.

 

Vine With Me

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Twitter has announced a new mobile video sharing service, called Vine that allows users to share six second video clips. While it’s a Twitter mechanism, you can share the videos on Twitter, Facebook or email. You don’t have to post the video on YouTube to share.

Vine is free in the App Store.

It’s the fastest video posting and sharing I have ever experienced. Twitter is all about micro-blogging. They gave you 140 characters to text a message, and now they are giving you six seconds to share video.

I realized a while ago that Twitter is based on the same premise as news reporting. Journalists are trained to get the who, what, where, why, how, and when in the first sentence of their story. Well, at least that was true before the Internet took over.

Both text and videos on Twitter have the same premise. If you can’t say it in 140 characters, or a six-second video, then you are wasting my time or you just can’t get to the point.

Click here to see a video of my Miami condo. Only six seconds.

You Never Heard of These Jobs 10 Years Ago

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One of the most important topics in politics today is the job market. While politicians talk about the number of jobs being created, very few mention the new positions that have been born primarily because of the Internet. Content is king and all of the following positions were developed because people want to share information.

I first read about this in a Forbes article but I decided to give you my own interpretations.

App developer

Ten years ago you never heard of an app. Today, more than a million apps have been developed and sold on Apples App Store and Android’s Google. Everyone in the tech business knows that the demand for app developers is going to keep growing, especially good ones.

Market Research Data Miner

This is the person who now makes sense out of all the Internet information that is being cultivated about the customer’s experience. Years ago there was no way to access this information. Today data miners look behavioral patterns to help retailers and businesses predict future trends..

Millennial Generational Expert

The generational expert does exactly what the title says. Companies hire experts to tell them the changes that are taking place in the workforce and how to keep valuable employees. They also assist in grooming the best members of the staff into strong executives.

Social Media Manager

We all know that social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, others) have become the communications vehicles for both small and humongous companies. Someone has to manage the information that is imparted to the targeted audience. This person not only needs to know what to say but precisely when to say it. Timing is everything.

Chief Listening Officer

This is a position many of you have probably never heard of before but has come increasingly important. The CLO has to monitor all of the remarks that are being made about their company on social media (Facebook, Twitter, message boards, blogs, and YouTube) and then report that information to the proper heads of departments. Most of the time immediate action must be taken in order to keep a brand prestigious and respectable.

User Experience Designer

A user experience designer makes tech type products easier to use. They make products and services friendlier so your experiences are more satisfying and rewarding. Companies higher UX designers (stands for user experience) because they want to make sure that their products are being utilized to the highest degree.

Will you still add me, will you still tag me, when I’m 64?

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As we get older, the hours of our lives become more precious. I just finished reading an article in The Atlantic that questioned whether I want to spend the last 25 years of my life reading and posting items on Facebook.

The headline for this post came directly from the article. I loved those words when I read them. I hum the words now as if the Beatles wrote them.

The Atlantic article was entitled “At What Age Will You Stop Using Facebook?” In my opinion, the piece was really a metaphor for how we want to spend the last 20 or 30 years of our lives. By now, we have learned that we don’t want to spend a minute doing anything we don’t like or be in the company of people we can’t stand.

For some seniors, Facebook represents a validation of who they are. They show family and friends all the wonderful things they are doing and feel a sense of comfort that others recognize their importance. The other group likes to peek in the lives of others but will never share a thing about themselves.

I personally didn’t need to read the article to realize that some of the things that I used to love to do hold no interest for me now. I am surprised that my tastes have changed so much. I can no longer tolerate situations that never bothered me five or 10 years ago.

The question for me is not whether I will give up Facebook but rather will I still continue to follow the friends I have today. I already know the answer to that because a few months ago I started deleting people who rant, use Facebook as a platform to talk ill of others, and constantly post their religious and extreme political beliefs.

It felt so good to delete those people right out of my life. It is not so easy to do that offline. Little by little, they may even be getting rid of me. That’s okay. I don’t want to spend time on Facebook looking back. At this stage, I find that so uninteresting. I would rather delve into the world of the unknown and take my chances.

The Job Facts Speak for Themselves

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The following facts about using social media to help you find a job are easily obtained on the Internet. I wanted to do the work for you because of what I talked about yesterday. If my 68-year-old friend nailed a job using his social media skills, so can you.

Online Colleges offered the following information.

1) One in six job seekers credit social media with landing their current job. That number is increasing every month.

2) Posting a social résumé allows you to see who is looking at you and provides you with other interesting analytics.

3) 92 per cent of employers in 2012 report using social media to find employees.

4) Recruiters used LinkedIn 98 percent of the time to find candidates.

5) Job seekers used Facebook the most, 52 percent.

6) Check out http://www.resumesocial.com, http://www.visualcv.com, razume.com, and ziggs.com. These sites will help you reach out to new contacts, search for jobs, create and share, and network.

The opportunity to find a job through social media is such a natural. It is very surprising that it took us this long to recognize its potential.

Check out the chart below. In fact, save the image to your camera roll. You can refer to it all the time.

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We Are Not Too Late for a Second Career

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Just when a friend of mine lost all hope of getting a job at 68 years of age, he was offered a CEO position at a financial services company in Raleigh, NC. Ken had been out of work for eight years and just could not land a position. Prior to that, he held sales and marketing positions at various companies. We would sit on the phone for hours bemoaning our fate. All the good jobs and assignments were going to younger people.

Then one day Ken’s granddaughter introduced him to several social media platforms, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, others. He started to socialize online the way he used to network in person. He dedicated himself to only posting info that made him look desirable for a high ranking position: 1-Business stories he found in his daily readings about a targeted niche. 2-Short, positive thoughts about changes in the specific industry he was interested in. 3-Inspiring comments about recent industry speeches and activities that he posted on other people’s blogs, podcasts, videos and group discussions.

Ken’s main goal was to appear knowledgeable and ageless. He carefully scrutinized every sentence he posted so that he always appeared positive, hopeful, and determined. There was never an attitude, a need to show-off or self-righteousness. It was all about presenting himself as a confident individual who knows how to get things done.

He was very disciplined about his postings. Ken made himself extremely visible and consistent. One day he received an email from a member of the board of a medium-sized financial company in Raleigh that mostly deals with real estate investments. The email was an invitation to a roundtable discussion about the stock market being held at company headquarters. Other outsiders were being invited too. He had to pay for his travel. All else was comped.

He went. When Ken came back from the two-day meeting he was a new man. Not only did he feel refreshed and enthused, but he felt relevant for the first time in years. His participation in social media gave him the business degree he never got. He taught himself so much about what was happening in business today that he actually became more knowledgable than many executives 10 years younger than himself.

Ken used the time away from the daily grind of business to actually become a strategist. The roundtable discussion in Raleigh was really an audition for all those who were invited to participate. Ken got the highest marks because he was the only one who understood and appreciated how to use today’s digital assets.

Today, Ken travels to Raleigh every Monday through Thursday and works from his home in Alpine, NJ on Fridays. He plans to work until he drops. He said he spent eight years in a forced retirement already and was miserable. These days he feels more alive and satisfied. While he doesn’t have much time to BS with me anymore, he doesn’t miss a day of being a voice online. He is gaining more traction than ever before and is teaching his grandchildren social resume skills that will be their calling card in the future

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Do You Think This Was a Set-Up?

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Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, showing off the next big step in technology, augmented-reality glasses.

Being a publicist, I am always suspicious when I read a story about something that happened “by chance.” People like me make “those chances” happen. Do I really believe that one of the richest men in the world, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, was riding the number 3 subway train downtown on Sunday when a stranger spotted him wearing Google’s augmented-reality glasses? Seconds later, the stranger (Noah Zerkin) tweeted the photo of Brin and the post got picked up on every online tech site, newspaper, and entertainment TV show within the next 24 hours.

This is what Noah Zerkin (@noazark) January 21, 2013, said on Twitter. “I just had a brief conversation with the most powerful man in the world. On the downtown 3 train. Nice guy.” Then he posted his photo. Zerkin is an interactive installation consultant who is a self-professed augmented-reality enthusiast who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Puh-leeze!

For those of you who don’t know about Google’s augmented-reality glasses, it is really worth researching because it is going to be the next big thing in technology. The glasses feature a translucent rectangle (the size of a postage stamp) that transmits data directly into your eye. Swiping motions can be made on the side of the headset to navigate the app interfaces. You can take hands-free photos, videos, and other soon-to-be announced tasks. The glasses are truly mind-boggling. A few years from now we will all be using them. They are slated to go on sale in 2014 for around $1,400. By that time, Google will have figured out some very practical uses for this device.

Meanwhile, I think I am the only one who feels the subway incident was a staged event. I have had my own share of PR “coincidences.” I staged Mohammad Ali to show up at a BSR (USA) sales rep meeting at the Chicago Hilton Tower Suites so he could throw air punches with retail customers. We pretended that he was having dinner downstairs with friends during our meeting. Through some miraculous last minute offer to show him the product line that was being introduced, he agreed to come up to the suite to say hello to the audience. The entire shtick was arranged weeks in advance and cost BSR lots of moola to get the champ to agree to the action-packed photo-op. Some retailers still have their photos displayed on the walls of their offices (or retirement homes).

Or how about the time we accidentally-on-purpose, lost a prototype for a new hand-held game for my electronics client in a New York City taxi cab during Toy Fair. The owners of the company offered a huge cash reward if anyone found and returned the one-of-a-kind mock up. Instantly, the brand became the talk of the entire convention.

I could go on and on about publicity stunts, but then I would be staging my own career death. That’s all for now.