Category Archives: Mobile device

post

De-Influencing: The New Trend!

Posted on by

Well, I don’t usually pay too much attention to new trends, but my curiosity was piqued the other day when I heard about something called “de-influencing”. Apparently “influencers”, those people you see pimping products on TikTok and the like, are becoming passé.

De-influencing is becoming a thing, and as of a couple of weeks ago, there were 160 million videos with the hashtag #deinfluencing on Tik Tok alone.

It’s going crazy out there!

If you don’t know what an “influencer” is, your gen is showing. Generation, that is.

Where it used to be Anne Murray promoting the bank or Mickey Mantle pushing smokes (okay, now MY gen is showing), lately it’s been celebrity wannabes looking for fame by creating videos of themselves trying all kinds of things.

But let’s get real. “Influencer” is really just a fancy word for advertiser. Everybody knows that the successful ones get paid very, very well for promoting stuff: trips, make-up, clothes, power tools, you name it.

The difference is that lots of people don’t realize they are being advertised TO. They just think they’ve seen the latest, greatest thing, and they’ve got to have it.

It’s Slinky! It’s Slinky! Who remembers that?

And there are plenty of companies and businesses willing to pay the big bucks to have these influencers, well, influence. Money, money, money. And lately, that’s what’s changing the game.

Right now, a lot of people, especially the younger ones, don’t have much money. Inflation has become a nightmare.

So in come the de-influencers. They’ve started creating videos telling you what NOT to waste your money on, what NOT to do. I don’t know, this all sounds really familiar to me…

Wait a minute! Now that I think of it, I am the original de-influencer! I must have told my kids a thousand times what not to do. And I definitely said “No!” to all the things they wanted me to buy them. I can confirm that I have been de-influencing since the 80’s!

I’m honestly thinking this new de-influencing thing might just be a scam. Maybe the de-influencers just want you to start trusting them before they end up selling you stuff just like the influencers do. More like a “don’t buy THAT, buy THIS” sort of thing.

Whatever.

I’ve never had Tik Tok on any of my devices, but whoever still does is asking for trouble. There are national security concerns, ongoing investigations and bans everywhere. You never know who might be able to access your personal information, so I would suggest you just get rid of it.

There, did I de-influence you? Yep. See how good I am?

post

How’d You Sleep?

Posted on by

So how did you sleep last night? Wouldn’t you know, I lost sleep thinking about this post, and how to write it.

Apparently, it’s common for Boomers to ask each other how well they slept. I don’t know if it’s a generational thing, but I would imagine many of us are struggling to get a good night’s sleep these days.

Sleep is everything, isn’t it? After a great sleep, you wake up refreshed and ready to tackle whatever comes your way. It’s so much easier to deal with everything physical, emotional, and mental when your body is well rested.

A bad sleep ruins it all. All of it.

What’s worse is when you’re exhausted and you STILL can’t sleep. It just doesn’t make sense! But sometimes it’s a sign that your circadian rhythm is off. You know, your body clock. People who do shift work can often have issues with their circadian rhythm because we’re hard wired to be up and around during the day, and asleep at night.

But the inability to sleep can be caused by many things. Stress and anxiety are top of the list. I’d venture to guess a lot of us are dealing with that right now.

Bad habits before bedtime don’t help.

Reading your Twitter feed before bed can be a sleep disturber. Actually, reading Twitter ANYTIME can be disturbing. But it’s about that light from your device, or so they say.

I like reading my e-book at night just before bed. Yes, it’s a murder mystery, so what?

Just as there are many causes for lack of sleep, there are dozens of “cures” for it. Pills and home remedies, different routines, audio recordings and even YouTube videos, are just some of the options out there.

Since I’ve heard too many horror stories about sleep medications, I won’t even try that.

A hot bath helps. I’ve tried different teas, especially ginger tea. As long as it’s not caffeinated, tea is comforting and cozy just before bed.

People I know swear that listening to soothing sounds or even white noise, helps them to sleep.

Getting enough physical activity during the day helps. I walk most days, and often twice in a day. When I walk I try not to think about anything. I just try to listen to the sounds around me, the birds, the conversations, my footsteps.

It doesn’t always work, but when I succeed, it puts me in a much better state of mind.

There are a gazillion websites out there with tips for getting a better sleep.

Something that helps me a lot lately when I roll over to sleep, is a little story I tell myself. You might call it a bedtime story. I close my eyes and start repeating it, same story every night.

It’s just something I made up. I repeat the details to myself as if I were telling it to someone else. Sometimes I have to start over again a few times, but I always tell it the same way.

Eventually, I drift off. Who’d a thought a bedtime story would actually work?? At my age??

Then there are those nights when you get to sleep okay, but you wake up at 2 or 3am. It might be a dream that jolts you awake, or a sudden snort from your partner.

If you’re lucky, you roll over and sleep finds you again. But sometimes you’re not.

If I get on that crazy train of thought, I’m in trouble. You know the one I’m talking about. You think one thing and that leads to another, and another, and another.

The next thing you know, you’re imagining every possible disaster that could ever happen. World War Three, the Big Shake, the Apocalypse. Heat domes, heart attacks, what’s that damn noise in my car?

On and on and….ahhhhh!

Sorry. Please don’t read this just before bed.

post

Never Mind Astro, I Want Rosey

Posted on by

I couldn’t believe it was actually going to happen. Rosey the Robot was finally coming to life.

If you’re old enough, you’ll remember the old cartoon series “The Jetsons”. There was George and Jane Jetson and their children Elroy and Judy, and one of my favourite characters on the series, Rosey, their personal robot maid.

I loved Rosey. She was like a sassy, no-nonsense aunt. “Beep! Beep! I may be homely, buster, but I am s-m-a-r-t, smart! Beep! Beep!” She didn’t take any baloney from anyone. But boy, could she clean their space house!

I always wanted a Rosey of my own. Who wouldn’t?

So when Amazon announced their new home robot Astro, I was beside myself with excitement. Finally! My own personal housecleaner.

I was imagining all of the things I would never have to do again. Scrub the toilet. Wash the kitchen floor. Dust and vacuum. Maybe Astro would even make my bed and prepare my favourite dinner. Wow.

I decided to watch Amazon’s introductory video, announcing Astro.

“What are we going to do with a robot?” the lady in the video asks her husband. Are you kidding me? I said that out loud. Housecleaning as we know it is now over!

“Astro, follow me,” the husband says.

I watched with great anticipation. Was he going to give Astro a toilet brush and put him right to work?

Astro followed him. Okay, so you can command him to follow you. Sort of like a dog.

That lead to another scene with a little girl talking to her grandmother through Astro’s video screen face.

I started wondering if the exciting stuff was still to come.

In yet another scene, a guy sitting on a park bench used his phone to give Astro the command to check and make sure that he turned the stove off at home.

Astro can relay text messages, re-charge itself, check the house for intruders, and play and dance to music. So basically a video camera that moves. And can catch a raccoon stealing your cupcakes.

At the very end, Astro brings the woman a beer on its tiny platter, and she declares “Alright, I’m in!”

Well, I’m not.

I already have a video doorbell. I can video chat with anyone I want using my phone or my tablet. And if I’ve accidently left the stove on, the fire department will surely let me know. As they’re dousing the flames.

I also have a man servant to bring me my wine. Begrudgingly, perhaps, but he’ll do it if I ask nicely.

I want a robot that can do the real work!

Who created Astro anyway? Let’s see. It can follow you like your dog, re-charge itself and bring you a beer. Was it a MAN?

Something I saw recently was an extract from a 1950s home economics book called “Tips To Look After Your Husband”. It’s filled with eye rolling suggestions for wives, like having dinner ready when he gets home. Preparing yourself and your children so you are presentable to him. Clearing away the clutter.

At the end of the article, it says “Try to make your home a place of peace and order where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit.” Cue another eye roll.

I have an idea. Let’s change that to “Your home robot will make your house a place of peace and order when you can renew yourself in body and spirit”. And instead of Astro, we’ll call our robot Rosey.

Alright, I’m in!

post

Your Call Is Important To Us

Posted on by

We’ve all had to do it; sit on the phone while listening to distorted, often depressing music, waiting for someone on the other end to finally answer our question or fix our problem.

And when you do get to talk to someone, they rush through their rehearsed jibber jabber, mumble jumble, assuming that you understand every word. Never mind that the quality of calls on cellphones has taken a very steep dive in the last few years.

Remember when phones were phones, and call quality was everything? Now it’s more about how many apps you can stuff on your device, and how good the camera is.

But I digress.

Around mid-January this year, I found out that my 2019 taxes had been reassessed and the CRA determined that I now owed them gobs of money. It was my mistake. I had declared some income I made in the wrong box on my income tax form. It was simply in the wrong box, I didn’t really owe money. But it made a mess of things.

After a number of attempts at calling the CRA, I finally got in the queue. And then it was another 5 hours of listening to that distorted, over-modulated classical music, before I actually got to speak with a real person. After some back and forth, I was given instructions as to how to mail all of my documents to a CRA office in Winnipeg to clear it up.

So last week when I got an email that there was a message in my CRA account, I assumed it was a response, and hopefully a resolution, to that issue.

Nope. It turned out to be another problem. Sigh.

This time, it took 19 calls over several days to even get in the queue. You go through the rigmarole of different menus and long, automated instructions before you finally get the dreaded “All of our agents are busy and the queues are full. Please call back later” thing.

This year’s tax season is turning out to be like no other in recent history for the CRA. They have been hiring thousands of extra agents for what they consider to be a very complicated tax season, with CERB and other benefits payouts being only part of the story.

Many users were locked out of their online accounts as a precautionary measure when it was thought some of their information could potentially be compromised. And the CRA website is only half working, with lots of pages unavailable due to “Technical Difficulties”. It’s a real mess.

On my 19th call, I finally got through to a real person. It was a surprise when the wait was only about 10 or 15 minutes this time. The agent was really apologetic and very helpful. I fixed my issue in about an hour.

I really feel for the agents who have to deal with an awful lot of people who are already in a bad mood because…well, let’s face it, how many of us are NOT in a bad mood these days? Especially when you’ve been waiting in the call queue for hours.

How do you get anything else done? How do you eat lunch? How do you, um, how shall I say, deal with nature’s call? I mean, we all take our phones with us to the bathroom anyway (don’t we?), but what if the agent comes on the phone just at that very inopportune time?

And I think maybe they should reconsider the distorted classical music and find something else. Rock or repetitive pop music might fire people up even more, so forget that. I’d like some jazz, myself. But I think the best choice would be some spa music. Chill while you’re waiting, and imagine having a nice massage, or a sea salt scrub, or a body wrap…ye-a-a-ah….

Hello? Hello? Click…

post

Facebook Follies

Posted on by

When I became a computer operator (now referred to as a computer “technician”) at the Vancouver Public Library back in the early 80s, it was an enormous task to enter the name of every book and periodical, and every patron, into our new system. We hired a group of people for that task, and they literally spent months and months tucked away in a room, doing nothing but data entry.

It amused us at the time that a few of the patrons were worried about their information being put into a computer system. Who would see their names and addresses? Who would have access to their records? We rolled our eyes at their paranoia.

Little did we know that 40 years later, we’d be carrying devices in our pockets that knew almost everything about us even when we didn’t mean for them to. Not only that, but those little devices could also broadcast whatever they knew about us anywhere in the world, to whomever wanted that info.

Last year around this time, we were on what would be our last (sob) vacation on the Big Island of Hawaii, before this COVID thing hit. We were walking through a market when I spotted a t-shirt on a woman about my age, and it made me laugh. I can’t remember now exactly what it said, but it wasn’t anything I’d seen anywhere before, and I thought it was pretty funny.

So I giddily told my husband and my daughter about it after we had passed the woman.

Back at our condo that evening I was on my iPad perusing Facebook, when I saw that very t-shirt in my Facebook feed. It was a unique t-shirt, so I knew it wasn’t a fluke. That was the first time I realized just how little privacy I actually had. Suddenly, those long ago library patrons questioning where their info was going to be seen or accessed, weren’t so paranoid to me anymore. My phone was actually listening to me.

As we have all discovered, the technology and algorithms on our phones and other devices are mapping our routes, listening to us, and watching every Google search we make.

A lot of people have quit Facebook for many reasons, including that privacy issue. Facebook pretty much makes all of their revenue (in 2020, close to $86 billion US) from businesses, big and small, who want your dollars. Of course, that’s what advertising is for, and what would businesses and companies do if they couldn’t advertise?

What bothers me is the sneaky little way that technology is figuring out what you might want to spend your money on. It feels creepy. It’s like some sleazy guy followed you as you walked through the mall, and watched as you eyed that new red dress. Then he shows up in the parking lot with the red dress, trying to convince you to buy it from him as you’re attempting to get into your car. That kind of creepy. And so much more.

Because, now imagine thousands of sleazy guys following you through the mall, every one of them carefully watching to see which purchases you might be considering. That’s closer to reality.

What’s even worse is how we are targeted by political ads. The fallout from that has been witnessed in such a distressful way with our neighbours to the south. “Freedom of speech” the tech companies say. More like “freedom to spew bull poop”.

In spite of all of this, my 149 friends and I are still on Facebook. Oh, there have been a few who’ve left, especially after some of the negative publicity that Facebook has received. And others have un-friended me for reasons I cannot fathom. What did I do? What did I say? It feels like being dumped.

And why are the rest of us still scrolling our Facebook feeds? That’s a good question, which I am sure has many answers. For me, it’s about staying in touch with friends and family, especially during these difficult times. Sure, there are other ways to do that, but at this point, the convenience that Facebook offers is unparalleled, at least for me.

Many of us are are waiting for the day that these social media companies will be held more accountable for their content, and take greater responsibility for their massive influence. We can always hope?

Me, I’m just trying to keep my voice down, in case that creepy guy on my phone is still listening. Shhhh!