Publications
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
How to configure your Facebook privacy settings to protect your kids
3 steps to creating a Facebook friend list for your kid-related content
My Facebook profile, now with extra hotness
If you haven't visited me on Facebook recently, you may not have seen my new super-awesome profile. It looks like this: And while you're visiting me, I hope you'll check out my new Facebook page, which I set up to share my writing and work. (I use my profile for...
5 reasons to consider putting your kids on Facebook
An open design process for SIMCentre.ca
This post appears today on the site of the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Shh...don't tell anyone, but we're redesigning our website. That's the standard attitude towards website redesign, at least since the (merciful!)...
Get visual inspiration from Pinterest
I'm trying out Pinterest, which I'd describe as a social bookmarking system for images. You create "Pinboards" of images you like, and "pin" items onto the board when you spot something you like online. The site's default pinboards suggest likely uses: keeping track...
Blogging hubris
Yesterday I made the mistake of bragging about how well I've been doing with my daily blogging practice. And tonight I thought I'd knock off a quick blog post that would keep me in my groove. Instead I found myself learning the ins and outs of last.fm, playlistify and...
Using Syncplicity and Dropbox to put Google Docs on your desktop
How to cope with your life as a social media celebrity
I think that, in a way, we're all sort of acting like celebrities have to act, where you have personal persona and a public persona. You think about what you want to share with your fans. I know that's how a lot of people feel about using Twitter, where, by default,...
Calling all geeks: Are you ready for the GeekOff challenge?
Working as a person of the female persuasion in the world of tech, I mostly do pretty well being surrounded by a lot of guys a lot of the time. My Women's Studies degree may not have fully prepared me for my day-to-day life, but I've found that I enjoy the energy of...
The Harvard Business Review
How to configure your Facebook privacy settings to protect your kids
3 steps to creating a Facebook friend list for your kid-related content
My Facebook profile, now with extra hotness
If you haven't visited me on Facebook recently, you may not have seen my new super-awesome profile. It looks like this: And while you're visiting me, I hope you'll check out my new Facebook page, which I set up to share my writing and work. (I use my profile for...
5 reasons to consider putting your kids on Facebook
An open design process for SIMCentre.ca
This post appears today on the site of the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Shh...don't tell anyone, but we're redesigning our website. That's the standard attitude towards website redesign, at least since the (merciful!)...
Get visual inspiration from Pinterest
I'm trying out Pinterest, which I'd describe as a social bookmarking system for images. You create "Pinboards" of images you like, and "pin" items onto the board when you spot something you like online. The site's default pinboards suggest likely uses: keeping track...
Blogging hubris
Yesterday I made the mistake of bragging about how well I've been doing with my daily blogging practice. And tonight I thought I'd knock off a quick blog post that would keep me in my groove. Instead I found myself learning the ins and outs of last.fm, playlistify and...
Using Syncplicity and Dropbox to put Google Docs on your desktop
How to cope with your life as a social media celebrity
I think that, in a way, we're all sort of acting like celebrities have to act, where you have personal persona and a public persona. You think about what you want to share with your fans. I know that's how a lot of people feel about using Twitter, where, by default,...
Calling all geeks: Are you ready for the GeekOff challenge?
Working as a person of the female persuasion in the world of tech, I mostly do pretty well being surrounded by a lot of guys a lot of the time. My Women's Studies degree may not have fully prepared me for my day-to-day life, but I've found that I enjoy the energy of...
OneZero
The social media obituary
His real break came as a stuntman in the Hollywood movie “On the Beach,” about survivors of a nuclear war, which was filmed in Melbourne, his hometown, in 1959. It starred Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Fred Astaire. “He watched Gregory Peck do 27 takes and thought, ‘A...
Who would you be without the Internet?
Without the internet I wouldn't be able to write. In the realms of pre-internet media, one either comes to the publisher/editor/gatekeeper with mad skills and gets published, or he gets a generic pink slip with a one-line apology. You can't use this system of...
5 reasons to blog like it’s the last night of the world
I worry a lot about the world ending. My scenarios usually involve some kind of catastrophic climate change, pandemic virus or global economic meltdown followed by civil collapse. This intermittent tendency to fret over various doomsday is something I try to deprive...
140-character lessons in how to live your real life online
Your online relationships, conversations and creativity are as real as anything you do offline. That's the message I delivered last weekend at Northern Voice, Canada's leading blogging conference. My talk, titled Stop Apologizing for Your Online Life, jumped off from...
The dangers of relying on Facebook and Twitter authentication
If you're not going to talk about me to your friends, I don't want to know you. That's the message that your web site is sending if you only accept registrations from Facebook and Twitter users. You can see what I'm talking about at Pinterest, a social network for...
5 ebook features that tap the power of social note-taking
Peter Meyers has a useful blog post on 3 ways to improve ebook note taking over at O'Reilly Radar. As he points out in his post, note-taking is one of the ways in which print books still kick the ass of digital books, since they allow you to "[j]ot notes anywhere you...
5 ways technology can reduce the family stress of business travel
When you’ve got kids, business travel is especially stressful. It’s hard for them to have mum or dad away, and it’s hard for you to miss them. Here are 5 ways that technology can help.
This 40th birthday brought to you by Apple
What's the right way for a geek to celebrate the big 40? In my case, as many of you now know, the answer was to spend the previous 40 days blogging. That met my need for ritual, but what about the day itself? I wanted to do something memorable, something that would...
JSTOR DAILY
The social media obituary
His real break came as a stuntman in the Hollywood movie “On the Beach,” about survivors of a nuclear war, which was filmed in Melbourne, his hometown, in 1959. It starred Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Fred Astaire. “He watched Gregory Peck do 27 takes and thought, ‘A...
Who would you be without the Internet?
Without the internet I wouldn't be able to write. In the realms of pre-internet media, one either comes to the publisher/editor/gatekeeper with mad skills and gets published, or he gets a generic pink slip with a one-line apology. You can't use this system of...
5 reasons to blog like it’s the last night of the world
I worry a lot about the world ending. My scenarios usually involve some kind of catastrophic climate change, pandemic virus or global economic meltdown followed by civil collapse. This intermittent tendency to fret over various doomsday is something I try to deprive...
140-character lessons in how to live your real life online
Your online relationships, conversations and creativity are as real as anything you do offline. That's the message I delivered last weekend at Northern Voice, Canada's leading blogging conference. My talk, titled Stop Apologizing for Your Online Life, jumped off from...
The dangers of relying on Facebook and Twitter authentication
If you're not going to talk about me to your friends, I don't want to know you. That's the message that your web site is sending if you only accept registrations from Facebook and Twitter users. You can see what I'm talking about at Pinterest, a social network for...
5 ebook features that tap the power of social note-taking
Peter Meyers has a useful blog post on 3 ways to improve ebook note taking over at O'Reilly Radar. As he points out in his post, note-taking is one of the ways in which print books still kick the ass of digital books, since they allow you to "[j]ot notes anywhere you...
5 ways technology can reduce the family stress of business travel
When you’ve got kids, business travel is especially stressful. It’s hard for them to have mum or dad away, and it’s hard for you to miss them. Here are 5 ways that technology can help.
This 40th birthday brought to you by Apple
What's the right way for a geek to celebrate the big 40? In my case, as many of you now know, the answer was to spend the previous 40 days blogging. That met my need for ritual, but what about the day itself? I wanted to do something memorable, something that would...
THE VERGE
Using the Internet to find empathy in solitude
Twitter is outsourced schizophrenia. I have a couple hundred voices I have consensually agreed to allow residence inside my brain. So writes Adam Brault in a very thoughtful blog post, I quit Twitter for a month and it completely changed my thinking about mostly...
ShopStyle: Diary of an online shopping addiction
Update: If you visit shopstyle.com from outside the U.S, you may be taken to an international site -- which in the case of the Canadian site has far fewer results. To access the U,S. site, visit this URL (and bookmark it). You'll be taken to the. women's clothes...
2×2: Filtering your Facebook friends
How do you decide to view or relate to different friends on Facebook? As with all things in life, this can be described by a 2x2 matrix: Love this person Not so much Entertaining Facebooker Add to my "A1 pals" list, which is the news feed I look at most of the time...
What to tell your kids about dating before the Internet
Hey, old people! By which I mean: hey, people my age! If you've been wondering what dating wisdom you can usefully impart to your teenage or soon-to-be teenage kids, you should read Stephanie Martin's thoughtful post on Dating in the Social Media Age. Stephanie...