Publications
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Family movie night: The 2×2
Like everything in life, the conundrum that is Family Movie Night can be reduced to a 2x2 table. Common Sense Media has solved a lot of our household media selection challenges, but it's yet to resolve this one. Your kids will find this movie... Appropriate for...
How to use Thesis to customize your teasers by page and category
I use the Thesis theme for my Wordpress blog. Thesis is much beloved in the Wordpress community because it allows a high degree of customization using its two pages of configuration menus, so even if you know nothing about PHP or CSS you can do a lot to customize your...
How to win friends and influence people…through social media
Dale Carnegie's How to win friends and influence people could be described as the father of relationship marketing and the grandfather of social media. Two recent blog posts revisit the book and highlight its implications for the social media era. J. Eddie Smith's...
The single woman’s guide to texting
My husband and I are closing in on our 10th wedding anniversary, and for the most part, that is great news. About 11.5 years out of our past 12 years together have been very very happy, and if you zero out the months that were tense because one of us had a new Macbook...
Research reveals people can survive up to 24 hours without Internet access
I'm fascinated by the number of people who are experimenting with different forms of unplugging: journalists, bloggers and tweeters who take some kind of solo holiday from connectivity. But a recent study at the University of Maryland took a larger-scale approach,...
An evangelical perspective on information overload
I was fascinated to come across an evangelical take on the problem of information overload. Becky Sweat's article in The Good News reads: information overload can distract us from the most important priority in our lives—our relationship with God. Indeed, a healthy...
10 expert predictions on how the Internet will affect social relations
The latest Pew survey on the Future of the Internet looks at the effect of technology on social relations, and the expectations of 895 Internet experts are overwhelmingly optimistic. It shouldn't come as a major surprise that a sample of people who are selected for...
thirtysomething meets the Internet
When I was sixteen I hated Jane Austen. I read Pride and Prejudice, but couldn't get beyond the anachronism. Every plot point rested on the impossibility of speaking directly and honestly: Mr. Darcy, if you could simply explain yourself to Miss Bennet, I'm sure she...
The upside to teen life online
Frankasaurus has a great blog post about her experiences growing up online, comparing the impact of chat rooms on a socially awkward teenagers with the experience of using social media today. As she writes about her early years in online chat: It wasn’t long before I...
For Oprah.com: Gifts for the geeky dad (even after Father’s Day)
Do you have a tech-loving Dad in your life? This post for Oprah.com offers great gift ideas to show him that he’s your favorite geek.
The Harvard Business Review
Family movie night: The 2×2
Like everything in life, the conundrum that is Family Movie Night can be reduced to a 2x2 table. Common Sense Media has solved a lot of our household media selection challenges, but it's yet to resolve this one. Your kids will find this movie... Appropriate for...
How to use Thesis to customize your teasers by page and category
I use the Thesis theme for my Wordpress blog. Thesis is much beloved in the Wordpress community because it allows a high degree of customization using its two pages of configuration menus, so even if you know nothing about PHP or CSS you can do a lot to customize your...
How to win friends and influence people…through social media
Dale Carnegie's How to win friends and influence people could be described as the father of relationship marketing and the grandfather of social media. Two recent blog posts revisit the book and highlight its implications for the social media era. J. Eddie Smith's...
The single woman’s guide to texting
My husband and I are closing in on our 10th wedding anniversary, and for the most part, that is great news. About 11.5 years out of our past 12 years together have been very very happy, and if you zero out the months that were tense because one of us had a new Macbook...
Research reveals people can survive up to 24 hours without Internet access
I'm fascinated by the number of people who are experimenting with different forms of unplugging: journalists, bloggers and tweeters who take some kind of solo holiday from connectivity. But a recent study at the University of Maryland took a larger-scale approach,...
An evangelical perspective on information overload
I was fascinated to come across an evangelical take on the problem of information overload. Becky Sweat's article in The Good News reads: information overload can distract us from the most important priority in our lives—our relationship with God. Indeed, a healthy...
10 expert predictions on how the Internet will affect social relations
The latest Pew survey on the Future of the Internet looks at the effect of technology on social relations, and the expectations of 895 Internet experts are overwhelmingly optimistic. It shouldn't come as a major surprise that a sample of people who are selected for...
thirtysomething meets the Internet
When I was sixteen I hated Jane Austen. I read Pride and Prejudice, but couldn't get beyond the anachronism. Every plot point rested on the impossibility of speaking directly and honestly: Mr. Darcy, if you could simply explain yourself to Miss Bennet, I'm sure she...
The upside to teen life online
Frankasaurus has a great blog post about her experiences growing up online, comparing the impact of chat rooms on a socially awkward teenagers with the experience of using social media today. As she writes about her early years in online chat: It wasn’t long before I...
For Oprah.com: Gifts for the geeky dad (even after Father’s Day)
Do you have a tech-loving Dad in your life? This post for Oprah.com offers great gift ideas to show him that he’s your favorite geek.
OneZero
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
JSTOR DAILY
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
THE VERGE
From the Wall Street Journal’s Daily Wrap: Twitter for CEOs (audio)
Why and how should CEOs use Twitter? That was the focus of my conversation with Michael Castner yesterday, on the Wall Street Journal's Daily Wrap. You can listen to that interview below, or read the Wall Street Journal story we were riffing off: Better Leadership...
How to crowdsource your Facebook Timeline
If you struggle to keep your Facebook Timeline dynamic and engaging, without creating what is simply a mirror of your Facebook or LinkedIn presence, the solution may not lie with you, but with your friends. For the past few months, I've been running a private...
The future of online nostalgia
Sometimes the only thing that makes the glitchiness of the Internet tolerable is the expectation that one day we will laugh nostalgically about the old days. Remember how we used to have iPads, but they couldn't see anything in Flash? Oh yeah -- FLASH!!! LOL Remember...
Online pickup, or online stalking? (From CBC Vancouver)
Finally, an online dating site that makes Plenty of Fish and Craigslist's Missed Connections look positively classy. My comments are included in the story that ran on CBC news tonight.