Welding 101

Over the weekend I did a welding introduction class at The Fortress.  I had touched welding since high school and we did mainly torch welding then.  At the time the teachers thought that torch welding was the easiest to learn and eventually we did a bit of stick welding. 20 years latter and MIG Welding […]

Voice sales, not so simple for Alexa…

A leaked Amazon report are shows that only 2% of users have used Alexa to make a purchase. In our home we’ve had Alexa for a couple of years and we disabled voice purchased almostimmediately after our son ( one of the primary users ) quickly figured out how to order a transformer. I luckily […]

The Best E-mail Testing Tool

HTML e-mail has come along way but different e-mail clients still load and display HTML emails different. The best way to reduce risk of someone seeing a poorly formatted e-mail is to test them in a tool that can show you how your e-mail will render multiple e-mail clients.

Retail Video Games

I hate discs and especially video game discs. They scratch easily and I loose them. All of the consoles only have a single disc slot so switching games always involved ejecting and swapping discs. Even worst if you have a problem with your console and the disc doesn’t eject properly…

iWatch about being a wallet, not a wearable

There are a lot of rumours about the Apple September 9th event and a possible Apple iWatch launch. I believe most Smart watches today are largely useless. I was surprised at how quickly people abandoned their Pebble, we’re never far from our phones and continuous connection drains your phone quickly. Even the relatively small battery […]

Joining Hill+Knowlton Strategies

I wanted to formally share some exciting news from my professional life. Effective yesterday, Ascentum Inc has been acquired and will be joining the Hill+Knowlton Strategies family.  I’ve been with Ascentum for 3 years and as you probably know Ascentum specializes in helping businesses, government and not-for-profit organizations facilitate and create dialogue with stakeholders via online, […]

BlackBerry… Its all about the Browser.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on my first mobile project in a while.  I use an iPhone regularly and have access to an older Android device.  I haven’t used a BlackBerry device in close to 3 years.  In fact, to get one we asked the last person in our office that got […]

Fixing Draw Something…

There’s been a lot of discussion around Draw Something and Zynga’s purchase of the game.  Forbes recently reported that the game saw a 5M drop in Daily Active Users.   This is a problem but Forbes seem to focus mainly on the belief that users are tired of the game.  Gigaom has a more complete […]

How to Travel to the US, with your iPhone…

I travel to the US 2-3 times a year and I want to use my iPhone while traveling. The first task is to understand is your usage.  My typical usage is: Voice Calls – I receive 2-3 calls daily with a total daily talk time of 20 mins, generally I know 2 of the 3 […]

Move over Google and enter DuckDuckGo…

I think it was around 1998 when I first discovered Google on a trip to San Francisco, and I’ve been using it faithfully since. I tried Bing a few years ago but it didn’t really deliver much improvement. When I originally heard about people using DuckDuckGo, I was skeptical I’d see much improvement… I have […]

Roger’s amazing shrinking value plan…

Since setting up and regretting Rogers One a few months ago my Roger’s value plan has been steadily shrinking.  My original Smartphone Value plan in December 2011 was: Call Display with Name Display Enhanced Voicemail Voicemail to Text Unlimited Sent Text, Picture & Video Msgs Unlimited Rcvd Text Msgs – Unlimited Sent & Received US/International […]

The problem is Robocalls…

In Canada we’ve been experiencing a fairly large scandal involving Robocalls to Canadians surrounding the 2011 election.  I’ve been frustrated with Robocalls for several years and the lack of regulation by the CRTC.  A few years ago I kept getting Robocalls from a collection agency ( trying to reach someone named Brandi ) and recently […]

The Great US Paywall

I was recently in Florida for a Vacation and purchased an Amazon Fire device. The device is very similar to the Barnes and Noble Nook I purchased last year but I thought the Amazon content and store would provide a better experience. The first thing I did was sign up for Amazon Prime Trial, with […]

I love Canada Post

Over the past few weeks I’ve ordered a number of things online and received shipments for all major shipping companies. My building has conceige that can sign for all packages that don’t require a payment for duty or COD. Its very interesting to see the process each company uses handle deliveries and collect the duty/COD […]