Everyone is writing about the Swine Flu right now, so what is one more article, right? My 5 year old affectionately calls it “Piggy Flu.” I’m not going to offer suggestion that haven’t been mentioned before. There are plenty of places to go to find out what to do to “prepare and prevent.” What I want to do is talk about a few habits that my wife and I have trained our kids to do that can go a long way, not only in combating Swine Flu, but also bolstering your defense against other flues and the common cold.
Just a few words up front. I don’t make any claims that this will prevent illness. They will, however, help to reduce the possibility of the transmission of viruses from public places. Also, some of the tips that I offer here take time in terms of training your children. Your goal should be making these tips and habits second nature to them so that they simply do it out of habit. In fact, you don’t have to be a child to follow them. They are perfectly usable by adults.
Our Special Habits
Over a period of years, my wife and I have trained our children to do specific things when in public places (e.g., stores, schools, bathrooms, friends’ houses, etc.). Even with this training, we constantly remind them to follow these practices and praise them when they actually do. Also, we follow some SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) when it comes to illness within our family.
The other day, I came across an incredibly useful Adobe AIR application called Balsamiq Mockups. This application allows you to quickly and artistically create drawing-like renditions of websites or applications for the computer or iPhone.
As I work in the software and hardware industry, I frequently have to discuss changing our website designs with various people within the organization. Often times, I spend a few minutes sketching out a concept for how to present a new feature within our website, or event how to redesign a person’s website from scratch. Usually, the drawings I produce are child-like and not elegant at all.
I had always envisioned a icon-based, drag and drop application that would allow you to quickly create a wireframe for a website or iPhone app. Balsamiq Mockups has solved this for me in a way that is easy to use and fun to execute.
The Program
Balsamiq Mockups is broken down into a few main components: the canvas and the UI Library and a few items that automagically activate based on the icons you select.
The Age of Twitter is upon us. All hail the all mighty and powerful Twitter! But also, the age of innocence is gone. There are spammers galore, people who are “social media experts” who have only 8 tweets to their name, and really attractive and scantily clad women who earned $1500 in just 1 day of work. Wonder how they do that…? I really like those people who have 10,000+ followers, have only been on Twitter a few days, but, coincidentally, also are following 10,000+ people. Wonder how they are able to even engage in a normal conversation on Twitter…they probably aren’t. Anyway…
Since mainstream media now fully endorsing or at least doing a great job of marketing Twitter’s power, it is now a force to be reckoned with. As more and more people are talking about it, those who are not using it are starting to feel left out, those who have been using it for a while are already trying to find the next best thing, or are diving much deeper into the analysis and psychology of those on Twitter. The bottom line is, the user base is growing beyond us early adopters (and I can barely even call myself that). Oh, by the way, you can follow me here: @hightechdad.
But now, the dark side of Twitter is starting to rear its ugly head, and those of us who are now making a living through the use of Social Media need to be prepared with how to deal with some new evils, specifically Twitter Threats and subsequent Negotiations.
Today I found out about a contest for the Sony Digital Imaging group that I wanted to pass on for a variety of reasons. First, it’s actually pretty fun. Second, there are some really great prizes and third, I thought it was a very innovative way of showcasing some of the main product features.
First, the fun.
The Game
I figured I would cut straight to the chase and get to the entertaining stuff first. Below is the contest which consists of three game challenges. You can jump right into it if you want, or skip over the contest for a second and read more about what it’s all about.
It looks like the Conficker worm is rearing its ugly head today, downloading a mysterious payload that is heavily encrypted to infected Windows machines. As the information on this is just starting to hit, there is still a lot of speculation as to what the payload contains and what it does. This post provides a [...]
When I walked into Rickshaw Bagworks, the first “person” to greet me was actually a big black Labrador named Burly. Burly seemed to be right at home in a room carved out of a large, airy, well lit warehouse. The warehouse looks like many others that you might find in a more industrialized area of [...]
Back in June of 2008, I did a review of Digital Lifestyle Outfitter’s TransDock Micro for the iPod. In my review of the previous version, one of my “complaints” was TDMA interference (the buzzing that comes through speakers when your iPhone is near it) and the fact that it wasn’t certified by Apple. Specifically, I [...]
Avid technologist, blogger, social media pundit (@HighTechDad on Twitter), loving husband and father of 3 beautiful girls. I write about technology, consumer electronics, gadgets, software, hardware, parenting "hacks," and other tips & tricks. I'm a fan of all technology that is new, exciting and valuable. See my About page for more details.
Professionally, I'm the Technology Evangelist for GoGrid, the #1 pure-play Cloud Computing Infrastructure hosting provider in the world where I write regularly about Cloud Computing on the GoGrid blog.
Get online with best value broadband & home phone bundles.
Choose between our Essentials or Plus packages -
both with introductory offers - & benefit from our ground-breaking HomeSafe online protection.
Compare our broadband and phone bundles with our competitors.
We think our Essentials and Plus packages are great value -
see for yourself by checking the breakdown of costs and features versus our biggest competitors.
