It's impossible to ignore Pinterest now. It's soared in recent months and it doesn't seem like it's going to die anytime soon. The latest "It-girl" in social media has been around since 2009 and showed the tip of its hockey-stick growth in September 2011. I must have heard about it in October and finally scored an account back in November or December (was waiting for an invite - thank you jonasll).

The first date was lukewarm. She was interesting and very pretty and I could definitely understand the appeal, but it just wasn't for me. I left the date with no hard feelings, thinking there would likely never be a second. Perhaps we'd stay in-touch, be Facebook friends or something, much like my previous hookups with Gowalla and Path.

Fast-forward a couple months later, and everybody was going bananas. She was the hottest thing since a jalapeño enema, she was the talk of the town and her logo was splashed on the cover of every tech and non-tech news site. Even Martha Stewart had social-media optimized her website with "Pin it" buttons. But I still wasn't interested.
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Labels: Social Networks

Ahh...the QR code.

Marketers blindly slap them on everything from ketchup bottles to cookies while most consumers still don't seem to know what they are or what the duck to do with them. Something like 6% of people even use them.

While there have definitely been many creative uses of QR codes, most tech journalists are quick to poo-poo them claiming it takes just as long to open your web browser and type in an shortened URL. They dismiss the whole thing as a silly fad like big shoulder pads in the 80's.

Some naysayers go as far as declaring death to the QR code, but it turns out it's death that's been adopting the technology.


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Labels: death

If you like photography and have an iPhone you need to download Instagram right now.

Once done, you may continue reading.

Instagram is currently the hottest "it" app in the saturated world of photo sharing. Word even surfaced last week that Facebook made an attempt to buy Instagram and failed. Not surprising seeing as the beloved app, which launched in October 2010, has already racked up 7 million users and over 150 million photos. That's... a lot.

It followed the basic recipe for start-up success:
1- Two co-founders
2- Wacky name
3- Absolutely no business model.

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Labels: art

Mobile ticketing is not new. Mobile ONLY ticketing kind of is.

The Billboard Summer Blowout concert which took place in New York on August 11th was the first in the US to distribute tickets to fans exclusively via MMS on their mobile phones. No paper tickets allowed. Heck, not even e-tickets allowed (e- wha?).

The Billboard Summer Blowout featured dance duo LMFAO and rapper/producer Swizz Beatz.

The concert was actually part of a mobile ticketing experiment. Users received their ticket on their phones the morning of the concert, and another device was used at the door to scan the message received. There was absolutely no other way to get in.

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Labels: music

It's been a while since I've wanted to explore what's happening in the world of mHotels. That's a term I pretty much made up to describe the intersection of mobile technology and the hotel industry.

Not to be confused with mobile hotels.


Those who know me well, know that I am fascinated (*ahem* obsessed) with the world of hotels. During my university years, I would tell my roommate that I was off to the gym (which was kind of true), except that I was actually going to go sit in the sauna at the Delta Hotel located 5 minutes away from the McGill Ghetto and read J Willard Marriott's biography.
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Labels: Hotels

Last week my baby Mobile Pop Princess turned one year old.

The milestone served as a friendly reminder to breathe a little air back in to the baby, and I thought what better way to pay homage than to revisit its very first topic: tech-integrated clothing. Although but only twelve months and four seasons have since come and gone (yes, that one day of Spring in the 514 counts as a season), the convergence of fashion and technology has evolved by leaps and bounds.

Welcome the new buzzword, to those already familiar with the terms "smart phones" and "smart cars": smart clothes.

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Labels: fashion, technology

The Watergate equivalent of the digital age occurred last week when two researchers revealed their findings that the iPhone is logging all of your location data into a nifty little consolidated.db file.

Cue gasps of horror.

Ok, now wipe that pretend look of trauma off your face. You almost had me, and I almost cared.

Let's review the facts in a nutshell. Since the launch of the iOS 4 last June, all iPhone and iPad devices with 3G access have been logging latitude and longitude coordinates along with a timestamp in a file accessible through your device or the computer which holds the iTunes account you use to synch.

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Labels: iPhone, technology