A Satisfyingly Tech-Savvy Moment

Out-teching your Facebook Twit-o-phile friends

Have you heard of RSS? Yes, it’s one of those internet acronyms, but thankfully it’s a really simple one. It stands for Really Simple Syndication. I like the sound of that - don’t you?

RSS is the way that you can be notified of new articles or content on your favourite websites, without clogging up your email inbox, and without having to check those sites every day. The best part is, you’re already equipped. You don’t need special software to do it. To subscribe to a website using RSS look for the RSS icon (ours is at the top left, next to the Twitter and Facebook icons). When you click it, it will show you a strangely formatted page … you can ignore it and just read the top part. Click the “subscribe” link (it may appear as a button).

If, like many, you use Microsoft Outlook for your email, you will find it convenient that notifications appear unobtrusively there. You may also have a Google home page, so you’d get notifications there too. You can choose which RSS ‘feeds’ go where, even to your iPhone. The possibilities are endless.

There may be hordes of FaceBookers and Twit-o-files, but if you want to really impress someone with your tech-savvy, tell them you use RSS.

Now you’re in the know.

Try it now, and never miss another Tempo Toronto article.

Grinchiness – an over-50 complaint?

The simplest Christmas of all

I can only speculate. I haven’t worked out why yet.

Time was when all those Christmas-y traditions were top of my list, and I’d be hoping for fat snowflakes poised momentarily – and rather romantically – on the end of my nose as they melted away. The gifts, the wrapping, the ribbons, the feasting, the decorating… oh, what fun I had with it all.

The past few years, the tawdriness of it all seems to overwhelm. My dearly beloved suggested we get modern, and ‘download’ Christmas instead, this year. After all, he does have a shiny new iPhone. Even so, I don’t think the Download Your Favourite Holiday Traditions App has hit the market yet.

Then there was the guilt to deal with. In a last minute fit of anxiety, a pre-Christmas cocktail party was organized hurriedly. We had a fabulous time, lots of fabulous hors d’oeuvres, and our closest friends gathered with us. Goodness, we even played charades! That, and a rather splendid brunch with son number one and his partner, then Christmas was quite frankly over and done with.

I don’t feel like a grinch, I am not anti-Christmas in any way. Quite honestly, I just couldn’t be bothered. I didn’t want to either give or receive gifts this year: instead the family sponsored the purchase of goats in poor villages, and ensured that two impoverished high school age students in Africa were able to complete their last year of education. Helping out those with much, much less that we have here in Toronto – that felt much more like the spirit of Christmas, to me at least.

So I speculate. My hormones are acting up? That’s a great excuse for almost anything, even though it is the most likely cause.. My sons have grown and flown the nest, and there are no grandchildren to entertain – perhaps that’s why. If it’s because I’m growing older and thus more curmudgeonly, then that would be a terrible thing, and I’ll be right into therapy come new year.

What was your experience?