Which cities are the friendliest?

Posted on October 13, 2009 by Jacqueline Boivin

I recently conducted a poll on my Facebook to ask people which cities they think are the friendliest. These are the names that came up: Cuenca, Ecuador; Toronto; Vancouver, BC; Chicago; Manchester, England; and Texas. Of course Texas is a state and not a city, but I have heard that on a whole the people are very friendly from there. I decided to create a list of factors that I feel a city should rate high on in order to be considered friendly. Let me know what you think!

How members most in need are treated (i.e. poor, sick, elderly, disabled, homeless etc.)
How well strangers treat each other
The number of community programs and groups (i.e. Meetup groups, local bands, not-for-profit groups)
How well new-comers to the city are treated
The number of open spaces, including parks and bike paths
Accessibility to the downtown core, including parking rates
Efficiency and ease of the public transportation system
The number and size of festivals
Is the city family friendly?
Affordability of housing

Please add to the list if you can think of anymore points, and let me know which cities you think are the friendliest.

The Pros and Cons of Having a Continuous Partial Attention Span

Posted on June 14, 2009 by Jacqueline Boivin

These days, there is a lot of talk about the web generation, or Google generation, and their lack of ability to focus on any one thing in particular for too long. In fact, I have read articles that say people who grew up this way have their brains wired differently than people who did not!

However, I’m not so sure this is such a new concept. In fact, I think I have a continuous partial attention span issue myself! I’ve heard arguments for and against this way of thinking and working, and so I would like to present you with my own set of pros and cons on this subject:

Pros:

Managers and co-workers get an (almost) immediate response to their emails.
There’s always lots of variety so you never feel bored!
You can get multiple tasks done at the same time, so nothing has to “sit” or be put on hold.
You don’t end up getting stuck on something. You can just put it down and go on to the next task.
You get better and better at scanning through information and quickly identifying whether it’s relevant or not.

Cons:

You are constantly interrupted when researching or working on a project-based task.
The above is a “con” in of itself because of the annoyance factor, but the interruptions can result in a lack of total focus on any one task at any one time.
It can lead to feelings of being overwhelmed.
You might end up taking a longer time to do a larger amount of work, than if you just focused on one task at a time. (What do you think about this point in particular?).
It may cause a tendency towards rushing through tasks and spending less time on them than you really should.

So there you have 5 pros and 5 cons from my own experience. Do you have anymore to add, or any thoughts on this subject to offer?

Find me on Twitter: @jacbird and @masitblog

The Social Bookmarking Phenomenon!

Posted on April 19, 2009 by Jacqueline Boivin

Lately it seems that everywhere you turn, there is a new social bookmarking site of some sort. These sites are interesting, and serve an important purpose. According to Wikipedia, social bookmarking is “a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages with the help of metadata (i.e. tags).”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bookmarking

To me, these sites are useful in that they offer an alternative to search engines for organizing and rating content. It is actual web users who find and rate the content, not just a computerized search algorithm.

Below, I have chosen my top five social bookmarking and news sites that are competing and vying for your attention and time: