I can’t stress this enough — you need to get an Apple Watch.
For roughly two months, I’ve been sporting the Apple Watch Series 5, and I now I feel like I don’t think I could ever go a day without wearing it.
I know a lot of people who own a smartwatch, and I’ve been considering getting one for a while, but I wasn’t sure how much use and value it would add to my life.
I work out seven days a week, so I’ve always felt getting a smartwatch might be useful because it would allow me to track my exercise habits. The more I researched the Apple Watch though, the more I learned about the other features the wearable offers beyond health.
This isn’t a review, but instead a look at how you can integrate an Apple Watch into your life. For our Apple Watch Series 5 review, click here.
Tailoring the look is helpful
During my time with the excellent wearable, I used the Series 5 silver aluminum case in the 40mm size.
I opted for a more classy, professional band, the Gold Milanese Loop (which costs $119 CAD). I know you’re probably wondering why I decided to mix metals, but I actually think it gave the Apple Watch a unique look.
My daily attire is business casual, and I wanted to make sure I had a watch that could match with most of my wardrobe.
First, I should note though that this specific band isn’t perfect for when you’re working out. It’s not a sport band, but I was lazy, and I didn’t want to keep switching bands. I sweat a lot, and at times I could feel the band loosen up because it features a magnetic clasp.
Aside from that, I think Apple did a great job of allowing the user to style their watch to their preference and lifestyle. I love how many options there are and that switching bands is really easy to do.
Some bands are more affordable than others, but I would recommend getting something you know will go with your wardrobe on a daily basis.
Apple Watch: the best for health stats
As soon as I connected the Watch to my iPhone, I wanted to start understanding how the Health and Activity app worked.
Every week, the user is able to set their target goal in terms of how many calories they want to lose. I decided to set my target at 500, just to understand how the Watch worked initially. I later increased that to 650 calories.
There are two other markers in the Activity app that indicate your performance throughout the day. The first is ‘Stand’ and the second is ‘Exercise.’ The former is calculated by how much you stand over 12-hours of the day, while the latter calculates the number of minutes you workout.
This was my favourite feature of the Watch. Immediately after I got the wearable, a friend of mine asked to do an Apple Watch fitness challenge. Essentially, the Watch lets you compete with other people who are in your contact list who also have a Watch. Every activity you perform adds points to your shared profile — the winner has the most points at the end of the challenge.
The Apple Watch creatively presents users with badges and medals too. Even if you lost against a friend, you still get a medal. Other medals include breaking your own record on the number of calories you may lose, or even just working out every day for 30-minutes.
These medals are incredibly encouraging. Apple also stores all your medals in a list that you can go back to and check out, which is a great way to really see your fitness accomplishments.
If you are not a very active person, the Apple Watch might also help motivate you to be active. It’s really fun to see when you do well and when you achieve something you didn’t think you could do.
In November, I decided to participate in a workout challenge at the spin studio I go to. The Ride Cycle Club, located on Ossington in downtown Toronto, had a special challenge that required riders to complete several tasks within the month.
I was also travelling a lot in November for work, so I had to be smart about completing the challenge and also being healthy and safe at the same time.
Between September and November, I saw a massive change in my performance. For example, my performance was the best when I didn’t drink any alcohol the night before, when I got enough sleep and when I wasn’t stressed.
The days between November 16th and 24th were my most stressful days. I had a lot of deadlines and those were the times when I was travelling. I noticed a huge shift in my performance as well. One weekend I flew back from Montreal and after landing at 7am, I headed directly to the studio to workout and I noticed that I barely lost any calories and that my performance was weak.
Being able to track my calories, my heart rate, and how I perform has helped me tailor other habits in my life as well. I know that if I don’t sleep enough, I won’t be strong to go work out. These may seem like things people should know without having to be reminded, but it was nice to see actual performance results and understand why they weren’t as good as they could have been.
Buyer beware, though — you may get addicted to getting these work out details and if you forget your Watch on the day of a workout, you’ll miss out. I will admit, I was very upset on a handful of occasions when I forgot my device.
Making safety a priority
As I researched more about the Watch, I learned about a lot of features that eased my irrational fear of dying alone and not being found.
Ok, I know you’re probably wondering where that came from. Hear me out for a second.
When I was living alone in Ottawa, I always had this irrational fear that I would accidentally fall in my shower, hurt myself and would not be found for at least a couple of days. My friends always joke around and say that I should get a medical necklace for safety precautions.
Well, who is laughing now? Because the Apple Watch has built-in the Fall Detection, I never ever have to worry. Within the Health app, you can set up emergency contact and allergy-related information as well.
Apple told me that if I fell, a notification pops up that asks if I’m actually in need of emergency services or if I’m okay. If you’re not okay, the watch will automatically call emergency services as well as any emergency contacts you’ve added to your list.
Apple also noted that if you are moved from your location to a hospital nearby, a message is sent to your emergency contacts with the precise location of where you’ve been moved to.
To test this feature, I had one of my coworkers push me a couple of times to set the Fall Detection off and surprisingly it worked out perfectly.
I was also told that now in Series 5 if you are in a situation where you feel your life is in danger, you can press and hold down the crown of the Watch, which will contact emergency services.
Feeling less phone dependent
As a journalist, my lifeline is my phone. I heavily depend on it to use social media, call sources, take notes and regularly function in my day-to-day life.
While having a Watch doesn’t mean I’m completely off my phone, I noticed that I was reaching for my device a lot less.
Every Watch series is connected to your phone even if it doesn’t have cellular connectivity. That means that if you get a text or notification from other platforms, you’ll get the notification on your Watch as well.
I absolutely loved this aspect of the wearable. If I received a text message, email or notification, I would quickly see what it was on my Watch and move on with whatever I was doing. I found myself to be far less distracted.
After completing whatever I was doing, I would go back to my phone and reply to text messages, or to anything pending.
Although no one likes a know-it-all, they dominate the Internet.
The Internet began as a vast repository of information. It quickly became a breeding ground for self-proclaimed experts seeking what most people desire: recognition and money.
Today, anyone with an Internet connection and some typing skills can position themselves, regardless of their education or experience, as a subject matter expert (SME). From relationship advice, career coaching, and health and nutrition tips to citizen journalists practicing pseudo-journalism, the Internet is awash with individuals—Internet talking heads—sharing their “insights,” which are, in large part, essentially educated guesses without the education or experience.
The Internet has become a 24/7/365 sitcom where armchair experts think they’re the star.
Not long ago, years, sometimes decades, of dedicated work and acquiring education in one’s field was once required to be recognized as an expert. The knowledge and opinions of doctors, scientists, historians, et al. were respected due to their education and experience. Today, a social media account and a knack for hyperbole are all it takes to present oneself as an “expert” to achieve Internet fame that can be monetized.
On the Internet, nearly every piece of content is self-serving in some way.
The line between actual expertise and self-professed knowledge has become blurry as an out-of-focus selfie. Inadvertently, social media platforms have created an informal degree program where likes and shares are equivalent to degrees. After reading selective articles, they’ve found via and watching some TikTok videos, a person can post a video claiming they’re an herbal medicine expert. Their new “knowledge,” which their followers will absorb, claims that Panda dung tea—one of the most expensive teas in the world and isn’t what its name implies—cures everything from hypertension to existential crisis. Meanwhile, registered dietitians are shaking their heads, wondering how to compete against all the misinformation their clients are exposed to.
More disturbing are individuals obsessed with evangelizing their beliefs or conspiracy theories. These people write in-depth blog posts, such as Elvis Is Alive and the Moon Landings Were Staged, with links to obscure YouTube videos, websites, social media accounts, and blogs. Regardless of your beliefs, someone or a group on the Internet shares them, thus confirming your beliefs.
Misinformation is the Internet’s currency used to get likes, shares, and engagement; thus, it often spreads like a cosmic joke. Consider the prevalence of clickbait headlines:
You Won’t Believe What Taylor Swift Says About Climate Change!
This Bedtime Drink Melts Belly Fat While You Sleep!
In One Week, I Turned $10 Into $1 Million!
Titles that make outrageous claims are how the content creator gets reads and views, which generates revenue via affiliate marketing, product placement, and pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Clickbait headlines are how you end up watching a TikTok video by a purported nutrition expert adamantly asserting you can lose belly fat while you sleep by drinking, for 14 consecutive days, a concoction of raw eggs, cinnamon, and apple cider vinegar 15 minutes before going to bed.
Our constant search for answers that’ll explain our convoluted world and our desire for shortcuts to success is how Internet talking heads achieve influencer status. Because we tend to seek low-hanging fruits, we listen to those with little experience or knowledge of the topics they discuss yet are astute enough to know what most people want to hear.
There’s a trend, more disturbing than spreading misinformation, that needs to be called out: individuals who’ve never achieved significant wealth or traded stocks giving how-to-make-easy-money advice, the appeal of which is undeniable. Several people I know have lost substantial money by following the “advice” of Internet talking heads.
Anyone on social media claiming to have a foolproof money-making strategy is lying. They wouldn’t be peddling their money-making strategy if they could make easy money.
Successful people tend to be secretive.
Social media companies design their respective algorithms to serve their advertisers—their source of revenue—interest; hence, content from Internet talking heads appears most prominent in your feeds. When a video of a self-professed expert goes viral, likely because it pressed an emotional button, the more people see it, the more engagement it receives, such as likes, shares and comments, creating a cycle akin to a tornado.
Imagine scrolling through your TikTok feed and stumbling upon a “scientist” who claims they can predict the weather using only aluminum foil, copper wire, sea salt and baking soda. You chuckle, but you notice his video got over 7,000 likes, has been shared over 600 times and received over 400 comments. You think to yourself, “Maybe this guy is onto something.” What started as a quest to achieve Internet fame evolved into an Internet-wide belief that weather forecasting can be as easy as DIY crafts.
Since anyone can call themselves “an expert,” you must cultivate critical thinking skills to distinguish genuine expertise from self-professed experts’ self-promoting nonsense. While the absurdity of the Internet can be entertaining, misinformation has serious consequences. The next time you read a headline that sounds too good to be true, it’s probably an Internet talking head making an educated guess; without the education seeking Internet fame, they can monetize.
TORONTO – A new survey says a majority of software engineers and developers feel tight project deadlines can put safety at risk.
Seventy-five per cent of the 1,000 global workers who responded to the survey released Tuesday say pressure to deliver projects on time and on budget could be compromising critical aspects like safety.
The concern is even higher among engineers and developers in North America, with 77 per cent of those surveyed on the continent reporting the urgency of projects could be straining safety.
The study was conducted between July and September by research agency Coleman Parkes and commissioned by BlackBerry Ltd.’s QNX division, which builds connected-car technology.
The results reflect a timeless tug of war engineers and developers grapple with as they balance the need to meet project deadlines with regulations and safety checks that can slow down the process.
Finding that balance is an issue that developers of even the simplest appliances face because of advancements in technology, said John Wall, a senior vice-president at BlackBerry and head of QNX.
“The software is getting more complicated and there is more software whether it’s in a vehicle, robotics, a toaster, you name it… so being able to patch vulnerabilities, to prevent bad actors from doing malicious acts is becoming more and more important,” he said.
The medical, industrial and automotive industries have standardized safety measures and anything they produce undergoes rigorous testing, but that work doesn’t happen overnight. It has to be carried out from the start and then at every step of the development process.
“What makes safety and security difficult is it’s an ongoing thing,” Wall said. “It’s not something where you’ve done it, and you are finished.”
The Waterloo, Ont.-based business found 90 per cent of its survey respondents reported that organizations are prioritizing safety.
However, when asked about why safety may not be a priority for their organization, 46 per cent of those surveyed answered cost pressures and 35 per cent said a lack of resources.
That doesn’t surprise Wall. Delays have become rampant in the development of tech, and in some cases, stand to push back the launch of vehicle lines by two years, he said.
“We have to make sure that people don’t compromise on safety and security to be able to get products out quicker,” he said.
“What we don’t want to see is people cutting corners and creating unsafe situations.”
The survey also took a peek at security breaches, which have hit major companies like London Drugs, Indigo Books & Music, Giant Tiger and Ticketmaster in recent years.
About 40 per cent of the survey’s respondents said they have encountered a security breach in their employer’s operating system. Those breaches resulted in major impacts for 27 per cent of respondents, moderate impacts for 42 per cent and minor impacts for 27 per cent.
“There are vulnerabilities all the time and this is what makes the job very difficult because when you ship the software, presumably the software has no security vulnerabilities, but things get discovered after the fact,” Wall said.
Security issues, he added, have really come to the forefront of the problems developers face, so “really without security, you have no safety.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 8, 2024.
As online shoppers hunt for bargains offered by Amazon during its annual fall sale this week, cybersecurity researchers are warning Canadians to beware of an influx of scammers posing as the tech giant.
In the 30 days leading up to Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days, taking place Tuesday and Wednesday, there were more than 1,000 newly registered Amazon-related web domains, according to Check Point Software Technologies, a company that offers cybersecurity solutions.
The company said it deemed 88 per cent of those domains malicious or suspicious, suggesting they could have been set up by scammers to prey on vulnerable consumers. One in every 54 newly created Amazon-related domain included the phrase “Amazon Prime.”
“They’re almost indiscernible from the real Amazon domain,” said Robert Falzon, head of engineering at Check Point in Canada.
“With all these domains registered that look so similar, it’s tricking a lot of people. And that’s the whole intent here.”
Falzon said Check Point Research sees an uptick in attempted scams around big online shopping days throughout the year, including Prime Days.
Scams often come in the form of phishing emails, which are deceptive messages that appear to be from a reputable source in attempt to steal sensitive information.
In this case, he said scammers posing as Amazon commonly offer “outrageous” deals that appear to be associated with Prime Days, in order to trick recipients into clicking on a malicious link.
The cybersecurity firm said it has identified and blocked 100 unique Amazon Prime-themed scam emails targeting organizations and consumers over the past two weeks.
Scammers also target Prime members with unsolicited calls, claiming urgent account issues and requesting payment information.
“It’s like Christmas for them,” said Falzon.
“People expect there to be significant savings on Prime Day, so they’re not shocked that they see something of significant value. Usually, the old adage applies: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”
Amazon’s website lists a number of red flags that it recommends customers watch for to identify a potential impersonation scam.
Those include false urgency, requests for personal information, or indications that the sender prefers to complete the purchase outside of the Amazon website or mobile app.
Scammers may also request that customers exclusively pay with gift cards, a claim code or PIN. Any notifications about an order or delivery for an unexpected item should also raise alarm bells, the company says.
“During busy shopping moments, we tend to see a rise in impersonation scams reported by customers,” said Amazon spokeswoman Octavia Roufogalis in a statement.
“We will continue to invest in protecting consumers and educating the public on scam avoidance. We encourage consumers to report suspected scams to us so that we can protect their accounts and refer bad actors to law enforcement to help keep consumers safe.”
Falzon added that these scams are more successful than people might think.
As of June 30, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre said there had been $284 million lost to fraud so far this year, affecting 15,941 victims.
But Falzon said many incidents go unreported, as some Canadians who are targeted do not know how or where to flag a scam, or may choose not to out of embarrassment.
Check Point recommends Amazon customers take precautions while shopping on Prime Days, including by checking URLs carefully, creating strong passwords on their accounts, and avoiding personal information being shared such as their birthday or social security number.
The cybersecurity company said consumers should also look for “https” at the beginning of a website URL, which indicates a secure connection, and use credit cards rather than debit cards for online shopping, which offer better protection and less liability if stolen.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 8, 2024.
