Love Food, Dining Out? Try Chowhound!

ARE YOU A CHOWHOUND?

Chowhound is a foodie's dream. It's motto - for those who live to eat - neatly sums up what this site is all about.

It's a social network for people who care about food and want find the best products, hottest restaurants and hidden gems around North America. A tool for both locals and culinary travelers, Chowhound offers a forum to discuss restaurants, find new and interesting products and Chowfinds.

The thing I love about Chowhound is that everyone has an opinion about food! Chow allows fellow foodies to share, debate and outright brawl over where to find the best pizza, how best to eat your way through a weekend in Baltimore or where to find jerusalem artichokes.

Any ingredient, any restaurant, any place in the world - it can be found on Chowhound!

This site has holds tremendous potential for those of us in PR. Chowhound is the home of culinary 'influentials' - tastemakers who can create buzz and drive traffic. One of the most common posters on the Toronto board is Jamie Kennedy - celebrity chef and locavore advocate.

I have been using the site for years and highly recommend it to anyone who loves food and wants to know where to find the best of everything.

I've chowhound used to find date restaurants and to get recommendations on what to eat while on vacation. I look forward to seeing my fellow chowhounders at the latest 'find' soon!

Check out other reviews of Chowhound here and here!

Is Social Media the New Frontier in Activism?

Social media has become a powerful to tool for people to connect in so many ways. From sharing pictures, finding out who's dating whom and where the coolest party is this weekend. This power to connect has also seen itself manifest in the form of social and political activists utilizing these tools to galvanize other users around the issues they care about.

One prominent example of late is Canadians expressing their outrage over the Harper government's decision to prorogue government until the Olympics are over. The Facebook group for this issue now has more than 200, 000 members. But how effective is this form of political activism?

Is the same effort required join a Facebook group expressing opposition than joining a march or contacting a government official? Or for that matter, to get out and vote when election time rolls around?

This is the true test of the efficacy of social media as a tool for political and social activism. Can activists get social media users to take the next step? If members of Canadians against Proroguing Parliament don't email their MP's or attend a rally, is the act of joining becomes symbolic?



The answer to these questions are far from clear and seem to be evolving on a continual basis. Social media is an incredibly powerful tool to both raise awareness of issues, as well as allowing people to discuss how they feel about issues. In the end, as the power of social media grows, and technology-resistant boomers begin to acknowledge the power of these tools - the legitimacy (and effectiveness) of this form of activism will only grow over time.

UPDATE:

So whatever happened to the uproar about Harper's proroguing of the government? Did anything come of it? The answer, as is all things political, is...well, kinda. I think one thing that did come of it was a display of the potential power that social media can have in this realm.

Not only did people join the Facebook group - when asked, they came out in droves. Indeed, thousands came out to protest across the country - no easy feat for a rather arcane parliamentary procedure.

Furthermore, the outrage the Facebook built may actually translate into new legislation. It's non-binding - but it's a start.

How to Use Google Docs

So I've been exploring Google Docs of late and have found some really useful resources on navigating this new and exciting addition to the world of digital and social media.

For those of you who are really comfortable with technology, I highly recommend you check out this youtube video. It gives you the basic raison d'etre for Google Docs - how it works and why it is so much better than sending attachments and creating myriad versions of a document.

For the less tech-savy among us, the video below offers some tips on how to use Google Docs in a more in-depth way. However, none of us want to watch a 20 minute video on how to do anything. This video offers succinct instruction and is gives you enough info to nagivate the app, but not so much as to overwhelm.



Speaking of being overwhelmed with detail - those of you who would like to learn everything imaginable about what google docs can do should check out Google's own instruction manual here.

Overall, Google Docs is a really useful tool for people who collaborate on the creation of documents, spreadsheets and presentations. For more information, I urge you check out Jacque and Nadine's posts on Google Docs. I think it's here to stay.

Exhibit A: to see all the best 'how to' reviews of other social media apps, click here!