Design. Charity. Life.Website and Blog of Daniel Francavilla

Summer has barely ended and already, to our surprise, there are Christmas displays in some stores.

Sure, the retail industry always gears up for its busiest season of the year, but their timing is a bit off, in my opinion. Think about it this way: people are heading home from from the cottage or summer vacation, wearing shorts and t-shirts, then stop into a store and BAM – Christmas?!

Just to clarify with everyone who doesn’t live on Earth, Christmas is celebrated universally on December 25th, annually. It’s a Christian holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, and, as Wikipedia explains, it’s also celebrated by many non-Christians as a secular, cultural festival (because gift-giving and such involve “heightened economic activity” among many of us, Christmas has become a major event for retailers).

Shoppers still in their summer shorts pass by a Christmas display at Costco in Scarborough on August 28, 2009. Photo: TONY BOCK/TORONTO STAR

Still, I agree with a recent Toronto Star article that it seems, “Christmas is coming earlier every year, and some consumers are far from happy”. Usually, I remember seeing Christmas decorations in stores come out after the fall’s Halloween festivities, which is still early – but this is being written in August, when Christmas is in no way on our minds.

Now, let’s stick to “Back to School” shopping. Hope you’ve enjoyed the music.

An article on HowStuffWorks.com called Top 10 Ways to Get More Followers on Twitter asks, “How can you expect anyone to follow you if they’re asleep?” I decided to create the poll below, after reading tip 9: Tweet During Peak Hours (quoted below).

Take a second to answer and share the poll! If you want to find out when and how much you really do tweet, you can find out at TweetStats.com! They’ll show you your tweets per hour, your tweet timeline, and @reply stats. You may want to check that first, you may be surprised with your results!

You can select more than one time, of course. I didn’t make an “all day” option. Here is the tip from HowStuffWorks.com about Tweets During Peak Hours:

Sending messages, or twittering, during peak hours gives you the best opportunity to be seen, or, rather, read. And that gives you better odds of someone enjoying whatever messages you’re sending out and signing up as a follower. So what are the peak hours? There haven’t been any studies performed yet, but the Washington, D.C.-based Internet marketing firm Abraham & Harrison have performed some Webinars along with Twitter and confirmed that 9 a.m., noon, 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. see heavy use. It’s also an opportunity for you to experiment with your tweets and see when you’re getting the best response. If you do find that between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. in the United States, either East or West Coast time, gets you a lot of traffic and you live elsewhere in the world, structure you tweets around this schedule. It may not be the most convenient time for you, but if you’re interested in gaining followers, you need to be around when the bulk of Twitter users are around.

The results will be embedded here as well. Thanks for your participation! – @francavilla

Ever joked around with someone about being addicted to the Internet or gaming? You may find it frustrating when you’re Internet is down, or when you have no service on your phone when you’re out of town – I just did at the cottage for a few days this summer – but we all need a break at some point.

There are people, however, that are seriously addicted. And in the United States, a they’ve opened their first rehab center that will treat Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD). There’s a 45 day program called reSTART that you may want to check out if you haven’t looked away from this computer for the past 24 hours (or, if you’re just reading this on a break from playing XBOX 360 for 2 days straight).

© 2009 reSTART Internet Addiction Recovery Program

So, how can you tell if you need to be admitted into the reSTART program? First off, the program website asks: Are you spending too much time playing video games, texting, or using the computer? Maybe lots of us are – but in this case, you’ll have to be displaying symptoms of its nine guidelines for Internet Addiction Disorder, which include:

1. You have a strong desire or impulse to use the internet.
2. Decreasing or stopping of the internet leads to withdrawal symptoms (e.g. general malaise, restlessness, irritability, lack of concentration, dyssomnia); and the above mentioned symptoms may be relieved by similar electronic media (e.g., TV, handheld games, gaming devices).
3. Continually increasing the amount of internet use and the extent of internet involvement to reach sense of satisfaction.
4. Use of internet in spite of its harmful effects; despite knowledge of harmful effects, internet use is hard to stop.
5. Difficulties controlling beginning, and finishing, and the duration of time of internet use; efforts to modify internet use may be attempted multiple times without success.
6. As a result of internet use, interests, recreation or social activities are decreased or abandoned.
7. Internet use is seen as a way to escape problems or to gain relief from negative feelings.
8. The extent of internet use is denied or minimized to teachers, schoolmates, friends or professionals (including actual time and expenditure of internet contact).
9. Everyday life and social function is impaired (e.g. in social, academic and workability).

So if you’re reading this and a lightbulb just went off in your head, you can actually go ahead and take the survey: “Are you Internet or Technology Addicted?”. Just realize that the 45 days of rehab will cost around $14,500.

For now, I’ll just keep making websites, writing blog posts, posting on Twitter and Facebook until…

Thanks for stopping by. As you can see my new website, “Design. Charity. Life.” at designcharitylife.com is now up, fully searchable and being refined.

To find out about the concept of designcharitylife.com read this post now. To learn what this site is all about, click the About page.

Feel free to sign-up for free email updates of newly added posts from this website. Subscribe to email updates.

There are still a few design adjustments and things I’d like to adjust, but here’s the site! If you have any comments please let me know. Thanks!

Change is coming. After exploring so many new websites and blogs on everything from design to sports to church, and learning some things about the Web 2.0, I’ve decided that it’s time to go through an upgrade myself.

Previously, my personal website and blog has always been about, well, myself and my thoughts on a few topics. However I found that there are so many other, unrelated topics and issues I’d like to write about – and why would someone go to find these at “Daniel Francavilla Online”? They wouldn’t – because they’re not about me.

Recently, I’ve been writing a few posts on some topics of interest, things that are in the news and categories of technology and the web. Through Twitter I’ve been able to connect with and share with a great audience, too.

So, after considering a lot of ideas, I’ve decided to re-design and re-refocus my website.

The three main areas of focus will be Design, Charity and Life. Why? Because Design and Charity are two things I spend the most time on and am most passionate about – and Life encompasses everything else, from faith to everyday news.

The site will still include my basic online profile. However, I plan on interviewing people I find interesting, important or useful and using this as featured content. I’ll also be able to share a lot more articles and useful links as it won’t be an official “just me” site.

Everything combined.

If you’ve ever been confused about where everything that I actually do online is – it’s going to be organized into the new site.

While there may be various URLs to get to the actual site, the main address will be www.designcharitylife.com. Other URLs that will remain are of course www.danielfrancavilla.com, which will link to the new site, and I’ll be working on a re-design of www.danieldesign.ca (a separate site for design business projects).

Great things like the Twitter feed and other profiles will also be imported to the site. I may just link to start.io/francavilla (which I recommend you make one for yourself, free) that had used for my main homepage in the past.

Read it, don’t read it, comment, or don’t comment.

This website will be part of a learning experience for me. I’m not expecting to make tons of money or gain a massive following out of it! I’ll be able to practice a little journalism, widen my range of topics and take advantage of all of the awesome new web features out there. With the hosted version of WordPress, I’ll be able to finally use the features I’ve been seeing everywhere – and have a proper URL (website address) for everything on the site. Your comments on and sharing of the new site will obviously be genuinely appreciated.

Looking forward to getting down to work!

- Daniel