Over the past few weeks as I’ve been grappling with colon cancer, it has been soooooooooo tempting to just pop open the Facebook app, write a story in the box and press “Share”. Simple. Easy. Done! Or inside the Twitter... Continue reading

The call came this morning, right as my regular weekly Strategic Communications team meeting was starting up. Once I saw the call was the Burlington hospital, I muted my connection, shut off the video ... and waited breathlessly for the news... The surgeon was delighted to call and say... no more cancer was found in the colon walls or lymph nodes! It's done. Finished. Fertig. I'm as close to "cancer-free" as anyone with colon cancer can be. No further tests needed. No chemo. No other treatments. I'll go back in about three months for a "flexible sigmoidoscopy" where they'll use... Continue reading

I put on pants today. Shorts, even. With a belt! This was a BIG deal. It's not that I haven't been wearing pants 😉 ... but that I've only been able to wear running pants with an elastic waste since leaving the hospital on Thursady. My stomach was too bloated from the surgery and it hurt too much to wear anything else. Until today. Another small victory! Never having had surgery before, I'm learning what countless others have learned before me - that each day brings a series of small victories, without hopefully any major defeats along the way. To... Continue reading

--- "I'm sorry, but unfortunately one of your polyps tested positive for colon cancer." Not the phone call you want to receive at 4:00pm on a Friday afternoon. Especially one week before you are about to buy a house in Vermont and start the process of relocating your family - and leaving behind your friends, other family members, and your whole "support system"! In truth, not a phone call you EVER want to receive. But I did get that call on June 29, 2018. And after many more tests, discussions and agonizing analysis, I'll be entering the hospital in a... Continue reading

“BEAR CROSSING - STAY ALERT” The bright yellow sign shouts its warning to me from the side of Interstate 91. I am in the middle of Vermont. There are few people here. Most of the time I-91 has walls of trees on either side, occasionally broken by amazing mountain views or scenic views of small towns. And so we are warned of bears and... moose! “MOOSE CROSSING - NEXT 5 MILES” I have seen the photos of damage caused by moose. You have a 2,000 pound animal on thin, spindley legs. Knock out the legs and the main bulk of... Continue reading

“FREE” says the sign pinned to the telephone pole in front of our house. And as we put out items, they usually disappear within a few hours. It’s been a fascinating aspect of living where we do in Keene, New Hampshire. We live on a fairly busy cross street, and so a good number of people are driving by. And they do stop and take the stuff we put on the street. All of it. Maybe it is part of being a college town. Maybe it is the huge number of people we see going to yard sales. Maybe it... Continue reading

I woke up this morning frustrated that I simply haven’t been writing across my various sites. In theory I am a “writer”, but I haven’t been writing! And as I wrote in My 3 Words for 2018: “because if I... Continue reading

If any of you will be at WordCamp Europe 2018 this week in Belgrade, Serbia, please do say hello. I'll be there starting this afternoon and am greatly looking forward to learning from many of the people involved deeply in... Continue reading

Continuing the tradition I started back in 2010 (see past years), here are three words that describe themes I intend to focus on this year. They aren't "resolutions" as much as areas of activity. "Themes" is a good way to think about them. HEALTH Carrying this one over from last year... because sadly not a great amount has changed over the past 12 months. I have let my weight creep up to where I am about 30 pounds over where I should be (and where I was back in 2011). I haven't been exercising. I have some dental issues to... Continue reading

Can I publish one podcast episode each day for the month of November? That's the premise of "National Podcast Post Month" or "NaPodPoMo". Similar to the idea of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), where writers sign up to write a... Continue reading

Facebook truly DESPISES Snapchat! As documented in a blog post today, Facebook has now added "Stories" to their main mobile apps. Just like Snapchat, these stories: expire after 24 hours can be either images or videos have all sorts of... Continue reading

In one picture, this comic from xkcd nails the very sad state of fragmentation with our messaging systems today. The text says: I have a hard time keeping track of which contacts use which chat systems. And that is our... Continue reading

For those of us experimenting with "360-degree photos", last week's announcement of Jetpack 4.5 had a hidden but awesome feature: you can use a shortcode to embed your 360 photo or video into ANY WordPress site (that uses the Jetpack... Continue reading

Yesterday I had an incredibly fun experience starting off 2017 - and now you can share in that: For Immediate Release (FIR) episode #68 is available for listening or download at: http://firpodcastnetwork.com/fir-68-us-actually-say/ Host Shel Holtz (in the big picture above)... Continue reading

Continuing the tradition I started back in 2010 (see past years), here are three words that describe themes I intend to focus on this year. They aren't "resolutions" as much as areas of activity. "Themes" is a good way to think about them. HEALTH I have let my weight creep up to where I am about 30 pounds over where I should be (and where I was back in 2011). I haven't been exercising. I have some dental issues to take care of. My last physical exam was... (I'm not sure... but I don't think I've ever met the doctor... Continue reading

Will "Facebook Live Audio" be good for podcasters? Will it help us engage with our audiences? Will it compete with SoundCloud and other similar platforms? Or will it pull people away from traditional podcasts to keep people within Facebook's shiny... Continue reading

Ten years ago today, on December 18, 2006, I launched this blog with a very short 1-paragraph post: Welcome to Disruptive Telephony! For a number of years, I have been blogging about VoIP as part of my personal blog, "Blog.DanYork.com".... Continue reading

Today on CyberMonday you can buy “Seven Deadliest Unified Communications Attacks” and hundreds of other ebooks and videos from O’Reilly and associated publishers at a discount of 50% off or more. Simply go to: http://oreil.ly/CyberMonday16 and start shopping. All you do is enter “CYBER16” as the promotion code when checking... Continue reading

Apparently seeking to keep up with Snapchat's Snapcodes and Facebook's Messenger Codes, Twitter has launched QR codes in at least the iOS app. Here are two examples of how the codes look for me (it seems to change color each... Continue reading

... we will be a nation with a massive divide, no matter who wins. A nation with a huge difference between the rural and the urban... between those who have done well in the new economy... and those who have been left behind. No matter who wins, our next task as a nation will be to figure out how to rebuild the connections between us. Can we perhaps start by being more civil to each other? To respecting our differences? Can each of us try to treat others more kindly? I'd like to think so... but I'm not so sure.... Continue reading

Do you want to understand why we love living in Keene, New Hampshire, and the surrounding "Monadnock Region"? This video taken from a drone shows the beauty of our area (and it also really makes me want to buy a drone with a video camera!) Kudos to the folks at the Monadnock Shopper News for creating this beautiful video. P.S. Our area is called the "Monadnock Region" because our tallest mountain is named Mount Monadnock. Continue reading

Today was a CRAZY day of curling! It began at 9:00am when our 7-year-old took to the ice at Petersham Curling Club (PCC) for her first day as a member of the "Little Rocks" youth program (ages 7-12). It ended with me going on the ice back at PCC at 8:15pm to play in the Mixed League (men and women) until after 10:00pm. In between those times, our 14-year-old daughter was up in the Toronto, Canada, area playing with her team against 15 other highly competitive Canadian and US teams. Her team had two games - 11:00am and 5:00pm -... Continue reading

Today is the day! Every year on November 1 some number of writers across the world challenge themselves to write EVERY SINGLE DAY in November. Some amazingly choose to focus on writing a novel. They go the "NaNoWriMo" route, a.k.a.... Continue reading

Want to learn the latest about WebRTC inside of Firefox? Nils Ohlmeier from Mozilla sat down for an interview at the IIT RTC Conference last week with Mark Fletcher of the Avaya Podcast Network. I found it quite a useful... Continue reading