Powerful Communication Podcast

canva.com is one of the most widely used online design tools in the world.

The Australian company launched in 2012 and has grown quickly over the last 10 years.

It lets you make graphics, presentations and videos simply and quickly - drag and drop - you don't need complex design skills.

Some people think that makes the designs look a bit repetitive and it's hard to create a truly original look in canva.

Many professionals will prefer tools like Adobe Photoshop…BUT with the amount of images many of us have to create quickly for social media, it can be extremely useful.

It has a very good free plan but the more advanced features cost around 8 pounds a month.

But - it's free if you're a non profit organisation. So - charities….this is well worth taking advantage of.

This next one frightens me a little bit.

Snapchat has bought a company based in Paris called NextMind which says it monitors brain activity to understand what you want to do when you're using a computing device.

So instead of clicking a button on a website with a mouse, or swiping with your finger, you could interact simply by thinking about what you want to do.

Facebook has been dabbling in something similar. Where will it all end up?

'Throwback Thursday' is an internet trend where people post pictures and video clips from years gone by on their social media feeds.

Lots of people take part from businesses to individuals and celebrities.

It can be fascinating to see how technology looked in years gone by, to relive memories or to cringe at some of the fashion choices.

Throwback Thursday also provides some escape from some of the negativity you'll find on the internet and one of my favourite accounts to look at for this sort of things is @oldUKcatalogues on Twitter which posts random selections of scans from the old catalogues.

One of the most popular images is the old Cadbury chocolate machine which took 2 pence pieces and dispensed miniature bars of chocolate.

There's also a selection of Matchbox cars from 1981.

Something a bit more up to date now - have you ever seen those GIF picture and video clips and wanted to create your own?

You can and it's easy.

Visit giphy.com that's GIPHY.com and you can upload pictures and video clips you've taken yourself and turn them into those short little animated clips that play automatically.

It's a great way to liven up your social media feeds.

I've got some new televisions to tell you about today, from LG.

The new G2 Gallery Edition id the premium model - these are OLED televisions with increased brightness on the previous model and wall mounts in the box. There's also an improved stand if you'd rather not mount them.

The new range brings down the weight and features a thinner bezel.

Sizes range from 55 inches all the way up to 97 inches.

If you need something a little smaller than the C2 Series might be more appropriate - the company is expecting it to do particularly well among gamers.

And later this year, LG will release two models of 8K television.

Which I'm sure would look amazing were it not for the fact that there really isn't much content made in 8K anyway.

There's a bit of fun happening on Twitter now as the platform launches its annual 'brand bracket' competition.

Who is your favourite brand on Twitter?

There's an American slant to it with brands like Wendys and Delta Airlines battling it out for votes.

But popular snack Pringles was getting talked about yesterday.

Check out #BestOfTweets to keep in touch with what's going on.

The head of Instagram has been giving more details about how Hashtags work on the platform and the impact they have on the number of people who see each post.

Adam Nosseri says Instagram's algorithm doesn't automatically favour hashtags and push them out to people - although there is evidence they did at one time - instead, he says they're used to categorise content and people interested in that subject matter will deliberately try to find it - resulting in increased reach.

Instagram allows 30 hashtags on each post although many users believe somewhere between 5 and 15 is the optimum number for the best results.

If you need help finding hashtags you could try a hashtag generator such as all-hashtag . Com

As social media gets bogged down every day by more noise, clutter and nasty stuff it pays to seek out the valuable communities.

Linkedin Groups, Clubhouse audio spaces and increasingly large scale WhatsApp groups and Zoom webinars are becoming valuable.

Many authors have WhatsApp groups you can join after reading their books, fans of particular TV shows are hosting Clubhouse or Facebook Messenger Rooms conversations after the broadcast and discord.com is another terrific platform for bringing people together where you can actually just talk to each other, in real time, instead of typing a message and posting it somewhere.

It's been a long-time coming but the new version of Apple's mobile operating system finally allows iPhone users to unlock their phones with Face ID while wearing a COVID protection mask.

The feature is included in iOS 15.4 which is available for the iPhone 12 and onwards.

The South By South West conference is taking place in Austin, Texas this week - it runs until Sunday.

It's the 35 annual event and while it has its roots in music and film, technology plays a big part in the discussions and showcases.

This year there's an entire Tech Industry track discussing everything from cryptocurrency and robots to voice technology and artificial intelligence.

Keep up with what's going on @sxsw on Instagram.

All things Ireland have been trending on social media over the last 24 hours with yesterday being St Patrick's Day.

Some of the most poignant coverage came from the Twitter account of the Ukrainian embassy in Dublin, sharing videos from the annual St Patrick's Day parade in the city which included the colours of the Ukrainian flag alongside the traditional green.

Accessibilty is essential in today's digital world.

If you have a website, have you considered if it's easy for people with visual impairments to access?

Have you used colours and fonts which are difficult to read? Or challenging language that might be hard for someone to understand if English isn't their first language?

Technology is incredible and screen reader software helps people who are blind or partially sighted people navigate their way around websites.

But that's only possible if the website itself has been properly set up.

www.rnib.org.uk has some advice on accessibility and both the UK and Scottish Governments have too.

Among the steps you can take to make your content more accessible is to be sure to include 'alt text' on any images you have on your website that means the screen reader software can tell the user what the picture is that they can't see and if you publish podcasts or videos you should generate transcripts and captions for them.

Devices themselves are also helping - many smartphones offer text to speech translation and automatic captions on any video or audio material played through the phone.

Chromebooks all have a built in screenreader called ChromeVox - access it by pressing CTL ALT Z, then close your eyes, and get some insight into what it's like to visit a website and have to rely on additional support to understand what's going on.

Digital has not been kind to bank giant TSB.

It blamed a duplicate payment error on its IT systems once again.

Thousands of customers were affected and found themselves paying for things twice.

Some were left with little or no money in their accounts leaving some stranded or unable to pay for goods at the shops.

After almost a whole day of uncertainty, TSB announced late in the afternoon that it would refund everyone affected overnight.

WWE is the latest big brand to get involved in NFTs or 'non fungible tokens'

Rapper Snoop Dogg is selling limited edition collectables through his ownership of Death Row Records and now the wrestling company is taking sign ups form people interested in their new NFT platform which is called 'Moonsault'.

And musicians - TikTok now has an easy way for you to upload your songs to its platform. Check out soundon.global for all the info.

This week is British Science Week so we thought we'd take a look at the impact of digital on science.

The first point that catches my eye is that British Science Week is in fact 10 days, which started on Friday and runs until this coming Sunday.

Keep in touch with all that's going on on Twitter @scienceweekUK and the official website at britishscienceweek.org

Your local schools, libraries, charities and businesses will have special events and activities for everyone to take part in - one of the most interesting discussions that caught my eye was some Open University research exploring what reading on screens does to our brains.

One of the key points is just how unnatural reading is - humans have only been able to read for about 6 thousand years and reading on screen has only become dominant in the last 20 years.

Scientists say the sheer volume of reading we do online is a major problem, because it encourages skimming rather than reading and that can change the circuitry in our brain to the point where we may lose the ability to understand more complex content and perhaps even the ability imagine.

Shopping on Twitter is now a thing as the social network makes further moves into its e commerce strategy.

2022 seems to be the year Amazon faces some tough competition with the social networks all wanting to make it easier for us to buy things from businesses using the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram.

Social commerce is the battle ground.

Twitter Shops is described as an 'experiment' on Twitter's official blog.

The feature is free and lets retailers choose up to 50 products to showcase. Only a handful of American businesses are able to run their shops right now but it'll likely expand.

And as other social networks try to take some of Amazon's e commerce revenue, Amazon is pushing into the broadcast audio space.

Amazon Amp is a standalone app that lets users create their own radio shows.

The company says its iPhone and invite only at the moment but features tens of millions of songs and some celebrities hosting their own shows.

Google tried something similar to this about 15 years ago and it failed, Amazon is having a good go at this but I'd predict long term the features in 'Amp' will simply become part of the Twitch live streaming platform.

And with others pushing in on the shopping space, could this be a case of Amazon spreading itself too thin and forgetting its core mission?