Happy New Year 2009

Wishing you a Happy New Year 2009 from your friends at Upic Solutions!

Using technology to track Santa tonight

Growing up in the 1960's, tracking Santa's progress from the North Pole involved watching the Channel 10 TV news with breathless updates from the weather reporter...usually involving a Santa cutout on the national weather map.

In the 1980's when my son was young, the weather reporters used their new (pre-Doppler) radar setups and would scare us with the news that Santa was just across the river, so we had to scurry to bed fast before he got to our house.

Now, thanks to Google, tracking Santa is high tech with Norad Santa.

With Google Maps for mobile, anyone can keep tabs on him from their mobile phones (just activate GMM and search for "norad santa").

You can also receive updates from "Bitz the Elf" on Twitter by following @noradsanta.

And of course, be sure to visit www.noradsanta.org starting December 24th at 6:00 am EST when Santa's journey begins.

Google search made easy

As loyal members of Upic's blog community, you are among the most tech savvy staff at your United Way.

Now, just in time for the holiday shopping season comes a free service designed to assist your friends/family harness the power of Google for their Internet searches.

"Let me Google that for you" is the latest tool to help your friends. Just enter their search item and the site produces a link that you can send back to your friend showing them step by step how to find it on Google.

This site is "for all of those people that find it more convenient to bother you with their question rather than google it for themselves".

Try it and prepare to smile. Now was that so hard?

Credit: CNET

Live United Flash Mob

What would you do if you saw people taking off their clothes in a busy train station? On November 13th, a "flash mob" from United Way of America struck Union Station in Washington DC for the Live United campaign. Below are the original PSA and a passerby video shot and posted on "You Tube". Very interesting concept to get the community involved. Check out the videos and the crowd reaction.

PSA:


Passerby video:

60,000 hits and growing

Thanks to you, Upic Solutions website (http://www.upicsolutions.org/) continues to grow in popularity. By the end of October, we'll exceed 60,000 hits for the year (compared to 40,000 in 2007 and 24,000 in 2006).

An October survey of our website visitors say that 90% have been able to meet their objectives in visiting our site. Top rated objectives include: checking messages/working remotely, obtaining company information and attending training events. We appreciate your feedback and your support of our website.

Since it's the end of October, let's check out a fun 3 minute Halloween video (rated G) from our friends at Common Craft. Everyone should know how to spot a Zombie, especially when Halloween is on a weekend! Now that's a hit everyone can enjoy.

Live United thank you video

The Live United thank you video is now available on You Tube. It needs something. Maybe a laundry detergent product placement (Tide, anyone)?

Top 10 computer passwords

Friends don't let friends use dumb passwords. So, please, PLEASE make sure you avoid using one of Top 10 Computer Passwords for your Upic network sign-in.

It won't take a rocket scientist to guess that "letmein" or "qwerty" or "123456" are in the top 10 computer password lists. But you may be surprised what else makes the list (from the UK).

And no, "2hot4u" did not make the list in England.