Ada's Sisters Podcast

All kinds of politically motivated boycotts going on this week are being driven over social media. From the #BAYcott over Ivanka Trump's fashion line to Starbucks because the CEO said he was going to hire refugees. Political messages are all the rage in digital, just take a look at the open letter from the Canadian Tech Community about diversity being our strength. Malala is (not surprisingly) against the refugee ban, and we talk about a new social network called Heartmob that seeks to end online harassment. And maybe our favourite positive response to Trump this week: women responding online (with photos) to his demand that female staff dress like women.

If you've ever wanted to fly you're going to love the ICAROS flying fitness machine. You're not going to love hearing that the Canadian Revenue Agency is using big data to find cheaters. Actually, we're not surprised. But you know what did surprise us? This article about how Gen Z uses their mobiles and this new HATER app. Crazy what we'll do to find Mr. Right. Speaking of crazy, we need to talk about the hate tweets against Premiere Wynn. But don't worry, we've got a fun, tool tip this week from Google Maps.

Perhaps it was eventual for a generation who live their entire lives online but a young girl committed suicide on live on Live.me, and now, it seems impossible to remove from the internet. Macs, and gmail are being targeted by malware and hackers this week, and The Washington Post and Toronto Star need some editorial aide. Advances in breast pump technology are important, but at what price? And speaking of price, why is it that only two women made the list of 100 top paid CEOs in Canada?

What would you do if you discovered your spouse was a troll? Well, there's a woman on Reddit is going through it live. Speaking of going through things. You should read Reductress efforts to make fun of people who make fun of rape. Sometimes sarcasm is all you've got. That toolbox is full of possibilities: Slate used another tool to combat Fake News, and Emmy Rossum employed basic human rights in negotiating her salary. And we need something good to talk about, how about Vicki Saunders, CEO of SheEo and the awesomeness that is Rogue One (despite the alt-Jedi campaigning against it). Wayne MacPhail pops in with a tooltip about his new AirPods.

Have you finished your holiday shopping yet? If you're ordering clothes online, you may want to check out what Canada Post is doing in Vancouver. And as part of another smart move in Canada, the entire internet will be archived here to protect it from the U.S. President Elect. Interesting times, including the fact that Stephani Renae Lawson is going to jail for creating a fake Facebook account to frame her ex. She gives all the women legitimately being harassed online a bad name. The internet archive needs to be protected as well, from President-Elect Trump. And in other news… the results of the annual Ellevate Impact Survey are here so let's talk about the latest research about professional women in the workplace. While we're on the subject of women's careers, we must mention the good work HoHoTO has been doing and our tooltip this week is for BusyBot!

A county council in England has come up with a clever and discreet way of combatting sexual violence and abuse and we'll tell you about THESKIMM, who registered almost a hundred thousand women to vote in the latest U.S. election. Mila Kunis' wrote an article in A Plus about more sexism in Hollywood and Toronto's Marie Henein's wrote an opinion piece in The Globe and Mail in support of Hillary Clinton. MentorWalk has launched in Australia (and we wish it would come here) and don't forget to register for Apple's free 'Hour of Code' December 5th to 11th!

This morning (Friday, November 11) we learned about the sudden passing of our friend and a true podcaster, Bob Goyetche. This episode of Ada's Sisters is dedicated to a good man and his wonderful family, especially his wife Cathy and son Simon. Bob was a community builder and one of the co-founders of the Canadian podcasting community. He and Mark Blevis launched the Podcasters Across Borders (PAB) and co-hosted the Canadian Podcast Buffet podcast showcasing Canadian podcasters and introducing new podcasts to listeners. He volunteered countless hours sharing his knowledge with other podcasters helping them learn the technology. Some of his friends also credit him with bridging the language gap and bringing the francophone and anglophone podcasting and early adopter social media community together in Quebec. Thanks to the community members who shared their thoughts with us for this special episode: C.C. Chapman, Ken Bole, Donna Papacosta, John Meadows, Whitney Hoffman... We apologize to anyone expecting o

We have two worrying gender equality stories to talk about this week: the World Economic Forum says the disparity between women and men and how much they get paid WILL be solved…. in about 170 years. And you know who can really move that process along? The all male standing committee on finance. Yup. This might be why it's going to take two lifetimes to make a change. At least there's good news coming from Hollywood: Season 2 of Jessica Jones is supposedly going to be directed by a roster of amazing female directors. And we have to tell you about a crowdfunding campaign created by a Canadian woman who wants to make sure homeless women have access to pads and tampons. And finally, it's a weird coincidence, we are both looking for replacements for our MacBooks, and it seems, so are half our friends on Facebook.

We're pleased to announce that despite all the smear campaign nonsense going on right now, we haven't included any in this episode. Which doesn't mean we won't be discussing other nonsense, including a warning about Facebook author pages from author, Lauren Layne In other bad news stories, Motherboard recently reported that tech leaders, including Elon Musk and Tim Cook, aren't following women on Twitter. But thankfully entrepreneur Mark Cuban says he has a plan to make Silicon Valley more woman-friendly A group of tech leaders in Canada including the chief exec of Shopify, are working with Ladies Learning Code to expand their efforts nationally and this week we have two tool tips: The Globe and Mail has launched "GloBot" - a bot developed to share the Globe's U.S. election news on Facebook Messenger. For those of us wanting to go cashless, we now have a Bitcoin ATM in Toronto and our hashtag this week is – #WhataDoctorLooksLike –  in response to Delta flight attendants who in an emer

Fox newscaster Brit Hume had the Internet in an uproar after the first presidential debate, and we want to make sure you see Outdoor Research's response to GQ's sexist climbing story. John Greathouse's article about women in tech in the Wall Street Journal has us wondering if we're all timewarped back to the 1950's. This week's tool tip comes from Kim Vallée — it's an app for kids called Swift Playgrounds and our hashtag this week is #podcastday for International Podcast Day. And on a lighter note, we'll end with a rendition of a song we've come to love, as sung by our friend Bob LeDrew.

Kristen Bell's Pinksourcing video is going viral for all the right reasons and there's an Austrian teen suing her parents for posting her childhood pics on Facebook. Graphic designer Katherine Young's cover take on Girls' Life magazine is perfect and we all need to do our best to influence real change in that medium, kind of like 16 year old Natalie Hampton, who has created the "Sit With Us" app to counter bullying in the school cafeterias. Jory Des Jardins (founder of BlogHer) has launched The Scale Collective - a new conference aimed at women tech founders and our trending hashtag for this week is #TogetherToEndMaleGuardianship, we'll tell you why. Finally, we've got a tooltip about a weapon (surprise!)

Another awesome return-ship program, this time including some big name companies like IBM. Our hashtag this week is about supporting mental health because #ItsOkToTalk. Jim Hines over on Gizmodo wrote an article about sexual harassment in Sci Fi that we think is worth your attention. Our friend Kim Vallee tagged us on a Forbes article featuring a top 11 list of things women can do to get ahead - as preached by Cindy Gallop of MakeLovenotPorn fame.

BLAB and Google Hangouts are going the way of MySpace, but Facebook Live is stepping into the vaccum with a new feature. The Olympics have wrapped up, and like everyone else, we think the ladies were the main story in Rio. From Penny  Oleksiak to Fu Yuanhui to Simone BILES, there is so much to talk about in changing the culture of reporting on women in sports. Sara Benincasa is maybe not a household name, but the comedian had a medium post response to fat-shaming that we think deserves some attention. As does the Lindsey Lohan video no one seems to be talking about - it was an assault, it was caught on camera, and for some reason, it's totally under the radar. And we wrap things up with Code Club Senegal, a brilliant project to get women in West Africa coding.  

Toronto's Parkdale neighbourhood now has free wi-fi blasting out there for anyone to use as part of a pilot project we really hope sparks a city-wide initiative. And who knew the ice-bucket challenge could actually amount to anything? Turns out, Eden did - the $100 million dollars raised by celebrities challenging each other led to some exciting breakthroughs in ALS research. We're loving the support Brie Larson is getting about her new role as Captain Marvel, especially after the opposite treatment of Leslie Jones and the rest of the Ghostbusters. But it's not all sunshine and lollipops at Ada's Sisters this week ... we have to tell you about the TTC app for harassment on the rails, and two trolls who deserved the backlash they are getting for their horrible posts.

We thought the UK's Metro story about Theresa May's husband was so on point it sang and are thrilled that Angela Lindow has won the first James Golick grant for women in Computology. We're 100% behind Twitter's lifetime ban on Milo Yiannopoulos for leading that hate campaign against Ghostbuster Leslie Jones. Two hashtags this week on that topic: #loveforlesliej and #TheFutureISFemale. Eden tells us why she's gone all-in on the Canva iPhone App and we'll talk about the brave images Shannen Doherty posted on Instagram tracking her battle against breast cancer.  

We love all these accounts and apps set up to track diversity - for example, the LedBetter, a web based database that shows you the representation of women in positions of power. Then we tell you about this new Spector tool - a Shazam for fonts. And we're eager to try out  Zencaster a new way to record Skype or Google Hangout and not at all eager to try out the BabyPod  an intravaginal bluetooth speaker. And Wayne MacPhail is back with another tooltip for an iPad app called Ulysses.

We love how the women of Google responded to sexist comments from shareholders - with LADY DAY - a day when we get to put the word "Lady" in front of all our titles. And on the topic of women responding to sexism, we get fully frontal with Samantha of Manchester's response to an unwelcome dick pic left as a result of her Facebook restaurant review. Hillary Clinton unveiled her technology platform for the U.S. presidential race. "Connectivity, education, and entrepreneurship" sound like ideas we can get behind, and on the topic of education and the end of the school year, we have some more education-based stories this week. Apple is launching a coding camp for kids in its stores this summer and the U.S. State Department and IREX got together to launch a A How-To Guide for Teachers for teaching Gender Equality in Education. Our tool tip is the Uber useful Uber Conference line.

It's been a bit of a depressing week for the ladies despite Hilary Clinton's landmark gains in the U.S. We don't understand why anyone is talking about how the next President of the United States looks, and we suggest that everyone stops and focuses on what really matters (economy, education, equality... pick one!) We simply can't avoid talking about the ridiculously light sentence given to the Stanford rapist, but we're going to give way more airtime to the two men who stopped the assault: Carl-Fredrik Arndt and Peter Jonsson. Heroes. Speaking of heroes, we're pretty impressed by five Aussie speakers who are boycotting conferences that don't make gender equality a priority. That's some real-life HeForShe work that we hope pays off, and if it does, maybe they can swing by Canada and talk to the all-male board of Tim Hortons, who voted NOT to add women to their stodgy old men's club. Finally, we're all over the hashtag #TryBeatingMeLightly which is in response to an insane law (in 2016!!!) advis

Something is going on over at BLAB, and we're not sure it is the smartest move. But a move we totally approve of is Girls Who Code's series of videos making fun of the totally erroneous idea that women aren't able to work with technology. Really, what can you say after that piece of awesomeness? Well, we have some thoughts on My.Flow - a bluetooth connected tampon that helps avoid leakage. No, seriously. Many thoughts. And Chewbacca Mom has had more than her 15 minutes in the sun, but we'd like to give her a shout-out for being kind of the best thing on the internet this week. We wrap up by throwing some light on Rayanne Thorn's terrifying article about a bartender trying to sexually assault her by putting something in her drink. Because it wasn't freaky enough to be a woman in a bar. Thanks for that.