Every Monday morning at 7:10 am, I am a guest contributor on CHOM 97.7 FM radio broadcasting out of Montreal (home base). It’s not a long segment – about 5 to 10 minutes every week – about everything that is happening in the world of technology and digital media. The good folks at CHOM 97.7 FM are posting these segments weekly to SoundCloud, if you’re interested in hearing more of me blathering away. I’m really excited about this opportunity, because this is the radio station that I grew up on listening to, and it really is a fun treat to be invited to the Mornings Rock with Terry and Heather B. morning show. The segment is called, CTRL ALT Delete with Mitch Joel.

This week we discussed: 

• How many old computers do you have lying around? Well, now you can install a free piece of software called CloudReady that’s based on Google‘s lightweight Web-centric Chrome operating system. Second life for that old computer? You bet! Great ideas for schools and groups to help those in need? Yes!
• One story that I can’t get over is how Snapchat turned down a $3  billion dollar acquisition offer from Facebook back in 2013. Now, as Facebook amps up on videos – and as videos become the predominant stuff that we share – we find Snapchat is rocking in video views. This week it was announced that Snapchat has caught up to Facebook in terms of video views. We toss around the word ‘billions’ now like it’s normal. It’s not. Whether you’re talking about money, users or even views. A billion is a lot of numbers! Snapchat’s video traffic is now at 8 billion daily video views. That’s more than five times where it was a year ago. That’s now at par with Facebook. Imagine if that Snapchat/Facebook deal had gone through? These numbers are just staggering. 
• Have you seen the ads on Instagram? Do you like them? Facebook owns Instagram, and it looks like it’s time for that multi-billion dollar acquisition to spit back some cash. So, bring forth the ads. Imagine this: 200,000 advertisers in five months. That’s a “wow!” To make this happen, Instagram opened its ads to 200 markets, established dozens of marketing-vendor partnerships, introduced longer-form video ads and carousel ads, and expanded its action-based ad options such as app-install ads, “Shop Now” and “Learn More” buttons. The formats have attracted big brand names.
• App of the week: Doctr.

Listen here…