Monthly Archives: November 2008

Wired Store

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
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Wired magazine has set up a store in New York City for the holidays on 15 W 18th Street in Chelsea. The store will be open from Nov. 21 through Dec. 28 so make sure to stop by if you’re in town before it closes. Also check out their list of events, there are some pretty interesting ones.

Last night I was at the store for an event with Alex Rigopulos, CEO of Harmonix. But I was much more interested in playing with all the gadgets. But there were more than gadgets in this store.

One of the most interesting things were two packages made by A & R. “Help I’ve cut myself” and “Help I have a headache”.

Help Remedies aim to solve simple health issues simply by stripping away the extraneous elements. The packaging is molded from recycled paper pulp and is compostable, and all Help’s products are packaged together at its upstate New York factory which employs adults with learning disabilities. The 500mg acetaminophen pills are as pure as possible, and without the dyes and coatings most brands are fond of using to pretty up meds. Acetaminophen doesn’t cause stomach problems the way aspirin and ibuprofen can. These next-generation bandages are made of hydrocolloid, the same material hospitals use to help wounds heal faster and reduce scarring. These strips are nearly invisible, and should stay on for several days. They are best for minor cuts and blisters. If all that wasn’t helpful enough, 5% of profits are returned to charities that help people without healthcare get healthcare.

But what I was most excited to play with was the Blackberry storm. I was very curious about the “Screen that clicks” But it is exactly what it sounds like. The touch screen can tell where your finger is but that will not select anything. Not until you actually press the screen down until it clicks will it be selected. The feel is much different than say and iPhone but I can see how some people will like it. I found the UI complicated but then again I am not a blackberry user so maybe it is more intuitive than I thought.

I didn’t get as much time to play with it as I would have liked. I hope to get my hands on one again soon so that I can do a full review. (hopefully with video)

I also got to play with Pleo, a chumby, Peak (the email only gadget) and many more. Check out all my photos from last night below.

www.flickr.com

Eye-Fi Card

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
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I first heard about Eye-Fi a while ago. I thought it was interesting but I didn’t jump on it for a few reasons. The main reason was that it was a SD card and my DSLR used CF cards. The other reason was that until recently I was never really a big flickr user. But the more I blog the more I find having my photos on twitter is a really easy way to add pictures of a blog post or add a URL to a twitter.

I love the idea of mobile blogging but when it comes time to add a picture from my iPhone to my blog post I just am not happy with the quality of the iPhone camera. The eye-fi would be perfect for this. As soon as you get to your home network the Eye-Fi goes right to work uploading all your photos, so before you know it, you have a flickr url and photos to add to your post. This is officially on my “I want” list. (along with a camera that uses SD cards of course)

Gmail adds themes

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
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So recently gmail added the ability for themes, and I have to say, the design geek in me is really happy. Most people who know me will know that I hate webmail. I don’t know why I hated it but I always preferred to use a desktop mail client so that I could have everything in one place.

But some of these gmail themes are so pretty I think I will start to use webmail more. So far so good.

Building a theme

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
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I have always wanted to design my own theme, while I love the random sarah theme now, I find from time to time I just get the itch for a redesign! Looking through the thousands of wordpress themes out there can be daunting, and if you have been reading random sarah for long enough you know what I went through when choosing a theme last time.

You will like a part of one, and a part of another one, and so on. You get to the point where you want to build it yourself (or in my case at least design what it will look like)

I cannot code for my life! This is a fact. But I consider myself to be a pretty good designer. So I wanted to know if it was possible for me to design what it looked like and how all the buttons would work, and someone else just code it for me. I have a few friends who are willing to help me out with this once the design is finished, so I started to build! You can watch the full evolution of the theme on flickr (I posted a link to the set below) I have been posting screen shots as I go along and getting feedback from my twitter peeps on how it looks.

The whole idea for the theme started with a set of free icons I found on Spoon Graphics of hand drawn icons for bloggers. I have seen a lot of hand drawn web design and it’s an aesthetic I like. So I decided to look around the web for some great blogs and find inspiration. Another important step was using iStockPhoto to get great art I could tear apart and use for the design. I got the background image and most of the other artwork from there. TIP: YOUR DESIGN WILL LOOK BETTER IF YOU SPEND A LITTLE MONEY!

So here is where I am so far, I would be happy to answer any questions about how I did this, it really wasn’t that hard. (and it’s not done yet!)

Generation Wh-Y Does it Matter?

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
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Yesterday I attended Jeff Pulver’s Social Media Jungle. With only a total of 50 people in attendance, SMJ08 quickly became the #1 trending topic on twitter. It was amazing to be in a room full of such influential people in our industry. Chris Brogan, Jeremy Epstein, Leslie Poston, Howard Greenstein, Dean Landsman, Jeffrey Sass, Nelly Yusupova, Brett Petersel, Oz Sultan, Steve Lubetkin, Jonathan Yarmis, Ben Grossman, Jamie Thompson, and Justin Oberman were the discussion leaders who talked about many different topics.

However one thing I noticed was that the term “Gen-Y” or “Millennials” came up a lot. This term of course refers to my generation, people who were born between 1982–2001. They are sometimes described as an “overachieving, over scheduled” generation. Many people will also sub-define this generation into the “MTV-generation” born from 1985-1990.

One of the reasons that these terms are used so much in social media is because of all the stats associated with this generation.

  • 97% own a computer
  • 97% have downloaded music and other media using peer-to-peer file sharing
  • 94% own a cell phone
  • 76% use instant messaging and social networking sites
  • 75% of college students have a Facebook profile and most of them check it daily.
  • 60% own some type of portable music and/or video device such as an iPod
  • 49% regularly download music and other media using peer-to-peer file sharing
  • 34% use websites as their primary source of news
  • 28% author a blog and 44% read blogs
  • 15% of IM users are logged on 24 hours a day/7 days a week
  • 8% have confessed to having an online gaming addiction at some point in their life

While I am sure all of this is true, I feel that as an industry we really need to stop categorizing our users into stereotypes. I am not a big person on terms and studies so the idea of categorizing all people born from one year to another as having the same habits, behaviors, etc, really upset me. Of course this is my personal belief and I’m am sure someone can argue the other side just as well, but I for one am so tired of hearing the “don’t put up drunk pictures on facebook” speech. (we know already, we aren’t stupid…well some of us are)

When I first started making videos and blogging a lot of my friends seemed worried. “What happens when you want to find a job, your employers are going to see this!” I answered, “I SURE HOPE SO!” What I do online speaks for me, but it speaks in a good way! I know that I have managed my digital life well and in a way that will only work to my advantage when I am being interviewed for a job.

I think in social media we should try and consider everything on a user-to-user basis, while you might not think that someone who is 50 wants to twitter, they might! What surprised me the most about all the talk of Gen-Yers yesterday was that I know so few people my age who are anxious to try new digital tools. The masses are happy with facebook and myspace! (I have no idea why) But maybe we should start to figure out a new term for people who use the tools that we use, cause I don’t think it has anything to do with age!

Yesterday one of the presenters was saying how he always says he is the oldest guy in social media and then he made a joke about how he still remembers his CompuServe ID. HELLO….I STILL REMEMBER MY COMPUSERVE ID! I have been using the internet for just as long, heck I still remember DOS prompts! We need to stop talking about age and start talking about the level of the user! Age is just a number.

That’s just my 2 cents!