Monthly Archives: February 2009

TokBox

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
6

Tokbox is a free service that lets you talk with your friends over live video. Here’s how it works: you sign up and they give you a link. When you want to talk with anyone, just give them the link – they click and you chat.

Now out of the many ways that anyone can video chat these days why would you choose Tokbox? There is iChat, Gchat, Skype, etc… They all have video. I was introduced to Tokbox and impressed by Tokbox by my friend Rob Blatt. He was showing me how it works and we did a quick video conference call with 6 people! And the video was clear and the sound wasn’t delayed!

Needless to say I was amazed! Tokbox has a bunch of interesting features and it is a pretty new service so I expect it to grow a lot. One of my main complaints about it is the sketch factor. Early on I did not update my privacy settings and I got a video chat request from someone I did not know who just wanted to chat with me.

I wasn’t really ok with that. But once I updated my privacy settings everything was all good.

Tokbox also has twitter integration so that you can send out a tweet if you are on a public conference call you want people to be able to join in on.

There are a few different things you can embed with Tokbox. You can embed video chat right on your website or blog, or embed a video mail box where people can leave you video messages on Tokbox. So check it out and let me know what you think! You can also add me as a friend on Tokbox here.

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a new video

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
5

FINALLY!!! I made a new video blog!

I know I have been away from video blogging for a while, but I am back! For all of my new followers on twitter, tumblr, and everywhere else, hi! This is me!

In the begining I mentioned Chris Brogan, he is awesome, check him out!

Also you can check out my Tumblr for more random stuff.

Keep checking back here for more video blogs in the future!

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Starting a new blog

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
2

Over the years I have started a number of new blogs for myself. Sometimes I just wanted a change, and sometimes it’s just to try out a new blogging platform. This year I had the idea to start a community blogging project and that was a whole new adventure.

This week I had the opportunity to help my mother set up her first blog and there was a lot that went into it. My mother has always wanted to write, and with five kids she sure has a lot to write about. But that wasn’t the main reason that my mother wanted to join the mommy blogging craze. My youngest brother Philip is 10 years old and he is a special needs child. Seeing the power of the internet through me, she decided that blogging about Philip’s condition might help her find other mothers who’s children have similar symptoms.

I did some research to see how many blogs there were on this subject already. I found a lot of mom’s with children that had Autism, but Philip’s condition is different. Next we had to decide what blogging platform my mom would use. I decided that she should use wordpress.com because that would teach her how to use one of the most powerful blogging platforms out there.

Setting up the site was very easy to get up and running. The hard part came when we needed to choose a theme for the blog and tweak it to look the way we wanted. This included getting the sidebar widgets in order and setting up some extra accounts like a flickr and vimeo account so that my mom could post photos and videos of Philip.

Twitter integration is a must for any blogger. My mother already had a twitter, but writing this blog will definitely give her her own community to interact with. She can find other moms in similar situations and create her own community.

Right now the blog is still a work in progress and I have found some differences working on her blog using wordpress.com than my blog which uses hosted wordpress, but I think we will be able to work it out.

I have never really blogged about my family because it wasn’t my niche. Yes this is a personal blog, but I focus on talking about technology and social media because that is what I love. I hope that my mom will be able to find or create a community online that will support her as my brother grows up and I will be here to help her every step of the way.

You can check out her blog A Life Delayed and meet Philip.

Let me know if you know any great mommy bloggers that I should be reading of following on twitter.

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Getting to SXSW 2009

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
7

It has been a long year for Random Sarah. I joined twitter, started a new blog, started video blogging, started a video podcast, created a community blog project, met a ton of people….man I’m tired already. But I had one goal when I started all this and that was to make it to SXSW interactive in 2009. I know it sounds like a strange goal, but I figured if I could only attend one conference all year I would pick that one.

The plan was pretty simple: Find a company that needed help during SXSWi and work for them for the week in exchange for a conference pass and accommodations. It was a plan that I had seen many other people execute before so it didn’t seem to difficult to me. However, over the last few months it has become very clear that this year we are dealing with SXSW recession edition.  More and more, companies didn’t have the same big budget for conferences that they once had. They were going to try and get by with as little as possible. And in this economy who can blame them.

But I still have a problem: I have a plane ticket to Austin and no conference pass. I am planning on shooting a few episodes of my show What’s it all about: Web 2.0 at SXSW but this all requires a sponsorship that I don’t have. So, I have come up with a new SXSW recession plan. I will be there for all 5 days of the conference. So I am looking for 5 Companies who would like me to represent their brand during the conference. (This idea was totally inspired by Girl in your shirt and I Wear Your Shirt)

The plan is simple: Each day I will wear the shirt of a different company. On your day I will be required to wear your shirt all around the expo and to any events I attend that evening. You would send me a company shirt along with something about your company that I would tell people every time they asked me about my shirt. I will be your active brand ambassador for the day. In addition to talking about your company, I will wear the shirt on my show that will be seen by many more people than just people physically in Austin attending SXSW. Your company will be the sponsor of that episode. All of this would only cost you $150 for the day! Seriously, I know you have $150 in your budget to sponsor a totally deserving blogger to go to SXSW!

UPDATE: In addition to having me wear your shirt and talk about the company for a day, and a sponsor spot on What’s it all about: Web 2.0, I will blog about your company before SXSW in a post about my SXSW Sponsors, and a post after SXSW, thanking my sponsors with links to all the photos, and videos taken of me during the conference. You will also get ad space on Random Sarah for the month of March. (125×125)

Why should your company do this? That’s easy! Because it would cost you a lot less than paying for my whole pass and hotel stay, and you get a up and comming girl in the world of social media to talk about your company all day. This is especially great for companies that may not have the budget to attend SXSWi this year. I will attend for you!

If you are looking for more information about me you can check out the rest of Random Sarah which is my personal blog, including my old video blogs. Check me out on Twitter and Tumblr. And check out my old episodes of What’s it all about: Web 2.0

Please contact me if your company is interested in me being your brand ambassador for the day.

Related links:

Want a brand ambassador for SXSW, meet Sarah (Sanford Dickert, Social Engineer)