Random Sarah » 2009

Geek Gift Guide 2009

Sarah Cooley — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:27:04 +0000

Last year I put together my first Geek Gift Guide. Take a look since most of those gifts would still make great gifts for the geeks on your list. But here is my latest list of perfect gifts for the geek in your life, or the geek in you.

Paper product: Action Method

Price: $5-$15

As much as I love my laptop, I don’t use it to take notes in every little meeting I am in. What I love are Action Method notebooks. The Action Book was designed by the Behance team and is based on the Action Method. The four distinct zones on each page provide a flexible template to get the most out of meetings and everyday brainstorm sessions. Each page of the notebook is divided up into 4 sections.

Capture Action steps, relentlessly. During a brainstorm/meeting or on the run, ideas can come and go unless they are captured as action steps.
Tend to your Backburner. Keep a “Backburner” to catch ideas that may someday become actions. Whether it is an idea for the future or some small errand you want to remember, put it in the backburner and then forget about it.
Think beyond lines and boxes. The dot matrix on the front and back of each page serves as a subtle guide for your notations and sketches.
Preparation and Focus Items. Plan for meetings beforehand and be sure to address your focus items.

The Action Method was designed to help us push projects forward by organizing our ideas and focusing on action steps. The Action Book is used by leading creatives in the agency/advertising world as well as at top design studios and innovative companies across industries. The 2008 TED Conference also featured a limited edition TED Action Book to help participants make ideas happen.

Artwork: DNA Portraits

Price: Starting at $199

The perfect gift of original art that no one could ever replicate! I love these portraits because they are simple and modern and yet would fit in almost any home setting. Here’s how it works.

Go to their e-store to begin customizing your art piece.
Order your complete DNA collection kit.
Collect a cheek cell swab using the swab they provide. It’s painless & effortless.
Send the sample back to them and take care of the rest.

If you are giving the artwork as a gift, when placing your order simply select “this is a gift” instead of selecting a color. Then the person who is receiving the gift will get the DNA kit in a nice metal presentation box.

Gadget: Magic Mouse

Price: $69

It wouldn’t be me if there weren’t an Apple product on this list. The Magic Mouse is the worldâ€™s first Multi-Touch mouse. Need I say more! It’s the perfect gift for anyone with a Mac who uses a mouse. It’s a great upgrade to any computer. It will change the way you use a mouse.

Apple Gift Cards are always good too.

Organization: Grid-It

Price: $22

Every geek has a laptop bag, or a back pack, or something that they keep all of their gadgets in. But the hardest thing is not organizing your gadgets, it’s organizing all the wires, chargers, and other accessories that you have for them.

The Grid-It organization system is a unique weave of rubberized elastic bands made specifically to hold personal objects firmly in place. Designed to provide endless configurations of digital devices and personal effects. Slim design and conveniently sized for your current laptop bag or travel case, lets you easily find what you need. It also has a rear zippered pocket for additional storage.

I hope you enjoyed my little gift guide. And keep in mind that geeks aren’t always just about gadgets, we appreciate good design and clean lines, there are food geeks, and fashion geeks, tea geeks, all kinds.

Take a look at what I got Drew for his birthday. It’s a print by an Etsy artist from Drew’s favorite movie Say Anything. It was the perfect gift. Not the most expensive, not the most “geeky” but just right.

So pay attention to the geek that you are shopping for, many times the best choice is the one you wouldn’t expect, the one that comes from the heart.

I hope you find the right gift for your geek this holiday season.

Let me know what you are shopping for in the comments.

update on my life

Sarah Cooley — Fri, 01 May 2009 18:41:48 +0000

The Thunder Cruise was a lot of fun, and I will have more on those contest details soon.

LaidOffCampNYC is today (registration is closed, sorry)

BarCampNYC4 is Saturday, May 30, 2009 - Sunday, May 31, 2009 (It’s free so please come!)

Internet Week in NYC is June 1st- June 8th 2009 (when it gets closer I will post my full event schedule for that week)

140 Characters Conference (I’m a part of the ‘cast of 140 characters’) is June 16th – June 17th 2009

Check out the new What’s it all About episodes from SXSW

SXSW update

Sarah Cooley — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:24:05 +0000

A lot has been going on here in Austin at SXSW. I had some video footage for the blog but as you might have heard on twitter, my flip mino was stolen and all the content that was on there is now gone.

I didn’t bring a small still camera with me (which I regret) but as photos that were taken at SXSW show up around the web I will post them here.

In addition to doing a ton of interviews for What’s it all about, I also was interviewed a number of times for a few different things. As those videos show up I will post them here as well.

SXSW 2009 Day 1

Sarah Cooley — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 20:17:28 +0000

Yesterday was my first day here at SXSW, it was a crazy day. Between the long line to get my badge and running around trying to get the lay of the convention center here in Austin it was crazy.

Yesterday and today have been a day full of meeting online friends IRL (in real life). I finally met @heyitsrachel, @djsteen, @jakemarsh, @ohdoctah, and tons of others. I also caught up with some old friends @dingman, @ajv, @garyvee, @chrisbrogan and others.

We will be taping the show on sunday and monday and I am really excited. Keep checking back here for updates

What’s it all about is heading to SXSW

Sarah Cooley — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 23:58:22 +0000

What’s it all About is going to SXSW interactive! I know you guys already knew that I was going and you know how excited I am, but I get to go and tape episodes of the show down there!

We are currently looking for companies to interview at SXSW and we will also be doing some interviews “man on the street” style as well as talking to a few of our favorite geeks about their favorite web tools. If you will be at SXSW and would like to be on the show, or just want to know where we will be and what we will be up to, please drop us a line at sxsw@whatsitallabout.tv

36 Predictions for 2009 in Media / Tech / Pop

Sarah Cooley — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 20:44:11 +0000

this is a reblog via fimoculous:

So here we are again — playing Nostradamus in media, technology, and pop culture — with 36 predictions for 2009:

1. Hatahs: 4chan digitally antagonizes an entire race of people into self-inflicted genocide.

2. Facebook: By the middle of summer, you realize that you’re logging into most websites via Facebook Connect. You get a creepy feeling in your gut about this, but it’s so damn convenient.

3. Politics: After a freak caribou attack injures Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Sarah Palin joins The View.

4. Newspapers: At least three major daily newspapers cease to exist. The most likely members of the carnage: the Denver Rocky Mountain News, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

5. Yahoo: Fuck it, Lycos buys it.

6. Twitter I: Facebook finally buys Twitter, but only after a price war with Google ramps it up to a ridiculous nine-figure valuation. Unsurprisingly, this is Twitter’s big plan “to make money.”

7. Twitter II: But seriously, just like those stories in 2001 about people who [shock!] make a living off of blogs, the “Twitter professional” will somehow become a reality.

8. Twitter III: A major news event happens that no one live twitters. NYT writes three stories (Styles, Tech, and Media) about this phenomena, quickly dubbed “Twitter Shock.”

9. Starbucks: After trying everything else imaginable, they introduce a new “buffet” option, which is a surprise hit.

10. Daughter Moguls: In the most convoluted assassination plot ever devised, Christie Hefner, Shari Redstone, and Elisabeth Murdoch join forces to commit triple patricide. Vanity Fair dedicates three eInk covers to the incident, with heads that morph from father to daughter.

11. Magazines I: Some rich kid on the west coast launches a magazine called Charticles, which consists only of… yeah. Choire Sicha commits suicide in his St. Mark’s apartment by paper cutting himself to death with the debut issue.

12. Magazines II: Monocle raises its newsstand price to $1295.00.

13. Magazines III: Doy, of course Portfolio goes under. The final cover story is mysteriously about cotton gin inventor Eli Whitney.

14. Gossip Girl: In the Christmas ’09 episode, Chuck and Blair finally fuck again. The recession ends.

15. Subscriptions: Against all seeming rationality, several new online subscription publications show up on the scene.

16. Where The Wild Things Are: You know what? The movie actually does suck. Gen X icons Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers are pilloried by a millennials who claim old people just don’t get it. They’re kinda right.

17. New York Times: After Brian Stelter notices that David Carr has refriended Jayson Blair on Facebook, the New York Times asks Carr to take a drug test. Upon failing, he returns to Minneapolis to run City Pages, which ends up being the last remaining alt-weekly at Village Voice Media.

18. Online Video: Something’s gotta give. Two of the “big” three — Revision3, ON Networks, Next New Networks — cease to exist by the end of the year. And when 23/6 and Funny Or Die expire on the same day, Alley Insider’s headline is “Funny Or Dead In 24/7.” Normal people have no idea what any of these things are.

19. Terrestrial Video: Something’s gotta give. One of the “big” five is morphed into a cable outlet.

20. Daily Beast: Tina Brown uses her consulting role at HBO to pitch a reality series about her own website. No one thinks it will go into development, but then Aaron Sorkin and Mark Burnett sign on. Julia Allison and Arianna Huffington are super pissed.

21. Tina Fey: First woman knighted. Now Oprah’s pissed too.

22. Google: They do a lot of stuff that no one expects, but the surprise application of the year is some sort of mashup between three core Google products: Reader, Chrome, and Docs. Oh, and maybe Android, just to make this pshit sci-fi.

23. FriendFeed: Not only does your mom still has no fucking idea what it is, but your friends don’t either.

24. Publishing: 49 books are published that chronicle the end of publishing.

25. Music: Proving that fake stuff always wins, Lonely Island’s album debuts platinum — the only album to do so this year.

26. Lara Logan: Dueling February covers of Parenting and Playboy.

27. Gawker Media: Nick Denton predicts armageddon, using copious Excel graphs to elucidate his point.

28. Mad Men: After negotiations break down with AMC, a rumor floats that a movie is in the works. It is eventually released in 2012 on the same day as the Arrested Development movie.

29. Diablo Cody: Released in September, Jennifer’s Body becomes the first young adult movie since Heathers and Clueless that resonates with grown-ups. While you try very hard to think of a new reason to hate her, Diablo casts Sasha Grey in her next film. Backlash-to-the-backlash-to-the-backlash-to-the-backlash ensues.

30. Words: Webster’s Dictionary names undershare word of the year.

31. Online Media: Trying to take advantage of cheap labor, hundreds of “me too” small startup publications launch. They will call themselves “online magazines,” but they will be blogs.

32. Microsoft: They! Will! Suprise! You! (Actually, no they won’t. You hear this every year. Their online version of Office will be begrudgingly cool, but it will have one severe flaw that renders it unusable.)

33. Apple: After Biz Week’s “Is The Innovation Over?” story appears, Steve Jobs retires at the end of the year, surprisingly citing health reasons.

34. Education: 37 percent of the people you know go back to grad school.

35. Digg: It does not get bought and Kevin Rose does not go on a date with Jennifer Aniston. Every boy in the Valley weeps at a shared realization: their sense of worth is over-valued.

36. Rupert Murdoch: He dies in a freak yacht accident. Sumner Redstone, Padma Lakshmi, Barry Diller, David Geffen, Rachel Sklar, Hoobastank, and Shaquille O’Neill are also on board, but all survive. Foul play is suspected, and an investigation reminiscent of the board game Clue ensues. A rumor spreads that Murdoch’s cryogenically frozen brain is in an Anaheim basement next to Walt Disney’s frontal lobe and the Arc of the Covenant. Michael Wolff sells his next book, The Brain Eaters, for $10 million. 17 people buy it; 4 read it.

Goals for 2009

Sarah Cooley — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 01:42:35 +0000

So the first year of Random Sarah has come to an end. But I can only look forward to the future with great joy and high expectations for myself. So I thought I would post some of my goals for the upcoming year in hopes that all of you might be able to keep me on track with my goals.
But first a look back at Random Sarah in 2008

here is one of my favorite early videos posted on April 14th

then on August 1st, this happened!

and everything changed!

here are some of my favorite posts from this year:

Generation Wh-Y does it matter?

A Vegetarian’s Favorite Burgers

Hacked my iPhone 3G

The State of the Web: Summer 2008