Tag Archives: sarah cooley

Geek Gift Guide 2010

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
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It’s that time of year again, time for my annual geek gift guide. 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. So the perfect gift for the geek on your list might be easier than you think. Now I’m warning you in advance, this years guide is a little Apple heavy (but that’s just me).

1. Number one on my gift guide is something that’s also at the top of my wish list. The iPad (I know, Oprah and I agree on something). I was going to wait for version 2, but so many people I know say that it has changed their everyday experience that I don’t see a reason to wait. If you want one, or know someone that wants one..it’s the perfect holiday gift.

There are so many reasons I want an iPad, but I won’t bore you with all of them. The main reason is I think it’s a great device for consuming content, and it continues to get better every day. The apps that have been developed for the iPad are simply amazing. I look forward to seeing what this device can do.

2. If you know someone who is just sick of smartphones, I know the perfect gift for them. John’s Phone. John’s Phone is billed as the “worlds simplest cell phone”. The phone has no screen on the front, it doesn’t send text messages, you can’t play games on it, it just makes phone calls. The buttons are big and easy to read, and it has a simple display on top so that you can see the number of the person who is calling (similar to a beeper display). It’s a unlocked phone and it will take any kind of SIM card. Another cool retro feature is that it has a paper address book on the back and it comes with a little pen-stylist.

Just think about how funny it will be when everyone is pulling out their latest device, and your friend pulls out a John’s Phone. It’s the perfect anti-smartphone!

Now we move on to accessories for all those gadgets that the geek in your life has.

3. The Glif. Glif is a tripod mount & stand for your iPhone 4. I found out about the Glif when the creators started a project on Kickstarter. They ended up raising $137,417 which was 1378% of their goal! Most of that funding was because people wanted to buy the Glif. If you pledged $20 or more you were essentially placing a pre-order for a Glif.

The Glif will allow you to mount an iPhone 4 onto any standard tripod mount, as well as act as a simple stand for the phone. Check out the video below which shows you some of the amazing uses for the Glif!

4. Moleskine cases for the iPad and iPhone. I love Moleskine notebooks, so when I saw that they made official cases for the iPad and iPhone I was super excited! The downside is, right now they only have a case for the iPhone 3G and not the iPhone 4. I also am not sure if I’d want my phone in such a bulky notebook case, but the iPad case looks pretty sweet!

Each cover is combined with blank notebook pages. They are designed to make using the device easier, by combining analog and digital functionality.

5. iPad foot. Similar to the Glif, the iPad foot is designed to make it easier to use your iPad by propping it up at and angle.

I love how simple this product is. I’ve seen a few iPad stands, but they usually are pretty big. This is a tiny product that does a big job and does it beautifully. But what I love most about this product is the price. It’s only $25! It comes in white, black, green and red.

Now we move on to a few stocking stuffers.

6. I have two USB keys to show you. The first is the Clé USB. It’s a more feminine design. I love how simple and beautiful it is. I wouldn’t hesitate to wear it around my neck as a necklace!

It has a 2GB capacity and it costs $50. I know it’s a little pricy for a USB stick, but I still think it makes a great gift!

The second USB key has amore neutral design. The LaCie iamaKey USB Flash Drive is an 8 GB flash drive and it’s only $27.21 on Amazon!

What I love most about it is that you can actually fit it on a key ring, and it blends right in. It’s also much thinner than a traditional flash drive.

If you are looking for a more personal gift to give I have a few suggestions.

7. The first is a very personal gift that is one of a kind, an original piece of artwork. My good friend Brandon Friend was recently commissioned to make this portrait of a little girl. He really enjoyed creating something special and personal for someone else and thought, what better gift for the holiday season. If you are interested in giving the gift of art this holiday and want to turn a digital photo into a timeless object you can contact him at brandonfriend(at)gmail(dot)com.

8. Lastly, if you are shopping for a geek in your life chances are they might have already made it easy for you to find out what they want. Check to see if they have a wish list on Amazon, or maybe they have a Svpply account where they share the things they want.

Do a little research, they may already be telling you what the perfect gift is.

I hope you enjoyed this years Geek Gift Guide. I’d love to know what’s on your wish list this year, and what you are planning on getting for all the geeks in your life!

The Middle Years Project

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
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So I’ve decided that I want to finish a documentary photo project I started a few years ago by getting the work gallery ready and putting on a gallery exhibition. It will take a lot of work so I will be starting a kickstarter project to help me fund it.

Please watch the video above for more details and I will keep you posted as the process goes on.

Not doing nearly as much as I want to

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
2

OK, I admit it. Tumblr has killed my blog. Well, not really killed it, but it certainly has decreased the time I spend blogging on Random Sarah and looking for new content to blog about.

Last week was Internet Week here in NYC, and in the few days since I have had a lot of time to reflect on this past year of me being a part of this amazing community. I have been spending the majority of my time lately looking for a full time job, and that has put a lot of my passion projects on hold.

I got into this “new media” space because I was passionate about online video and I stumbled upon Social Media by accident. I was perfectly happy going on facebook and reading apple rumor sites. I had almost no desire to be on twitter, to be a blogger or a podcast creator. Then I started watching video podcasts and I realized that I wanted to create content as well.

As much as it seams like I’m busy, I know that it is not an excuse for letting my passion for online video fall off. What’s it All About has hit a few bumps in the road, and I feel as if I am back to square one with the project. However, instead of being discouraged I have decided to modify what I was doing.

Very often people will ask me questions, either on twitter, or via email. For example, the other day someone asked my about #followfriday best practices. I get asked questions about social media all the time. So, I am just going to start answering them on video, here in my room. For right now I am thinking that I will just put these videos up here on Random Sarah because I am not really sure that they are part of the What’s it All About brand, and I’m not really sure what that brand is anymore.

You can ask me questions on twitter or shoot me and email

I would love your feedback since you have all been an amazing part of this journey.

p.s. I am still working on the user generated “I am a geek” video, but so far I only have 5 submissions so keep them coming!

Anatomy of a Tweetup

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
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The other night I attended a tweetup. What’s a tweetup?

A “tweetup” is a local meeting of Twitter users, usually announced ahead of time. Tweetups can take place any time or any place, and usually everyone in the area is invited. It helps give social networking a more palpable environment and allows local Twitter users to meet each other in person.

So why would you do this? Why would you want to publicly announce on twitter that you were going to be somewhere and that you wanted complete strangers to come meet you there?

A tweetup usually starts as a desire for twitter users to meet IRL (in real life). Sometimes it’s a group of friends, sometimes it’s just a random group of people.

The tweetup I attended the other night started out simply because my friend Tim (@tspatz) wanted to see his friend @newscred, who was in NYC from out of town, and Tim wanted some of his friends to meet him.

So Tim DM’d some of his friends on twitter with the time and place. This quickly turned into a tweetup when the conversation went public on twitter.

Everyone that had been invited was tweeting about the tweetup and the result was really interesting.

Just like anything else on twitter, tweetups spread in an interesting way. I like to call it the re-tweet effect. (it’s kind of like a game of telephone)

If I tweet something it has the potential to reach the 1,800 people that are following me. However, my friend can re-tweet it and then all of his followers will see it as well.

So at this tweetup we had a few different groups of people that had formed organically based on how the tweets about the tweetup went out.

The tweet I sent out looked like this:

sarahcooley: RT @WaltRibeiro: TONIGHT Lunasa NY 1st ave b/t 7th and 8th St. @ 7pm! Let’s do it! #tweetup #nyc I’m on my way there now!

But some re-tweets looked like this:

jerrylore: RT @newscred: Entrepreneur/hacker #tweetup tonight atLunasa in the East Village #nyc , 6pm. Free beers on NewsCred if you come early!
So while I was told it was just a group of my friends getting together, it was presented to some people as a hacker tweetup (a community that I am not really part of) So because of this tweetup I was able to meet a new group of people that I would have normally never met)

Best of Tumblr Fridays

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
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Today I saw a post from Mike Arauz, he is putting up his favorite links, photos, and videos from his Tumblr blog. Many of you know that tumblr is an obsession of mine, and it has taken away a lot of the random content that used to be on random sarah. So I decided to adopt his idea so that those of you who read random sarah, but may not keep up with my tumblog can still get a taste of the content that I put up there.

So here are my favorite links, photos, and videos from my Tumblr blog this week:

The Cult of Done Manifesto

  1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
  2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
  3. There is no editing stage.
  4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
  5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
  6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
  7. Once you’re done you can throw it away.
  8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
  9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
  10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
  11. Destruction is a variant of done.
  12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
  13. Done is the engine of more.

Preparing for Chaos – the Life of a Startup

“Startups are inherently chaos. As a founder you need to prepare yourself to think creatively and independently, because more often than not, conditions on the ground will change so rapidly that the original well-thought-out business plan becomes irrelevant. If you can’t manage chaos and uncertainty, if you can’t bias yourself for action and if you wait around for someone else to tell you what to do, then your investors and competitors will make your decisions for you and you will run out of money and your company will die. Therefore the best way to keep your company alive is to instill in every employee a decisive mindset that can quickly separate the crucial from the irrelevant, synthesize the output, and use this intelligence to create islands of order in the all-out chaos of a startup.”

Real Life Twitter

Screen-shot from the NFL Draft (this was done by me)

@garyvee and @ajv are not happy about that pick #nfldraft
Photos from the Thunder Cruise

Well I hope you enjoyed my first Tumblr Friday’s post. Let me know what you think and what you would like to see more of here.