The New Dork – Entrepreneur State of Mind

I think this video speaks for itself….

A Video Game Wedding Invitation

Kudos to this creative and geeky couple, Darino and Niko, for making a video game wedding invitation. The Mario Brothers-esque game requires viewers to complete the game to get the invitation.

The gamer-geek appropriate packaging for the game:

Very adorable, but I don’t think I could get away with sending something like this. For starters, I think half of my friends are too lazy and/or busy to play a game just to get info about my wedding, and the last time I checked, none of my Grandparents knew what 1337 meant.

via Offbeat Bride

Um, Butterfingers?

The sidewalk jumped up and bit me!

I guess my only decision now is whether to spend $300 for another phone that has crappy service or spend $600 to break my contract (up in August) and get a phone that actually works. Or, get a really cheap phone and wait a few months and get the yet-to-be-officially-confirmed iPhone 4G.

What would you do?

Bits & Pieces: March 2, 2010

- Stripes and Tulle. Two very wonderful things, usually separate, together!

- Honda Wins Best All-Around Vehicle By Consumer Reports for the 4th year in a row! Subaru was also up there. l’m feeling thankful I decided to buy a Civic in 08.

- Los Angeles Swaps 21 Billboards For Art – great! We could use less billboards in this ugly, cluttered city.

- Unhappy Hipsters. Need a break from your day? Read it & laugh. Or cry.

- What’s Your Excuse for Not Saving? Great post by my girl FB about the lame justifications people make for spending frivilously instead of investing in their future. Just FYI: you do not NEED a mansion, a gardener, a luxury car, a weekly french manicure or a $500 pair of shoes. Especially if you are in debt.

- The cutest thing I’ve seen from/about ChatRoulette.

- If I had a son, I would totally help him make these little boy Valentine’s. Gummy spiders + chocolate rocks = tasty and masculine!

- I’ve been a fan of these KittyWigs for a couple years now, but I had no idea they had A BOOK! Superb.

- These Commander Skype Headphones make headphones look just a liiiittle bit less Burger King-ish.

- Not that I surf (in the water) or anything, but this is the cutest wetsuit I’ve ever seen.

- Pantone Makeup & Nail Polish – strictly conceptual designs, but how clean and fresh is this?!

- LA Tech vs SF Tech – My favorite line has to be: “However, while both crowds love to love the city of San Francisco, San Franciscans love to loathe Los Angeles, which is understandable in some regards. Traffic here is tragic, and this IS where buttock implants were invented.”

- Also relevant… Why You Should Start A Company In LA, the latest in Fast Company’s look into startup appeal in cities other than Silicon Valley.

- Six Word Memoirs by famous authors. My personal favorite is Frank McCourt (author of Angela’s Ashes, Tis, etc): “The miserable childhood leads to royalties.”

- Award-winning cookies – perfect for Oscar parties, which I am hoping to partake in this coming weekend! Check out the Best Actress selection below. Wonder if they taste as good as those women can act? Also adorable, Oscar statue cookies!

- Empty bellies do not beget genius. – Brilliant piece by the bold and beautiful Gala Darling on female body image and why you should say “screw you” to the pressure to be stick thin.

- I Want That Hoodie So Bad. I really do. It has nothing to do with the fact that my fiance designed it and that it’s modeled after his latest sketch, which you can see below.

Bits ‘n Pieces: February 24, 2010

Ready to take a trip down Random Lane? All aboard!

-The most incredible postcard on Etsy – it’s sold out, but I want it so very badly as a poster! It is just so “me.”

- I’m mildly obsessed with the website OnlineSchools.org, which features fun, easy-to-read educational illustrations and graphs about everything from the History of LEGOs to The Global Financial Crisis to 15 Things You Should Know About Breasts (hey smokers – check out #15! Saggy boobs!) Take a second to check it out and learn something!

- Gummy Worm Chromosomes – if learning about DNA was this delicious, I might have taken a more passionate interest in biology in middle school. Imagine me as a biologist. Solving medical mysteries. Mixing things in a lab. Not wearing makeup. All jokes aside, I did briefly consider a career as a veterinarian – until I realized it’s harder to get into vet school than it is to get into med school. And that my heart would break everyday watching animals suffer.

- Top 10 Books Perfect For The iPad. Haha…. this one is for Julian, who thought he was doing me a favor by suggesting I get an iPad instead of a laptop. PLEASE.

- The wedding invitation of our friends Kayla and Tyler, who are getting married just a couple months after Julian and I. It’s the sweetest and most creative wedding invite I’ve ever seen – plus I got to watch Julian and Tyler making it while they were in LA!

- Babies with laser eyes. An entire site devoted to the meme. Anatomy of a laser baby brain – cute.

- Kitchen of the Year. I’d say! That place is making me salivate, it’s so gorgeous.

- ChatRoulette is all the rage these days. Even Ashton Kutcher is on it, and one math student in Calgary took a screenshot of the convo he was having with Mr. Aplusk. I can see the appeal of the site, that randomly connects you via videochat to people around the world, but I don’t see why I would use it. It would have provided hours of fun in college, though.

- Book Cover Purses – perfect for the literary nerd like myself.

- Butch Cupcakes – this bakery in NY designs cupcakes with men in mind, because everyone deserves to enjoy a nice cupcake, but how masculine is it to eat a pink cupcake with heart sprinkles? Camo or wood-grain patterns are so much more macho.

Shown: The B-52

- How the new credit card laws will affect your account.

- Twitter strikes a deal to bring free SMS tweets to Haiti.

- Coffee splash Flickr pool is pretty awesome – the photos look amazing, but my OCD side is tensing up at the thought of the aftermath (can you imagine the stains?)

- Study shows cat owners are more educated than dog owners. I’m feeling a bit of justice to all women who have unfairly been called “cat ladies” now. By the way, I love dogs too. Just not as much as kitties.

- Why I’ll Never Live in a Rich Neighborhood. That Neil Patel – he’s got a good head on his little shoulders!

- Another new study about how awesome Boulder, CO is. This particular one states it is the happiest city in all the US. Apparently Boulder knows how intellectual, healthy, bicycle-friendly and clean their city is, because I found a hefty list of credentials on their website. Proud, maybe. But I’d still move there in a heartbeat.

- Speaking of awesome places to live, check out this little house on a cliff in Iceland. Talk about breathtaking!

- Austrian millionaire gives away his millions, claims they are making him “miserable.” Great story!

- Depths of the Ocean, Scaled to Human Size – this is both crazy and terrifying, especially for people like me who get the heebie jeebies about deep, dark water. What’s DOWN there?!

- New species of dinosaur discovered in a quarry in Utah.

- Oh the cuteness! Bunny ring from Fred Flare. Hop hop! Only $12 and available in silver and gold!

Lauren, who is in Hawaii this week, requested we play this loudly in our office on repeat. For the record, this is on the wall of our office:

I thought this video of two koalas bickering was super cute at first, until one of them provokes the other and it breaks out into a nasty fight. My maternal/animal-lover instinct kicked in and I wanted to scoop up the babies to protect and calm them down. Then I realized, they’re just like kids… fighting and picking on the other for no good reason.

My Little Ponies performing musicals – LIVE! MLP hold a special place in my heart, even if this is extremely strange.

Most Adorable Commercial Ever!

And the winner of my favorite Super Bowl ad is…. GOOGLE! You know, the company that doesn’t need any advertising. Their Parisian Love commercial was just the cutest thing I have ever seen.

Maybe it’s because I’m going to Paris in about 90 days and have an infinite love for all things French. Or maybe it’s because I’m in the midst of planning my wedding to a man that I quickly and unexpectedly fell in love with. Or maybe it’s because of the huge role the internet played in our relationship. Whatever it may be, this is “très mignonne.”

What’s The Value In Having 5,000 Friends?

Let me ask you all (ya’ll) a question – how many friends do you have on Facebook? How many of those people are actual friends that you know, care about “what’s on their mind”, and want to converse with? How about Twitter? Do you strive to have more followers? Do you follow everyone who follows you? How often do you get to read all the tweets in your Twitterstream?

We’ve created a monster.

Inspired by an article in the latest issued of Wired he read on the flight to LA this week, our friend Tyler just announced he had cut his Facebook friends list back from more than 2,000 to around 300 total. The article, by Clive Thompson (In Praise of Online Obscurity), analyzes the way we have turned social networking into something very unsocial. No longer are we using social networking as a means of fostering relationships with people we actually care about – we’re using it to create new relationships with people (and “reconnect” with people from our past) and quite frankly, we can’t keep up with it. We’re faced with countless hurdles to jump to maintain these relationships, weeding through updates from networking contacts we barely know, distant friends from our childhood, friends of friends and ex-boyfriends. All people who, the second you click accept, can see all your info, as well. As Thompson points out, when your list gets too big, social networking is no longer a possibility. Social networking starts to break down.

Nowadays, people use Facebook as a means to notifying their friends about developments in their life (and granted, some stuff we could care less about – “Makin’ quesadillas tonight!” – I’m guilty of that.) In the last week I found out that I missed news from two of my good friends because their updates were lost in my enormous feed. One of my friends adopted a rescue puppy and the other one got engaged. Both are things I actually would have liked to know, but because of all the noise in my feed, I didn’t.

So what was the result of Tyler’s massacre on his friends list? A list of status updates that he – SHOCK! – actually cares about. Imagine truly wanting to read each and every status update on your list, instead of clicking “Hide” on that person you added, but only because you had 30 friends in common, all of whom are people you met at conferences. Imagine not having to worry that you’re missing something important, funny or interesting because your feed is filled with information and people that honestly, you could care less about.

Of course, this is just my opinion.

Thompson emphasizes the value in obscurity – of keeping your network small and manageable, because once it grows to a certain size, the conversation dissipates. It becomes silent. Mark Zuckerberg famously declared at the recent Crunchie Awards that living publicly and having minimal online privacy is “the social norm, now.” I disagree. Living a public life is not something everyone should be obligated to do, just because they want to use social networking to keep in touch with friends. Now, online privacy is an entirely separate issue as far as I’m concerned (albeit a very, very important one, I have quite a bit to say about this what with having my identity stolen online several times). But aside from the security aspect, I can’t help but agree with Thompson’s stance on online obscurity – how on Earth are we expected to keep up genuine relationships with 3,000 of our closest friends? It’s just not possible. Not unless you give up your job, your family, your hobbies, eating and sleeping. And then what would you have left to talk about, anyway?

In a way, it’s just like high school again – one big popularity contest. So many people striving to be the next Gary Vaynerchuk, the next “online celeb” who millions turn to for entertainment and advice. First of all, this isn’t realistic. That kind of fame is just not feasible for most of us. And whatever happened to good old human relationships – conversations – not soapboxing?

I’m not suggesting everyone go on an “unfriend-ing” rampage or to stop trying to gain followers, I suppose it depends on the purpose of that particular network, but I do think that if you plan on using social networking as a tool to strengthening relationships, you might want to scale back or segregate your relationships by dividing them on different networks (LinkedIn, for example). I know many are of the opinion that in order to create a successful business relationship, you have to first start with a personal relationship, and to some extent, I agree. But you’ve got to make it genuine. Adding me as one of your 7,000 friends on Facebook does not make me feel like I am getting in a close, personal, trusting relationship with you to where I would ever want to enter a business partnership with you. The same way I would feel if I were one of 300 people invited to your birthday party and only had 5 minutes to celebrate with you.

By the way – I realize this might sound a bit hypocritical because I have this blog and a handful of fans, but in no way do I tout myself as a “guru” of any kind or someone that people should “turn to for advice.” I’m nobody. Just a random girl with a poorly written, stream-of-conscience blog and a need to share pretty, interesting things. I have no goals in terms of popularity or fame. This concept of scaling back on social networking just resonated with me, perhaps because of my own struggle to maintain intimate relationships these days via social networking. So – I ask of you…

What’s your method when it comes to managing your online social scene? Do you have rules for adding new friends? Do you only use certain networks for certain things? I’m very curious to find out!

One Bad App.

I am baffled by the amount of apps available for the iPhone. I’m even more baffled at how some of these most useless apps get approved yet highly practical and awesome apps sit in queue for months only to be denied over some d-r-a-m-a. My man Julian Smith totally gets it – and his newest sketch pokes fun at some of these wildly ridiculous apps.

I give you, the latest video I heard being edited non-stop for days, One Bad App. Just in time for Apple’s OTHER big announcement (the Tablet… being announced sometime soon according to the 4103710327431 people ignoring their work to tweet and blog about what features it may or may not have.)

Maybe Ciao For Now!

Just a quick note to all 5 of my readers to say MERRY CHRISTMAS and to let you know that my internet access may be limited these coming weeks. By miracle, I have finished all my work for the year and by this time tomorrow I will be in Nashville with my sweetheart to spend Christmas with his family and friends.

hello_naomi

First, I’ll be dropping my Macbook Pro off at the repair shop because it is broken (I spit coffee on it on accident a couple months back and have been using an evil external keyboard ever since), which means if I do any blogging, it will be either via WordPress iPhone app or Julian’s laptop.

If you don’t hear from me, I’m still wishing you all a very happy holiday and a WONDERFUL New Year!

Behind The Scenes Photos: 2009 Holiday Buyers Guide

As I mentioned on Thursday, yesterday was the big photo shoot for the 2009 Holiday Buyers Guide for Tom’s Hardware & Tom’s Guide. It was my third year modeling for the series (I used to work for the site), and it was just as fun as always. Though many of the original crew has moved on, it was awesome to spend the day with Rachel, Chris, Molly, Devin, Antoine, Vince, photographer Andy, etc. We shot roughly one HUNDRED different products ideal for holiday gifts for tech geeks, from motherboards and coolers to laptops and earbuds. You’ll have to wait until later this month (or early next) to see the finished guides (along with the REAL photos), but trust me it’s going to be goooood.

Perhaps the best part of the day (aside from Randy’s Donuts) was having Julian there with me, who was happily snapping photos of me looking like a fool trying to model gadgets and hardware while wearing a little Christmas outfit. Here are a few (thousand) of the pictures, and a couple videos, too:

Just what I've ALWAYS wanted!

Are you as excited about all-in-one PCs as I am?! (I'd rather have an iMac)

Alright, how are we going to make this one look different than the last?

Glamour Shots by Julian.

Click for a video of me shooting this one.

Click for a video of me wailing on Beatles Rock Band.

Ok, which one for the cover of my Christmas album:

Feel free to laugh and/or ridicule me in the comments. I’ll be sure to link to the published Holiday Buyers Guides when they are up, so you can see more awesome tech-y holiday ridiculousness.