You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Cool Stuff' category.

Before I left Dow, I promised I would be one of their first “Alums” to get active on Dow’s new social media site, My Dow Network. The site has been around for more than a year. It’s an interesting model – connecting employees, quitters and retirees in a private social community. 

I’ll blog more about it later. For now, check out Dow’s feature story on the network, I’m pictured. Also, Dennis McDonald wrote an interesting summary based upon a conversation with one of my former team members, Trish Bharwada.

Dow alumna Becky Marxer, who is now working at a public relations firm, says My Women’s Network helps her to stay connected with friends she left behind when she moved away from Midland to be closer to her fiancé. 

“This is an easy way to keep in touch,” says Marxer. “Although I’m 600 miles away, it feels like I’m back at Dow.  I have about 35 friends on my contact list.  I can look at their photos, keep in touch with job moves and stay current.”

 

By the way, as an accommodating PR professional, I did not object that they characterized my leaving the company to get married. That said, that explanation is a little simplified and… minorly feminized. Alas, gotta paint the one woman as having work/life balance issues! To be honest, I DID have a life issue – my future husband lived three states away! (Vent completed.)

Dow, I will always love ya – great company, even better people. Thank you for all the opportunities you affored me.

Don’t know about you, but I really enjoy Jamie Oliver – his Food Network programs, his rustic cooking style… and his innovative products.

So, short story on this one is that I’m a newlywed. And like 99.9 percent of us blissful bees, I registered a numerous places for “must-have” homemaking wares. The registration process was trying for my then fiance and I. We got into more than a couple tiffs about scanning useless items to the registy. One of the Crate and Barrel squabbles I lost was for a mortar and pestle. 

How it works.

How it works.

He said, “What are you ever going to use that thing for?! It will just take up space and collect dust.” To which, I replied, “To grid things like coriander.” (At the time, coriander seeds were the best I could do.)

I lost. We have no mortar, no pestle. For the record, we do have correander seeds that go unused becuase we cannot grid them.

Enter, my culinary crush, Jamie. Jamie’s invented a brilliant little product called the Flavour Shaker. This biomorphic contraption lets you beat your herbs and spices to smithereens – all the while providing a maraca-like percussion. I’ve had trouble finding the product in the US, but it looks to be available via UK import.

 

Think this would make a great Christmas gift. Friends, don’t be surprised if you are soon the proud owner of one! PS- do on to others…. would love one of these beauties for myself.

Check out Jamie’s newest show on the Food Network, Jamie at Home. It’s a fun little program. Like the format too. He focuses on extremely simple ingredients and does a whole show about the – like tomato’s, or zucchini or peppers.

Exciting evening development. The Twitter Handbook was just been released. Check it out, it’s free. I’m scanning through it now. What do you think, 181 pages on a 140-character medium? Looking forward to the upcoming dialogue on the handbook!

Wonder how long it will take for me and my fellow PR brethren to monetize the insights. So many vultures out there trying to sell “the twitter solution.” I can tell you one thing, being an early adopter or first in your industry to get on Twitter puts you in a good competitive position. BUT… I have a hunch that many of us, passionate strat. commers, will toss our savvy to wind and go hog wild – spamming and promoting with dollar signs in our head versus relationship development in our hearts.

Hope us PR flacks get it right this time! Personally, I’m doing my best to be smart about it. In a new world like Twitter, one must rely on his/her instincts. In my case, those instincts are deeply rooted in strat comm theory.

… Alas, when I start talking “theory,” I know it’s time to log off.

I’ve had two models of the iPod over the years… The not-so-trusty 3G behemoth and the 2G Nano (apple green) – still use the 2G almost every day. Love the Nike Plus running kit (on my second kit).  Very cool timeline on Gizmodo.

 

What do you think of the new Nanos?  When are they going to offer custom colors and designs. Thought Apple would get on top of that trend a while ago. I mean Nike has been offering NikeID (design your own shoe) for how many years?

Update to Loving Google Chrome from last week.  Chrome has crashed on me a few times today. It freezes up on Facebook and seems to be slowing my other applications. I still love you, Google Chrome, but you really need to patch things up. Some flowers would be nice.

Predictions can be a dicey game, but I’m going to go ahead and call it. The Twilight Series is about to hit the 24-35 female demographic like gangbusters. As you can tell from my volume of posts on the Stephenie Meyer book series as of late, it’s captured a little bit of my imagination.

But let’s not talk about me. Let’s talk about the fact that four out of four of my friends who I’ve lent the books to are hooked too. This is a diverse crowd of folks. All professional women (who would have thought?)… If the Twilight Series was issuing an IPO, I would buy, buy, buy!

Any other twenty-something Twilighters out there? Don’t know about you, but I’ve already sent out an Evite for an opening-night girls night out at the movies!!

This came across my Twitter feed the other day. Cool product, good price and a little piece of mind.

Check out Preserve Cutlery – gotta love the innovators providing products that crossroads of hyper-consumerism and environmental sustainability. But seriously, I’m a capitalist through and through. Good job for good works, Preserve! (By the way, they’re more than just cutlery.)

A few years back, I executed a psychophysiological research study to fulfill the requirements of my master of arts degree. To date, my mom, dad and husband are the only folks who have cracked this book open. It’s dense, academically focused and it’s got some seriously questionable grammar! Nonetheless, it’s online – so might as well offer it up to the global collective. 

What’s the point? What knowledge was discovered and articulated?

Findings suggest that content structure does impact allocation of cognitive

resources for controlled attention. BSM requires less effort and fewer cognitive resources

allocated during exposure with no significant memory differences.

I presented these findings of my thesis at a couple academic conferences – it got me a trip to NYC and Lisbon. It also helped me get my first post-grad job. If one person out there finds value in it, all the better! 

Long live the Missouri School of Journalism and The PRIME Lab – Mizzou-Rah!

Just saw an interesting post over at Web Strategy by Jeremiah. Helped crystallize my thinking around why I love Google Chrome so much – aside from the cool design and snappy features… 

The search box circumvents the address bar
After playing with Google’s Chrome browser for the last few days, . Google “Address” bar, which is just called a “Box” is really a search field that anything entered into it will deliver a webpage (it first looks at your historical activities) or renders Google search results, or of some other search engine of your choosing (Including Twitter search). As a result, it’s become apparently that I no longer need to enter in URLs to my browser for 99% of all tasks.

[Chrome is a nod to the future, the address bar is really a search bar. URLs will be an anachronism]

 

is what I mentioned in Twitter with a flurry of agreements back from the community. Lori MacVittie expands further on the idea and agrees that like engine parts in our car, or IP addresses, they mainly go invisible as we drive to our real world or online destinations.

This is one of my favorites songs from the ’90s – what’s more, they’re local boys – Stir! Seriously one of my favorite “remember that teen angst” feeling songs (great melody – raspy vocals – love it!). Guess that’s why it reminds me so much of my favorite teen angst novel – Twilight. Give it a listen, let me know if you like.