After all the years of companies trying to come up with shocking, totally out there products, I do not frequently come across something that makes me think “Wow, did they really do that?” But that’s exactly what I did when I came across the tampon flash drive from Meninos, an online retailer that reminds me, in a lot of ways, of ThinkGeek when it comes to simple products like t-shirts, mugs and yes, tech gadgets like flash drives that are utterly hilarious and not really compatible with everyone’s taste level.
Sadly, there is no definitive price on the tampon flash drive, which has to be horrible for sales because I know I’m not one to go ahead and email a company about a product they have failed to make openly available. I did immediately think that I needed this product when I first saw it though because, what can I say, I really like weird things that start some even weirder conversations. Not to mention that I also run a website called Menstrual Poetry. This tampon flash drive would be hilarious and I would love it, but what about you? Would you carry this flash drive around with you and undoubtedly collect very weird stares from people who catch a glimpse of it?
Earlier this month at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, California, Bill Gates spoke about how people go about accomplishing their college education goals and what the web could potentially do for self-starting young adults. He predicts that in just five years time, you will be able to find the best lectures in the world on the web for free and stressed that college needs to be less “place-based.”
A lot of people have already come out and said Bill Gates is off the mark on this one, but after hearing the comments he made further along with his “predictions,” I’m inclined to agree with where he’s coming from. The overall point he was trying to make is that college, as it is right now and in this country, is too expensive and it’s too hard for young adults (and let’s face it, older adults as well) to get an upper-level education. According to Gates, a major problem with the education system today is text books, saying that even in grade schools, a math text book can be 300 pages — “They’re giant, intimidating books. I look at them and think: what on Earth is in there?” He also pointed out that text book in the U.S. are three times longer than the equivalents in Asia, a country that is currently beating the U.S. in many ways in terms of education and because text books are built by committee, these books are overloaded with information that really doesn’t need to be there.
While Gates’ comments about college education needing to be less “place-based” could very well be seen as radical, there are a number of excellent educational resources online, put online by prestigious and well-known educational institutions, that are free of charge. We’re a lot further with education being available on the web instead of in a typical classroom than many may think, you just have to know where to look to find the information you’re most interested in.
MIT OpenCourseWare — With over 2,000 courses available online, MIT OpenCourseWare should be your first (and maybe your only) stop in online learning.
Online Education Database — This website offers up a list of 200 free classes you can take online, from physics classes where you can learn about the phenomenon of superconductivity to algebra classes you struggled with in high school.
OpenCulture — This website offers up a list of free classes from top universities like Stanford and UC Berkeley, and even some video lectures you can find on YouTube.
Open Learning Initiative — Free courses, along with self-guided materials, help you learn biology, chemistry, economics and more at your own pace.
UC Berkeley Webcasts — Skip the sky-high tuition and get free video and audio lectures from UC Berkeley professors.
Free Online Classes — Get design and Photoshop tutorials to help you in the digital space.
OpenCourseWare Consortium — This website hosts thousands of classes in several languages. Learn at your own pace, and even scan the professors’ notes, all for free!
Practically everyone knows about Mom Central and the variety of blogs full of expert advice, opinions from real parents and of course, the amazing community run under their banner. We like Mom Central a lot, we participate in the community, in their awesome Twitter parties and write about them fairly often. Well, considering moms have been having a blast over at Mom Central for such a long time, it was only natural for them to branch out some more and have a little nook for all the dads.
Dad Central Consulting is a division of Mom Central just for all the dads out there who are pretty spectacular and eager to connect and engage with each other while building brands. On Thursday, August 26th from 12PM to 1PM EST (that’s tomorrow, folks!) join Dad Central for the Power of Dads Twitter party. The focus of the Twitter party will be discussing how becoming a dad has influenced what you buy, why you but it and who you trust for advice. As an extra, special perk for participating in the party, Dad Central will be giving away six $50 American Express gift cards during the party. To join in on the Twitter party, just search for and use Twitter hashtag #PowerofDads. Also, make sure you’re following @DadCentral and @MomCentral for the discussion and chance to win prizes.
If you’re a blogging dad and want to get involved with Dad Central, join the Dad Central Blog Roll. If you want to be considered for getting to test and review cool new products and take surveys for the chance to win prizes, join the Dad Testing Panel and if you’re on Twitter, join the Dad Twitter Team! If you’re on Facebook, you may also want to join the Dad Central Facebook page to stay up to date on all things Dad Central, participate in discussions and more!
Parents of young athletes always have to be aware of the warning signs of heat illnesses that could affect their child. Heat illnesses that have the opportunity to come on when your child is exercising vigorously in unusually high temperatures and high humidity, which can result in heat cramps, heat exhaustion, or heatstroke. To make sure you know what to be on the lookout for–and for the chance to ask an expert in the field any questions that may be on your mind about heat illnesses–Mom Central has teamed up with Leslie Bonci to host a Beat the Heat Twitter Party.
Gatorade’s Beat the Heat campaign is an ongoing effort to raise awareness and building communication about heat illness prevention. Leslie Bonci is an expert on sports nutrition, a consultant to numerous professional, collegiate and high school athletic programs and a registered dietitian.
Use hashtag #beattheheat tomorrow, August 18th from 3PM to 4PM EST and make sure to follow @MomCentral and @LeslieBonci. There is no RSVP required, just search Twitter for the #beattheheat hashtag and start participating in the discussion. By participating, you will not only learn a lot about heat safety, but you will also have the chance to win a pretty awesome gift pack, including Gatorade coolers, powder and $50 AMEX gift cards.
This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Boost Mobile. All opinions are 100% mine.
It seems that for as many distinct and eccentric personalities there are in the world, there is a different phone to compliment each one. Everyone expects certain features from the phones they choose that go far beyond just being able to make and receive phone calls and text messages. As the technology we utilize on our computers continues to evolve, that same technology must evolve on our cell phones as well. Not only do you need to perform your basic functions, but because so many people, myself definitely included, are wired to the internet and to social media and networking most of the time, for a phone not to have those pertinent functions is downright unacceptable.
A phone service that keeps the demands of web professionals on the go in mind is Boost Mobile. Boost Mobile not only designs phones that are social in nature, not to mention extremely stylish and downright pretty, they also understand the minds of those who are dangerously fickle about their phones and pride themselves on not signing people into long-term contracts. Their monthly unlimited service for Blackberry is great, giving people features like multi-media messaging, instant messaging and web and email access for a flat rate, instead of nickel and diming their customers for every single addon that they essentially expect a phone to have.
One of the best features Boost Mobile has is their featured Re-Boost program that lets you pay your bill in a variety of ways to ensure that you get your payments in on time and at maximum convenience for your daily lifestyle. You have the option of paying your bill online, setting up worry-free automatic payments with a credit or debit card, or register your card for future payments. You can also pay in person at your local Re-Boost location and you also have the ability to pay by phone. The Re-Boost program also lets you add money to a friend or family member’s Boost Mobile account using a credit or debit card without tying your card to that person’s account.
If you’re in the market for a new phone or phone service, check out Boost Mobile and everything they have to offer all without signing yourself away to a long-term contract.
Twitter has just launched the offical Tweet Button, a small button that when clicked, will bring up a small window that lets you log into your Twitter account and automatically share what you’re reading with all of your followers.
Twitter found that close to a quarter of all Tweets contain a link in them and I know from personal experience that every single piece of huge news out there that I get, comes directly from the people I follow on Twitter. Whenever there is a celebrity death, breaking world news, or something going on that I’m interested in, Twitter is the service that is usually making me aware of it. Now, with the release of the Twitter Button, sharing links to what you’re reading and interested in is simpler than having to open Twitter in your browser or load your desktop Twitter application and shorten a link. Just by clicking on the official Twitter button, that has already been implemented on countless websites you frequent every day, you can share that information in a lot less time.
We have just implemented the official Twitter Button here on Woman Tribune and already, I found a really awesome feature that I’m super excited about. If you click on the number of the Tweets a particular blog post has on the Tweet Button, it will bring you to Twitter and show you, in real time, who’s retweeting that post. To see it in action, take a look at everyone Tweeting about our $25 Walmart gift card giveaway.
Before the launch of this official Tweet Button, there was a very popular retweet button made by TweetMeme and they haven’t been left out by Twitter releasing their official button. In fact, the developers behind TweetMeme will be working closely with Twitter.
TweetMeme has written on their blog all about how they will be working with Twitter to assist them in the technical challenges involved with the button and they will also be working with Twitter on delivering real-time curation of the Twitter Firehose.
Websites like Huffington Post, Gawker Media, SFGate, Hulu, CNN and many others have already implemented the Tweet Button on their websites and if you want to put it on yours, just grab the short code and you’ll automatically be making it super easy for your readers to share your content.
It is always wise to keep the possibility of a zombie invasion open; it’s usually the people who don’t believe in zombies that are the first to be eaten. To make matters worse, they’re not only eaten, but devoured by the people they thought were their friends; and perhaps they were friends, before one couldn’t help but stalk their friend down and start feasting on their meaty arm.
Luckily, there is now an iPhone app that could possibly save your life in the case of a zombie attack. Max Brooks’ bestselling book The Zombie Survival Guide is now a free iPhone app.
The Zombie Survival Guide Scanner is an app from the Crown Publishing Group that uses the iPhone’s rear camera to take a picture of someone and “scan” their face to illustrate their infection rate. After all, it’s the people you know the best who are always trying to convince you that they’re not infected and then before you know it, they’re trying to eat you. With this app, you just scan their face and see if they’re truly an uninfected human who needs to accompany you out of town, or if you need to shoot them in the head.
All joking aside, this app is hilarious and will keep you occupied for hours, especially if you walk down a busy street and snap pictures of random people and see them get zombiefied right on your phone. It’s great to see more businesses, in this case Crown Publishing Group, developing apps that will go over huge in order to use it as a marketing tool to help build a book’s fanbase.
If you’re heading to New York City to attend the sixth annual BlogHer conference August 6th and 7th, you will need to make a note in your presumably chaotic agenda for the night of August 6th.
If you have attended BlogHer in the past, or just know a lot about it from seeing it being blogged about practically everywhere or have a few friends who have attended the conferences and just had to share every single detail with you, you know that in 2008 a tradition was created–the Community Keynote. This year will be no different, but after two years of receiving hundreds of submissions for the Community Keynote and going through the agonizing process of narrowing the list of entries down to just 15 to 20, this year’s Community Keynote will work a little differently and it will include quite a few more people.
While 15 bloggers will be chosen to present their work to the BlogHer community, 75 additional bloggers will also be honored as Voices of the Year. BlogHer has partnered with the savvy social media mavens behind Kirtsy, Gabrielle Blair, Laura Mayes and Laurie Smithwick to create a Gala of quality voices that will be heard during the 2010 BlogHer Community Keynote. The event, BlogHer 2010 Voices of the Year Gala and Art Auction Curated by Kirtsy, will be held the night of Friday, August 6th from 6:00pm to 10:00pm and it will be held over an entire floor of the Hilton hotel in New York.
So what kind of things can you expect from this Gala? Well, one section will feature a type of performance art from bloggers like Jenny of The Bloggess. In another section, Karen of Chookooloonks and other accompanying bloggers will be painting and throughout the entire party, there will be an art exhibit full of artwork and photography from over 150 bloggers.
The auction segment of the Gala will not take place during the same night. Instead, it will be held a few weeks after BlogHer has ended and everyone who attended is still adjusting back into their daily routine and planning for next summer’s BlogHer conference. All of the proceeds from the auction will benefit Nature Conservancy to assist with oil cleanup in the Gulf.
Sounds like a pretty awesome party and a great way to feature the bloggers who work hard to keep their blogs up and running and whose creativity and openness we can sometimes take advantage of as readers.
As we head into the last month of summer vacation, a lot of families are making the last of their plans for their upcoming family vacations. The worst thing parents can hear while on their summer vacations is “I’m bored!” from their kids and that is precisely why Marriott has just launched a new promotion that is guaranteed to keep kids occupied and happy throughout their stay.
When you stay at any of the 2,000 Marriott locations, including Courtyard, Fairfield Inn & Suites, SpringHill Suites, Residence Inn and TownePlace Suites locations, you can arrange to “Nickelodeon Your Stay”. The package includes a ton of free items, including a SpongeBob activity bag and splash ball, Nickelodeon sunglasses and a 3-D build-your-own SpongeBob craft. The Nickelodeon Your Stay packages at Marriott and JW Marriott Hotels & Resorts include all of the above items as well as a SpongeBob SquarePants or Dora the Explorer pillowcase and storybook.
Visit NickelodeonYourStay.com for all of the information you’ll need on how to Nickelodeon Your Stay when you stay at any Marriott location during your family vacation. You will also find free, downloadable Nickelodeon-themed travel games, a travel journal, a travel bingo game and coloring sheets.
To celebrate the addition of the Nickelodeon Your Stay packages at the Marriott locations, Mom Central is hosting a Twitter party on Thursday, July 29th at 3:00PM EST. During the Twitter Party you will be able to talk about summer vacation plans, tips for traveling with kids and you will also have the chance to win $50 and really awesome Marriott/Nickelodeon prizes.
There are countless podcasts making their presence known on the internet. Regardless of your interests, you can find a podcast (or 50) that you can quickly become addicted to and like your favorite television show, not be able to miss an episode of. Podcasts bring back the love of radio, where we pay more attention to the words people have to say than the pictures we’re seeing on a screen. But radio isn’t cool anymore, now that it has become a giant business of deception and the people have always been more entertaining than the hired hands telling the people what they want to listen to.
The question is–what podcasts do you listen to? What are the top-rated podcasts that have claimed the attention and hearts of those who have been listening to it since its inception and what podcasts should you be listening to that perhaps the rest of the internet world hasn’t caught on to yet?
Here are 5 podcasts that are entertaining, thought-provoking and just plain awesome. You’re bound to find one that fits well.
This American Life
This American Life is the most popular podcast in the country. It garners more than a half million downloads per episode and includes much of the same content heard on the This American Life public radio show that is broadcast on more than 500 stations.
This American Life is comprised of an array on non-fiction stories, investigative journalism, fiction, essays and experimental story telling. This American Life helped to launch the literary careers of David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell and David Rakoff.
Muckmakers
Muckmakers is a blog dedicated to exposing corrupt politicians, businessmen, religious leaders, celebrities, or other public figures in the most brutally honest manner possible. It was created to inform the public of what is going on right under their noses and hopefully inspire and motivate people to want to do something about it.
The Muckmakers podcast has the same premise as the blog, where the two creators of the site can expand a little more on their thoughts and generally talk about what’s going on in the world. If you’re interested in politics and have a passion for analyzing everything from politics, religion and current events or just have a love of hearing about hot button debate issues, check it out.
WireTap
WireTap is a Canadian public radio show from Jonathan Goldstein, former This American Life producer. Like Jerry Seinfeld and Woody Allen, Goldstein takes an alter ego approach full of self-deprecating humor with the weekly installments of WireTap. In addition to discussing the minutiae of daily life, WireTap also features short stories.
The New Yorker Fiction Podcast
The New Yorker Fiction Podcast features both well-known and up-and-coming authors who read short stories they have picked by their favorite authors. The New Yorker Fiction Podcast is a great find for anyone who needs that literary pick-me-up.
Kink On Tap
Kink On Tap is a thoughtful, well thought out and captivating podcast that brings up topics like sexuality, society, culture, feminism and queer issues and activism. The two hosts of the podcast have weekly guests where they speak in-depth about issues the guest is intimately involved with.
Sexuality is something to be celebrated and explored and we hope to help you do just that with the articles and reviews we publish in our love and sex category.
Earlier this month at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, California, Bill Gates 
Parents of young athletes always have to be aware of the warning signs of heat illnesses that could affect their child. Heat illnesses that have the opportunity to come on when your child is exercising vigorously in unusually high temperatures and high humidity, which can result in heat cramps, heat exhaustion, or heatstroke. To make sure you know what to be on the lookout for–and for the chance to ask an expert in the field any questions that may be on your mind about heat illnesses–
It seems that for as many distinct and eccentric personalities there are in the world, there is a different phone to compliment each one. Everyone expects certain features from the phones they choose that go far beyond just being able to make and receive phone calls and text messages. As the technology we utilize on our computers continues to evolve, that same technology must evolve on our cell phones as well. Not only do you need to perform your basic functions, but because so many people, myself definitely included, are wired to the internet and to social media and networking most of the time, for a phone not to have those pertinent functions is downright unacceptable.
If you’re heading to New York City to attend the sixth annual BlogHer conference August 6th and 7th, you will need to make a note in your presumably chaotic agenda for the night of August 6th.
