Sometimes, you just plan and plan and not get to actually make something, ya know?

What do you guys think of the new look?

And as I said earlier to BananaBoy since this is still under wraps, “Don’t go leaking this to Gizmodo.” ;)

I mentioned in an earlier post that I’d do a quick podcast review. This ties into “spending less time online”.

Really, what does it come down to? Being efficient.

And nothing’s more efficient than a podcast that will catch you up with the latest industry news in a few minutes to an hour.

The podcasts mentioned below are my current favorites. They range from general news to tech news to randomness to craftiness
(listed counterclockwise):

Sticks & Strings
a knitting podcast by an Australian bloke

You Look Nice Today
Journal of Emotional Hygiene with Merlin Mann as one of the 3 main guests

Knitters Uncensored
Hilarious trio based in Germany. Definitely uncensored.

This American Life
There’s a theme to each episode, and a variety of stories on that theme. It’s mostly true stories of everyday people, though not always.

Craft.Rock.Live.
Vickie Howell’s podcast which lasted for one season. She has an interview with Greenday’s lead singer’s wife as well as other crafty divas.

NYTimes Podcast
News on the go: Front page news, NYT Tech Talk, Political Points: On The Presidential Campaign, Science Times, Only in New York

This Week in Tech: TWiT
Join Leo Laporte, Patrick Norton, John C. Dvorak, and other tech luminaries in a roundtable discussion of the latest trends in high tech

That is all folks! Check out these podcasts when you have a chance. Let me know if you’ve converted to any of them :)

I have an XPS laptop from Dell which is pretty rare considering the Apple fan kids surrounding me. I figured I’d give the logo hiding a try for kicks. A few pieces of felt, lots of white glue and scissors and about half an hour later:

Upclose shot:
Crafts and technology collide!

All in all, I can say my site is still well and alive as you can tell :) And if you haven’t noticed already, there’s a link on the left hand column so you can join my mailing list. If you want to stay up to date and would like to find out when I’ll be reopening the shop, sign up. I’ll probably send out an introductory coupon of sorts for the new shop so it won’t hurt.

And the moral of the story kids is – don’t be afraid of screwing up. You can’t get anywhere if you don’t start and try. You just need to DO IT.

Panel: Keynote with Mark Zuckerberg
My notes: “Sucked”
All I remember from this talk was Zuckerberg saying “platform, efficient, community” and Lacy just crossing and uncrossing her legs while twirling her hair. I left 15 minutes before the end. Apparently, the crowd went a bit crazy when it was Q&A time towards the end. The best part was when it as mob rule and they gave her a lashing. Ah well.

Panel: Human Rights in Virtual Worlds: discussion about whether or not you own what you make in a virtual game
- there is no such thing as group rights as of now. There’s still work being done for individual rights online
- ULAs (User Licence Agreements) are not always as liberal as marketed

Should you own what you make? If it’s on their server, perhaps it doesn’t fall into “your” possession. Curious what the gamers in the audience think of this one.

Panel: Icanhascheezburger
We were promised free burgers. While we were inside the room, passersby ate our burgers :( I still can’t believe the company staffs 9 full time employees – all off ad-based revenue from funny cat pictures!

Sunday was the most partied out night of all of them. Went to a pre-party for the Adobe Web Awards. Then the awards show hosted by Eugene Mirman. Lots of laughs. The ‘ask a ninja’ guy came out to receive awards for participants not present. Went to the Etsy/Threadless/Moo party – which sucked. It was crowded, hot and no movement space since there were 3 pool tables with active games going on at the time. Gawker party at Emo’s: Met John Coulton who sings “Code Monkey”. Bumped into Eugene Mirman there who let us know of his comedy show the following night. Then went to Blogger party and met Cheeseburger from Icanhascheezburger. Partied hard.

Most memorable moment at the Blogger party: Met an Irishman and asked where I should go when I visit Ireland some day. Instead of the usual way of making a list, he drew out an accurate map of Ireland’s coastline and pin pointed the cities I should see. I love the geek way and not the ‘normal’ way :)

I don’t want to bore you with all the details and I’m sure you can find long, well written explanations of the panels on professional blogs. Here, I’ll just note what I found interesting from the ones I attended.

In true slacker fashion, I will write up the first day. More to come.

Panel: Horrible Ads: A panel with Jeff Jarvis and others discussing last year’s worst advertising campaigns
- Rules #101 : When making an ad, make sure your audience can remember your brand name
- Don’t mess with Wikipedia because you will be found out
- Don’t make up socialibility where it doesn’t exist (The Cisco “human networking” example)
- Vespa: Started a blog and let it die after a few entries. If you start it, finish it!
- Whole Foods CEO: Don’t lie about your competition
- Whatever you do, don’t insult your audience’s intelligence

Panel: Steven Johnson & Henry Jenkins: An optimistic view on collective intelligence
- How is it that people find the time and devotion to fan sites?
- Most pink collar workers need high levels of expertise to get the job. Once they have it, they are only required to use a small portion of their knowledge at work. They then seek out respect and a reputation outside of the office – this is possible in an online space. Hence, the motivation for hours spent creating online communities
- Harry Potter has enabled kids to seek out larger text to read as well as learn about the legal process and fair trade when they try to publish their own works.
- There’s a shift from “I” to “We”
- A large reason why Barack Obama is popular amongst younger voters: he is the stub in the Wikipedia entry and we are all filling out the entry together (interesting wording that caught my attention)

Panel: Voting
- “miracle of aggregation”
- In a betting market, there is a cost to be wrong. If there’s something at stake, does a voter with a ‘wrong’ vote stay quiet?
- If you don’t know enough about a subject, don’t vote! (brings up the question of how informed are we as a society about the current issues and our presidential candidates’ take on them)

Panel: Worst. Website. Ever: A complete riot. Some of the most hilarious moments at SXSW. Loved it.
- What makes a horrible website? It is: Inane. Derivative. Evil.
(derivative example: Facebook for Senior Citizens. Threadless for Pants – Pantless)
Sites presented: Presca.st, Flockd Up, HappyNetBox, Sickr, Mmomerce, PeopleIPO.

After this, we’d gone to Spaghetti warehouse. Because where do you eat the best Italian food? In Texas, of course. And how do you know it’s the best? Your food has a tiny plastic Italian flag on it to remind you of the cuisine in case you’d forgotten.

Good times on 6th street afterwards. Got a cowgirl hat. :)

In any case, it seems that SXSW is following me even at the entrance of my workplace. I walked out this morning to get some late morning coffee and I see two girls handing out fliers for Animoto. I had seen their presentation at SXSW’s Trade Show. I grabbed a few dozen fliers of theirs and decided to join the site. Here’s my little experiment -

It’s not a bad process. Takes about 15 minutes total and is much quicker if you have your photos hosted on Flickr or another hosting site. I may use it later in the future. If you make your own slideshow, let me know. Mine was kinda a starter :)