I Need a Robot…or Just Large Amounts of Caffeine! July 24, 2009

I am sitting here trying to work from home, but my eyes keep drifting to the different areas of our apartment that are filled with clutter (which is pretty much ALL of it!).  I haven’t fully adjusted to normal life after all the wedding craziness (I have the best hubby – yay!) which was then followed up by an AMAZING honeymoon in Oahu for a week.

As I look around, I wish there was a robot I could buy (or even rent for that matter) that would unpack my bags, do my 8 tons of laundry, and find space for all the amazing wedding gifts we have received and are SO grateful for.  Oh, and clean. It would have to be a damn good robot though, because we don’t have space for anything – it would have to build another room!

If someone could please invent said robot, I would really appreciate it.  Thanks.

In the meantime…off to go make some strong coffee and get working!!

Wedding Registry Gadgets May 22, 2009

I have been very neglectful of my fun little hobby site here since life is pretty hectic right now. I get married in a month and a half, and while it can get a bit stressful, the rewards absolutely outweigh any stressful moments. I have been lucky enough to have 3 wedding showers. I know, three wedding showers is borderline ridiculous and you might be thinking ‘what a spoiled brat’, and in this instance, you may be right. I don’t know how I got so fortunate, but even without the gifts, each shower was amazing in and of itself just with getting the different groups together.

Anyway, I immediately became addicted to registering – especially for cool kitchen gadgets (both electric and manual) and even the simplest tools made me so excited. I never thought I would be excited for a high-powered dust buster (see details below)!

Here are some of the fun gadgets that I was SO excited and grateful to get!

Wesabe Wins My Vote for a Free Money Management Tool March 23, 2009

I don’t know about you, but I don’t even know where my check book is, let alone maintain my check register when I spend or deposit anything. I have been a faithful user of Online Checking for years, and find that it rarely lets me down. While I like Bank of America’s Online Checking website just fine, it doesn’t provide a lot of options in terms of sorting your transactions by deposits, withdrawals, or purchase types.

There are a few free online money management sites that help decipher exactly where most of your money ends up going. I have tried Quicken Online, Mint.com, and Wesabe, and while they all have very similar functionality, Wesabe is the one that I have actually stuck with.

Wesabe brings the social media aspect into it, which I am a huge fan of. You ‘tag’ your transactions so you can easily track and see reports of certain purchases. For example, I tag all supermarket transactions as ‘groceries’, any purchases of alcohol as ‘booze’, and anytime I get my nails or hair done I classify that as ‘beautification’. Now if I click on any of those tags, I will see all related transactions and how much money I spent on them within a given time frame.

Blackberry Themes: My Quest for the Perfect Theme March 17, 2009

As I have already mentioned, I currently have the Blackberry Curve 8330 with Sprint and I love it! Not only do I love the fact that it has so many different ways to keep my information organized, but it also gives me SO many ways to personalize my phone. Since I have such a short attention span when it comes to electronic devices, the fact that I can easily change something up so it seems new again is KEY!!

I have visited a few different Blackberry forums to find free themes, and the two that I find myself visiting the most are Themes4BB.com and BlueRoomSolution.com. Themes4BB has a ton more information on their site in general, but I have  found some really good themes at BlueRoomSolution that keep me checking back for more. Both sites require you to sign up for a free account if you want to view more than like 4 pages at a time, but they are pretty good about not sending a ton of emails to you once you sign up.

I was browsing for some new themes today and was frustrated that I couldn’t seem to find exactly what I was looking for. I began thinking that it must not be so hard to create my own, so I did a little research to see how I could accomplish that. I came across the Plazmic Content Developer Kit and downloaded it with the hope that I would have my new perfect theme tonight!  

Well, it is a little bit harder (and time consuming) than I initially thought, but I think once I gather the images I want and get going I will have just what I am looking for. Once I get my first theme done I will post it for everyone to see (and by everyone, I mean my fiance and my sister – hi guys!).    

If you are new to downloading themes for your phone, don’t be scared, just join a forum and check things out.  Chances are that any questions you have, someone has already asked it and the answer will be easy to find. Good luck and have fun!

Pandora – What the Heck Took Me So Long?? February 18, 2009

I have heard of Pandora before, but never really remembered to check it out when I was on the computer (which is only at least 8 hours of my day, but whatever).  It wasn’t until yesterday that I typed Pandora’s address into the address bar and experienced love at first sight.

I love music as much – if not more – than I love gadgets, so having the ability to customize a radio station to my personal taste is amazing! It was super easy to sign up for a new account and my personalized Jason Mraz station started within a couple minutes of arriving to the site.  You can give a thumbs up or thumbs down to songs (as well as a couple other options) and based on the reviews you give, your radio station just gets more and more personalized.

Now that I have started working from home 2-3 days a week, I know that opening Pandora is just going to become another morning ritual – after making coffee, of course!

The basic service is free, but if you don’t want to hear or see any ads then you can pay $36 for an annual subscription. I can deal with hearing a 20-30 second ad every couple hours, so the free service works just fine for me.

My Current Tech Toys February 11, 2009

I plan on writing more detail about each of these in the future, but in the meantime here is a brief intro into what items I currently am using to feed my addiction.

My Cellular:

I have a bit of a cell phone fetish (much to the dismay of my fiancé), but am currently still happily obsessed with my red Blackberry Curve 8300 with Sprint.  I think I’ve had 9 different cell phones since I first got one in 2002 – maybe I am making up for being a late adopter – and so far the Blackberry is still my favorite.

My first Blackberry was the Pearl with T-Mobile, and if it wasn’t for the crappy T-Mobile service in the Bay Area, I might still have it. After switching to Sprint, I decided to try a different phone, but ultimately came back to the Blackberry. Me and the love for my Curve; “it’s real and it’s deep” (from Will & Grace…anyone?).

My MP3 Player:

Just like I have a mild obsession with cell phones, I also love to have the newest MP3 player I can get my hands on. I have had 3 iPods in 4-5 years, and got the iPod Touch 2nd Generation a few months ago. I still haven’t utilized it to a quarter of it’s potential, but I still like knowing that the potential is there.

My Camera:

This camera was a result of the lovely $600 we received from the government last year. Can you tell I have a thing for red electronic devices? This is another instance of my not knowing half of the things I can do with this camera, but I am going to continue with my plan to eventually find out.

Nerd Alert! I am a Girl Who LOVES Gadgets

Hi everyone,

This is my introductory post to my first website/blog. I didn’t think I would ever have one, but after working within the internet marketing industry for the majority of the last year, it became something I started considering.

I often have to blog for my job, but since I am still a newbie in the industry, I don’t have an overwhelming passion for some of the topics I have to write about.  That’s where this site comes in…I LOVE tech gadgets, new web technologies, social media tools, etc.  I am the type of girl that geeked out when I saw Kent German from CNET at Boudins in downtown SF.

So, my goal for this site is to just talk about new (or old) technologies (physical or web-related) that I think are cool.  Since I don’t have any formal education in technology, things won’t get too technical and I will do my best to keep things light and easy to read.

Hope you enjoy, and feel free to drop me a line if you see something new that I haven’t talked about yet.

Thanks for reading!