Girls ‘n’ Gadgets will be back in march with a new look team and loads of gadget news!!!
In the mean time, do check out our recommended blogs in the links section.
Leila
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
New Year, New Team!
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010Introducing Our New U.S. Blogger
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
Kelly
Hello everyone. Taking a cue from Madeline, I thought I should introduce myself prior to making my first post. Okay, technically this is my first post, but you know what I mean.
My name is Kelly Johnson. I live and work in San Diego, CA. Yes, tough life, but someone has to celebrate Christmas at 73 degrees Fahrenheit, why not me? I came across Girls ‘n’ Gadgets quite accidentally one evening, while browsing the web. You know the routine, one link leads to another and next thing I know I’m emailing Leila, telling her how much I enjoy her site and asking if she has any need for new bloggers, yada, yada, yada – and here I am.
My background is primarily in academia and the nonprofit arena. Right after college I worked as a newspaper reporter. A few years later I made the transition to public relations, a girl’s gotta eat after all.Seeking a new challenge, I took an admin job at the University of California, San Diego, working in the library information technology department. I was fortunate and lucky, to work with a group of brilliant and generous geeks who taught me most of what I know. The rest I learned in class, one of the benefits of working for a university.
Most recently I worked at the Wharton School in Pennsylvania, while my husband attended med school in Philadelphia, PA. These days I keep busy doing freelance web development, blogging, and engaging in geeky endeavors wherever I may find them. You can always reach me at kelly@girlsngadgets.com.
Girls ‘n’ Gadgets wins an Award!
Thursday, November 26th, 2009
Founder Leila Gilley Accepting Awards
Girls ‘n’ Gadgets won the Computer Weekly - Best Company/corporate: SMEs Award in a fantastic awards ceremony in London last night.
The awards were held at the uber trendy Shoreditch House and attracted top tech journalists/ bloggers such as Rory Cellan-Jones (BBC), Hermione Way (News Pepper and Techfluff ) and Kevin Anderson (Guardian).
Other winners included Michelle Flynn (Individual IT professional female), Steve Clayton (Individual IT professional male) and Elizabeth Harrin (Project management). The big winner of the night though was Graham Cluley with a whopping 3 awards (IT security, IT Twitter User of the Year and Best of the Best). Cap Gemini scooped two (Company/corporate: large enterprise and CIO/IT director).
List of Winners:
* CIO/IT director
Winner: Capgemini – CTO Blog
Runner up: CIO Blog – Peter Birley
* IT consultant and analyst
Winner: ITP Report – Alim Ozcan report
Runner up: The IT Skeptic
* Individual IT professional male
Winner: Steve Clayton – Geek in disguise
Runner up: TechHead
* Individual IT professional female
Winner: Flynny’s blog – EMC Consulting
Runner up: A girl’s guide to Project Management
* Company/corporate: large enterprise
Winner: Technology blog – Capgemini
Runner up: TechCrunch
* Company/corporate: SMEs
Winner: Girls’n’Gadgets
Runner up: The Symbian blog
* Project management (including methodologies, e.g. Agile)
Winner: A girl’s guide to Project management
Runner up: ZDNet – IT project failures – Michael Krigsman
* Sustainable and green IT
Winner: Greenbang
Runner up: Kate Craig-Wood – Kate’s Comment
* IT security
Winner: Graham Cluley’s Blog Sophos
Runner up: Countermeasures
* Open source in business
Winner: BrianTeeman.net
Runner up: ComputerWorld UK – Open Enterprise
* IT Twitter user of the year
Winner: @gcluley
Runners up: @stephenfry and @rickmans
Individual IT professional female
Nokia Twist 7705
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
I thoroughly enjoyed placing the Nokia Twist on the table during my meetings, especially when the other 10 were all the same top-selling model. This Twist commands the attention of the room even when it’s filled with fanboys of $500 phones.
The design of the Nokia Twist is sleek and sophisticated, yet simple. It is a small, square-shaped phone, smaller than the palm of my hand and you see only one button when closed. The first thing that catches your eye is the shiny hole on the corner of the phone. The hole lights up in different colors and it is used as the pivot point when twisting open and closed. The phone has rounded corners and has smooth edges, even when open. It comes with two different protector faceplates that you can change depending on what you’re in the mood for, black or purple. It actually resembles a compact when closed, and even has a mirror in the back when open. You’ll love this if you like to take pictures of yourself or if you don’t carry a mirror but need one.
The phone twists open to reveal a full Qwerty keyboard along with 7 shortcut keys: New Text Message, Music, Internet, Voice Command, Speakerphone On/Off, Camera, and Vibrate/Silent Mode. I am a huge fan of the Palm Pre’s rubbery keys and was hoping that was what I would find in this phone. If you enjoy having long nails and texting, fuhgettaboudit! My nails are not very long but sending messages on this phone was either at 5wpm or it looked like something from the Da Vinci Code.
Many people were expecting to find Nokia’s browser when tapping the Internet shortcut key but instead found Verizon’s Polaris browser. Verizon’s MobileWeb home page was the best part of my browsing experience with the Nokia Twist. It allowed me to type a number on the keypad instead of having to use the directional keys around the Menu button on the face of the phone.
Once I had to do more than view news, weather and sports, I began navigating using the directional keys and the keypad. I must say that this was a frustrating experience. The phone has 2 touch soft keys on each side of the directional pad. Whether you use your nail or finger tip to move the curser left, right, or up, you will most likely tap the soft key for stop, menu, or navigate. The CLR key is another touch key that is near the directional pad and if you hold the phone the wrong way, you will press it and go back to the previous page. If you are focused when browsing, you will most likely be able to manage without throwing the phone out the window but multi-taskers beware!
Most will tell you that the appearance of the Nokia Twist is unlike any other on the market but as far as its functionality, it is very similar to other flip-phones on the market. If you like the type of phone that allows full functionality without having to open it, this is not the phone for you. Without opening the phone you can silence and ignore calls, view contacts and text conversations, and navigate through the menu. If you like the type of phone that will turn heads and maybe score you some numbers, you have found your match!
Computer Weekly IT Blog Awards Nomination…
Monday, October 19th, 2009Introducing our US Correspondent Madelline Garza…
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
Madelline Garza - G'n'G US Correspondent
Howdy! I was recently given the very exciting opportunity to be Girls’n'Gadget’s Official US Correspondent so I thought I’d introduce myself!
My name is Madelline Garza and I live in Austin, Texas in the US of A. Austin’s motto is “Keep Austin Weird” so I might be writing about some of the “weird” stuff we get to see around here!
I have various interests but personally, I love my kids, very high heels, shopping, Halo, live music, movies, technology, languages, math, mocking stereotypes, and yummy dragon food (bad kids and pepperoni pizza are my favorite).
I grew up with my father who fixed and rebuilt computers on the side. Luckily, this came with several benefits including a keyboard and computer as my favorite toy at 11 years old. (I was typing at over 100wpm at 14!) Since I was daddy’s little girl, I became very interested in what he was doing with these “toys”.
In the 90’s I took part in a couple of social forums from “the valley” in south Texas and a few years ago, I began visiting different forums to help answer questions and give my advice on familiar subjects. I created an internal website for Apple’s International Carrier Support group and then before the launch of the iPhone 3G S and 3.0, I became a member of the Apple Employee Program to help moderate and answer questions in Apple’s forums.
In the past 10 years I have worked with networks, electronics and cell phones. I now work for Apple supporting the iPhones, Macs, and of course lovely PCs. Several months ago, a friend of mine met Swanny in London and then introduced me to Girls’n'Gadgets. I am proud to say that I am now a part of it and I can’t wait to deliver my take on tech for Girls’n'Gadgets!
Over and out
FOWA – It’s all about exactly that
Thursday, October 8th, 2009This year’s FOWA was my first, and what an event it turned out to be. There are so many exciting things in store for us and I was delighted to get an insight into the Future of Web Applications!
All of the presentations were interesting and beneficial and I struggled to whittle them down to a compiled a list of points from those that I found particularly interesting, but here goes.
The first talk to really get me thinking was ‘Get Niche, Rich and Go Mainstream’ with David Prager. I’d always personally brushed over Niche (or was it Nitch 
) markets thinking that there wasn’t really a huge amount of revenue to be made there. Turns out I was very wrong, these are the untapped markets and it would seem the web is leaning towards this. It would make sense that the more relevant you can make your web app to someone the more likely they are to use you time and time again to get the best most suited product.
The next presentation to have my mind boggled was ‘Going Global’ with Cat Lee, the statistic that really sticks in my brain from Cat’s presentation is this: Facebook was translated into French in 24 hours, yes 24 hours! That’s incredible and how did they do it? They got their users to…genius. Why pay a third party or in-house employees to complete a requirement for you when you can ask your users whom are willing and eager to help. Facebook has created such a dedicated and loyal community that they want to work from them for free, this is proof of the power of crowd sourcing.
Both Kevin Rose’s and Gary V’s presentations left me with some points that seemed logical but one’s I’d never sat down and identified before. One of those being over featuring, by that I mean giving your users too many features. Instead do fewer features well continuing to improve on those that the users love. Remember to never think you know your users, you don’t. Ask them what they want – a feedback form is not good enough – get them to tell you what works for them and what doesn’t, that way they feel like the contributed and contribution gives you a sense of belonging. Something like uservoice.com seems ideal.
I have to mention Bruce Lawson’s talk on HTML5 – how very exciting! HTML5 really has something new to bring to the game, I can’t wait for all current browsers to support it (come on IE). Bruce’s Friday talk was SO good Ryan replaced his own panel debate on Saturday with another talk from Bruce, upon hearing what he had to say and demonstrate I’d definitely encourage people to experiment with it, although not on a live deployment just yet as it’s not fully supported.
I think my favourite presentation has to be one on Accessibility by Robin Christopherson – How to Increase the Accessibility of Your Web App. Firstly, what an amazing guy if you get the chance to see one of his presentations please go, it will be worth it. Before listening to this presentation I’d always kind of skipped over accessibility but I now realise the error of my ways! I did not realise that by making your site inaccessible you are cutting out a sizable slice of the market. If you’ve never put your site through a screen reader, do it (here’s a free download). I guarantee it will shed a new light on the importance of accessibility.
In my opinion FOWA was a great success (despite the issues with wifi) and an exciting look into the technologies we have awaiting us. I always find it so liberating to mingle and debate topics with such passionate, intelligent and driven people and FOWA was buzzing with just those types.
FOWA 2009
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
FOWA Conference
Having lived a mile or so away from last year’s venue, I remember my local Twitter stream showing nothing but tweets from the conference. Many Web professionals talk highly of the Future Of Web Apps Conference (FOWA) and so this year I thought I would go along and see what the hype is all about. FOWA is organised by Carsonified who run events and workshops for Web professionals (designers and developers).
This year’s event was sponsored by companies such as Microsoft, Pay Pal, Vodafone and Yahoo, who all had stands with demos, competitions and some very cool freebies. The event, held at the Kensington Town Hall, was a sell out. It was hosted by Carsonified’s very own CEO Ryan Carson and boasted names such as Kevin Rose (Digg) and Gary Vaynerchuk (Wine Library TV) who received a fantastic reception from the FOWA crowd.
Ryan introduced a Twitter related application, developed to help FOWA conference goers to meet and find people with similar interests. The Hello App (@helloapp) works by entering the code attached to each chair in the conference hall. Your Twitter icon would then show where the seat was located on the online seating plan and you could then see who was sitting around you. Other commands such as ‘meets’ and ‘high fives’ would also be sent by the user to @helloapp and points would be gained in order to win prizes. Voucher codes were also scattered around the venue to gain points/ icons. There were prizes for various combinations of points/ icons collected. The big prize ( built to scale remote control truck) was won by Calvin Robinson who wasted no time in opening it!!!
Day one was kicked off by Kevin Rose who delivered an inspiring talk on how to get your site from one to one million users. All of the talks could be watched in the main auditorium or downstairs in the Sun (Microsystems) Startup Essentials ‘Chill Out’ lounge, where conference goers could sit on the bean bags, relax and watch the talks on the big screens. As well as the beanbag area, Sun Startup Essentials provided stand space for various music startups such as Audio Boo, GigLocator, Soundcloud and Mix Cloud , giving them access to network and show demos of their products to over 700 people. Stewart Townsend, Matt Hosanee and Lucy Hillman did a superb job and to top it all off, at the end of the first day, they provided pizza and beer for everyone! The official FOWA party (sponsored by PayPal) followed, which resulted in a lot of hungover people for Fridays session.
There was a noticeable increase in people watching the conference from the chill out room on Friday, but everyone seemed to be enjoying the presentations. The day ended with the highly amusing Gary and Keven show, which saw a girl from the audience, throw herself on stage and battle with another startup founder to ‘pimp their startup’. The Twitter feed in the background at times got unruly, but was extremely entertaining!
All in all, my first FOWA was great! The event was superbly organised and apart from the sketchy Internet, I think it went extremely well. I enjoyed the presentations a lot, although I felt there could have been a better representation from the UK; 80% of the speakers were American and despite the fact I thought they were really good and entertaining, it would have been nice to see some home grown talent.
Well done to everyone involved in the organising! A great success!
Tomorrow we will have the technical review of the talks.
Geek Girl Dinners go down a storm
Thursday, August 27th, 2009Last night I was invited to the fourth anniversary event for London’s Girl Geek Dinners and it was the first one I had ever been to.
The event, which takes place every few months, looks at and debates how girls and tech can be moved more into the mainstream arena and get advertisers to take us seriously, through questions and situations put to the audience through a discussion panel.
It was set up by Sarah Blow who thought it would be a “few girls based in London having some nice food and a few drinks talking about what they have been up to with their work.”
However, it’s grown massively since then with heads such as Maggie Philbin, science and technology broadcaster and former Tomorrow’s World presenter, taking the stage and really debating how we girls can get our feet firmly into the technology door.
On the debating panel last night was Belinda, who is a consultant at Saatchi and Saatchi and has been campaigning for girls to be recognized as the technology “geeks” we are instead of fluffy fashion victims.
Top of her terrible advertisers list was PC World and Dell, which aired a despicable advert suggesting us girl’s only go for the colour of items and what they look like rather than the specs. If this wasn’t bad enough the advert was also followed through (quite a fitting term) with a ditzy voice over.
“Our research has shown only 9% of women want the Jordan fashion and pink look, and 45% want specs and sophistication,” she told us.
Thankfully, as the audience agreed, the technology gap is closing, but as we all know there is still more to be done to change the pink puff tech image we girl’s have involuntarily fallen into.
Geek Girl Dinners
A Model Search?
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009Calling all model scouts!
Do you feel like surfing websites for models is a waste of time?
How many hours, days, weeks even, do you spend before finding ‘the one’?
How about a website that will save you time and deliver relevant and accurate results for even the most demanding of client requests? Interested? I thought you might be… The answer is Sonnet Models.
Sonnet Models have created a Facebook application, launching on 1st July 2009, which they claim will “change the way aspiring models get onto the books of the world’s leading modelling agencies”. Their aim is to filter the amount of information that bombards modelling industry professionals on a daily basis. For all of those aspiring models out there, this ‘quantity’ can be a real issue and hard to overcome. As a result, some of the best/ most suited models for jobs are overlooked. Sonnet are hoping to take the hard work out of model scouting and to provide a fairer pairing process for both the scout and the model.
So here’s how it works: “a model goes to the Sonnet Facebook application” explains the CEO of Sonnet models, Mike Chepkin. “He or she uploads a photo and submits it into categories, e.g. ‘friendliness’ or ‘beauty’. Facebook users then decide which models they prefer by casting votes and the top models could get scouted by some of the world’s leading agencies.”
Enter the ‘Sonnet Face of the World’ competition and you could win the chance to be flown to one of the fashion capitals for an exclusive photoshoot to kick start your modelling career in style. All finalists will secure contracts with top agencies such as Elite, Diva and Scene - so what are you waiting for?
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