Pamela Poole

life as a lipstick geek

September 2, 2010 • 8:33 pm 0

I’ve lost that lovin’ feelin’

OK, I just flipped real quick through the last, I dunno, 90 or so posts on Mashable, which I picked because it’s more or less representative of most of the blogs that cover what’s new and exciting on the Web, and because it was sitting there, in my Reader, kind of in the middle, with 245 posts unread, begging for attention. It could have happened to anybody.

I’m just an Internet entrepreneur/evangelist having a little crisis of faith. But I can’t possibly be the only one who’s noticed that the Emperor has no clothes…

QR Codes Help Consumers Shop for Wine. Point your gadget at the wine bottle. Watch a video about the wine. Move on to next bottle of wine. And the next. Vacillate. Get annoyed. Ask the guy what goes good with seafood.

HOW TO: Get Started with HTML5 Boilerplate. Now HTML5 is exciting, no question. (Go and enter your zip code in the interactive film The Wilderness Downtown. Arcade Fire soundtrack. Pure awesome.)

Google Responds to Steve Jobs’s Android Activation Jab. Bitch fight.

A Facebook-Based Online Store Just for Students. A “genius idea” with “lifestyle brands” targeting college kids. Nausea.

Pay for Starbucks Coffee with Your BlackBerry. Starbucks and Blackberry sitting in a tree, S-U-C-K-I-N-G.

Twitter Launches Official iPad App. Duh.

Facebook Places Gets a Romantic Twist with MeetMoi Integration. Don’t just go to a bar and pick up a girl. Find all the girls in bars nearby through Facebook and simultaneously flirt with them all online first. Pick the one who seems drunkest and then go nail her. Don’t have to buy her as many drinks or wait as long that way. Dontcha love location apps?

HOW TO: Follow the US Open with Social Media. Watching tennis on Twitter. Happy happy joy joy.

Apple Introduces “Ping” Music Social Network and iTunes 10. Was interested for 30 seconds. Utterly lame, unless you’re about nothing but buying stuff on iTunes. Ping Is the Last Nail in the Coffin for MySpace. Nope. Because MySpace at least has… Hit it boys! Personality (walk) Personality (talk) Personality (charm) Personality (love) Personality…

FCC Questions Key Aspects of Google and Verizon’s Net Neutrality Proposal. Important. So is generally keeping an eye on the one site to rule them all one site to find them one site to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. Google to Power AOL Search for the Next 5 Years. See?

To Unfriend or Not to Unfriend: That Is the Facebook Question. Are we still talking about this?

Justin.tv’s Android App Lets You Broadcast Live Video Anytime, Anywhere. Great. More naked weirdos live.

Old Digg Crushes New Digg in Reader Vote. New version of Digg. Users like the old version better. Duh.

Windows Phone 7 Ready for Release. Microsoft sells phones too? Must be crap.

Filmmaker Raises More than $34,000 for Pirate Bay Documentary. Could be interes…zzzzzzzzzzzz

Target to Sell Facebook Credits as Gift Cards in Stores. Fall of Western Civilization. (Boycott Target, they donated $150K to a far-right gubernatorial candidate, superbly executed flashmob in protest (video).)

4 Tips for Writing SEO-Friendly Blog Posts. Are we still talking about this?

FashionStake “allows consumers to help fund and shape designers’ collections before they’re produced.” Yeah, we know what happens when the fat part of the bell curve gets involved.

Crowdsourced literary magazine. See above. Watch literature become pulp overnight. Without adding water!

Gowalla Feature Defines Place Popularity by Experience, Not Checkins. “This ice cream made me come” might get my attention. Otherwise, spare me. (Please God, no more location crap.)

Sexual Assault Case Against WikiLeaks Founder Reopened. So what’s new about either yet another twisted fuck or yet another CIA plot?

Madden NFL Makes Its Debut on Facebook. It’s not a game, it’s an experience. And it leverages.

Facebook’s Latest Patent Targets Search Behaviors. Are we still surprised?

Digg Crowns Former Amazon Exec New CEO. More Internet executive incest. Inbreeding is bad.

Meet the First Plant That Requires Facebook Fans to Survive. Now that’s cute! Almost tempted to reopen my Facebook account just to friend this tamagotchi.

Real-Time Analytics Provider Chartbeat Raises $3M from All-Star Investors. $3M for fucking stats. Ppfffthh.

Japanese Resort Caters to Men with Virtual Girlfriends. It’s people like you who make everybody think we’re all freaks.

10 Useful iPhone Shortcuts, Tips and Tricks. List Post. Check your brain at the door.

Announcing the UN Week Digital Media Lounge. The UN getting all digital. Almost compensates for the losers with the hologirlfriends. And there are thought leaders in there somewhere.

Twitter Temporarily Turns Off “Who to Follow”. OH NOOOOOOOO! What will become of us???

5 Fun FarmVille Accessories. Fall of Western Civilization.

HOW TO: Incorporate Your Startup at the Right Time. There are already 2 million articles about this (no, really), but thanks on behalf of the millions who are too lazy to Google when to incorporate startup.

Somebrand’s LCD TV goes 3D. Somebrand gets a tablet of their own. New Apple TV does more stuff. Apple makes your iPhone work like your Xbox. Somebrand’s making fancy new earbuds. Someapp updates business data in real time. Somebrand puts out a scratchproof/shockproof Android phone. Somebrand improves its e-reader touch screen. Somebrand cuts prices on its low-end e-readers…

If you can still get excited about all this, they’re hiring at Mashable: We’re Hiring! 50+ Job Vacancies in Social Media, Web Design, and More. Go ahead. Make my day.

Filed under: web life, web trends

May 16, 2010 • 10:56 am 1

Unliking Facebook

In the US, 25% of the web pages viewed are within Facebook. (That’s just so beyond sad.) This may partially explain why, when I told Facebook people I was leaving the site because I thought it was an unscrupulous and untrustworhy company (and asked them to connect with me on LinkedIn till something better came along), one of them, an educated woman, said “I am not sure what facebook is doing that you are troubled by, but do share!” and another one, who considers herself a web entrepreneur, just asked “Why are you leaving facebook?”

Upon reflection, I was surprised that I was surprised that people had no idea that Facebook has, from Day One, been subject to scrutiny and criticism for its morally questionable actions, blatant fuck-ups and lack of respect for users and their personal information. Of course (lightbulb)! Ordinary people don’t read about the Internet, they just jump right in and use it. And Facebook banks on that kind of lemming-ness.

Read the entire post on frogblog.

Filed under: apps, social media, web life, web trends

March 22, 2010 • 11:20 am 0

Token girls

There’s a huge wave that Internet people are paddling like fools to catch right now. It’s the “women are starting to realize they’re under-represented in tech and startups, so we’d better start to care or at least pretend we do” wave. Some effects of this wave include a rise in women-in-tech organizations and an effort by tech event organizers to give women more visibility.

It’s great to see that tech events are giving women a little limelight of their own. I’m going to an event soon that has given women their very own panel! And they’ve called it “Women’s Panel.” Kind of like Women’s Room. But with the latter, there’s little doubt about who uses it or for what. But what about this mysterious Panel…?

Read the rest of this article on frogblog.

Filed under: tech events, web life, web trends , ,

March 14, 2010 • 6:13 pm 0

French, francophile and fresh

There’s a new addition to my family! Meet the Francophilia Gazette.

It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet of juicy news tidbits and spicy culture bites from France: gossip, trivia, pop culture, high culture, history, and more… A fresh take on France and Frenchness, with none of those tired articles about Brie and beaujolais nouveau…

I’ve tested this material on Francophilia’s audience for a year through Twitter with excellent results, so I decided to deliver it in a format that the other 81% of Internet users could handle.

The content is literally bite sized, and visiting the site is like walking into a chocolate shop. The design is pure delight too: resize your browser and watch what happens, or Ctrl + and – a few times. Go to the site on your iPhone and feel the love…

The Francophilia Gazette is rated “French,” which means it won’t always be safe for work in other countries… Vive la France !

Filed under: web life , , ,

March 5, 2010 • 1:10 pm 0

When you want to join the reindeer games…

Do you think there’s room on the Internet for startups that aren’t the product of a programmer’s brain? I do. But some things need to change. Way back in 2008, Bernard Lunn of ReadWriteWeb wrote about his vision for the near future of the Web in a brilliant three-part series in which he said:

The Main Street Web is about people who don’t care about technology or media, they just use it. Above all it is about really simple business models that work in the physical world as well as online world. The Main Street Web will empower small business and level the playing field with big business.

He talked mostly about how usage would become more mainstream, but in my article, You Can’t Launch the Next Generation of Internet Startups Without Women, I suggest that startup founders with viable ideas are likely to start coming from the mainstream too, and that they might be better able to meet the needs and address the interests of an ageing and increasingly diverse population of Internet users.

It’s time for the puppet masters to start looking at paper projects again, like they did in the old days. The way publishing houses look at manuscripts.

Filed under: web life, web trends ,

February 9, 2010 • 4:54 pm 0

A Geek Girl Party in Paris

I went to my first Geek Girl Party in Paris, which was masterfully organized by Sandrine Camus, founder of GamonGirls and the woman behind the Paris Girl Geek Dinners. The party wasn’t quite what I expected. I thought it would be a feminine version of all the tech networking/social events I normally attend, most of which are about startups. But I never saw a business card exchange hands at the girly geek party, and I got the impression it wasn’t serious.

The male-dominated geek events I go to manage to be serious and fun, but the all-girl party was just fun. Also, at the boy parties, everybody is buzzing around talking to strangers, like puppies who run to sniff the shoes of the person they don’t recognize. Where the boys will assertively work the room in search of serendipitous synergies, the girls stood around in their cliques and ignored anyone they didn’t know. I felt like I’d been transported back to high school.

Having a geek girl party is a great idea, unless the only purpose of it is for corporate sponsors to sell you pink tech gadgets. If girl geeks want to be taken seriously, they have to learn how to do fun and serious. Like the boys. And they need to ask for more than free panties and pancake mix…

I highly recommend this French geekette’s insightful and entertaining post on the party.

Filed under: tech events, web life , ,

January 28, 2010 • 8:10 pm 0

Fatigue

There is a common theme to the last two posts I wrote for Web Worker Daily (which has a spiffy new design, BTW, check it out). One was about how to use a great little app called Tweepi to manage all your followers and followees on Twitter, and the other was about what to do when you are in over your head on a  project. I seem to write about managing chaos a lot. Hmmm… I am feeling very fatigued.

Speaking of fatigue, I saw the expression “social media fatigue” for the first time in a while the other day, just a few days after announcing to my husband “I’m bored with the Internet and Twitter right now.” Maybe that’s what I’ve got.

And of course, with what’s happened in Haiti, the expression “compassion fatigue” is on my mind, especially since I can’t seem to inspire even 188 Francophilia members to donate five bucks each to reach my $1,000 donation goal for earthquake relief. Inspiring is hard work. It’s making me tired. They must be fatigued too…

Filed under: apps, social media, web life , , ,

December 18, 2009 • 10:28 am 2

How to be a nomad in Paris

Of all the terms I’ve heard to describe people who can work anywhere there’s wi-fi, my favorite is nomadic workers. There’s something exciting and mysterious and all Lawrence of Arabia about it.

De tous les appellations que j’ai entendues pour parler des personnes qui travaillent partout où il y a du wi-fi, ma préférée est la nomade attitude. Il y a quelque chose de Lawrence d’Arabie dans cette expression-là, du mystère, de l’intrigue.

London-based nomads now have WorkSnug, a sexy, brand-new augmented reality app for the iPhone that points them directly to work-friendly spaces with wi-fi in their vicinity.

Les londoniens qui ont la nomade attitude ont accès à WorkSnug, une application iPhone en réalité augmentée qui leur indique les espaces conviviaux avec un accès wi-fi à proximité.

Now they’re working on the Paris version of WorkSnug, and I get to do the research.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: apps, web life , ,

December 5, 2009 • 7:11 pm 0

Fondatrix

I’ve just created a Facebook group for women startup founders and management. Just a few weeks ago, I started talking to The Next Women in London about doing some blogging and interviews for them. To do that, I need access to women entrepreneurs. So I took the plunge and created Fondatrix.

It’s something I’ve been thinking of doing for a while now. You see, I’ve been on the web/tech/startup circuit for a couple years here in Paris, and the girlpreneurs are just not visible enough IMHO. And I have a very good idea about why that is… Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: social media, tech events, web life , , ,

November 17, 2009 • 3:20 pm 0

You need a plan

Do you have a content strategy for your own social media presence? If you’re a professional, you probably should. Too many small business/startup blogs and Twitter feeds are too inwardly focused, all about features and updates or the founder’s views and activities.

I give some tips for getting a plan and making your content valuable in my Web Worker Daily article Taking Content Strategy Personally.

Content Strategy Forum 2010 — 15-16 April

Don’t know what content strategy is? Find out in Paris next April at Content Strategy Forum 2010, “for anyone who develops, manages, or delivers content within their own organization or for their clients: user experience designers, information architects, business analysts, technical writers, web project managers, documentation managers, translators, web marketers, practicing content strategists, and those looking to break into the field.”

Filed under: social media, tech events, web life, web trends , ,

November 7, 2009 • 7:20 pm 0

What just happened?

Squizlogo

I rarely try out a new site without being highly conscious of my own user experience. That’s what happens when you’ve been in startup Lala Land for a few years, write for a tech blog, and are married to a UI design expert.

Read my post Online seduction on frogblog, about being a conscious user (but mostly about how I was seduced by Squiz, and their anti-business cards).

Filed under: apps, web life , , , , , ,

October 27, 2009 • 9:59 am 0

Most people haven’t been assimilated. Yet.

Why am I always so shocked when I meet people who, for example, don’t know what Twitter is? (And this happened the other day in Paris, not the Amazon rainforest…) Sometimes we Internet types need a reality check.

Here’s a post I wrote for Web Worker Daily just as a reminder that there are lots of people who live mostly in the brick & mortar universe. There are more of them, in fact, than there are of us:

Filed under: web life, web trends

October 20, 2009 • 8:25 am 0

It’s not easy being…compulsive

I admit I’m compulsive and neurotic about some things. Like recycling. I recycle everything, even the little paper envelopes my teabags come in. (And then agonize about what tea plantations have done to developing countries, the carbon emissions to ship the tea, the fact that so many resources go into creating something that is essentially a non-food. Although it does have anti-oxidants. Then I vow to quit. Almost every day.). You see what I mean by neurotic?

Anyway, I wrote a couple of green-leaning posts for Web Worker Daily recently that I thought I’d share:

Filed under: web life

August 29, 2009 • 12:51 pm 0

What does the Web say about you?

Everybody seems to have at least two cents to contribute to the apparently endless discussion of online identity (or personal branding, or e-reputation, or whatever you want to call it). I have plenty to say about it too; I even give talks on the topic. And since personal branding was the theme on Web Worker Daily last month, I contributed two articles that you might find interesting. Or not. But I do talk about Big Bird and pastries in an attempt to keep you from being too bored…

Filed under: social media, web life, web trends , ,

August 15, 2009 • 8:51 am 5

Burned by a client…

voleu2r

Everybody who knows me knows I’m a champion of French startups: on my own blogs, on Web Worker Daily, and IRL. But I’m on the verge of being really pissed off. There’s a French startup that owes me around 300 Euros for a translation I did, and they’re six months late paying…

The merde is about to hit the ventilateur.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: social media, translation, web life , ,

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