Traveling with your favorite beauty products is a pain, no matter which way you slice it.  Either you’re squeezing lotions and potions into too-tiny bottles, crossing your fingers that you have enough serum or face scrub to make it through your trip, or you lug your full-sized bottles with you, and you’re the poor girl waiting for your baggage long after the carry-on crew has left the building.  Thankfully, the ladies at 3floz.com have a better way— they send you TSA-approved, travel sized bottles of your favorite high-end beauty products.  Have them shipped to your house so you can pack them before you leave, or send them to your destination so they’re waiting to make you beautiful when you get there.  3floz.com is proof that good things come in small, security-friendly packages.

During the summer I spent in the Great White North, I had the opportunity to be involved in a photo-shoot-turned-tear-jerker video project that asked that very question.  When I smiled and held up my card, I had no idea what a powerful message would result when all our collective wisdom was strung together with music.  Check out this beautiful video, masterminded by Scott Stratten from Unmarketing and Alison Kramer from Nummies.  Thanks so much for including me. It was so fun to be a part of it!

If you could go back and talk to your pregnant self, what would you say? Let me know in comments!

Sometimes, you want to shop in your jammies. You want to point, click and buy. You want your spoils to arrive in a brown box carried by a man who looks good in brown shorts.

God bless the internet!

There are some times, however, when the internet just doesn’t cut it. Maybe you want to get up close and personal before you make your final purchase decision, or you just crave that instant gratification that Mr. Buy It Now button just can’t provide.

When you want to research online but shop local, use Milo.com to see what’s available at local stores in real time. Milo scans the shelves of stores near you so you know what’s available where before you leave home— no more running from store to store hoping that they’ve got what you need. Clothing, home improvement, electronics, books and more… if it’s in Milo’s database, you’re assured a successful trip to the local store.

Recipes are fun. Organizing recipes and creating shopping lists is not. Enter ZipList, the app that helps make easy work of keeping your recipes all in one place (even the ones you tear out of doctor’s waiting room magazines), and creating shopping lists from the recipes you want to make each week. Check out the video and watch how easy it is to get started creating a digital shopping list that anyone can update and won’t get left on the fridge.

What’s your biggest grocery/meal planning challenge? And where do you get your recipes from? I’d love to hear from you!

That’s why when I stumbled across Cocoon Innovations and their amazing Grid-It system, I was intrigued.  Actually, I was jump-up-and-down excited because I was heading to BlogHer and KNEW that I couldn’t afford to be digitally disorganized as I made my way through the convention halls.

The Grid-It system consists of a board wrapped with a basketweave of rubberized elastic bands that intersect in varying widths, so that some of the spaces between them are large enough to hold a camera, and some are small enough to hold a pen.  Cocoon Innovations was kind enough to send me their new iPad Sling to wear at the conference (thank you, CI!), and not only did it do WONDERS for my back because of it’s over-the-shoulder design, but the Grid-It  board that came with it kept my lip gloss handy, as well as my cell phone and Flip video camera (a geek chic triumvirate if there ever was one!)

Cocoon Innovations makes all kinds of corralling gear for geeks— cases for laptops, gaming devices, phones, camera bags and more, most of which come with a Grid-It, which can also be purchased separately.

Cocoon Innovations was kind enough to give me an iPad Sling to wear at BlogHer, but I was not compensated for this post in any other way.  I also would never write a positive review just cause I got free stuff.  That would be icky.

The idea of following up with everyone I met and catching up on the work that I missed is making my brain throb.  I am definitely experiencing Conference Crash.  Here are the helpful tools and apps that I’m going to use to make my post-BlogHer recovery a little less painful.

Neat Receipts by Neat Company

Trapped inside each card in that stack you collected is a friendship, an opportunity, some great information, your next client or your next sale.  And trapped they’ll stay if you don’t have a way to swiftly get them all into your contact management system, a daunting and time consuming task.  Consider yourself rescued by Neat Receipts.  This diminutive yet powerful scanner reads and extracts key information from your cards, documents and receipts so you can export it into your own system or database.  Scan those scribbled notes you took at the keynote, hand-outs and flyers, and receipts you need to track for your next expense report— using Neat Receipts is like hiring a personal assistant to do all your typing for you, and it won’t even ask you for a raise.

Evernote

Where can you store that business plan you wrote on the back of a napkin, the Exhibitor Hall contact list, that audio interview you recorded with the keynote speaker, and that photo of the Chardonnay label you sipped at the sponsor party?  Evernote is like one big giant notebook you can tuck just about anything into.  If you can see it or think of it, Evernote can help you store, organize and retrieve it.  Web clippings, lists, documents, scans, audio files and more, all can be tagged and organized so you know you’ll be able to find it when you need it.  Stuff it full of stuff from all corners of your digital life, and it will never be as heavy as your conference bag.

OtherInbox

Stacks of unanswered emails are the worst side effect of Conference Crash.  There’s urgent stuff— bills, work tasks, and emails from “real” people—sandwiched in between the department store coupons and mass newsletters.  OtherInbox helps you get to that stuff first, and fast.  It’s like having someone sort through your email, leaving all the important stuff in your inbox, then organizing and filing the rest for you to peruse when you’re done playing catch-up.  Use the Organizer to teach OtherInbox about which emails are important to you and which can be tucked away to read later.  Now, your inbox is a little less overwhelming and you can find your mom’s cat photos that much quicker (unless you tell OtherInbox to file her emails away— mums the word).

Klout

You met so many lovely people in 48 hours, but let’s face it, you want to network with some of the big fish first.  How can you know whether that woman you met in the bathroom is a hobby bloggess, or a social media maven with legions who hang on her every word?  Klout can help you determine the overall online influence of anyone.  Just enter their twitter handle and you’ll get a thorough evaluation of things like their “Amplification Probability” (how likely their tweets are retweeted, or spark conversation), and their “Network Score” (how influential their followers are).  Now you can make an informed decision about who to include in your first line of response— you’ll get to the rest, but first get to the ones with the most Klout— er, clout.

Cocodot

A hand-written “nice to meet you” note for everyone you encountered at BlogHer would be the ultimate smooth move— what better way to stand out from the pack?  But writing all those letters is a one-way ticket to carpel tunnel, not to mention that most of your contacts didn’t give you their mailing address, and the postage bill would be sizeable.  Send a card without the hassle with Cocodot, the eco-chic e-greeting company.  Select from thousands of beautiful templates, then customize fonts and colors ‘til your heart’s content.  Send a card to one or many, and each arrives in your recipient’s inbox in a digital envelope, which opens to reveal your beautiful card.  The experience of opening one is so visceral it’s almost like the real thing. Upload your blog logo or company name for an even more personalized touch, or add a picture of yourself to the card to jog a new contact’s memory about what you look like.

Passpack securely stores all my passwords and gives me one-click access to any site whose information I store in it’s Fort Knox-like coffers.  You can create the most complex, hacker-resistant passwords and never have to worry about keeping track of them all. Your information is so deeply encrypted, not even the folks at Passpack can access the information! But you, my friend, can access it from anywhere.

I’m thrilled to be representing Passpack at BlogHer this week. Check out these videos to learn more about how their awesome app works.

How to use Passpack’s Auto Login and One Click Login features

How passpack keeps your information secure

How to use Passpack to securely share passwords with a team

I thought I’d reach out to all you amazing blogging females before I jump into the crowd, and say “Hello, nice to meet you.  Tell me about your blog!”

If you’re attending BlogHer, I’d love for you to comment below and introduce yourself.  Tell me who you are, and what your blog is about. (Hey, it’s a good opportunity to practice your elevator pitch!)

Can’t wait to meet you all next week!

Ever since I arrived on the east coast, it takes every calendar entry and sets it 3 hours back, to west coast time.  And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the incorrect entry then syncs with my phone, where it gets set back another three hours. I have modified every setting, and Googled every possible explanation, but nothing has solved the problem. We missed the day-before-camp orientation by 3 hours and my poor kids showed up to an empty field with no counselors or campers to get acquainted with— ah, good times.

What’s your latest computer drama?  Share it with me here!

That’s where Nutshell Mail comes in. It delivers the latest happenings from all your social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn) to your Inbox in an easy-to-read digest. With easy set up and customization, you can get the 411 in one, digestable email— click on any link or post and go straight to the web to react, or just read it and get on with your day.

I’ll show you how to get an account, and what your email will look like when it shows up in your Inbox!

Click here to view the embedded video.