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.
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!
The BlogHer conference was a blast, and I hopped from party to party, collecting business cards like a mad woman and tweeting up a storm. I might have even made some great joint venture deals— hard to remember with all that wine and swag flowing! Now that it’s over, I’ve got sore feet, stacks of business cards and days worth of unanswered emails. The party is definitely over!
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
A few months back, I reviewed Passpack, an online password management system that safely stores all the usernames and passwords for all the websites you visit online. At the time, I had only begun to play with Passpack’s power app, and since then have transferred every last login and use it every day. So it’s time to reintroduce… Passpack!
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
Tweets, pokes, followers, friends… sometimes social media can feel less like a cocktail party and more like being a waitress at a cocktail party. It can be such a project to keep up with all your social media channels, and who really has the time to nurse them all with frequency?
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!
What do you you do with all the articles and blog posts you want to read… later? How do you track all those pages so that you can find them all when you have time? And what if you don’t have an internet connection when it’s time to start reading? Read It Later answers all those questions and more– watch this 2 minute video where I show you how to use this simply powerful application to track things you want to read later.
Are you feeling the schedule crunch? Cozi.com wants to help you simplify and organize family life. They have “just enough” technology– everything you need and nothing you don’t– to keep in touch and coordinated with your family members. Plus to-do lists, shopping lists, and a great journal to help you jot down quick memories and photos to share with family and friends. It’s FREE and easy to sign up and get started!
Yesterday, while I was creating the last couple videos for my new Digital Video Training Product, Sync or Swim Digital Photos, a bird flew into my office.
I swear, the sweetest little brown bird.
Somewhere on my hard drive is an outtake of me rambling on about ordering prints online, interrupted by a mad-woman shriek, followed by fits of giggles and screaming. It was a total scene— me trying to shoo it out the door, my kids screaming helpful directions, and my dog cowering in the corner (pathetic— she’s a bird dog and everything).
After it was all over, my kids and I fell on the floor, laughing, panting and retelling the story. And then I thought— man, I wish I had a picture of that crazy event!
I’m pretty sure that my brain has been irreparably damaged by the birth of my two children, love them as I do. These days, if I don’t have a picture, memories slip into the abyss and are forgotten as quickly as they happen.
It’s not much different when you DO actually manage to get the picture, but it sits in a pile of hundreds of other pictures, and never gets organized or published.
It’s kinda like that zen quandary: “If a digital photo falls in the forest, and no one can find it, does it preserve a memory?”
It’s time to give our memories the respect they deserve: To curate them, to elevate them from a pile of gigabytes to a place of great value. I mean, this is our life we’re talking about.
And the kicker is, it’s EASY to do once you learn how. The tools you need don’t cost anything and they’re waiting to help you make sense of all your digital pictures. You only have to decide that it’s time to stop stressing and start taking action.
If you’re tired of the piles of unorganized photos on your hard drive (or are they still on your camera?!),
If you’re feeling intimidated by the technology, and don’t know where to start,
If YOU want to be the one that has the coffee table full of those smart digital photo books,
then it’s time to wipe the bird poop off your computer and join me for a LIVE webinar tomorrow, May 19th at 10am PT/1p ET. I’ll be talking about:
How to get pictures off your camera, and where to put them when you do
Why Google Picasa is my program of choice for managing your pictures
Some cool ways to get the most out of your pictures
PLUS, I’ll be launching Sync or Swim Digital Photos, my very first digital product that WALKS YOU THROUGH how to organize all your digital pictures, print photobooks, share online and more! You’ll be able to ask me questions, and get answers about your digital photo quandries (if you STILL don’t get what a megapixel is, I’ll go over it again!).
If you can’t make it live, no biggie, sign up anyway and I’ll send you a recording that you can watch later.
Hope you’ll join me for a little Digital Photo therapy!
Measy takes the confusion and frustration about choosing something like a digital camera, smartphone or e-reader. Combining my two favorite passtimes— taking quizzes and shopping for nerdy gadgets— Measy asks you a series of VERY thorough questions and in minutes you’ve got the BEST recommendation given all your needs and wants.
What the heck is a megapixel? Now you don’t have to care, because Measy.com is your decisive BFF.
Carley has been a true asset to our program at Women’s Care Cottage. She has helped the women reflect and create resolve in their next steps and future successes. Carley has been a true inspiration to clients by being witty, personable, honest and courteous. Carley has done all of this for us for free! Our women really appreciate her here and we look forward to many more enlightening sessions with her. — Shamika D. Women’s Care Cottage
