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A (tech) Star is Born

02/02/2011

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As an actor and producer of 35, the first scripted web series to stream live on the Internet, Kathryn Jones is reinventing the concept of "theater techie." No longer is it only about shadowed souls clad in head-to-toe black, frantically whispering into headsets, trying to perfect the lighting on Juliet's face as she waxes poetic about her happy dagger right before plunging the rusty tool into her broken heart. No - because of Miss Jones and her crew, theater techies now perform a much more visible bow at curtain call. In fact - curtain call has taken the form of rolling credits behind the glow of our computer screens, and the theater techie, now clad with multiple cameras and vigilant live-editing skills, has risen, lens first, into the limelight.

Founded by three women, Better Left Unsaid is a cross between a play, an online video and a live-streamed event - and with already six performances under their belt, Jones (producer) has already broken cross-industry ground by merging theater, technology and social media.

Written by Joey Brennaman, the play follows eight lives as their secrets are revealed, ultimately asking the question "How well do you know the people you love?" Performed in front of a live audience in Manhattan, the production is shot with multiple cameras, mixed in real time, and streamed live so that anyone anywhere in the world can watch, and interact during the show and via the post-show discussions 'What You Said.'

GIRLS IN TECH: come support your fabulous, fellow GIT. Don't leave Better Left Unsaid unsaid! SPREAD the word. And WATCH their second round of live performances, starting THIS Friday, in your pajamas at home or with armloads of flowers and applause at Center Stage in Flatiron District (48 West 21st Street, 4th Floor, between 5th and 6th Ave., Subway: F or N/R to 23rd).

Theater and online performance times:

Friday, Feb 4 – 8pm EST

Saturday, Feb 5 – 8pm EST

Sunday, Feb 6 – 3pm EST (optimized for European audiences respectively - 9PM GMT )

Sunday, Feb 6 – 7pm EST 
Theater tickets are $18 while interactive online viewing tickets are a suggested donation of $2-$18.

For more information and tickets, visit www.betterleftunsaid.tv.

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A Happy Day for AHAlife

09/16/2010

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There is a space that exists between ambition and success, the dull and delicious, static and fresh – a demure gap of inspiration that can catalyze global movements, or remain entirely invisible.

That space is called the AHA. A flash instant, in which our entire perspectives are shifted, swirled and flipped inside out – revealing a new playing field of ideas and opportunities. 

Shauna Mei harnessed her AHA moment a long time ago and launched AHAlife this past Monday. Curious minds all over the world will soon be kowtowing in gratitude.

AHAlife.com is a discovery platform of innovative lifestyle products built for savvy, socially conscious consumers. The AHAlife experience is unerringly reflective of how we are growing as a society. As our lives become more and more cramped with shiny new things, we naturally begin searching for ways to filter and curate. We yearn to cut out the noise, so that we can save time and focus on what’s most important, interesting, inspiring. Which is exactly what AHAlife does for the consumer palette. 
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Their mantra, “1 product. 24 hours. 100% inspiring,” leverages urgency, scarcity and crowd-sourcing to break the heavymold of e-commerce by creating a shopping process where the only sales pitch is one we make to ourselves. Because the real ‘aha’ behind AHAlife is their growing network of curators who suggest fiercely inspired products from all over the world.  And though that list of curators includes the likes of Diane Von Furstenberg, Tim Gunn and Vivienne Tam, anyone can submit products for consideration. The platform gives us the chance to be influential tastemakers, ultimately guiding ourselves to become a new generation of more sophisticated, conscious and self-generated consumers. You could say AHAlife is a tastemaker of tastemakers. And it is precisely this move that will be the source of their viral success.

Hey Shauna. You always said you loved when people make everyday objects beautiful. Well – look what you have done to the entire industries of e-commerce and media. You. Go. Girl.

There is a force that sits quietly, waiting to be noticed. A bolt of lightning willing the Earth to obtain a charge. 

That force is called the AHA. It stops time, allowing us to discover and recognize a piece of life at its fullest. And it is that AHA that pulls our everyday ordinary into a state of infinite beauty.


*For more information, sign up to become a member at www.ahalife.com

 

 

 

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Click. Click. Bling!

05/31/2010

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A few weeks ago, Mashable put out an article on how to customize real life treats via the Internet. Among them: mix your own chocolate bar, smoke your own jerky, create your own pet-food, shoes, handbags, shirts. And the one that stuck out the most to me (other than the jerky): customize your own jewelry.

Say what?

Every girl likes diamonds right?

And boys (in many cases) are the ideal deliverers.

Thanks, pop culture. It’s because of you that I have this grossly generalized fantasy in my head:

Girl meets Boy.

Boy is smitten.

First date.

First kiss.

Move in.


“Dear Boyfriend,

When you propose, it will preferably be on a cruise to Costa Rica.

Think that’s too cliché? I’ll ask again when our mouths are full of lobster, and we’re riding a horse named Steve through the rainforest.

But most importantly, I would like you to present me with a 10 carat, princess-cut diamond in a platinum  setting . . . or was it a marquise in white gold with two emeralds on the side. Or maybe I . . .

On second thought. Don’t propose until I consult my jeweler to find out what the heck it is I want.

Love, your adoring, baby darling, shmoopie.”


Well, this is how it used to go in my head anyway. Except now, I want a wedding on the beach, and maybe a proposal that takes place on a ferris wheel. And the ring. Jewelry is either supposed to be extravagant or sentimental, right? So maybe expecting a bajillion-carat Harry Winston is a bit much. So, let’s go for sentimental. You know, like a test of how much the boy knows me. (It seems the boy never wins in my fantasies)

Except I haven’t found any jewelry that’s quite up to my taste and sentiment. Until now. Which is where Gemvara steps in – with the perfect combination of two things I love: bling and tech.

Everyone’s a critic and I am no exception. Owning a domain name and fingers with which to type a blog suddenly makes me an expert consumer, right? Well, it’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to. I want my cake and eat it too. That sort of thing. Which makes it no surprise that one of the first things I asked Cheryl Kremkow, Gemvara's VP of Content and Merchandising, was whether customers were uncomfortable with the idea of creating and buying jewelry online because they couldn’t try it on. I mean, half the fun of buying bling is putting it on and imagining the subsequent avalanche of compliments, right? Luckily, Kremkow was incredibly sweet, especially when pointing out that even if you are creating custom jewelry at a store, there is no way to actually visualize or touch the exact piece until it is made – which is sometimes too late. But on Gemvara, you can pick and choose until you get it just right.  In fact, each gemstone has 16 different varieties, and there are eight different metals to choose from. So, take a standard ring, let’s say – a diamond with two supporting stones – add 16 different choices for each stone, and eight different metals, and thousands of designs: you do the math. The possibilities are endless. And here’s the cool part: you can SEE every single one of those possibilities, as long as your patience matches the number of times your index finger can click the mouse. 

In fact, the endless customer stories Kremkow receives on a daily basis is proof of the platinum pudding that Gemvara is feeding a very hungry niche.

“One of the surprises for me, is the different colors of engagement stones. People want something different, and we can give that to them. Sapphire, amythest, emerald – even a black diamond. We’ve seen birthstones, and if it’s a second marriage and there are kids, the ring might even have the birthstones of the kids. I’ve discovered that people want to do so much more than just a diamond. There really are no rules. We want to help our customers express themselves. If you’re only going to do this once, you should do it right!"

So, I went online and expressed myself. Here is my wish list:
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Ok, so I happened to choose the most expensive engagement ring of the bunch. Lucky boyfriend.
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Thangka Pendant in 14K Rose Gold
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So many colors, so little time!
So that’s the bling part. Now the tech.

One of the reasons Gemvara is doing so well is because this sort of thing has never been done before. And one of the main reasons it’s doing so well now is that the technology is just starting to exist for jewelry designers. The CAD cam (computer aided design) is just now becoming more accessible. And along with CAD comes a whole new community of designers who are becoming well-versed in this tool. And that’s what tech is for right? A niche need surfaces; a tool is built to aid that need; a community is born to aid that tool; everyone goes home with a nice piece of bling.

And the women in tech? No women developers yet, although their Chairman of the Board is female, and a lot of their designers are women. But Gemvara is looking to expand their team, looking for: online marketers, graphic designers, front end developers, and people who are familiar with the CAD system, particularly those who use Rhino and Matrix design and manufacturing platforms. So if any of you ladies (or gents) are partial to the industry of bling, you might want to consider a Gemvara career. And if not, you can just join the rest of us who are relishing in the luxury of creating our own treasure troves of diamonds, sapphires, rubies and rivers of yellow gold. Not a bad way to indulge in a few hours online, I’d say.

For more info, visit Gemvara’s Facebook and Twitter pages.
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A Look @loic

01/21/2010

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9am EST yesterday morning began the launch of Loic Le Meur’s SeesmicLook, a radically innovative and intuitive app that curates Twitter content and introduces it to the mainstream population – aka those who don’t have a Twitter account, don’t know what Twitter is, or don’t really find the appeal in microblogging.

If you’re unfamiliar with @loic and his marvels, Seesmic has created a number of platforms that help people share information regardless of where they are: via desktop, web-based, mobile, and recently e-mail, SMS and chat. These platforms have been downloaded 3.5 million times since the company’s launch in 2007. And because one of Seesmic’s largest goals is to create a streamlined experience for Twitter users, devoted tweeters are, well, their main users. 
So what about the “normal” people?  (As Loic put it.)

Normal, defined as in those whose daily lives don’t revolve around Twitter: people who don’t even know what a hashtag is (it’s this: #) or what the heck a RSS feed does (it let’s you read different stuff in one place); people like my mom, Loic’s mom, your mom, maybe even you. People who are not social media Power Users.

So again, what about those Joes and Janes on the street, whose largest social media interest is collecting one billion dollars on Mafia Wars or getting a 25K Blitz on Bejeweled?   If Twitter is raising millions of dollars for Haiti, recommending the best places in town, providing comedic relief and endless links to valuable information, shouldn’t they be privy to that?

And that’s exactly what Loic thought. Yes! Joe, Jane and the Normals should be privy to all that is deliciously streaming on Twitter. But how?
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@Twittamentary: BJ to NYC to LA

10/21/2009

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Our very own Tan Siok Siok (@sioksiok)—insightful, creative filmmaker and core member of GIT-China—has just flown from Beijing and will be driving cross-country from NYC to LA and back Oct 21-Nov 6.

The mission? To film Twittamentary,  an innovative, crowd-sourced documentary about Twitter. The initiative officially launches TODAY, at the NYC 140 Conference meet up.

Twitta….what?

Twittamentary is more than just a documentary about Twitter. According to director Siok, “it’s about you and me and the unimaginable new ways we are communicating. We explore how, what, and why Twitter is affecting sea changes to society, media, business, economy, culture and our daily lives, all at the speed of light.”

People around the world have been talking about the Twitter revolution and how it has transformed our very identities and our collective subconscious. Twitter accelerates serendipity. Bonds are forged as a result of unexpected
encounters between strangers as they share moments of their lives in real
time.
 Twitter also attracts controversy. Cynics see the popular
micro-blogging service as the breeding ground of ‘narcissists’ and
”micro celebrities” who are lured by the promise of instant fame. But why has this seemingly banal micro-blogging service captured the
world’s imagination?
In this documentary, Tan Siok Siok peels away the hype and explores the human dimensions of how lives connect, intersect, and are affected and changed as a result of encounters on Twitter. Twittamentary is crowd-sourced by social medians across the globe; it is all about stories of the people, and by the people.
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