Virgin Mobile Fest Greens Technologic

I did not get a chance to blog at all this past weekend due to the Virgin Mobile Festival that I worked at.

I thought I would share some of the things that worked and some things that didn't work.

The festival wanted to focus on being green and eco-friendly. At the same time, they want to increase brand awareness by associating themselves with many non-profit organization and music. I felt they did a fairly good job at this but they lacked in some areas. For example, they did not train or inform their event staff of everything that was happening. (I found this out when I was passing out free sunscreen. This woman (an event goer) thanked me and mentioned that she wished she had known there was free sunscreen earlier. This was due to the fact that a 15yr old staff member told her there was no sunscreen to be found throughout the concert venue and another staff member told her there was NO FIRST AID! When has there ever been a music festival with NO FIRST AID!) They did not clarify what type of trash was designated for the different recycling bins. The initiative to recycle at the event was not prominent and the music line-up was poorly done. (They spelled Kanye West's name as "KAYNE" West. How does that happen!?!? As well as all the best bands were playing at the same time and at opposite sides).

There are many ways they could have fixed these problems but it was only their third year holding this music festival. I should say some things they did right.

The use of eco-friendly technologies such as recharging your phone, camera or Ipod via bike was very convenient. They had a Dell Dome where people could make their own buttons, T-shirts and use computers to sign up for Buzzd (a new social networking service like Twitter and Yelp.)

Real quick rant on Buzzd: It is described as a "location-sensitive entertainment
listings service with branded editorial and real-time user generated content on
the mobile device.'Your city, in real-time,' buzzd allows consumers to know
what's happening at any venue right now, rate events, and connect with friends
and people in the area." I can see how this could beat Yelp but they really need
to keep pushing it. They need to get more publicity if they want to beat their
competitors. When I heard about the service I automatically thought it was another social network trying to make it big. It did not strike me as a "OMG! THIS IS SOO COOL!" It needs to offer more to users.

On that note, let me finish what I was saying before this post gets to long. They had a spiffy VIP areas that gave free drinks and had actually beds to sleep on outside. They had a Recharge Dome for people to check out the new Kyocera Special Edition Virgin Mobile Festival "Wild Card" mobile (texting from this phone made my hand cramp up) which they could use to make phone calls, send a text message to the concert stage screens or ride a bike and recharge their phone. They had a Refresh Dome for people to cool off and they had a recycling program where people could get stuff for collecting empty bottles and cans.

There were more positive and negatives that I could list about the music festival but I don't want to drag on. They should have integrated the idea of charging your phone by dancing . . . Maybe I'll make a list and send it to Richard Branson.

[picture via Mobilecrunch]

Calvin and Jobs Comic on Steve

Thanks to Gizmodo, I couldn't help feel the need to share. No idea on who did the comic strip but it wasn't Bill Watterson. There is the belief that it was in MAD Magazine (July edition). This strip was found on Flickr. To see a couple more, visit here.

Farming Made Easy

The USDA and MIT are working together and testing a new gadget. "A wireless headset, called the 'Ear-A-Round,' has stereo earphones that transmit sounds directly into the cow's ears to guide its movement. Powered by a small solar energy panel, the unit contains a GPS device to monitor a cow's location and movement." The point of this product is to give farmers the ability to monitor and control their cattle while sipping lemonade in their office. (I didn't know farmer's had offices!) It will help farmers attain better use of their land and "we can also find out what the animals do all day." (What do cows do all day . . . that is what we all want to know. I could make a guess. They eat, moo, walk around, relieve themselves and sleep. Any other ideas? Maybe they take time out of their day to plan world domination! Just an idea.)

The one thing I have against it is, if the sound cues fail, the headset will give a small electrical shock to get the cow moving.

Once we have this technology working, then what is purpose of having a real farmer? With more technology inventions to do certain jobs, means less needed human experience or skill to run them.
I apologize for the crappy picture but I wasn't able to use my computer for this post.

[Via Associated Press]

Slydial to Voicemail

When reading about this new technology service, I thought that everyone already had this capability featured on their phone. You might want to check your voicemail features before getting excited about this service. I'm sorry I should probably mention what the service is first before commenting on it.

Slydial is a new service that connects you directly to some one's voicemail. In other words, you can avoid speaking to a person directly by using Slydial. It saves you time (if you don't count the ads that you have to hear before getting connected to the voicemail.) and awkward or long conversations. For example, you want to call in sick to work and are afraid if the boss answers then you have to answer questions and explain yourself. This makes it a lot easier to be a coward and go straight to voicemail. By the time your boss has gotten the voicemail; he will be to busy to call and check up on you (to make sure you are not playing hookie.) Here are some more situations. (Please do not use this service to voicemail break-up, unless your dating a psycho or your dog.)

The service is free to use but you can get a membership if you want to get rid of the ads. This leads me to what I was taking about in the beginning of the post. When I listen to my voicemails, I have the option to record a message and send it to a number. This is basically the exact same thing. To my surprise, this option is not available to all.

If you don't have this feature then I would suggest it as a great way to speak to your mother or girlfriend without having to listen to an hour long session of yapping. (No offense, but women can talk for hours!)

From another perspective, this service is making us more of a coward and continuing to change our way of communicating with each other. We are trying to find ways around directly communicating with people.

Spiffy Photoshop Online

Ask and you shall receive Photoshop Express!
Some people may be big fans of Photoshop (like me!) and some may have no idea what it is or how to use it. For those of you living under a rock or are slightly familiar with Photoshop, please step right up to Photoshop Express!

It doesn't have all the features, benefits or cool abilities that the Adobe Photoshop CS3 program has. But it does have some nice features. There is 2GB of space for photos and the ability to organize all your pictures in one place. For example, some people use Facebook, Picasa, Flickr and many more photo sites to organize and share their pictures. Photoshop Express works with these sites so that you can edit the picture and post them to any of these sites. As the site says, "It's an online photo library, editing and sharing website. You can crop, rotate, change colors, enhance, remove red eye, and even some crazy special effects like twirling and distorting. When you're done, you can share the photos using galleries and even give people a link to go see them."

There are some drawbacks . . . since it runs on Flash, it doesn't play well with the IPhone and IPod Touch. Lori Grunin from Webware points out,

"a policy pothole . . . Adobe's claims on your publicly shared photos. From the
Terms of Service: Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However,
with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on
publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide,
royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable
license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from,
reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly
display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into
other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later
developed. (emphasis mine)"

With that being said, she mentions some other drawbacks here.

I don't want to bash the Beta (meaning it is still in the works and dying for testers and feedback). There are positives about the easy to use online photo sharing site. It integrates all the different photo sites you may be using, helps organize and provides a photo editing play area. If you make a mistake or don't like what you did to the photo at a later date, then you can easily revert it back to it's original state.

With every program, social networking site or gadget there are positives and negatives. The point is to decide whether it will make your life easier because that is what technology is for!

USB MP3 & Camera Spy Sunglasses

These sunglasses are the next gadget I would like to have. Who needs Prada, Gucci and other designer sunglasses when you can get something better.

These sunglasses are an MP3 player and a spy camera. You take picture by a remote in your hand. Meaning if there is a crime going on then you could take pictures of the criminal! Only thing that would make these sunglasses cooler were if they were blue tooth compatible or had wireless connectivity. For example, what if you were lucky enough to have a hot babe or Jessica Alba speak to you. You could snap a picture while speaking to her and send it to your friends! or TWITTER!

The specs are:

• built-in MP3 player
• 1.3 mega pixel camera
• 2GB memory capacity
• shoots 1280×1024 sized images
• includes stereo headphones
• plays MP3 or WMA files
• lithium-ion battery lasts up to 6 hrs for MP3 usage
• lasts up to 9 hrs for camera usage

This sounds great but what it comes down to is the price. The ultra hip spy sunglasses can be found at Brando for US$165.
Read more at Brando, found via Ubergizmo.