sgtret’s Neighbors

Become a Vox Fan on Facebook

nobody@vox.com(Team Vox) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 17:25:50 -0400

Gimme a V! Gimme an O! Gimme an X! What's that spell? VOX!

What better way to tell the world how much you love Vox than to announce it on Facebook? That's right: Vox now has an official Facebook page! Become a fan of Vox.com on Facebook and let your friends know what you really care about: staying connected with friends and family through blog posts, photos, videos and comments.

Once you're a fan, you can also add photos and videos to the page, write on the wall, and connect with other Voxers in ways you may not have previously. Plus, it's a great opportunity to let people know about your Vox blog, or start discussion topics. To become a fan, just visit the official Vox.com Facebook page and click the "Become a Fan" button in the upper right hand corner.

Once you've joined, why not post a response to the current discussion topic? Just post a link (and a brief description, if you'd like) to what you consider one of your all-time best Vox posts.

What are you waiting for? Become a Vox.com fan on Facebook today!

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Bourne: Last week's 24-hours of iPhone coverage made history

nobody@vox.com(InsideTWiT) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:06:38 -0400

Here's a very nice post from Scott Bourne of MacBreak Weekly and the Apple Phone Show from last week: I Saw A Little History Yesterday Thanks to Leo Laporte.

Scott says a number of very nice things, including this excerpt:

Leo managed to make sure things kept rolling even though the iPhone was covered non-stop for 24 hours. Again, this is not easy. I was pretty excited by the variety of topics and opinions that were presented as was the audience.

Now let’s look at what really happened. At any given second, between 7000 and 8000 people were watching LIVE. The cumulative audience for the event was just under 300,000! These are cable TV numbers folks without the Cable TV! We constantly had about 600-700 people on chat joining in as well.

The streaming part of this was amazing. The folks at Stickam did a great job. Streaming media has come a very long way since I started delivering radio with the Internet at NetRadio in the 90s. We could never support an audience that large simultaneously.
Many of my listeners commented that it felt like the old TechTV days. I have to agree.
Leo’s been on the bleeding edge of technology media from day one. He’s always innovating and always trying to find new ways to serve his audience.

As far as I know, nothing has ever been done like this in the brief history of new media. To do 24-hour, live, streaming coverage of a single event in front of an audience of this size is a staggering achievement.

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Mommy Bloggers Hit the Road

nobody@vox.com(Team Vox) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:38:06 -0400

Summer Road Trip '08

Although we typically post on Team Vox to let you know about things that are going on with Vox (to, uh, state the obvious), once in a while, we like to let you know about other cool things that are happening around the blogosphere. And we think the idea of four hilarious mommy bloggers traveling across the U.S. on their way to the BlogHer '08 conference - all the while blogging and video blogging the journey - is one trip you will not want to miss.

Four adventurous bloggers from the Silicon Valley Moms Group were selected to participate in the Summer Road Trip '08 and blog about their travels, hotel stays, media appearances, time away from their families, and life on the road. Six Apart helped them partner up with General Motors, who provided the blogging mommies with a Chevy Tahoe Hybrid SUV to help make their journey comfy, safe, and a little more green.

In case you're not familiar with them, SV Moms is a group of over 200 bloggers who showcase the ups, downs, outrages, struggles, victories, and everyday humor of motherhood. There are currently nine regional and demographically tailored sites that give mothers from D.C., New Jersey, the Deep South, Rocky Mountains, L.A., and Silicon Valley a powerful voice and sense of camaraderie across the country. Whether you're a mother, a child, or just a person who enjoys a good blog, you'll really love reading the words of these amazing women.

Packed and Ready!

The moms buckled into their Chevy Tahoe Hybrid SUV on July 11th and even got an encouraging message from Katie Couric to kick things off! They are currently somewhere in the middle of America making their way to San Francisco where they'll attend an SV Moms Group Party, as well as BlogHer '08.

You do not want to miss these entertaining and irreverent bloggers -- or their spontaneous contest giveaways! -- as they blog from the road. Experience the journey at MomRoadTrip.com.

And let us know about your summer road trip - or plane/boat/bus trip - in the comments! (I like to live vicariously.)

~daisy

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Looking for Gifts? Visit me at Zazzle.com

nobody@vox.com(bookchick50) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:31:29 -0400

My Zazzle

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Photo Journaling A Lot Easier with Pivi

nobody@vox.com(Patrick Ng) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:55:19 -0400

I longed to get the Fujifilm Pivi MP-300 and finally last week in Tokyo I bought it. I wish I bought it earlier because instantly my travel journaling or photo journaling becomes much much easier.

Photo Journaling with Pivi

The size of Pivi's photo is just fit for my Moleskine notebook. For Traveler's Notebook, it leaves a lot of space good for writing and sticking precious stickers/tickets/etc things you collect in travel. I love the fact that it is instant yet not wasting any of your film because you can choose which photo on your digital camera to print. My Canon support pictbridge so there was no problem at all. I can now journal with photos whenever I can have a coffee stop, instant!

Pivi Photos and Delfonics new albums

Delfonics just released a series of new albums, which one of the ranges allows you to put pivi sized photos in the paper album. I'm not particularly fond of the quality because the photo pocket openings are on the edge of each page instead of near the spine, which makes it easy for photos to fall out. In addition, the album pages are bound by just one staple, so inserting 10 photos (half of the album's capacity) already makes the album bulky. However, I love the colors of the covers they offer and bought 4.

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Moleskine in Orange

nobody@vox.com(Patrick Ng) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:02:45 -0400

Catchy title isn't it? No they don't produce an orange leather Moleskine, it was just me playing around with colors to decorate my Moleskine. Gfeller leather cover was a gift from friend Kelly, which was painted with black shoe polish, a technique taught by illustrator/artist Steve Light, Faber Castell perfect pencil in orange, a promotional leaflet in the form of typewriter from Orange Airline (a stationery company in Japan), and orange/red brick floor tiles.

Moleskine in Orange

Tokyo, 8th - 13th July 2008, trip for the ISOT (International Stationery Show).

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That Moleskine Cow...

nobody@vox.com(Patrick Ng) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:39:59 -0400

It has been less fun to see all those Moleskine exhibitions nowadays, for me. In June I visited Tokyo's Lifestyle show and just last week I visited Tokyo again for the International Stationery show. In both event, Moleskine was elaborately exhibited there. My feeling towards the writing, journaling, drawing culture of the Moleskiners lowered significantly simply because it all became too commercial.

Moleskine Detour Exhibition in Lifestyle Show Tokyo June 2008

In both events, I got a little time to look at all those drawings from the Detour project, (as corrected by Paola - Moleskine brand equity & network relations, "the exhibition in Lifestyle show did not contain any works from Detour project, all the Detour events are listed on the official website www.moleskine.com/detour where you can take a look at the notebook and also read some lines on the single author's biography. The Detour Project is not a commercial event and it's meant to support the non profit foundation lettera27") as well as those from Invitation au Voyage. Who were the artists and what's their stories? I didn't care to find out anymore. They became one of the thousands of notebooks with drawings. The booth design and display however was great.

One large table was dedicated to all those examples of corporate-premium-limited editions. Do I want to collect them all? No. And look, in June I went to Shibuya's Loft and the space dedicated to a short-term promotion of Moleskine was so huge it spans nearly 4 meters wide.

Moleskine in Shibuy Loft, Tokyo June 2008

The ever increasing SKU now becomes unbearable to me. Now the spinners made by Modo e Modo are invading retailers especially department stores. Yes these are negative feelings of me not liking product marketing being too commercial and people forget about the artists who contributed. I even heard that there will be more stationery products from Moleskine, e.g. maybe a ring binders with an elastic band (which was used as a catalog distributed to distributors last year).

Moleskine New Products 2008

Now many asked about when the leather version of 2009 diary will be launched. I heard that it will arrive in Hong Kong around end-August. So it will be around mid-August for people in Europe to buy them. The catch, only 1 retailer per country is allowed to sell the limited edition. It will be disappointing a lot of fans, I love the look and feel of the notebook though :)

A note from a recent meeting with a French stationery maker: Société Générale, one of the main European financial services companies which acquired Moleskine for 60 euros (3 times Moleskine's market value back then?) back in 2006, experienced a 4.9 billion euros trading lost in just three days in January 2008. They are going to milk the Moleskine cow!

Well, I have a thought. The tremendous success of Moleskine's revival is a true marketing success story. Millions of community effort to promote its branding. What have Moleskine done to return favor to the community? Now that Moleskine is made in China, a fact that not many people adore, what did Moleskine do when there was a great earthquake in SiChuan China when more than 71,000 people were dead? Well I did a search on Google "Moleskine Charity" and nothing really came up. Enlighten me if I'm wrong (and Paola did, the lettera27 projects are making changes that will certainly produce a larger results in longer run, the next Chatwin waves may change the world as we know it. As a retailer we are increasing our efforts to source from companies that encourage food chain sustainability such as farming/fishing, while on the product manufacturing side the burden is now on top tier vendors/manufacturers to set examples when fair trade, environmental protection and cultural preservation become common terms. I hope Moleskine as a global brand will create conscious efforts to localize the such practice in countries they appear and source from, especially when they enter the CHINA market in the near future. Yes, a huge challenge for a company with only a dozen of staff, but the impact they can make will be tremendous.). I mean I love the brand and product, just that I expected a little more from it to be more cultural instead of commercial, more world-class in terms of charity instead of world-domination.

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When Networks Fail, Hams to the Rescue

nobody@vox.com(bookchick50) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:08:57 -0400

credits:
When networks fail, hams to the rescue
By Jason Meserve , Network World , 07/03/2008

==========
I missed Field Day this year.

clipped from www.networkworld.com

Normally, in a time of crisis, an "amateur" is not the first person you might call. But when communications networks go down, amateur radio operators – or hams – and their gear can get communities connected to the outside world via the radio waves.

During the recent Field Day activities hosted by the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), ham operators and clubs across North America spent 48 hours demonstrating their communications abilities.

Many similar camps are currently operating in flood-ravaged parts of the Midwest

Hams work in conjunction with other volunteer groups such as the Military Affiliated Radio Stations (MARS) and Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES)

clipped from www.networkworld.com

Hams are also reaching out to hospitals in an effort to keep them connected if primary communications systems fail

clipped from www.networkworld.com

Anyone can get an entry-level Technical Class license by taking a 35-question exam administered by the FCC

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24 Hours of iPhone

nobody@vox.com(InsideTWiT) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:09:57 -0400

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Vox Meetup This Saturday: Cincinnati, Ohio

nobody@vox.com(Team Vox) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:12:24 -0400

Cincinnati, Ohio Vox Meetup

Do you live in or around Cincinnati, Ohio? If so, you're in luck because Scott and the Queen City Voxers Group have organized a Vox user meetup!

WHEN: This Saturday, July 12th

WHERE: Ault Park Playground. 3600 Observatory Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio 45208. "We'll look for each other at the playground marked by the red X below. If it's raining, head for the shelter to the north of the [red] X."

Ault Park Map

EATS: Bring your own picnic and, if you're so inclined, bring something yummy to share with the other Voxers.

To RSVP (which is not essential, but is appreciated), reply to Scott's announcement or send him a private message. All Voxers, as well as their friends and family, are welcome to attend.

If you do attend the meetup, have a great time and please take lots of pictures and send them to me so I can post them in Team Vox for everyone to see!

Thank you so much to Scott for organizing this meetup. Wish I could be there!

~daisy

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