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Sprinkles Around the Web 12/31/10-01/13/11

Sprinkles from around the web

Links from around the web that I enjoyed. Mileage may vary.

Me

Check out me and my new knives.
Check out me and my new knives.

• My Amazon.com GeekGirlCon product recommendations

GeekGirlCon

• Come to our all-hands meeting this Saturday from 10am-1pm at the Madison Park Starbucks in Seattle.

• We’re throwing Buffy Summers a 30th Birthday Bash in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Come join us.

Environment

• BP Disaster was “Avoidable” The commission reports find that it was due to failure on part of all the companies. Which means lazy companies caused on of the worst environmental disasters we’ve seen. And they aren’t properly cleaning it up.

Fandom

• David Tennant and Catherine Tate are to appear together on stage in a new West End production of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. OMG, I want to go now!

• Superman’s social network nightmare About the destruction moms can do on Facebook.

• Diamond Halts All Shipments Of Graphic Novels To Borders. Apocalyptic Wave Of Returns Expected Diamond has a capital on comic book distribution. I’m going to assume that it’s in the best interests of Marvel and DC Comics to make deals directly with Borders. Hopefully, this will help take down Diamond’s monopoly on comic book distribution.

• Women and Comics Another letter to publishers and marketers how they are missing a huge part of the world: women.

• Wonder Woman TV project officially dead I’m going to be over here crying. Not even television super producer David E. Kelley could get a Wonder Woman project off the ground.

• Dinosaur Comics on the likelihood of a real life Batman

• 7 reasons to give Stephanie Brown a chance as Batgirl Yes. I agree with all of this. Enjoying Stephanie Brown as Batgirl does not mean that one cannot also like Cass Cain. Continue reading “Sprinkles Around the Web 12/31/10-01/13/11”

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Sprinkles Around the Web 9/24-9/30/10

Sprinkles from around the web

Yes, it’s back. Here are links that I’ve enjoyed in the past week from around the web. Your mileage may vary.

• First, go nominate @geekgirlcon for the best non-profit over on the Mashable Awards.

• Second, Happy Queer History Month! Or LGBTTIQQA (did I miss anyone?) History Month, if you prefer that.

Me

• I bruised the heck out of my foot. Sprained it or something. I had to walk with a cane all last week. Ouches.

Books

• A review of Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation. Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman have edited a book about young people who are transpeople and gender queer and RJ’s review just makes me want to read it more.

• Writer Greg Rucka gives a preview of Chapter 2 of his new Queen & Country book. I love Queen & Country and am so excited that Rucka’s writing it again. Continue reading “Sprinkles Around the Web 9/24-9/30/10”

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Sprinkles Around the Web 8/6-8/12/10

Sprinkles from around the web

Links to astound and amazing you, dear reader.

Me

• I went to Social Media Breakfast on Tuesday to see Kira Wampler from Ant’s Eye View/Intuit speak. Here were a couple the tips I tweeted:

Find the sexy about your business, which may not be your product itself.

Don’t stop at just listening to your customers. Do something too.

Employees needs guard rails for rules of online engagement. Want to do right by the company.

Fandom

• Runaways Movie Casting Breakdown Racebending brings a summary of the casting for the Runaways movie, and the actor requirements don’t even mention the character being Japanese-America. Instead she’s “Uniquely beautiful, nurturing but guarded.” Worth noting that most casting breakdowns are horribly stereotypical, even if the end result of a film is not. However, after the complete whitewashing of The Last Airbender…

• Will You Subvert the Dominant Paradigm for a Cookie? The return of the Joss Whedon puppy. Continue reading “Sprinkles Around the Web 8/6-8/12/10”

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Sprinkles Around the Web 7/23-7/29/10

Links I enjoyed this week from around the internet.

Sprinkles from around the web

Business

• Why Your Customers Don’t Want to Talk to You. This is a very interesting study in how customers like easy, low-bar self-service. I think this is very important as there are many days, I love the self-service checkout at the grocery store.

Environment

• What BP Could Have Bought With All the Money They Lost. I love infographics. And this is kind of a crazy, crazy amount of profit. Like does any company need this much money? It could do so much good in the world.

• China launches oil spill clean-up after pipeline blasts. There’s another oil spill happening, only this time in the Yellow Sea in China. Two oil pipelines going into a port burst.

Fandom and Feminism

• Live Nerd Girls. Lucy Knisley’s comic about how women are treated by men in nerd fandoms. And about the stories we tell ourselves in our heads. Continue reading “Sprinkles Around the Web 7/23-7/29/10”

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Sprinkles Around the Web 7/09-7/22/10

Sprinkles from around the web

Links that I enjoyed and shared around the web. Take a gander.

Economy

• Times report: The real mortgage deadbeats are the rich. Why does it not surprise me that even in the Great Recession, the rich keep getting richer by hiring their legal team to take advantage of all the loopholes, including ones that are supposed to be helping the middle and working classes.

Fandom

• Feminist Hulk SMASH Exclusive Interview with MS.! Awesome.

Tweeting in all-caps, this size-XXXXXXL superhero fights for social justice and breaks down the gender binary–all the while looking “smashing” in purple shorts with a big smile on his face.

• Mythbusting Princess Leia’s Hair. Leia had some bizarre hair, even for the 1970s. And some hair that expert cos-players can’t figure out how to replicate. Certainly hair she couldn’t have done by herself, while on the run and fighting a war. Continue reading “Sprinkles Around the Web 7/09-7/22/10”

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Sprinkles Around the Web 6/11-7/01/10

Sprinkles from around the web

Links I’ve enjoyed from around the web. Your mileage may vary.

Me

• A photo of me from Seattle’s Gay Pride Parade 2010 on Sunday, June 27th.

Environment

• Is the BP Gusher Unstoppable? Read the forum of geologists and oil professionals that has the science community buzzing. This is just beyond depressing, but is a must-read as it explains the science behind the gushing well.

Sea Turtle by Mauro Luna
Sea turtles are our friends and adorable. Also endangered.
• BP’s burning sea turtles. A video of a boat captain talking about how BP stopped him and his crew from trying to find sea turtles in oil BP was setting on fire.

• “We Don’t Need This on Camera”: BP’s Crappy Cleanup Job. BP continues to block reporters’ access to beaches affected by the Gulf Oil Spill. In some cases, beaches and wildlife are completely neglected.

• From the Ground: BP Censoring Media, Destroying Evidence.

“BP doesn’t want the media taking pictures of oil on the beaches. You should see the oil that’s about six miles off the coast,” he said grimly. We looked down at the wavy orange boom surrounding the islands below us. The pilot shook his head. “There’s no way those booms are going to stop what’s offshore from hitting those beaches.”

Continue reading “Sprinkles Around the Web 6/11-7/01/10”

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Sprinkles from around the web: Interesting links 5/07-5/13/10

Sprinkles from around the web

Interesting links I found around the web. Apparently, I had a very tech-heavy reading list this week.

Fandom

• Darth Vader vs. a Unicorn. How can this not be awesome?

Betty White, only looks mild-mannered
Betty White, only looks mild-mannered
• SNL Hosted by Betty White. Run, don’t walk, to watch this. Hilarious. “I haven’t had a cherry in my muffin since 1939.” What a dirty, awesome old woman Betty is.

Political

• That’s Gay: Faking It. How faking being gay is offensive, an explanation which uses a montage of TV shows in which characters have pretended to be gay. Brilliant.

Technology

• 30 SEO Problems & the Tools to Solve Them. A great list of tools, both free and paid, to use with SEO work.

• Determine Your Facebook Page’s Value. A new company called Virtue is measuring how much money your Facebook fan page is worth.

• Does Facebook Really Want a Semantic Web? How Facebook’s lack of web standards, even when it comes to their own apps, is not helping move toward a semantic web.

• Facebook Privacy: A Bewildering Tangle of Options. A very interesting infograph on all the choices one has for privacy on Facebook.

• Finding Gaps and Opportunities: Step 3 of the 8-Step SEO Strategy. A good technique on identifying long-tail terms based on one desired keyword and opportunities.

• Firefox 4 Plans: Faster, Friendlier, More Secure. It looks like they’re finally tackling the memory-eating problem Firefox has.

• REVEALED: How Today’s Twitter Bug Was First Discovered. Make anyone follow you on Twitter. Oprah won at following the most new people due to this bug.

• Translate That French Menu With Your Android Phone And Google Goggles. I can’t wait to use this in a restaurant where the menus not in English and impressing everyone.

• Why the Fashion Industry Loves Foursquare

As more fashion brands start to use location-based services like Gowalla and Foursquare to drive online customers into retail locations, it’s important to remember that location-based marketing efforts can and should be used to accomplish more than one marketing goal. Brands should strive to not only engage customers, but to enhance their shopping experiences.

• WordPress 3.0: The 5 Most Important New Features. I’m rather looking forward to the changes as I’ve been planning on doing a makeover on this blog for a while.

Writing

• Fan Fiction: It’s What’s for Dinner. If you missed it, author Diana Gabaldon goes off on fan fiction writers. In fact, she accuses them of raping her family members, err characters. Author Chuck Wendig explains why people writing fan fiction about your stories is an awesome problem to have.

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Confessions of a Geek: No iPad, No Kindle, No iTunes

Erica and Winston in front of books
Me and Winston, my cat, in front of some of my books.
I didn’t order an iPad. I don’t have a Kindle or Sony e-Reader. I don’t buy TV or music off iTunes. I still trudge every week to the comic book shop to pick up my weekly stack. I still frequent used book stores to collect whatever trashy vampire book I’m reading next or cookbook I want to pillage for recipes. I still buy CDs and pay for my favorite shows on DVD. I still have freaking vinyl records.

Admittedly, I have a love for books — yes, the physical form in my hand. They never run low on batteries and only cost you page wrinkling or under $20 to replace when you drop them in the bathtub. However, I wouldn’t mind giving up my CDs and DVDs for digital copies. If for no other reason, I’d have more shelf space for books. (Oh, yes, I am that girl, the one you never want to volunteer to help move.) I’ll admit to owning an iPod, and how it’s much more convenient to have 128 GB of music at my fingertips when I need to tune out at work.

I don’t own an iPad or Kindle and I don’t buy from iTunes because of Digital Rights Management (DRM).

I don’t like the idea that Amazon could hit the kill switch on a book I paid money for. Same with iTunes. And how many generally technologically savvy friends have I had who’ve killed all the music on their iPods due to syncing issues related to DRM. I’ve also had several tell me that every CD they buy off iTunes, they immediately burn to a disc, which rather defeats the point of digital copies. The iPad premiered with a Marvel Comic Book app. It looks very slick. Besides some issues I have with pricing, how do I know these comics aren’t going to disappear when Marvel decides I can’t own them anymore?

Amazon tells the consumer how many times s/he can share books to different devices and with other Kindle owners. Marvel doesn’t allow sharing, unless you want someone to borrow your $500 iPad. iPods are set from the factory to wipe their entire harddrives when hooked up to a different computer.

I think I’ll keep my books, my CDs, my DVDs, and yes, my vinyl records until someone sorts out this DRM issue in a way that’s pro-consumer, not pro-corporation. I’m okay with being old fashioned here.