GeekSugar

Mytv Helps You Create Your Own Personalized TV RSS Feed

GeekSugar — Sun, 11 May 2008 10:11:10 -0700

Do you ever miss one of your favorite shows, or worse yet (this happens to me quite often), forget to set your DVR for a series recording of certain shows? Thankfully there's this new tool called mytvrss that will create a personalized RSS feed of all your fave shows that you can't bear to miss! Just go to the site, click on the shows you want in the feed and mytvrss will alert you through the feed the day an episode is aired! Kimora Lee, I promise to be watching this week girlfriend!

Geeky Girl We Love: Gina Hughes

GeekSugar — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 23:30:09 -0700

Words like "geek," "techie" and "diva" can drum up some nasty stereotypes, but Gina Hughes, the Chief Editor and Founder of TechieDiva, seems to embody only the sugar-sweet aspects of each and her site is anything but diva-driven. Like geeksugar, TechieDiva showcases fun gadgets, iPods, cell phones as well as practical services and killer applications. We fell for Gina because of her inherent ability to merge technology and style and her aptitude for keeping us entertained and coming back for more everyday. Turns out she's a karaoke fan (big props here!) and she thinks Gizmodo's Jason Chen is a dead sexy geek...following her hubby of course. For the full interview, read more

Geeksugar: Tell us a bit about yourself. How did you become a blogger?
Gina: Soon after my four-year tour in the Marine Corps ended, I moved to Austin, TX where I worked as a Web Designer for several years. Colleagues introduced me to blogging, mainly to learn the code, but I ended up creating my first business blog in 2003. I launched Techie Diva in 2005 all by myself, mainly to stay up-to-date on the latest technology out there. Blogging has opened up many doors for me, including the opportunity to write a column for Yahoo! Tech which has really exposed me to a broader audience, and gives me the opportunity to help tech novices around the world. I love it!

Geeksugar: What are your hobbies besides blogging?
Gina: Anyone who blogs for a living, might as well say good bye to any kind of social life they had. It can become an unhealthy obsession! I completely shut off my
computer on weekends to get my weekly overdose of Vitamin D playing tennis, running, biking, hiking, or golfing. I also enjoy watching foreign movies, playing
board games (yes, board games), shopping, playing guitar and guitar hero, reading, entertaining friends, and chilling out with my hubby. My geeky hobbies have me slaving away on the computer editing home movies, digitizing my photo collection, burning DVDs of old home videos, and helping my friends and family with any techie needs. I try to change things up all the time, and love to try anything at least once.

Geeksugar: How many hours are you online everyday?
Gina: I refuse to spend any time on the computer on weekends - that's my time. But during the week, I can literally spend 12-15 hours a day online - and it feels
more like a guilty pleasure than work! I have to remind myself to take breaks often, since sitting down all that time can be really bad for your back. I started doing some yoga to stretch out the muscles. It works great.

Geeksugar: Your first computer was a ...
Gina: A very old and slow one, that I'm quite embarrassed to talk about. I was a poor student at the time, and it was within my budget. But ask me about my computer
now...(cough) Macbook.

Geeksugar: What are three luxurious things you've featured on your site that you really want?
Gina: I want them all! I wouldn't mind a Vertu Phone, Muiro iPod Robot, and the NailJet Pro, since I'm terrible at doing my own nails.

Geeksugar: What are some of your favorite websites/websites that inspire you?
Gina: I tend to visit design and celebrity gossip blogs to break up the monotony. My favorite eye-candy blogs are Coolhunting.com, TheCoolhunter.net, Design Sponge, Treehugger.com, Digg.com, Blogher.org, and Valleywag.

Geeksugar: What is your greatest techie luxury in life?
Gina: My car. I drive an Acura RL with GPS, Bluetooth, voice recognition, satellite radio, iPod connections, keyless entry, gosh you name it. That thing can do just about anything, but park itself, but I hear that's coming soon. I also feel really guilty about having a swanky 40" 1080P Sony Bravia in my office so I can watch Oprah. That TV is insane!

Geeksugar: How many blog feeds are in your RSS reader?
Gina: Over 500 feeds! I don't visit them on a daily basis, but I do visit them at least weekly.

Geeksugar: Describe a typical day at work for you.
Gina: The warm weather has motivated me to start working out again, so these days I try to exercise early in the morning or sometime in the afternoon. After the occasional A.M. workout, my day starts out by checking email, IM, posts on my blogs, reply to email, review products, do a little video blogging, go through my RSS feeds, and write up my daily posts on Yahoo! Tech and Techie Diva. After that, I take a long TV break to catch up on my TiVo programming, then I'm back on the computer blogging before I go to bed. Pretty boring, which is why sometimes I hit the bar during happy hour, and on Thursdays happy hour turns into Karaoke night. A girl's gotta have some fun.

Geeksugar: Who do you think are the top 5 sexiest male geeks in the world?
Gina:

Mr. Hughes- my daily inspiration and great all around geek.
Chris Null - The man is funny and smart. Funny is the new sexy.
Jason Chen - Any guys who sticks electronics down his pants is pretty damn sexy.
Ricky Montalvo - Ricky is bringing technosexual back!
Sergey Brin ( in drag) - Need I say more?

Geeksugar: Who do you think are the top 5 sexiest female geeks in the world?
Gina: There are so many sexy geeky ladies out there, and I wish I could list them all here. Sexy geeky women are a combo of brains, humor, fearlessness, and inspiration. I think these five ladies fit the bill right now.

Geeksugar: Name a blogger you admire and tell us why.
Gina: I love David Pogue from the NYT because he's so funny, and really out there. I admire the way he has fun talking about tech.

Geeksugar: How do you feel about being called a "geek?"
Gina: Geek is the new chic, don't you know? I consider it a compliment.

Geeksugar: What is the geekiest thing about yourself?
Gina: I spend more time at electronics stores, than a shopping mall. Anyone who really knows me, would be shocked to hear that.

Geeksugar: What is your goal for Techie Diva? What do you want your readers to get when they visit your site?
Gina: These are exciting times, so I hope Techie Diva visitors get their daily fix of present and futuristic technology trends changing the way we live. My goal would be to inspire more women to embrace technology in their own way. It has literally rocked my world, and even I feel like I learn something totally new and exciting every day. I just love it!

Geeky Girl We Love: Nandini Maheshwari

GeekSugar — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 23:30:00 -0800

Last month we featured some of the cutest geeky couples and bachelors in the blogoshere, which left many of you wondering - what about the women? Fear not my fine friends, we were just saving the best for last. March is women's history month so I figured there was no better way to celebrate than to highlight some of the smartest, most creative and successful women on the internet. First up, Nandini Maheshwari, editor of Born Rich, a site that makes the stuff of MTV's Cribs look like Salvation Army rejects, and co-founder of the Instablogs Network in India. While Nandini spends her days exposing the glamorous gadgets and accessories of the insanely wealthy, she's a smart, down-to-earth commerce graduate that's championing the geeky girls online movement. Her pick for sexiest geek in the world? Her hubby of course! read more

Geeksugar: So clearly you keep very busy as a blogger, but what are some of your other hobbies?
Nandini: Reading - I am more into magazines and non-fictional stuff. I love to indulge in adventure sports, watching movies (I would like to admit here, I just hate watching war movies, no matter how good they are) and I love to enjoy almost every good thing in life.

Geeksugar: This is my favorite question to ask bloggers - how many hours are you online everyday?
Nandini: I'm online for some 10- 12 hrs on an average.

Geeksugar: Your first computer was a ...
Nandini: My first computer was a XT machine, and I remember playing Chess and Prince of Persia on it.

Geeksugar: Born Rich is filled with amazingly decedent gadgets and luxuries that seem out of everyone's price range are there any luxurious things you've featured that you really want?
Nandini: Diamond-Studded Ego-lifestyle notebook, the Multimedia RUF Cinema bed, and the Calspas Luxurious Bath Tubs With 42" Plasma TV.

Geeksugar: Are there any items you featured that you ended up buying?
Nandini: Yes, I have a passion for mobile phones. So, I ended up buying almost every one of the Nokia N-series.

Geeksugar: How many blogs are in your RSS reader?
Nandini: I have some 200 odd blogs in my RSS reader at present.

Geeksugar: Bloggers have the fortune and misfortune of having unorthodox schedules. Can you describe what a typical day is like?
Nandini: The alarm goes off at 7:00 am, but it's only music to my ears and motivates me to sleep some more. I wake up around half an hour later with my husband bringing morning tea and my laptop. I go through my mails, new comments on my blogs and check out few feeds while sipping my tea. Start forming mental checklist and go over my "To Do List" again and decide what to do for the day (this changes throughout the morning). My husband, Ankit goes to work before me, so I prepare our lunch, watch few morning shows, and scan through my RSS feeds again.

After I head to the office I catch up and eventually drag Ankit from his PC to the lunch table (this happens everyday without fail). Lunch is a great place to bounce new ideas. Also meet few guys around the office. Then I start to panic by evening, since I have done everything except any blogging. But miracles happen and by night I have written around 6-8 posts. Leave office by 8:00 pm and prepare dinner. I welcome Ankit at the door and catch up on the day that he had with me. Catching up is followed by dinner/sitcoms/friends/being a good wife. I check stats, email and back-links again before saying goodnight which is around 12:30 am in the night. Have to drag Ankit again from his laptop to get some sleep.

Geeksugar: Who do you think are the top 5 sexiest male geeks in the world?
Nandini: Oh, that's a sweet one…

Ankit (my husband), he's is a Super Geek and one of the cutest guys I have always met. And, I am not saying this just for the heck of it! Whatever I have achieved would not have been possible without his support that, I often need whenever I am on writer's block or just low at work. He is also full of new ideas.
Charlie White - editor at Gizmodo. I love his blogging, his anchoring on his Sirius Coolness Roundup Show and I love his humble and modest nature too! I have told him this too and telling you now…I would like to make a list of "I have" just like he did…it's another thing that my list won't be half as impressive as his…no exaggerations!
Graham Bell - from TreeHugger. He looks so cute … and his achievements....don't think I need to say! He has led to the term Eco-Geek..in true sense.
Kevin Ross: He is cute too! and I love wasting my time on Digg everyday and watching his diggnation.
Peter Rojas - editor of Engagdet : He single handedly brought Engadget to a super gadget blog.

Geeksugar: Who do you think are the top 5 sexiest female geeks in the world?
Nandini: That would be...

Judie Hughes of the Gear Diary will always be the first one! She is just so amazing as a woman and as a blogger. She have a way with words…wish I would have learned the same vocabulary she had!
Katie Lee - the shiny editor of ShinyShiny
Amanda Congdon - Though no longer with RocketBoom she was kind of a pioneer in video podcasting.
Marissa Ann Mayer - the Vice President of Google - a true example of beauty with brains.
The beautiful and chic editor of geeksugar. I am sure she is responsible for all of the male audience on geeksugar.

Geeksugar: Oh, you make me blush! Who is the only blogger you admire the most?
Nandini: Oh, that's a tough one…I admire so many! As I have to name just one…I will go by the one I took inspiration from for BornRich – Deidre Woollard of Luxist.

Geeksugar: How do you feel about being called a "geek"?
Nandini: I love it! Geek is in.

Geeksugar: What is your goal for BornRich and the Instablogs Network?
Nandini: I want Bornich to be the best luxury blog in the world, and reach out and entertain my audience more in different ways. Instablogs Network's new version "Instablogs Community" has received a tremendous response. Now we are working on our next version where we could truly be an online newspaper by getting into localized blogging as well. We are also working on our own Ad server to help our bloggers monetize their work more.

Tech News - 3D Lego Pumpkin

GeekSugar — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 12:00:45 -0700

Just in time for Halloween: $18 Lego pumpkin packs - Popgadget
Ten handy tips for buying a TV - Apartment Therapy
New Nike watch lets you control your iPod via your watch - Shiny Shiny
China goes the distance by putting blanket ban on RSS feeds - Switched
Art.Lebedev designs a 20-inch long, gazillion button remote controller - Gizmodo

Love 2.0: Anil Dash and Alaina Browne

GeekSugar — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 10:10:19 -0800

As part of our Geeks We Love series, I caught up with a few couples that, through the beauty of the internet and technology have influenced both our lives and each other.

There are plenty of couples that both blog, but Anil Dash and Alaina Browne are in an elite club of longtime bloggers that have been around the blogosphere for years, but are still humble about their success, influence and accomplishments. Anil, is Vice President at Six Apart, a blogging software used by millions of people across the world, but he describes his occupation by saying "I help people start blogging." Alaina is the general manager at Serious Eats, a website filled with video, blogs, photos and feature stories all geared toward the foods people love. What geeky things do these two love about life online and each other? read more.

Geeksugar: So, let's lay it all on the table. What do you think is the "geekiest" thing about yourself?
Anil: I'm probably a little bit obsessive over weird little technical things, like the order of icons on my desktop, or the way my songs are tagged in iTunes. I've even gotten hundreds of people to tell me how they use Excel to organize their personal lives. So probably the most geeky thing about me is that I really, really love software and consider myself a student of software culture.
Alaina: I won my school’s Computer Science Student of the Year award in 7th grade.

Geeksugar: Tell us a bit about your background.
Alaina: I’ve been a web geek pretty much since the beginning, working with MindSpring (later Earthlink) and puttering around with websites and later blogs for about ten years. I had a personal site for a long time, and then when I moved to New York City in 2002, I started NYC Eats, which later became A Full Belly. It was one of the first food blogs, and I was very lucky and happy to meet a lot of people and discover a lot of new things through the site, though I don’t update it much anymore. After we moved to San Francisco in 2004, I started working for Mule Design, a great web design shop run by some friends of ours. While there I got to work on a diverse mix projects for Six Apart, CNET’s Chowhound, and a lot of other great clients. Then late last year I got the chance to help get Serious Eats off the ground. Combined with the chance to come back to New York, it was an irresistible opportunity and one that I’m very excited about. The community on Serious Eats is already something really special.
Anil: I work at Six Apart because I've been a blogger since 1999 (at dashes.com) and I wanted to help people get started blogging. I was the first employee, so I've been at it for about four years. These days, I get to go everywhere talking about Movable Type, TypePad, LiveJournal and Vox, and it's the best job I've ever had. You could say I got into it because I couldn't not do it.

Geeksugar: What about the geekiest thing about your significant other?
Anil: Hmm, that's a tough one. Alaina is very adept at masking her geekiness around others, so that I am the only one who gets to see how funny and clever she really is. It's like being married to a geeky J. Frog.
Alaina: His blortal.

Geeksugar: How and when did you meet eachother?
Anil: We were introduced by a couple whom I had met through my blog. In late 2001, they set us up, and 5 years later, we're married!
Alaina: We met in December 2001 thanks to an introduction from a college roommate, dear friend, and master matchmaker. Before we met, she sent me the link to his blog which I’d seen before. Its tagline at the time was “New York, New Media, New Funk,” which made me go “blech” but I trust Shannon so I kept an open mind.

Geeksugar: What are your top 5 favorite gadgets?
Anil: I really love my Nintendo Wii and covet Alaina's DS Lite. (I have a regular DS, so I can't complain.) I have an iPod Nano, which works well enough, but I love the form factor more than the device itself.
Alaina: iPod Nano and accompanying Nike+ sport kit, white DS lite, Macbook, Fuji F11 digital camera, my pink Gameboy Advanced SP.

Geeksugar: Top 5 luxury gadgets you really want?
Anil: Oddly, I don't covet very many gadgets. I got a chance to see the new Nokia NSeries phones because they work with Vox, and the video camera in the N93i looks awesome.

Geeksugar: Your first computer was a...
Anil: A Commodore VIC-20. I had pretty much every Commodore but the Amiga, including a VIC-20, a C-64, a C-128, and even a Commodore Colt, which was a PC clone.
Alaina: Commodore 64.

Geeksugar: What are your favorite websites?
Anil: Well, seriouseats.com, of course. And I am pretty proud of what I've done with dashes.com over the past several years. I think the web page I visit the most is my Vox neighborhood at anil.vox.com. But I'm inspired by some of the really great blogs I read - Overheard in New York, Ftrain, Rebecca's Pocket.
Alaina: Seriouseats.com, Flickr.com, Vox.com, Kottke.org

Geeksugar: What are your Valentine's Day plan?
Anil: Well, we like to eat well, so I think a nice dinner somewhere and then returning home for a date to play Wii Sports and Wario Ware might be pretty nice.
Alaina: Not to have a Valentine’s Day plan.

Geeksugar: Who makes the final decision when it comes to gadgets for the home?
Anil: Actually, we almost never even have discussions about this. We're fairly moderate in our gadget purchases, so we can each pretty much get whatever we want. It's always a nice surprise to come home and find that the other person has something shiny to show off.
Alaina: We’re pretty in sync when it comes to gadgets and our finances and trust each other to make these kinds of decisions. If it’s a big ticket item, like the flat panel tv we just bought, we’ll discuss it together first so there are no surprises when it comes time to balance the checkbook.

Geeksugar: Who solves tech problems at home?
Anil: I think it depends on the nature of the tech problem. I tend to do most of the CSS troubleshooting and wifi wrangling. Alaina is more adept with hacking blog templates and making DVD/TV/web video go. It's a pretty balanced relationship.
Alaina: I try to solve tech problems myself and if I get stuck, I call in Anil.

Geeksugar: Are you going to buy an iPhone?
Anil: Probably not. I love the idea of a common platform for portable hackery, but I hate phones and phone carriers, especially. I tend to be a late adopter with iPods anyway, which is fine by me.
Alaina: No. No. No.

Geeksugar: How do you feel about people calling you a "geek"?
Anil: I'm very comfortable about that. I like that, when I'm in a room full of normals, I'm the geeky one, but when I'm in a room full of geeks, I'm seen as not geeky enough.
Alaina: It’s an accurate description I don’t object to.

Geeksugar: What do think are the greatest things you guys have contributed to the blogsosphere?
Anil: I've helped promote the good work that other people do in creating the social web. I'm very proud to be friends or acquaintances with a lot of the most talented people in the world of blogging and social media. As far as Alaina's accomplishments, I think she has been phenomenally influential in the world of food blogging and in food community online in general - A Full Belly (originally NYC Eats), was a seminal food blog and informs the spirit of a lot of food communities today, including Serious Eats.
Alaina: His ability to effectively communicate about technology with the non-geek majority. No one does it better.

Geeksugar: How many hours do you spend online a day?
Anil: Roughly 24? Actually, in all seriousness, I pretty frequently spend 14+ hours a day online, and sometimes 18 hours, since I don't sleep much and you could count watching a DVD on a laptop or playing video games as "being online."
Alaina: 16.

Geeksugar: How many hours does your partner spend online a day?
Anil: Less than that. She actually does other things like running marathons and eating good dinners at nice restaurants. I should learn from her example.
Alaina: All of them.

Geeksugar: What is one geeky habit you're trying to quit?
Anil: Obsessively checking things like stats, RSS feeds, and email. Nothing that important is ever in there, but sources of stress often are.
Alaina: Reading scripting.com.

Geeksugar: Are you the "Beauty" or the "Geek" in the relationship?
Anil: I think we're both a lot of both in our marriage! Even though I'm definitely a geek, Alaina's had a personal website a lot longer than me, and really gets a lot of geek culture at a gut level. On the other hand, I dress a lot better since I've had Alaina's help, so while I can't quite come to her level of beauty, I'm at least not looking like something the cat dragged in.
Alaina: I think we’re both beautiful geeks.

Reader Profile: Calamari Proves Geek is Chic On Guys Too

GeekSugar — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 09:00:11 -0700

While geeksugar may cater to girls we are in no way an exclusive club. In fact, one of our most prolific contributors and commentors is Calamari, a male graphic designer and illustrator who isn't bothered by our pinkness and isn't afraid to admit his geekiness. When Calamari isn't working, he's drawing, playing video games (he's a sucker for wii bowling and planet puzzle league DS right now), blogging, and trying to become better at photography. He also spends plenty of time sharing fun items like the cupcake speakers and his iGoogle page with us.

What is Calamari most excited for? Christmas. His fiancée instructed him not to buy an iPhone so she could get him one. Which, he notes, "makes me a very, very lucky guy. Christmas can't come fast enough this year!" For my interview with him, read more

Geeksugar: How did you learn about the site and when did you start reading?
Calamari: I have a few friends who are really into the sugar sites and they introduced me. I've been hooked for about six months now.

Geeksugar: Do you consider yourself to be a geek? If so, why?
Calamari: I'm a hopeless geek. I think I have geeky genes. But there's so much cool tech stuff happening right now, it's such a fun time to be a geek.

Geeksugar: How many hours are you online everyday?
Calamari: Around 12. I check e-mail first thing in the morning. Then about 8-10 hours at work. Then a few hours at night for fun.

Geeksugar: Name your top five favorite websites.
Calamari: I really depend on igoogle, google reader and del.icio.us to help me organize all the blogs and links that I'm interested in. My other favorite sites change pretty frequently, but right now I'm really into seeqpod.com and mojizu.com

Geeksugar: Your first computer was a ...
Calamari: My family had an apple II e when I was young. The first computer I had that was mine was a commodore amiga. I loved it but it didn't even have a hard drive. I remember swapping discs back and forth when I played games like Kings Quest.

Geeksugar: Top three gadgets you couldn't live without?
Calamari: My mac laptop, my two iPods (one for music, movies and photos and another for carrying around my designs and illustrations), and my Nintendo DS. I know that's four, but I'm going to cheat and count my two iPods as one gadget.

Geeksugar: You knew you were a geek when...
Calamari: In 4th or 5th grade I got a magazine that listed programs in BASIC code. I used to copy the code line by line into my computer at home to see what would happen. It was crazy because you had to make sure every character was exactly the same as in the magazine. Then when you were finished, it would do something like draw a simple flower cartoon on the screen...so anticlimactic.

Geeksugar: How many blogs are in your RSS reader?
Calamari: 134 (it's a messy mix of blogs, news, art and flickr feeds)

Geeksugar: What are some non-geeky things you do in your spare time?
Calamari: I love visiting new restaurants and cool stores in the San Francisco Bay Area (it's one of the greatest places in the world and I'm lucky to live here). And, when my schedule allows, I do volunteer work at the local animal shelter.

Geeksugar: Who do you think are the top 5 sexiest male geeks in the world?
Calamari: Masayori Oka, Jonathan Ive (Senior VP of Industrial Design at Apple), Pharrell Williams, Kevin Rose (co-founder of digg.com) and (although he may not be very sexy) John Hodgman.

Geeksugar: Who do you think are the top 5 sexiest female geeks in the world?
Calamari: My fiancée (she's the best), Geeksugar (of course), Cali Lewis (host of geekbrief.tv), Tamara Chuang (writes a gadget blog that I like), and Tina Fey.

Geeksugar: PC or Mac?
Calamari: Mac.

Geeksugar: Did you already get or are you going to get an iPhone?
Calamari: Sigh...not yet and I'm so jealous of all you guys that have one. My fiancée told me to wait until Christmas so she could buy me one, which I know makes me a very, very lucky guy. But my current phone just feels so woefully uncool now. Christmas can't come fast enough this year.

Geeksugar: Anything else about yourself?
Calamari: Nothing about me. But a big thanks to you and everyone at teamsugar for creating such a great community. It's always a cool place to go on the internet.