Olive Juice

DandyID’s WordPress plugin is now available, compliments of talented developer [and perhaps our biggest fan] Neil Simon. The plugin places a linked list of your online services into your WP blog sidebar. First you’ll need a DandyID account and supply your identities – then download the plugin and follow the installation instructions: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/dandyid-services/.

Enjoy!

Twice last month did I win from Fling It Girl and once from Kirtsy! What can creative-commenting get a girl? White tea, strawberry cupcakes from Lux Sugar, and two free passes to Lucky Shops in NYC!

If you haven’t checked out either of these sites, hop on over. Besides giveaways and competitions, both offer up-to-date resources for fashion finds, design, family matters, mind/body, technology and more. Sign up, submit links of your own and join the conversations!

Mid-April I said my goodbyes to CPB and moved on to co-found DandyId with Arron Kallenberg and Anthony Dimitre. We’ve since launched an open beta and are communicating with third-parties for partner integration with our repository and widget. While partnerships form, users can sign up and fill out their identities – then grab a widget containing those ‘chicklets’ and respective links, for their blog. I have the widget, in badge form, on this blog.

I’ll also be moving my home base back to Rhode Island  later this month, and setting up Dandy headquarters in the Providence area. We’re hiring two developers, PHP/MySql/Mashup ninjas, and possibly an intern. Arron will remain in Boulder for 2 more months or so, heading our business development. If you’re a developer in the RI area (or in Boulder through July/August) please contact us for more information! 

DandyId is launching on a more official note this August at Gnomedex.  Check out the DandyId blog for future information, and DandyId.org to signup!

Although FOWA has hardly come to an end (double-days of Nikki Beach parties beginning tonight!), and tomorrow I’ll be winning the MacBook Air… however, some notes on todays happenings.

Kathy Sierra opened with a keynote “Creating Passionate Users” and cognitive seduction, stating the seemingly obvious but so often overlooked methods for relating to people and engaging users in exceptional experiences. Kathy spoke of our duty towards humanizing technology, getting people to meet – offline, while making more usable/human software. Develop easy-to-master-FAST apps, leaping to the “passion threshold”, where users are able to be great at what they *do* with the tool. It’s not about the tool. It’s about what the tool allows them to do. Get through to feelings and legacy brain. And place a “WTF” button nearby for your site’s users.

Blaine Cook, Twitter Engineer, held together his whimsical panel throughout audience notifications that Twitter was, no surprise, down. Cook warned of feature creep and the importance of adding what users *strongly* request, keep it clean, open APIs, and “use and love” the app you are creating. If you don’t love the service, others won’t either.Leah Culver, Pownce, followed, also pressing “opening code” as a top priority for any web service. 

Microsoft showcased the ever-awesome Photosynth, and a rad 3D maps application, which I didn’t catch the link to.

A panel pointing “what makes the next great startup”: Brilliance, team, confidence/ambition, depth of knowledge/research/ capital structure/right vw/legal issues, open!, distribution, extremism, and of course serendipity.

Remember the Milk’s Emily Boyd presented a quite enjoyable panel on FTM’s birth and lifespan, $0.19 budget, and various interface options (including the iPhone, yet available to the Aussies) (and a hacked GMAIL! love it). 

Off to the party, hosted by Scrapblog!  

Well it’s been quite some time that I’ve submitted a blog entry …. I’ve found another love, Twitter, works well with my random thoughts and lifestyle.

However, just signing up for SocialThing this morning which aggregates my online social space, realized how lame my “blog” is. Maybe this is my new years resolution. Alongside my site’s redesign.