Olive Juice » Social Web

Where Not to Eat

Sara Czyzewicz — Mon, 02 May 2011 01:09:48 +0000

Services for recommending restaurants & bars are all well and great – hear from prior patrons the pros and cons of atmosphere, menu items and customer service of a venue.

But what about sanitation and health code?

Most often, the public is unaware of a potential health code violation at their restaurant-of-choice. A new service however, DontEat.at, will alert visitors via text if they have “checked in” to a NYC location at risk of said violation.

Co-working and Social Media in Orlando

Sara Czyzewicz — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:33:10 +0000

Friday afternoon I decided to check out CoLab, downtown Orlando’s co-working space since 2008. With memberships starting at $49/month, the space offers working stations for individuals and suites for larger groups. They also host various events each month, including screenwriters meetups, Refresh Orlando and “learning lunches” every other Friday. There’s also the OmLab right upstairs, a studio for yoga/massage/acupuncture.

Last Friday the free learning lunch was sponsored by Doterati, and featured a presentation with Director of Interactive Strategy Murray Izenwasser from Biztegra, Inc. Murray discussed doing “social media right”, particularly focusing on the masses of Facebook fans (e.g. 104k active fans of the color Purple), Tweeting can work for any industry and taking advantage of the SEO opportunities via YouTube videos.

If you’re in the Orlando area, check out CoLab as well as Doterati to get in the event loop & connect with like-minded members (e.g. TweetUp this Tuesday, BarCamp April 3)

Share your Services, WordPress Plugin

Sara Czyzewicz — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 03:13:43 +0000

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/ – Mac undelete.

Enjoy!

Entrepreneur Showcase at MIT VC Conference

Sara Czyzewicz — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 18:44:45 +0000

Yesterday Arron and I made our way to the 11th Annual MIT Venture Capital Conference, to check out the Entrepreneur Showcase where thirty early-stage businesses from sectors including information technology, healthcare and clean technology exhibited their business vision and technology prowess.

Three companies in particular caught my interest; in no particular order:

1 – Artaic – Innovative Mosaic http://artaic.com/
“Artaic is a full service provider of turn-key mosaic projects, from concept through installation. The creation of mosaic is brought to a new level, where art meets technology to make the medium more sophisticated and accessible.”

2 – Delfigo Security http://www.delfigosecurity.com/
“Delfigo Security is the first in the identity and authentication industry to develop a solution using behavioral characteristics as markers in identity authentication. Our solution uses artificial intelligence based algorithms that uniquely identify users based on multiple factors including keyboard biometrics, geospatial metrics, system parameters, and reflective thinking.”

3 – Movolu http://movolu.com
“This new advertising network is built for the mobile platform – the application is quite simple. Movolu leverages location information to enhance the mobile experience and connect businesses with customers in their area.” A detailed review can be found at http://nicholascifuentes.com/.

Thank You October! Winnings from Fling It Girl and Kirtsy

Sara Czyzewicz — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:17:08 +0000

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!

CNN Hologram Presence of Princess Yellin

Sara Czyzewicz — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 01:05:04 +0000

It’s Tuesday night, I’m on my couch wrapped in my Slanket, eating a Luigi’s Mango Italian Ice, eyeballing FriendFeed RealTime, and something shocking is on the television…

Aside from the obvious (tallying votes for the next US President), there’s a holographic woman on CNN?

I love how “techy” TV is getting… aside from the “pop-up ads” interrupting shows.

The 3D hologram was a campaign specialist/princess Jessica Yellin, in Chicago speaking with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in Manhattan. TechCrunch has photographic proof of this sighting.22 cameras and 40 computers snapping 360-degree image sequences render the figure. This has been one fancy election!

DandyId and my Latest Doings

Sara Czyzewicz — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 00:06:18 +0000

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!

On FOWA-Miami

Sara Czyzewicz — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 03:25:20 +0000

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!

Future of Web Apps – Miami

Sara Czyzewicz — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 20:59:35 +0000

Looking forward to FOWA next week. I’m planning to attend the BarCamp, located in FOWA venue, Thursday instead of the workshops.

Do check out the Crowdvine page, pre-conference: sign-up for the social events, as well as filter through attendees with whom to meet in the Sunshine state.

Blogging and SocialThing

Sara Czyzewicz — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 17:00:55 +0000

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.