Category: snappy

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Two Three Things

1. Here is my video interview with Arianna Huffington. You can tell by the rosy-red hue of my makeup that I’m positively tickled to get to speak with her about her new book On Becoming Fearless.

2. Cooper Munroe’s article is very compelling, as is the video she links to encouraging women to get out and vote. More info at the WomensVoices, WomensVote website.

3. Are you looking for more accurate reading material for you and your children to share at bedtime? Sweet Juniper! has you covered. So worth the read.

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There Was This One Time…..

I did an interview with the amazing Amanda B of Very Zen once upon a time and while we were emailing back and forth, she promised me that at some point, she would get some music online for me to hear. And she did! And it’s here! And she’s good! And you should go listen!

Oh, Amanda! Thank you! Please, go to the recording studio or go sing at a nearby place so I can come and listen to you because I need MORE. Your voice is amazing!

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Dandelife

A long time friend of Joe’s (and then luckily, friend of mine by default) has created Dandelife, a place to store your memories. Kelly Abbott calls it a Social Biography Network. He didn’t just create this as a hobby. He believes in it so much that he actually quit his job to do it full time. You could say that Dandelife is his life. (I know. Sorry.)

I tried it out a while back and realized that I could really use a place like Dandelife. It’s different than a blog in the way that you can chronologically write in the memories and stories of your life instead of what you ate for lunch yesterday. You can capture your story so you don’t forget it, and put in the details you might not want to go into on your blog but you do want somewhere. And, if you’re like me, it’s fun to see who else was doing things around the same time and where.

I asked Kelly a few questions about Dandelife and he was nice enough to answer.

LP: What was the inspiration for you to create Dandelife?

KA: Loved blogging a little too much, you could say. That’s the short version. The less-short version? Dandelife Origins – I’ve got 11 posts and counting on our blog that create some kind of picture as to why I would drop everything for Dandelife.

LP: What does Dandelife mean to you?

KA: What is it to me? It’s my baby. It’s funny, but I’ve been giving birth to this idea for many years. You can read some of those stories here. But what Dandelife means to me deeper, I suppose, than just a business. I often joke with people that it’s the culmination of my being. I love photos. I love storytelling. I love the Internet and community building online. In a way, Dandelife is the logical progression of bring all of those desires I have into one place.

LP: What kind of mark do you think Dandelife will leave on the world or with individuals?

KA: The mark that Dandelife should leave on individuals is simple: I want people who visit to be entertained by the stories people are sharing here. For the members who’ve signed up, I want their lives to be an archive of sorts. A trusted venue for housing their memories is important to do right. Which leads to the world at large. I want the community at Dandelife.com to reflect the world as it is. The stories people are sharing are quite different from the stuff you read about in your daily news. The connections being made run deeper than those you make at MySpace. What’s happening on Dandelife is very real – even if it is “virtual.”

LP: What is your favorite part of Dandelife?

KA: My favorite part hasn’t been developed yet. Users are giving me recommendations on a daily basis. That combined with the constant loop of ideas that we have going on internally, there are some pretty creative features coming. I can’t wait to tell you about them.

If you were to put my feet to the fire, then I’d have to admit that my favorite part right now is the timeline you see on the home page. It’s what our members love the most and seems to be what the blogosphere digs the most as well. People just love the idea of seeing their life – visually – at a glance. Keep hitting refresh on the home page and you’ll start to see some pretty neat stories popping up every time. I sometimes find that I’ve wasted an entire afternoon bouncing from one good story to the next. Of course, for me, that’s not an occupational hazard at all. 🙂 For you – I hope it’s a nice diversion from the daily grind.

Thanks, Kelly.

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Also Known as Jenn

My awesome friend from San Diego, Jennifer Simpson, was at Blogher and I got to see her all of about 5 seconds. She posted an audio clip she made from a few different bloggers, me included, about why we blog. I love the idea of it because it’s like a mini-interview. (And who likes interviews??)

Does everyone hate my laugh or is it just me?

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Badges. Get Your Badges. (and HuffPost)

Get your BloggerNetwork.org badges here. It includes instructions if you need them. If anyone feels adventurous and creative and wants to make some more badges, please do and send them to me. I’ll post them and make them available along with a link to your site if you want.

The Huffington Post is looking for submissions. If you have a story related to overcoming fear, they would love to get it for a new section of their website that is launching very soon. Email Romi for more specifics.

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Blogger Network

UPDATE: 8/4 1:00am: Joe has been cleaning up some code and doing general awesome things all over the place. I’ve gone through the database and tried to add and correct cities to those of you that had them pending since we had to break a few things to fix a few things. Ain’t that always the way? But if you used a different email to request the city than the one you used to sign up, I can’t match you and you’ll need to log in and do it yourself. Photography and Personal are both added as a focus. We rearranged the city/states. The search feature hasn’t been added yet but at least you can read through the cities now without wanting to rip your eyes out. Seriously, thanks for all your great feedback.

UPDATE: 8/3 1:10pm: I’ve had a few suggestions for putting the city name next to the person’s name or url. For example, when you are on the main BloggerNetwork page and are viewing the entire list of the last updated sites, you would be able to tell who belonged to which city before you clicked on their url. From a design perspective, I’m not sure how that looks. If any of you that are thinking along those lines wants to come up with a design to work it in, let me know. I’m happy to see any and all idea. This is turning into quite a community effort and I THANK YOU for you feedback and help. And, yes, I’ll be changing the way the cities looks and having them listed by state option and also alphabetical order option. But probably not today.

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UPDATE: 8/3 11:30am: Some of the cities are not showing up in connection to your urls. Troubleshooting now. You should not have to add your cities again or anything. But if you click on your city on the right and your url doesn’t show, just know I’m working on it. Thanks!

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UPDATE: 8/3 10:15am: (i know, right?) Don’t forget to log back into your account and add your city to your url once I get it listed.

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UPDATE: 8/3 10am: WOW! You guys totally rock! The list of cities is getting longer and longer. At some point, I might need to have only states listed on the right with a city dropdown. But we’ll be adding a search as well, and that might help you to find your city fastest. For those of you asking, ‘Hey! Where is said BloggerNetwork badge to put on my site?’ To you I say ‘Soon.’ And thank you for asking. But you can put a text link on your site now, if you want. KristyK suggested we add an icon for Photography and Suebob suggested a Personal category. Both great ideas and will be implemented soon. Thanks, everyone!

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UPDATE: 8/2 midnight: The issue is fixed. Please, resume the adding of your blogs and let me know if you find any other errors. Your info is now safe. If you signed up earlier tonight, please login to BloggerNetwork.org and update with a new password. Thanks!

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UPDATE 8/2 7pm: Schmutzie wins as the person to find the first bug. Thanks, Schmutzie! We’ll be back in a few hours when it gets fixed. Something about your personal information being important and all that crap…..

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I hate going on a trip to a new city and not knowing whom of my blogger friends lives there. What if I went all the way there and then all the way home and THEN found out that so-and-so lived there and we could have hooked up for drinks?

I had an idea for a simple and easy to use blog listing by city. Sure, at some point it could be shaped into something with groups, networking, an ad service and whatever else was wanted but the main thing I want it for – is for me. And you, if you want.

So, add your blog. Right now, my son and myself are the only ones there and we are a little lonely. Send suggestions for improvement. Tell me you want to work on the design. (Please! The design!) Tell me anything that comes to mind. Add your city! The San Diego listing will have a ton of names in it in a few weeks because we are going to migrate all the content from here to there. But, if you are already on SDB, go ahead and sign up anyway. It will save me work, and that is totally cool. You can pick more than one city if you so desire. That is mostly for me as well, since I want to claim Los Angeles and San Diego and figured other people might be like me. (what? no?) You can also put in little, tiny (so cute!) icons by selecting up to three areas of focus and also, rss, atom and anything else you can think of to make yourself appear as geeky as possible. Again, mostly for me so I know what you’re talking about and if we can be friends. Also, if you are an anonymous blogger or prefer to use only your first name, totally fine. Just make sure your online published name is not your real, secret name. Capiche?

The whole point is so that I can come to your city and have a drink with you. What’s not to like?

PS. if you find kinks or bugs, please let me know.

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The Recap

Wow.

I was still going through my questions and finishing up last items on Thursday but I felt pretty prepared by the time I went to the dinner on Thursday night. All day Friday and all day Saturday I interviewed some amazing women. I was so busy that I didn’t get photos of all of them. Dang. In fact, I was so busy that I didn’t get to meet nearly as many people there as I wanted to. On the flip side, I got to really talk to those women that came in to film. We had a few problems come up and some people were very understanding and patient as we figured out the kinks (THANK YOU) but all in all it was a great weekend. Isabel Kallman, founder of Alpha Mom is truly an amazing woman and I thank her so much for sending me Mario for the weekend, without whom I might have died. And Chris. And Jesus. Can I get an amen?

The panel I was a part of went well, I thought. Danah was a great moderator. I wish I would have had more time to talk to her because I find her smart, fascinating and sporting great hair. It was great to finally meet Jenn, Denise and Erica in person. You can read more about our panel here on PBS Mediashift by Mark Glaser and here on The Huffington Post by Liz Henry. I was watching Liz type furiously during the panel and wondered how she could possibly get it all down. All in all, it’s a pretty accurate account. One part where she quotes me as saying, “Leah Peterson: I don’t blog about my kids, I have 4 kids all teens. And also my relationship with my husband.” was just a little off. I said something more like I make sure my kids are ok with what I blog about them and if they ask me not to blog something, I don’t because I want to make sure they always know they can tell me anything. But, wow, Liz can type fast.

And if that all wasn’t enough, Arianna Huffington sat down with me and Alpha Mom for a few minutes to talk about her new book. On Becoming Fearless….in Love, Work and Life is truly inspired. I think everyone should get a copy. I’ve read it twice now. I don’t know when any of the TV segments will be coming out but I’ll link to them when they do.

There were a few things like weird/spotty and not free internet connectivity and a large, laid-out conference area that made things challenging. And even though I only got to pop into one other panel besides my own for about 20 minutes, I was acutely aware that some people there were harboring and fostering some types of negative energy which made me sad. In my mind, when you get 700+ women together, we should all be planning to do something good, like switching things up in the government or figuring out how to make the perfect pair of high heels that make our calves look fantastic but don’t create blisters, rather than turning on each other. Just think what we could all do if we worked together! It would truly be a tragedy to waste the creative opportunity for greatness that Blogher facilitates.

Update: Sour Duck says some nice things about the panel here.

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Interview with Derek Powazek

Derek Powazek has a thing for stories. He tells them through pictures and words. He was a Senior designer at Technorati, is the founder of Fray, a co-founder of JPG magazine and an Online Director of AlterNet. He wrote a few books and his photos have been in exhibits and in various publications including San Francisco Magazine, Curve Magazine and also online. He’s won awards like the Silver Award in PhotoJournalism from the Society of News Design and is currently starting his own publishing company. Derek is inspiring to me. He is true to himself, follows his dreams and has more than enough talent to take him anywhere he wants to go.

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Alpine Skate Park

In the interest of doing activities that are free and close by, the kids and I went to check out Alpine Skate Park in Ventura. It’s all housed within one building. They have a very large area to skate, a concert area, a gaming room and a place where the other people can hang out with some pretty great murals throughout. They also have a beauty parlor and a smallish store, but they weren’t open. They have free wireless. The evenings get quite hoppin with the odd and punk people in the area. Sadly, I had left but Devon reported that I would have loved it.

Devon took us there in his Thing. I haven’t been in a convertible anything in quite a while and it was fun for a short trip. Of course, I wasn’t in the back.
We ate at a nearby bar and grill where a man got kicked out for being disorderly during Happy Hour and trying to pick a fight. We ate Gator Eggs and extremely hot Hell-O sauce. The water tasted slightly of Sprite, which is so irritating. I want it to be either Sprite or water, not a sad, weak combination of both. The ice was the really good kind, though.

Tony and Tyler are both battling a bad and snotty cold. Today, both of their throats are yucky and they are hacking at each other and filling the entire trash bin with used tissues. So far this week we’ve gone through 5 tissue boxes. I’m kind of glad we aren’t traveling since they would be hating it, which means I would be hating it. But I’m still looking for something for next week. Something local-er than Oregon and Utah. Maybe Santa Barbara or San Diego. Hopefully something inexpensive due to someone else canceling at the last minute due to unexpected hardship. Not that I’m wishing hardship on anyone, Strike that. Let’s say they have to change plans because they just won the lottery and have so much paperwork to sign, they can’t possibly get away. Our vacation budget is quite small this year. And when I say small, I mean tiny. And when I say tiny, I mean pretty much there isn’t one. I mean, if you think about it, we can’t afford to go anywhere or eat out. Or for that matter, eat in.

Everyone, stop eating.

Because our vacation plans have been cancelled and changed about 20 times over the past week, I refuse to plan anything else ever again. Ever. I am not just a semi-planner. I am a Planner. I use an itinerary complete with maps, directions, phone numbers, approximate costs, highlights of the activity, expected weather and a packing list. And that is just the first 20 pages. I number the pages and create a Travel Book. This is so beyond just making plans. This is deep in the sad OCD place that drives those around me crazy. And because of the depths I go to to create these Travel Books, it is not a simple thing to just change plans. This makes me a pain. And I am sorry.

My daughter is….my daughter. She likes my Travel Books. She likes to see what we will be doing and who we will be doing it with. She would even like it better if I had the hours written down, but I only use generalized parts of the day, like ‘early morning’ and ‘after dinner.’ She is my spawn. She is the one hollering at everyone to get in the shower, to get out of the shower, to shower faster, to leave the door open so she can do her hair while they shower and to shut the door because the Axe in the air is killing her. She doesn’t mean to be bossy. She just knows the right way to do things and wants to help you to achieve your personal best. Huh. That sounds so familiar……

If we survive these two weeks with each other with no concrete ‘Vacation, Summer 2006’ plans and no money to do anything or go anywhere, we might just be translated and go straight to the Celestial Kingdom. And then I’d miss out on more of Alex with her permit, driving our huge and very heavy van in the same area as other cars. That are moving. Towards us. But, it’s a free activity, which makes it at the top of the list of things to do. Hold me.