Shali's Tumbling Thoughts

‘Float’ by Pacific Air is my new jam.

Tue, 07 May 2013 18:12:04 -0400

‘Float’ by Pacific Air is my new jam.

instagram: Introducing Photos of You Photos are memories of...

Thu, 02 May 2013 17:33:04 -0400

Introducing Photos of You

Photos are memories of the people, places and moments that mean the most to us. We have always sought to give you simple and expressive ways to bring the stories behind your photos to life. Your captions and hashtags capture the “what?” and your Photo Map answers the “where?” but until today we’ve never quite been able to answer the “who?”.

Today, we’re excited to introduce Photos of You and bring you a new way to share and discover stories on Instagram. When you upload a photo to Instagram, you’re now able to add people as easily as you add hashtags. Only you can add people to your photos, so you have control over the images you share. And it doesn’t stop at people—you can add any account on Instagram, whether it’s your best friend, favorite coffee shop or even that adorable dog you follow.

There will now be a Photos of You section on your profile. When someone adds you to a photo, you’ll receive a notification and the photo will appear in your Photos of You. Want to make sure you like the photo first? No problem: you can easily adjust your settings so nothing appears on your profile until you approve it. Before your Photos of You section is visible to other people, you’ll have until May 16th to play around and get used to the feature. You can find more information about how Photos of You works and how to control your visibility at help.instagram.com.

Instagram for iOS version 3.5 is currently available for download in Apple’s App Store, and Instagram for Android version 3.5 is now available on Google Play.

Oooooo!

I’m pretty excited about the future of gaming. This looks...

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 19:31:00 -0400

I’m pretty excited about the future of gaming. This looks fun!

Uhm… what? lol!

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 19:25:43 -0400

Uhm… what? lol!

Sometimes googling before you ask a silly question is probably the wiser choice.

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 22:33:00 -0500

HA. The story of my life…

Fun Fact: Until I was, uh, 18?, I thought Martha Stewart owned Martha’s Vineyard. Like, I thought she lived there with her servants and made jam and walked her dogs and everything was perfect because it was her island and she could do anything she wanted! She was Queen of Martha’s Vineyard! I didn’t realize you could go there as a civilian. And then I moved to Massachusetts and everyone was like, “Ohmygod, I can’t wait to go to the Vineyard for the Summer!” and I just sat there and nodded whilst imagining Martha’s Special Forces shooting people as they rafted over to her Island. But thank goodness for Google, because one day I learned the truth.

via http://tribeboston.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/martha-stewart-does-not-live-on-marthas-vineyard/

Actually, having been born and raised solely in California, I guess I don’t blame myself for just assuming a similar story for most of my life. But boy, did Dylan laugh so hard when I asked him, “Wait… so Martha Stewart lives in Martha’s Vineyard, right?”

And then I googled and found this funny blog post. Oh boy, I bet @KyleFord is headdesk-ing right now as he reads this. ;-)

I mean… did you even know Martha’s Vineyard was an island??? I never had a reason to look it up, so sue me.

I can’t stop listening to this song. It’s too cute....

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 03:48:00 -0400

I can’t stop listening to this song. It’s too cute. And crazy… It’s like they had this adorable little girl talk about the meaning of life (and frogs) and then made a cool M83 track to go with it. Lyrics for those who like to follow along:

I heard about this frog
It’s a very tiny frog
But it’s also very special
You can only find it in the jungle
So far away from me
But if you find it and if you touch it
Your world can change forever

If you touch its skin
You can feel your body changing
And your vision also
And blue becomes red and red becomes blue
And your mommy suddenly becomes your daddy
And everything looks like a giant cupcake

And you keep laughing and laughing and laughing
Nothing is ever quite the same really
And after you finish laughing
It’s time to turn into a frog yourself
It’s very funny to be a frog
You can dive into the water
And cross the rivers and the oceans
And you can jump all the time and everywhere
Do you want to play with me?

We can be a whole group of friends
A whole group of frogs
Jumping into the streets
Jumping into the planet
Climbing up the buildings
Swimming in the lakes and in the bathtubs
We would be hundreds, thousands, millions
The biggest group of friends the world has ever seen
Jumping and laughing forever
It would be great, right?

Shali: What’s a Razorback? Dylan: It’s a pig or...

Sat, 15 Sep 2012 16:55:09 -0400

Shali: What’s a Razorback?

Dylan: It’s a pig or something.

Shali: *does Google Image search for “razorback”*…

Shali: Oh ok yeah, it’s a pig.

Shali: What’s the Alabama mascot?

Dylan: Crimson Tide… so I guess like waves of blood?

Shali: *does Google Image search for “Crimson Tide”….

Shali: Wait…but there’s an elephant?????

Dylan: Oh yeah

Shali: An elephant war in waves of blood. Neat.

Enjoy this lovely song “Petition (vacationer remix)”...

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 12:44:54 -0400

Enjoy this lovely song “Petition (vacationer remix)” by Tennis for your Friday tunes. :-)

I picked up a random travel magazine while waiting around in a...

Sat, 07 Jul 2012 03:55:00 -0400

I picked up a random travel magazine while waiting around in a dental office today. “The Hotels Issue” it was called. I flipped through it, pulling out my iPhone… staring at the time… continuing to flip through and then I stopped. I found this incredible (and crazy!) looking photo of a room that was half graffitied and half white. It was strangely beautiful.

I don’t think I could sleep in this room but the idea of sleeping in a work of art is just really cool. Every year, Au Vieux Panier in Marseille, France would select a few artists to create a unique experience in each of their six hotel rooms. This was “season 3” they call it. The Panic Room designed by graffiti artist Tilt with a few of his friends was done over a period of one week. I found this video that documented the making of the Panic Room: http://vimeo.com/38437356

The Naive Optimist: Reducing churn with Econometrics

Mon, 28 May 2012 17:03:32 -0400

The Naive Optimist: Reducing churn with Econometrics:

ryanleecarson:

If you run a recurring revenue web app, churn is one of your biggest enemies. Right now our churn at Treehouse hovers around 9% and we’d like to get that to 5% or less.

We just built a tool that should decrease cancellations or pauses by up to 50% so I thought I’d share how we did it.*

…

Yahoo Axis just made me die a little bit. Let's watch some ads!

Thu, 24 May 2012 04:38:00 -0400

It’s funny that browsers have gone out of their way to invest in really nice quality ads these days. Having just read about the release of the new Yahoo Axis and watching the… well… terrible videos, I’ve decided to reflect on recent browser ads.

Chrome has done a nice series of ads over the last year but more recently, they released this one which got me a little emotional and teary even.

And then there was this surprising one from Microsoft which made IE9 look completely bad ass. This ad makes me want to buy a PC just so I could start using IE9 (no, not really). But it pretty much invokes the “I want to go to there” feeling. Ok, enough of that. Watch it and you’ll see:

Today, Yahoo Axis releases what seems like a disaster. I mean I haven’t used the browser yet but words cannot describe how terrible (and ridiculously funny!) this video is. I have no desire to try this new browser. Enjoy:

I love this locally shot video of “Day Dreams” by...

Sat, 19 May 2012 18:08:00 -0400

I love this locally shot video of “Day Dreams” by Midi Matilda. The song is awesome as well. :-)

“Day Dreams was shot over 10 nights in San Francisco and Berkeley CA. The music video was filmed in a studio, and then projected onto thousands of surfaces around the cities. Each frame of the video was captured with a photo. 3,300 photos. The music and video were created by both members of midi matilda.”

Happy mother’s day to the best mama in the world! <3...

Sun, 13 May 2012 12:37:14 -0400

Happy mother’s day to the best mama in the world! <3 (Taken with instagram)

Confession: I have an addiction to using online tools.

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 02:49:00 -0400

If you’ve ever worked with me, you’ll know that I am one of those people who would have the answer of “Oh, I know what we could use to solve X.” and the answer always involves some kind of online tool/software of some sort. What’s weird is that if there isn’t an app top of mind during that moment of discussion, I will scour the web and Quora and other resources to find the perfect app for that.

It’s a sick obsession of mine but I’m actually pretty happy I’ve spent the last six working years exploring, using, assessing, and all that with the many apps the web, desktop, and mobile has had to offer. So I’ve decided to compile a list of my top and favorite tools for everything I do and deal with in my life. Enjoy!

For work

Text editor: Textmate (although I’ve been trying to convert to Sublime Text 2)
Group chat/messenger: Hipchat
Issue tracker: GitHub Issues (or Jira if you prefer something more custom and elaborate)
Collaborative documents: Confluence 4 life (I hate you Google docs!)
Email marketing: Campaign Monitor
Image optimization: ImageOptim & ImageAlpha
Wireframing/flow charting: Balsamiq and OmniGraffle
File sharing: Dropbox
Screenshotting: Skitch
Collaborative to-do listing: Trello
Event management: Eventbrite
Task hiring: Task Rabbit
Food ordering: ZeroCater
Faxing: Hellofax
Screen sharing: Join.Me
Keep my computer awake: Caffeine
Richer contact details: Rapportive
Sales email tracking: Yesware (syncs to your CRM!)
CRM: Batchbook
Lead generation: eTrigue

For personal

Notetaking: Notational Velocity (on desktop)/Simplenote (on iPhone) - A simple notepad app that instantly syncs between phone and desktop is my favorite thing about this
Resizing my desktop windows quickly: SizeUp
Launcher: Alfred
Chat program: Adium
Todo Lists: The Hit List
Saving articles to read later: Instapaper
Agh, I can’t find my iPhone!: Find my iPhone
Music Player: Spotify
Concert finder: Songkick
Music discovery: Last.fm
Blogging: Tumblr
Flight booking: Kayak
Hotel exploring: Tablet Hotels
Photo management: Lightroom
Tweeting: Twitter desktop

What are some of your favorite apps?

Amazing new tumblr blog discovery… Meet Steve Gobs!

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:07:39 -0500

Amazing new tumblr blog discovery… Meet Steve Gobs!

puuurdy! annamarie: Fancy Nails!! Sally Hansen Salon...

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:06:10 -0500

puuurdy!

annamarie:

Fancy Nails!!
Sally Hansen Salon Effects Real Nail Polish Strips - Laced Up
This is my first time applying nail polish strips and oh man, it was so much harder than I was expecting! I’m not going to detail the steps because they come with good detailed instructions, but I will say don’t expect this to be easier than actually painting your nails. Luckily they give you extra strips in the package because I ended up using all of them due to 3 initial misfires. I think with practice it will get a lot easier and I do think they look really cool!

My new company, ZeroCater, arranges company catering from the...

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 16:19:00 -0400

My new company, ZeroCater, arranges company catering from the best local restaurants. I’ll be posting photos from my own delicious encounters!

Today we have: Chicken & Beef Kebabs from Palmyra

Another interesting new thing that popped up on Hacker News....

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 14:46:00 -0400

Another interesting new thing that popped up on Hacker News. TinyProj allows designers, devs, copywriters, and illustrators to sign up for a weekly email that pops up in your inbox on Saturday mornings with tiny legit projects that average a duration of 7 days with about a $2K budget. And for $25, anyone that needs help meeting a certain criteria can post their project. Now this is an interesting concept! Read more about it here.

There’s a new web app that recently appeared on Hacker...

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 14:27:47 -0400

There’s a new web app that recently appeared on Hacker News called IFTTT (If this, then that) which allows you to “put the internet to work” simply by creating a task such as:

IF (posting photo from this Instagram account) THEN (upload photo to my Dropbox account)

You can do a ton of interesting combinations…

IF (weather is 85+ degrees) THEN (text me to remind me to put on sunscreen)

IF (craigslist post for X search term) THEN (email me a notification).

The possibilities seem endless. Pretty neat, eh?

brit: HTML for Babies. Yes, this is a real book with colorful...

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 11:43:50 -0400

brit:

HTML for Babies. Yes, this is a real book with colorful words wrapped in mark up tags, designed to start acquainting your little one with geekiness. Part of me loves it, part of me thinks it’s a little absurd. I’m (obvs) leaning towards the former.

Regardless, it would be a fun baby shower gift for a friend… even if they take it as a joke :)

Editor’s note: No, I’m not planning on having a baby soon. But I AM getting a puppy! (Think they can make HTML for Puppies?) More on that coming soon.

Hahaha… love this!