down the avenue

Techlicious Blog Unveiled: Tech-Savvy Friend for Women

The Techlicious blog was launched today, whose mission is to simplify technology, particularly for women.

They tout themselves as the tech-savvy friend women can count on for tips and tricks to get the most out of technology; whether that’s saving time in their hectic schedules, discovering new ways to enjoy their personal interests, or keeping up with the latest technology trends and styles.

As founder Suzanne Kantra points out on the site, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, women influence the purchase of more than 90% of consumer electronics, yet there is nowhere women can go to get straightforward advice tailored to them that is not overly geeky, snarky, or dumbed-down.

Techlicious simplifies things by cutting through the hype and technical jargon to give you the information you need, in language that's easy to understand.

The content will include how-to videos, new product and website recommendations, as well as useful tips for getting the most out of the products they already own.

Their Buyer’s Guides provide advice on choosing the right product for every lifestyle, and include recommendations at various price points. Techlicious also offers a community forum where women can get answers to their questions and share their own tips and discoveries.

The Israeli Faces of Innovation

A collection of social and panel shots from the first Israel Conference in the states, held all day Thursday in Los Angeles at the Luxe Hotel.

Session topics included high technology, clean tech, medical solutions and entertainment media technology. I was pleasantly surprised by the diversity of the crowd and the fact that they sold out in their first year, just surpassing 500 registered attendees.

From retail, sustainability, biotech and new media to venture capital, film producers, attorneys and serial entrepeneurs, they all showed up to participate in the discussion on and off the stage.

Sharona Justman is the force behind this new event, designed to be an interactive forum to bring Israel-facing companies together to increase business and investment opportunities between Israel and California. Below is Sharona with Israeli visionary Yossi Vardi following his keynote.

Lou Lenart

Ron Hadar of Tigo Energy

Shahar Azani

Answers.com Bob Rosenschein

MySpace's Allen Hurff, Renee Blodgett, Yossi Vardi

Isabel Maxwell

Yossi brings us his wit

Guy Hoffman

Isabel Maxwell and Isaac Applbaum on the Green Technology panel

Additional photos can be found here.

Iraq is Gone

Two interesting shorts on Iraq.

From Baghdad to San Jose. Haitham Jasim and his wife, Jamila Ghanm, arrived in San Jose from Iraq in July. This is their story.

The second one is called Iraq is gone.

Bay Communion

Jack Gescheidt's Tree Spirit Project series of photos always amaze me. An example or for the whole series, click here where you can also order various sizes of prints. This is called Bay Communion.

Moving Panoramic Shot of American Bloggers in Africa

We had an opportunity to hang out with the founder of Virtual Africa for a few days in Cape Town. After an amazing 360 panoramic view of Table Mountain and the surrounding Cape by helicopter, he took a shot of the American visiting bloggers, which also includes three South African bloggers in this amazing shot. We'll cover them in depth in a later post.

360^o picture of the participatingUS and South African bloggers, courtesy of Virtual Africa. Full screen version.

Photojoy: New Photo Web App

I've been playing around with yet another photo web app called Photojoy. It's a crowded space, but given that digital photography continues to be a favorite online hobby and the fact that more and more amateurs are trying to figure out how to share, edit and accessorize their photos in more creative ways, entrepreneurs continue to bring a variation of a previous service to market.

Photojoy is unique in that you can create wallpaper collages, turn your phtos into 3D screensavers, and display your images in more creative ways by turning them into toys or widgets that can be repurposed. There are also thousands of professional photos you can access. A flavor below.

Check out their online demo to dive deeper.

RADUS New Media Platform Unveiled

Today, client RADUS unveiled a new media hub platform that allows anyone to simultaneously discover, search, share, and view digital-rich media across leading computer, mobile, and social networking services, including Facebook and MySpace.

The new platform was designed to address one of the major issues confronting online content delivery—the lack of a consistent user experience—cited by half of all senior industry executives surveyed as the main barrier to mass consumer adoption of digital-rich media, according to a recent Accenture Global Media Study.

RADUS transforms the way you experience digital-rich content by enabling you to view all your favorite media types under one roof while making it easy to explore new areas of interest.

Free to the public, RADUS’ new media hub streamlines content discovery and navigation, offering you quick and easy access to hundreds of mainstream and user generated news, sports, and entertainment channels from leading broadcasters, bloggers, directors, musicians, photographers, etc.

RADUS provides quick, one-click access to mainstream, vertical, and niche content and can be easily customized to suit individual needs. You can create your own personal media hub by adding your own personalized feeds, changing skins and more.

The new media hub also makes it easy to connect with friends and other users who share common interests. The RADUS widget supports dozens of leading social sites, letting you share your favorite videos, photos, and blogs on the fly. Groundbreaking widget features include comprehensive channel navigation, search, share, and content display capabilities.

Academy Award winning director Michael Moore’s latest film —SLACKER UPRISING—documenting his controversial nationwide get-out-the-vote tour during the last weeks of the 2004 Presidential Campaign is being broadcast in its entirety commercial free until election night at RADUS.com. Be sure to check it out.

They have received some nice blog kudos and early looks so far, including AppScout, CNET, InformationWeek, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch, PC Magazine, and Ubergizmo to name a few.

Adrants on Photrade Photo Contest

Adrants covers client Photrade's new photo contest platform. Check it out. They suggest that "there's a ton of reasons to launch a consumer-generated media campaign since they save money and think time, encourage brand appropriation, and are pretty easy to sell to a client."

Fast Company on Buying & Selling Photos

Fast Company does an extensive piece on client Photrade.

Darren Rowse Joins Photrade's Advisory Board

Client Photrade.com, the only free site where photographers can share, protect and make money from their photos, announced today that Darren Rowse will be joining its board of advisors. Rowse founded the successful online Digital Photography School in 2005 which now has over 1 million visitors a month and ProBlogger.net, a site about the skills of blogging, which is one of the top 30 blogs in the world. He is also a co-founder of b5 Media, a global new media network of hundreds of bloggers that receives 30 million page views each month.