Bare Necessities Brings Lingerie To A Tablet Near You!
May 8th, 2012 by Tech StaffBare Necessities, the leading online destination for brand name bras and lingerie, today launched two new catalogs without printing a single page. The editions are completely digital and designed specifically for a tablet shopping experience. The catalogs are available today via the free Google Catalogs and Catalog Spree tablet apps for both iPad and Android, and can be viewed on BareNecessities.com as well.
The first new catalog features Bare Necessities’ incredible new swimwear collection, featuring brands such as SPANX, Elomi, Freya, and Fantasie.
The second digital catalog highlights Bare Necessities’ Spring bra and lingerie collection from Wacoal in a rich, sensual experience that is accentuated by being designed for an interactive, tablet environment.
Bare Necessities also launched www.Bareplus.com in February 2012, which features more than 1,200 styles of full figure and plus size bras and lingerie.
“We are excited for the opportunity to use digital technologies to connect with consumers in new and engaging ways,” said Bob Vitale, President of Wacoal America. “Through the digital catalog, Bare Necessities has made our bras and lingerie really come to life for women of all sizes.”
Google Catalogs and Catalog Spree are available free on Apple’s App Store for iPad and on Google Play for Android.
Are You At Risk Of Becoming A Google Slave?
August 15th, 2011 by Christen
IN TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS: Google announced THIS morning that it will acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. Motorola is one of 39 manufacturers of handsets that use Google’s Android operating system. Buying a hardware company is an unusual move for Google. The acquisition, Google said in a statement, “will enable Google to supercharge the Android ecosystem.”
Now here’s the conspiracy you didn’t know. By now, you’re probably at risk of being sucked into the Google ecosystem. Most of you are already waist-deep within Google’s clutches of power and don’t even know it yet.
Google has been on a mission to divide and conquer since 2001 acquiring major companies that provide the products & services that you use daily — with it’s newest acquisition of Motorola, the Google “monster” is in prime position to control many of your daily activities one moment at a time…
Five Reasons Why You’re At Risk of Becoming a Google Slave?
5. Gmail – If you own a gmail account, use google apps or utilize Google Ad words on your website, GOTCHA! One quick security breach in Google’s products could make your life a living hell! (…and let’s not even talk about the Google+ hype.)
4. SayNow – Originally created to assist the internet deprived people of Egypt (during the 2011 revolution) by allowing phone messages to be tweeted through Twitter’s #Egypt hashtag, now acquired by Google, SayNow has the ability to become a communications lifeline, if (God-forbid) we have a huge internet shutdown or mutiny. Who will we have to look to for help? Google wins again.
3. Blogger – If you use the free blogging platform Blogger, for all of your online blogging needs – then you already know how dependent you are on Google to make sure everything is right – if not, you and your blog are subject to an epic fail!
2. YouTube – Who doesn’t utilize YouTube for a little in-office free time fun or to upload precious family moments or pure ridiculousness? Can you imagine what would happen if YouTube suddenly disappeared? You can’t — and that’s just where Google wants you.
1. Motorola – Can you hear me now? If you’re a Droid user (now controlled by Google) then it totally depends on what Google wants you to hear. Google CEO Larry Page says “Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies.” – (side eyes) it sounds good, only time will tell how this acquisition will affect Droid and the user-experience in the future, just remember – if it goes to crap, you know who to blame.
Google is on a roll to control every aspect of a person’s online & offline life – it’s only a matter of time until the next acquisition could change the way we live in an instant, we’ll just have to wait and see who’s next to come under the Google umbrella and hope that it changes everything for the better and not for the worse.
Which Google product are you dependent on?
Do you think you can walk away from using Google forever?
Google+ Virtual Concert
July 22nd, 2011 by Christen
Pushing the limits of Google’s new technology, singer/songwriter Daria Musk performed a 6.5 hour Google+ Hangout concert that became a worldwide phenomenon, ultimately reaching thousands of viewers around the globe, from Norway to Australia to Argentina. With the support of Google, whose Director of Engineering, Chee Chew, attended the Hangout and provided technical assistance throughout the concert, Daria performed all night for fans who created an etiquette of staying for a few songs before leaving the Hangout so that fans-in-waiting could jump in.
Overcome by the response from fans around the world and the media (the story has been picked up by CNN, Reuters and other international information outlets), Daria now prepares for round two, scheduling a second performance that she has described to her fans as a “Gl+bal G+thering of G+niuses” for thisSaturday, July 23, at 7 p.m. ET, under the direction of Google’s top engineers. Her innovative idea to give live concerts to online viewers has Google updating their newly launched Google+ Hangout technology, so that the young artist’s performances circle the globe many times over.
“Google’s new Hangout technology is a real game-changer for the music industry,” said Sean Wolfington, owner of Tier 10 Marketing, which pioneered the digital marketing strategy for Grammy Award-winning musician Shakira. Since the concert, Wolfington’s marketing and public relations agency now also represents Musk (www.Tier10Marketing.com). “Traditionally the record labels dictated which artists get exposure; however, this cutting edge technology introduces a whole new platform that talented artists like Daria can leverage to take control of their exposure.”
As a result of her virtual concert, +DariaMusk has landed on the list of “Interesting People to Circle on Google+” on BusinessInsider.com, which writes: “Musk is growing a grassroots following on Google+, and gives free concerts via Hangouts (Google+’s cool mass video chat feature). Add her if you like music.”
From a technology perspective, Daria’s concert changed how Google+ Hangouts are used and perceived. Post concert, Chew posted, “just had the privilege of attending the first known pro level Hangout jam session.”
“We, at Google+, are passionate about bringing people together,” said Chew to his Google+ network earlier this month. “For us on hangouts it’s about really connecting small groups together face to face (to face to face), bringing people together from around the world in a new way. We all have a human need to connect and communicate.”
Are you still looking for you Google+ INVITE? Click HERE.
Which Superstar Will Become The Next Virtual Concert Newsmaker? Beyonce? Lady Gaga? We’ll see…
Are You Satisfied With Facebook?
July 21st, 2011 by Christen
The social media market is primed for a new player that allows users to connect with friends, according to the 2011 American Customer Satisfaction Index(ACSI) E-Business Report, produced in partnership with customer experience analytics firm ForeSee Results. Despite a small improvement this year, Facebook (+3% to 66) is the lowest-scoring site, not only in the social media category, but of all measured companies in this report. The survey was conducted last month, before the widespread introduction of Facebook’s biggest competitor, Google+, but Facebook’s low score indicates that Google+ could easily pounce and gain market share if they can provide a superior customer experience.
“We don’t know yet how Google+ will fare, but what we do know is that Google is one of the highest-scoring companies in the ACSI and Facebook is one of the lowest,” said Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results. “An existing dominance of market share like Facebook has is no longer a safety net for a company that is not providing a superior customer experience.”
Facebook is just one story emerging from today’s report. The ACSI E-Business Report covers three categories of e-business: social media, portals and search engines, and online news. This is the twelfth annual report of its kind, allowing companies and analysts to track the performance of these organizations over time by a critical metric: customer satisfaction.
Social Media: Wikipedia (+1% to 78) takes the top spot, while YouTube (+1% to 74) comes in a distant second. MySpace drops from this year’s Index because there were not enough users to create a statistically significant sample. Overall, social media is one of the lowest-scoring industries measured by the ACSI—only airlines, newspapers, and subscription television services score lower.
Search Engines and Portals: Google leads the search engine and portals category (up 4% to 83), but Bing follows closely, jumping an impressive 7% in one year to 82. Anything over 80 is generally considered an excellent score. Bing has grown in market share over the last year and makes up roughly 17% of the search engine market, up from 9% last year.
“While Google+ is the challenger to Facebook’s established dominance in the social media sphere, in the search engine wars, Google is king and Bing is hoping to be a contender,” added Freed. “Last year, Google’s customer satisfaction score was three points higher than Bing’s. This year, that gap narrows to one point. Bing is showing it can challenge Google in terms of revenue, market share, and the customer experience.”
For more analysis and complete historical scores, please visit www.theacsi.org or www.ForeSeeResults.com.
Who Runs Google+….DIVAS!!!
July 15th, 2011 by Christen
As I recover from my Eastcoast/Westcoast time hiatus…I came across an interesting social media tidbit via Mashable that I think my divas would be interested in…We all know that you’re into the fashion and social media thing and that many of you are early adapters (and adopters) to the latest and greatest gadgets and social media trends.
Check out this interesting tidbit from the Google+ stats trackers: Three quarters (or more) of Google+ users are male.
SocialStatistics, a third-party site that gathers data from select profiles, pegs the percentage of male users at 86.8%, whileFindPeopleOnPlus, which curates information from about a million users, says men constitute 73.7% of Google+.
With around 60% of users identifying themselves as web developers or software engineers, that paints a fairly stereotypical picture of Google+’s userbase: nerdy guys who have deep understandings of technology and who don’t mind killing some time setting up Circles of friends.
It’s true that the early adopters of any new technology are usually male. But Google+ will have to appeal to a mainstream audience if it’s to reach mass adoption anytime soon. Consider the gender breakdown for Google+’s biggest competitor, Facebook. The social network is close to a 50-50 split between men and women. And some of Facebook’s most addicted, most enthusiastic users are women.
So in order to even out the playing field a bit! We’re handing out some Google+ invites to “DIVAS ONLY” (sorry Divos.) If you’re interested in receiving an invite and changing the shift in social media usage – shoot us an email at info (at) divasanddorks (dot) com and we’ll get you squared away to check out all the latest and greatest that Google + has to offer.
See my ugly face? (FB vs. Google+)
July 8th, 2011 by ChristenAnd by ugly, I mean UGLY!
I’m reminded of a printing pal of min in Charlotte, North Carolina by the name of Chris. As one of the original Greek inhabitants of the city of Charlotte he’s experienced an extraordinary life – from cooking for Marilyn Monroe during the war, meeting the POTUS & owning/operating the eldest printing company in Charlotte – Speedee Prints. As a peculiar and wildly sarcastic man, Chris would light up everytime I entered his business for printing services and would greet me with a line that I’ll never forget…
“Is that, that ugly girl Christen again?”
I’d laugh and say, yes its me.
He’d respond..“You know why I call you ugly right?”
“I figure that you’ve been called pretty all your life… If I’d call you ugly, you’d never forget me for as long as you live!”
Which in fact, is actually true. So true, that once I began drafting this story about the pros/cons of face-to-face chatting – I immediately thought to myself – “Is it really THAT important to see my ugly face during online chatting?”
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With the launch of Google+ last week and this week’s “huge” Facebook announcement offering Skype video conferencing – I’m starting to wonder if face-to-face chatting is even all that exclusive anymore. Just earlier this week, Mashable announce the discovery that the friendliest MySpace friend ever (Tom) has been saying all along – MySpace was the first to offer Skype conferencing to friends over seven years ago.
See, video conferencing isn’t anything new. Has it advanced over the years? Yes. Will it continue to advance? Yes. Does that secure Facebook’s reign at the top forever? Yes, well um first let’s weigh the pros/cons of Google+ Hangout vs Facebook/Skype.
Facebook Chat
Facebook chat powered by Skype is simple to use – but first you have to download the plugin www.facebook.com/videocalling
Making a video call is easy. Select your friends (in the lower right-hand corner of your Facebook page) who are currently available on Facebook chat. Double-click a name, and you’ll see there’s a new icon at the top of the chat screen — a small video camera. Click it to send an invitation for that person to participate in a video chat. They’ll receive a pop-up notification to a video chat, and if they don’t have the plugin installed, they’ll be prompted to install it.
…and BOOM. YOU’RE CHATTING!
PROS: Fairly simple to use.
CONS: Audio / Video quality lags (A LOT) | You can chat one person at a time. | There’s no “chat-waiting” (if a person is chatting with someone else, you’ll have to leave a message.
GOOGLE+ (Hangout)
Google+ Hangout is more fully featured than Facebook Video Calling — to begin with, it’s designed primarily for group chats rather than one-on-one talks — but, possibly because it’s a beta, it’s still got a few wrinkles to iron out.
As with Facebook, if you haven’t used Hangout before, you’ll be prompted to install a plug-in the first time you click on the “Start a hangout” button. Once it’s installed, you’re ready to go. Creating a Hangout is as simple as pressing the Start a hangout button on the right side of your main stream page (in Google+, your stream is the comments and notifications you get from everyone else). A separate video window then opens — this is your “hangout.”
The Hangout pop-out window is larger than the one that appears for Facebook Video Calling. You see a large video of the person to whom you’re talking in the main part of the screen. Across the bottom of the screen, there are thumbnails of everyone in the chat, including you. Google+ offers a number of interesting features with Hangout. You can text chat while you video chat, and you can also mute your audio and video. And if you’re tired to talking to each other, you can watch a video: Hangout also has a YouTube button that gives all participants the ability to watch the same YouTube video.
Since this is still limited to only a few users, I’ll just lay out the pros/cons here and will wait to hear about your experience with Google+.
PROS: Chat with more than one person simultaneously. | Share video and watch it simultaneously. | Text online while chatting.
CONS: Video lag was unbearable. | There are still alot of kinks to work out | Pixelated / blurry video | You can’t choose who you listen to (the main screen shifts alot if everyone speaks at once.)
Facebook’s video chat (at this moment) is more reliable and requires fewer system resources. (Believe it or not it has higher-quality video and audio.) On the other hand, Google+ Hangout is a more fully featured application, clearly designed for group video chat. Those who have made it into Google+ may find that some bugs need to be worked out, but in the long run, Google+ could prove to be the “Facebook killer” that everyone is hyping it up to be…and you could see my ugly face coming soon to a computer screen near you 
Watch the Throne: Google+ VS Facebook
June 30th, 2011 by ChristenUnless you’ve been under a rock, within the past 24 hours you’ve heard about the MySpace acquisition (with an unlikely stakeholder named Justin Timberlake) and Google+ launch — all gunning after the Facebook throne.
Here’s the skinny…GOOGLE (aka the world’s largest search engine company) has officially taken it’s first step to become a major force in social networking. Google stepped into the social media ring on Tuesday to drop a NEW social networking service called the Google+ project. The service called Google+ will let people share their lives and do the kinds of things they already do on Facebook such as post status updates, photos and links. Its focus is on sharing with small groups like your homeboys, homegirls, co-workers, college roommates or hiking friends — instead of with all of a user’s friends or the entire Web. It also offers group text messaging and video chat. *taps microphone* Um, Facebook – You just gonna let them punk you huh?
DID YOU GET AN INVITE YET?
The service, will initially be available only to a select group of Google users who will soon be able to invite others, let people share and discuss status updates, photos and links. If you didn’t get your invite yet, don’t feel bad. (I’m sure it was lost in the mail…)
Google may need to re-think the complexity of this one…with four different features that give you different ways of communications, this thing may get too confusing and backfire BIG TIME!
1. Huddle aka Group Chats: (not just for Blackberry users anymore..)
Texting is great, but not when you’re trying get six different people to decide on a movie. Huddle takes care of it by turning all those different conversations into one simple group chat, so everyone gets on the same page long before thumbs get sore. Imagine you are at a party with 5 of your friends and you ONLY want to send texts about where you are or what you are seeing to those 5 friends. With HUDDLE you can do just that…it’s for Android 2.0+ phones, iPhone 4.0+ phones and SMS.
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2. GOOGLE CIRCLES: You share different things with different people. But sharing the right stuff with the right people shouldn’t be a hassle. Circles makes it easy to put your friends from Saturday night in one circle, your parents in another, and your boss in a circle by himself, just like real life. There’s no limit to the number of circles you can create.
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3. GOOGLE SPARKS: Tips On What To Share. Sparks basically looks for videos and articles it thinks you’ll like, so when you’re free, there’s always something to watch, read, and share.
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4. Hangouts: Group Video Chat - With Hangouts, up to 10 people at a time can all interact through video. As one participant speaks, the main image automatically changed to that person. You can also play video that everyone watches.
…and of course there are other additives and extras that Google will throw in the mix for good measure so we’ll see how this pans out. Personally, I would be a fan of the Hangouts option – as a member of an extremely large family scattered across the US, this would be a great tool (and seems pretty easy) to communicate with some serious face time while thousands of miles away.
Do you think Google+ will initiate the demise of Facebook? Will it live up to it’s birthname of “The Facebook Killer”?
Apple/Google: WE NEED TO TALK!
April 26th, 2011 by Christen
Whenever your conversation begins with these words “We Need To Talk…” it’s usually not a good thing. If you ask me, those words couldn’t have been delivered by the Senate to the peeping Toms over at Apple and Google soon enough!
According to Wired.com – Senator Al Franken (D-MN) has called upon Apple and Google to participate in a hearing with the Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law in order to discuss consumer privacy. The hearing will take place on May 10 at 10am EDT in Washington, where witnesses from the US Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission, Center for Democracy and Technology, and others will talk about what the latest mobile technology means for privacy and the law.
“Recent advances in mobile technology have allowed Americans to stay connected like never before and put an astonishing number of resources at our fingertips,” Franken said in a statement. “But the same technology that has given us smartphones, tablets, and cell phones has also allowed these devices to gather extremely sensitive information about users, including detailed records of their daily movements and location.
Remember we posted Apple iPhone/iPad Your Worst Enemy? only to find out that Apple wasn’t the only one tracking your whereabouts, Google is too! (Google’s Watching You Too!)
With all the hucking & bucking in the media, Apple and Google still has yet to acknowledge these allegations directly nor have responded to Senator Franken’s call for a hearing…this could get ugly real quick if the public fails to get a response soon…
**Developing…**
Google’s Watching YOU too!
April 25th, 2011 by ChristenCue up Rockwell’s “Sometimes I feel like, Somebody’s Waaa-tching Me…..”
Google said Friday that it collected location data from Android phones, but that it did so anonymously and with user consent. The company said it gathered the data to provide services like maps and searches for shops or restaurants near a person’s location. The company said it also used the information to estimate traffic on various roads.
“Phones know where you are, and they need to for many of the services we offer,” said Mike Nelson, a Google spokesman.
If you recall last week, we reported that Apple is tracking your comings and goings without your consent and using it for “data purposes”…
For more about Google’s tracking, click here.
New Google Motion…
April 1st, 2011 by Christen
Look no further for the latest in technology innovation, Google Motion has it all at your fingertips!
How it works
Gmail Motion uses your computer’s built-in webcam and Google’s patented spatial tracking technology to detect your movements and translate them into meaningful characters and commands. Movements are designed to be simple and intuitive for people of all skill levels.
Motion Guide
Familiarize yourself with some of the basic functionality of Gmail Motion using this printable guide of sample gestures. With it, you’ll be able to start writing and responding to emails – with your body – in no time.
The Beta testing is limited to the first 10,000 users as of March 31st. For your free Beta Google Motion email CLICK HERE.
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