Geek Girlfriends

I’m not a big fan of video conferencing conversations where everyone is staring at their own bad hair day in the little window on their screen and pretending to be interested in the conversation. But I did see a video phone app the other day that I think I’ll use: Knocking Live. It’s an app for iPhones or Android phones that lets you send a live video stream to your friends and family — as long as they, too, have an iPhone or Android phone. You can also send a live video link to anyone with an iPod or iPad. Pretty cool, right? Who needs an iPhone 4 for this? There’s a free app!

The thing is, I don’t want to look at the person I’m talking to with a video phone. I want to see what they are seeing. Or show them what I am seeing. Maybe my husband can’t make it to the school play or I am looking at a fabulous view and I want to share it. Or maybe I’m shopping and want my sister’s opinion on a pair of shoes. I could send her a text picture - or dial her up with Knocking for a live 360 degree walkthrough so she can actually form an opinion.

I’ve only done one “Knock” so far. And that was with Knocking Co-Founder Brian Meehan, who I really don’t know at all. But he pointed out some other cool uses people have found for the tool (which crossed the 2,000,000 user mark the day I spoke to him).

College-bound teens are using it to show the family back home the new dorm room, give a tour of campus, and introduce everyone back home to the new kids at school. You can’t do that with a Wi-Fi connection because you’d have to keep logging into a new network. With a cell phone, you can actually walk around and show people what you are looking at.

What will you use it for?

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I gave to charity yesterday while I was shopping with my sister and daughter. Later in the day, my sister and I went out on the town and I gave to charity while she and I looked at the sunset and sipped wine.

And the best part of all my do-gooding is that it didn’t cost me a dime.

I used an app - CauseWorld - on my Android phone that lets me check in with nearby shops and restaurants in the name of my favorite charity. I let the app locate me, then touch a nearby merchant on my phone’s screen. I don’t even have to set a foot in the shop or restaurant. Being nearby is good enough. And I accrue Karma points every time I do this. This location data about potential customers is valuable to marketers so in exchange for my “check in” banks and other big businesses give to a charity in my name. All I’m doing is leveraging the customer data they want about me into Karma points. If I accrue enough Karma points, I can donate to Haiti or abused animals or whatever I feel needs a little help today.

And with the slight attention I paid to the app yesterday, I was able to give to three causes. Pretty cool. If I really got into it, I could really rack up the Karma points by scanning goods while I’m actually in the grocery store.

If you have an iPhone or Android phone, you can get in on the giving action too. Just look for the CauseWorld app in the iTunes store or Android Market. It’s free.

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I watched a demo yesterday of the cool feature that went live today at Mint.com: Goals. And I’ve already come up with a plan to get out of debt, remodel my house, buy a new car, go on vacation, and pay for my kids to go to college. I don’t have any more money than I did yesterday but I do have a plan. And that’s a sobering thing.

The thing that’s cool about this new tool is that it is easy, easy, easy. Since Mint already connects to your credit cards so you can track spending, for example, it can automatically pull up your actual debt when you click on the “Get Out of Debt” goal. All you do is tick a couple of boxes and decide how much of your hard-earned cash you want to throw at this goal each month. It does the math and makes helpful suggestions (including lower-interest credit cards) to help you achieve your goals faster.

If it’s a car or house you are saving for, it goes out and looks up the market value of a house in your desired area or the Kelly Blue Book value of the car you want and plugs those numbers in before you can say, “Sticker Shock.” It instantly tells you how much you will need to save for a down payment and what your monthly payment will be.

If you haven’t tried the awesome and free financial planning tools at Mint.com yet maybe this is the thing to get you to take the plunge into visual fiscal management?

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Ever since I first covered an Otterbox phone case here two years ago, I have wanted one of these protective cases for my own phone. But, not being an iPhone user, I have been - till recently - forced to covet with no hope of acquiring. But two things happened at once - a few weeks ago - that made this small dream possible. First, I got a new Android phone. Then Otterbox announced a range of cases for lots of phones other than the iPhone or Blackberry. Sweet!

So my Motorola Cliq has been sporting this protective jacket ($34.95) for a couple of weeks now. And I think it would be embarrassed to be seen in public without it. I would certainly worry about it skinning its corners and scratching its screen if it were to go into the world all naked the way I - shocking to me now — let it at first. The case protects and nothing else: It doesn’t add bulk, doesn’t make the phone hard to use, doesn’t get in the way of the keyboard, and doesn’t get in my way. It’s sort of like workout clothes for my phone.

This case is in Otterbox’s Commuter series of covers. So it adds protection but is not quite as tough as the Defender series, which has three layers of protection to guard against bumps and shock. But I’m happy with it.

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Okay, I’m back from my impromptu Blogcation. I didn’t actually plan to take so much time off from this blog. But it was necessary. I went to Intel in Portland Oregon for a couple of days. Then, since I was so close, I went to San Francisco for a few days to see friends and editors. And when I got home: SLAM! Work hit me hard. I am only just starting to get caught up. But I’m back now and I have a little story to tell about how technology made my vacation easier.

One of my essential travel tools is my TomTom GPS. I keep it in my purse and charge it at night with my cell phone when I’m traveling so I can find my way around strange cities whether I’m walking, taking public transportation, or renting a car. Even though San Francisco is not strange to me, I always bring it because the place is massive and I hate getting sucked into those discussions (a fact of life there) about what is the best way to get from point A to point B. I just rely on my TomTom. I have it set to a soothing - if somewhat repressed - female English accent. And she gives me someone to argue with or discuss routing options as I drive. My daughter has named her Celeste and, “What does Celeste think?” is a common question between us when we travel together.

This time I also tucked a new (free) travel app the Inrix Traffic! (look for it in the Market for Android. Also available for iPhones) into my Android phone before I left. And it was a delight to have along.

For example, I was headed on an adventure with my pal Henry one day when we ran into traffic on Highway 25. This four-lane freeway came to a complete stop. We were on a schedule. And in the Bay Area, it is possible to be stuck for hours in these sudden slowdowns. Your life is no longer your own as you move so slowly that elderly power-walkers pass you at a clip (if they are fool enough to walk on the freeways.) The worst thing is the uncertainty. Is this just a blip or should get off at the next exit and give up on my plans? Henry was starting to panic. So I pulled out my phone, loaded up the app and got a birds-eye view of the traffic pattern in front of us.

“There is an accident at the next exit,” I told him. “And there is also some slowing beyond that because drivers are ogling a brush fire.” He still looked panicked. Should I use my phone to cancel our appointment was the question in the air? “It says the delay estimate is only five minutes,” I offered.  He relaxed. “If that’s true we’ll only be three minutes late,” he said. And he smiled, pleased to have this information delivered so easily and not to have to speculate with no inteligence. Relaxing is hard to do when you are looking at a seemingly endless stream of stopped cars in front of you. But we did. He turned on the radio and we talked about something else. And, just as predicted by Inrix Traffic!, the snarl cleared in a few minutes. We made our appointment -though we were three minutes late. But we didn’t bring any of that post-traffic stress with us.

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Here is a demo of Google TV.

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I am watching a demo with Ben Foss at Intel of this nifty bit of technology that helps people with dyslexia or vision problems read without assistance. Here is a video of how it works. If you know someone with reading issues who would like more independence, you owe it to them to watch this video.

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Next week, I am off to Portland, Oregon to meet up with a group of my fellow tech-bloggers at Intel’s Upgrade Your Life event. Intel’s Alison sent me the agenda last week. But I only just had a chance to study it last night. It is such a cool lineup of talks with Intel insiders that I actually yelped with excitement. Then I tried to look cool and collected when my daughter came in to see what I was getting all happy about.

Do I really want her to know how much of a geek I am? I tried to think of a way to cover.

Finally I just admitted it. “I’m excited that I’m getting to meet with the people at Intel who play around with the new TV initiative, technology in education, green living, and - tantalizingly in the agenda - mad science. It was like they asked me what I wanted to see and set the whole thing up just for me.”

She gave me her best pouty look. I thought she was going to say something about me being too geeky for her social circle. But I guess that was my generation. Because she said, “I want to go to Intel, too!” She whined and pouted some more - because sometimes she gets what she wants that way. (From her father! Not from me.) “Why can’t I come?” She begged.  ”I want to eat the free food and play volleyball. I want to ride my bike around the campus. Why do you get to have all the fun?” I explained that the food and volleyball (and stuffed animals on desks and pets at work) was Google, where I went last fall. ”Well, I want to meet the guy who invented USB then. And the rock stars who aren’t like mine.”

Okay, I’m putting words in her mouth a little bit. She wanted to go as much as I do is the gist. And she hadn’t even heard the announcement that Google and Intel (and Sony and Logitech) are partnering to launch Google TV.

How about you? Sound like fun? Is there anything you want to ask the folks at Intel? I am happy to ask your questions while I am there. Or you can just follow along. I’ll be posting stories, gossip, photos, and video from the event whenever I get the chance.

And to give you a taste of the cool that is coming, here is a video (above) of Intel’s delightful anthropologist Genevieve Bell talking about TV, Intel, and the work she’s been doing figuring out how people use technology. Apparently her job involves going to people’s houses and watching TV with them. I’m clearly in the wrong line of work. She’ll be in Portland next week at this blogger meet-up, too, so fire away if you have questions/observations you want me to share with her.

In accordance to the FTC Guidelines and WOMMA Code of Ethics, I am disclosing that Intel Corporation has covered my travel, accommodations and costs related to my visit to their Oregon-based offices.

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Remember when I was pestering Mint.com for an Android app? Well it worked! The company released it! And it’s free. I have been using the app for about a week now. And it does exactly what I hoped it would: gives me instant access to my budget wherever I am. (Well, not in the shower because then my phone would get wet. But you get the idea.) It’s in the Market now. So, all you Android-using, Mint.com lovers, go get ours. For the rest of you, I offer this (above) silly, epic tale of debt and redemption made by the folks at Mint. (I’m not quite sure what sort of cultural, economic statement it is trying to make when getting out of debt wins the hero a woman (!) but I’m trying not to over-think it. Trying….)

Sit your teen down in front of it for a parable-level lesson on the necessary evils of credit. (But say something about that whole woman-as-commodity/reward scenario because that’s just wrong. But let’s not over-think it.) And watch it yourself as a reminder of why you should probably not go shopping at Zappos. (Maybe there is a parallel story of a woman who gets into debt and becomes the reward? No. That’s probably a bit dark. I’m over-thinking it, aren’t I?)

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I have gotten several announcements lately about services I wish I could try out. I usually only cover things here that I’ve tried and like. But I’m curious about these and — for one reason or another — can’t test them. Maybe you would like to try them and report in the comments?

Here they are:

PassporttoPrana.com. The idea here is that you buy a yoga gift card - good at lots of studios - for someone who likes yoga and is shopping for a place to do it. Or, I suppose, you buy it for yourself for the same reason or for someone you think should do yoga and needs a push in the right direction. It works only in big-ish cities so I couldn’t try it out in the little backwater where I live. And, honestly, I’m not into yoga. I have a good excuse: carpal tunnel injury in my wrists (down dog = bad kind of pain) but also because I would be sort of like Jason Segel’s character in (the unrated version of) Forgetting Sarah Marshal, without the booze and cussing of course. (Here is the scene if you haven’t seen that movie. But be warned, there is cussing.) Yoga people? What do you think?

RelishRelish.com. This is an online menu planner that serves up a reasonable selection of quick-to-make recipes you pick from to create a week of meals. Then it hands you a shopping list and sends you to the store to buy exactly what you need to implement your new plan. I’m an advocate of menu planning. It definitely saves time and money over “hope for the best” methods of getting dinner on the table. It saves money on groceries because you only buy what you need. And it saves all the time you normally spend staring into the fridge wondering what to make. This site didn’t work for me. But only because I already have a system for this. But maybe RelishRelish.com would work for one of you? It costs $21 a month for a three-month subscription. (It’s cheaper by the month if you buy more months.) But here’s an offer from RelishRelish.com to GeekGirlfriend.com readers: “We’d like to offer free silicone grilling tongs ($12 value) for everyone who signs up for a 6 or 12 month subscription. Just enter TONGS at checkout on www.relishrelish.com.”

VolunteerSpot.com. I just lived through several weeks of end-of-school-year party planning, requests for volunteers to help proctor EOGs at my kids’ school, and fundraiser requests from the kids themselves. I don’t mind volunteering or donating to these things. But keeping up with the email strings and figuring out what’s needed and when and what I should donate takes it out of me. (For one party alone, the email string was 50 messages long. I simply didn’t have time to sort it out. Imagine what a hell that was for the organizer!) I already have a pretty full plate. I just want to know what to do and when. And that’s what this site aims to do: Organize all the people and their willingness to volunteer without burying everyone in slips of paper, emails, and phone trees. I didn’t have time to try it though because I was already buried. And now the school year is almost over. (Yay!) Is anyone still in the middle of volunteer season? Want to take it for a spin and tell us what you think?

Spafinder iPhone app. I don’t have an iPhone and at the moment I really don’t have time to hit the spa. But it sounds so nice: While driving to your vacation destination, you realize it would be great to get a mani-pedi and a massage when you arrive. So when you pull into a rest stop, out comes the iPhone. Locate a spa nearby (or near your destination) and book an appointment. Can I trade my upcoming week in for this imaginary one? Or maybe one of you is already living large and needs an app to make that large living just a tad more convenient?

(A word about the ads and product reviews on this site.)

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