Archive | April, 2011

Sony’s Honeycomb Tablets S1 and S2

By thechickblogger on April 27, 2011 in Cool Stuff, Featured, Gadget Talk, Mobile Devices

I find iPads really beautiful and sleek. So why am I not hankering to have one? I dunno. I guess I’m not one of those persons who pant and salivate on hearing the word Apple or Mac. Hahaha! If I ever buy a tablet I want something running on Android. So, what’s in the market? What are my choices?

Hmm, Sony is launching two new tablets called S1 and S2 this fall. Yay! It’s running on Android Honeycomb 3.0, are 3G and 4G compatible and is equipped with awesome gaming integration courtesy of PlayStation Suite. The reader in me won’t be left unsatisfied coz it can download books easily from the Reader store.

The one on the left is the S1 and to the right is S2. S1 will come with 9.4-inch screen and a unique “off-center of gravity” form for easier hold. While S2 comes with two 5.5-inch screens which I think would take a bit of getting used to when browsing, but otherwise would be really great to lug around since it can be folded neatly.

Check out the demo video below…

Via GeekSugar

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Blog Beautiful with Google Web Fonts

By thechickblogger on April 27, 2011 in Blogging Talk, Featured

If you’re new to blogging, for sure you can’t be bothered with customizing the look of your blog template. But once you go more into blogging, one realizes that there are about a gazillion competing blogs out there and it pays to develop something unique. It’s like developing a brand, your blog must have a special look.

One way to do this is have a custom template made or get yourself a premium theme subscription. But these could be pricey. I use both premium and free themes. As for free themes, there are lots of really fab free templates you could use to dress up your blogs. You just need to do a bit of code tweaking to make it look a bit more distinct.

A few easy tips:

Change your favicon. This is easy enough to do, just google for free favicons or favicon generators and make one for your blog. Installing it is also a breeze. Make full use of google search and a tutorial on how to install it will come up.
Change your social and feed icons. Same comments as above.
Colorize your fonts! If you’re using blogger and your theme of choice is compatible with in-dashboard font customization, then it’ll be a breeze. For WP users you can edit font colors via Dashboard – Appearance – Editor and usually the font attributes you need to change are in style.css files.
Style your fonts! There are several ways you can change your fonts to the not so generic web fonts. There’s Cufon, Typekit, @fontface.. My easy favorite would be using Google Web Fonts.

The fonts available might be not that extensive but a lot of them are really beautiful and would give your blog a very distinct feel and look. Another plus is – easy installation. You also don’t have to host the fonts, Google API takes care of it for you.

You simply choose which font you want to use, then click on Use This Font. The installation instruction will appear. You just need to add one simple line of code before the <head> tag of your template. Once you’ve done that, you just need to go to the css styling of your template and add the ‘font name’ to the ‘font family’ your template is using.

Here’s some of my blogs with custom fonts from Google Web Fonts. The change is subtle but it does lend a different look and feel to the site.

My Unfiltered Musings – using Oulipo WordPress Theme original

I really like this theme but since its a free theme I bet a lot of sites are using it so I wanted to give it a slightly different look. So I changed fonts..

And here’s my thrift hunting blog: Girl on A Thrift Hunt’s original theme – On The Go by Elegant Themes.

Modified and now sporting a script font for the titles..

See the subtle difference? Go ahead, tweak and blog beautiful! Just don’t forget to back up

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Snooze and Loose Alarm Clock

By thechickblogger on April 26, 2011 in Cool Stuff, Gadget Talk

I sorely tempted to buy this and gift it to my sister. Alarm clocks never work for her and I know for a fact that she is a very thrifty, tight fisted person. So for sure this would work for her.

‘Snuznluz’ { clever name, isn’t it?} doesn’t like it when it alarms and you hit the snooze button. Once you do, this WIFI enabled clock will connect to your real bank account and donate some to a cause you hate! You’ll definitely loose if you snooze.

I had a real laugh at the product description via ThinkGeek.

Common Usage Suggestions!
Are you a butcher? Set your SnūzNLūz to donate to PETA
Are you a republican? Set your SnūzNLūz to donate to the ACLU!
Are you a land developer? Set your SnūzNLūz to donate to the Wilderness Society!
Enjoy your freedom? (Blue state version) Set your SnūzNLūz to donate to the GOP. or
Enjoy your freedom? (Red state version) Set your SnūzNLūz to donate to MoveOn.Org
Are you a hippie? Set your SnūzNLūz to donate to the American Coal Foundation.
Are you a Ninja? Set your SnūzNLūz to donate to, hrrrm, we can’t find a Pirate Charity at the moment. But there must be one…somewhere…anyways, the point is it’s easy to setup once you identify your enemy!

The SnūzNLūz – Wifi Donation Alarm Clock retails for $39.99 at ThinkGeek.

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Chic Picks: Floral Sateen Dress

By thechickblogger on April 3, 2011 in Chic Picks, Fashionista Talk, Featured

Super adorable! This Melonie Flora Sateen Dress I saw in Kohl’s. I’m seriously tempted to grab the card and make a go for this. Thankfully, I’m living outside the US so I curbed the impulse and contented myself to just blogging about it.

Cute, right? I like the floral accents, its not too overwhelming. Just right to add the ultra feminine look. The dip-dyed effect and the cut of the dress is very flattering for all figure types. Well worth the price tag of $100.

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Just For Fun: Next Tweet Generator

By thechickblogger on April 3, 2011 in Cool Stuff, Web Talk

Something to have a bit of fun with. I love twitter, but to be honest there are times I ran out of things to tweet! Lol! Yeah, you just need 100 or more characters to tweet but sometimes I really don’t know what to say. A few days ago, a friend sent me a link to That Can Be My Next Tweet. This site ‘generates your future tweets based on the DNA of your existing messages’.

And it comes up with really hilarious stuff. Addictive. Weirdly addictive tool. Lol! Here’s what it generated for one of my twitter accounts..

And I just love how Mashable describes this app:

That Can Be My Next Tweet is a microapp that parses a Twitter stream of your choosing and autogenerates an often incoherent, random string of phrases. Once the string is generated, you can choose to ponder its deeper meaning in solitude or share it with the world via your Twitter account.

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35mm Film 4GB Flash Drives

By thechickblogger on April 2, 2011 in Accessories, Computers, Featured, Gadget Talk

Oh, this is just soooo retro! I can’t believe I’d say, wow! I miss seeing film rolls but I do. For one I find their packaging pretty neat and colorful. But I think I’ve long accepted that carrying films about are no longer the norm.