TMP: Teen Bloggers Network

Speaking at Under 21 – Digital Natives in Rome, Italy!

Daniel Brusilovsky — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:56:29 +0000

Wow, where do I even begin. At this point, I think I’m at a loss for words. I recently got an email that landed in my spam folder, asking me to speak at a conference. More and more, I’ve been getting these types of emails (keep them coming!), but this email was different. It was an invitation to speak at a conference in Italy! It’s not everyday that you get an email from a major telecommunications company asking you to speak at their conference in Rome, Italy.

Telecom Italia has invited me to participate at their upcoming event, Under 21 – Digital Natives on November 18 in Rome at Capitoline Museum.

“Digital Natives” is a project on the future of innovation and digital culture designed and produced by Telecom Italia, Wired, Foundation Romaeuropa, and CATTID University La Sapienza.

I’ll be speaking with a great group of young (well, under 21!) individuals, including; Salvatore Aranzulla, Jessica Brando, Marco De Rossi, Nicholas Greek, Andrea Lo Pumo, and Valerio Masotti. They will be live streaming this event, which you can find here.

I’ll be staying in Italy from November 14, through the 21, mostly in Rome. If you are an Italian entrepreneur, lets get in touch — I would love to learn what your working on! Thanks to Telecom Italia for inviting me — I look forward to this great opportunity. Till then — ciao!

How to Build Your Own Podcast Studio

Gdovin.net — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:22:47 +0000

Podcasting is a great way to broadcast your voice over the internet and recording a podcasting is not to hard to do. However it does take some work and some money to buy a few things to get started. I thought it would be useful to give a list of items that you need to [...]

P2 Cards- A step in The Wrong Direction

Gdovin.net — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:28:53 +0000

I was excited when I heard that my school was going tapeless but then, I found out that what they were moving to were P2 cards which are proprietary memory cards but are all based on flash memory. Then, I found out how much they cost, which is between $1,000 and $4,000 depending on capacity. Although [...]

Magic Mouse: Initial Thoughts

Riley Kaminer — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:12:13 +0000

Old and New: Magic Mouse (left) and Mighty Mouse (right)

My Magic Mouse came a few days ago in the mail. I am using it with my MacBook in replacement of my old Mighty Mouse. All in all, I am liking it so far. Here are a few points of likes/dislikes right now.

Initial Setup

Once I got it out of the box (not as easy as I thought it would be), I immediately paired it with my computer. I opened up a few documents and tried to use some of the new features of the mouse, but they weren’t working. After a quick “Magic Mouse” search on Twitter, I realized that I needed to run Software Update to enable full capabilities. Once I did that, it started working like a charm.

Clicking

I love having the ability to click virtually anywhere on the mouse and getting a response of some sort. It is a bit of a hassle to have to lift my index finger to right click on the mouse accurately. I’m sure there are people who can right click without having to lift their index finger (I know I used to be able to with my Mighty Mouse), but I can’t as of now.

Scrolling

Scrolling is very nice on the Magic Mouse. It is possible to scroll with two fingers (like you do with a MacBook trackpad), but I find it *much* easier to scroll with one finger in the center, similarly to how you would scroll with the little ball on the old Mighty Mouse. I also like the way it goes with the momentum of your finger swish, even though it can be annoying at times.

Feel in General

The Magic Mouse is a lot smaller than its predecessor, so it took a little getting used to. I still am not 100% sure of the best way to hold it… it is a little awkwardly sized. I currently put my fingers all the way on top of it, leaving the bottom part of my hand on the table. Although it is a bit strange when tracking, I find this is optimal for clicking and scrolling.

Overall

I think that this is a very worthwhile $70 upgrade. Paired with a wireless keyboard, there’s nothing better. Bet you can’t get THAT with a PC!

Magic Mouse and Windows 7

Rupert Maspero — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:59:02 +0000

Just before the release of Windows 7 Apple announced a couple updates to some of their products. They released what are basically widescreen versions of the iMac, which have to be said look extremely nice, they also gave them a bit of a speed bump. They released a slender new aluminium Apple remote, a server version of the Mac Mini and a new MacBook with better longer battery life and a plastic unibody shell.

But most importantly they released the Magic Mouse, that is unbelievably cool. One of most talked about announcements is a flipping mouse. It is so hard to find a good bluetooth mouse these days. Logitech are the only company that sell a good basic bluetooth mouse ever other mouse wants you to plugin some form of dongle. Is it so unreasonable to use a technology that could be built into every Laptop and is in nearly every phone. Anyway back to the Magic mouse, it has the most sleek and stream line design of any mouse I have ever seen. I don’t know if I would really uses all those fancy finger gestures, but as long as I don’t have to lift my right finger to click with my left I might actually have to buy it.

What I did buy was a copy of Windows 7, there are so many version it can get really confusing but after looking around people were suggesting to get the 64-bit version on a Mac as Apple have drivers for 64-bit Windows 7 unlike Vista where there are only drivers for the 32-bit versions. In the end I bought the 64-bit Home premium version. I decided to get Windows 7 after playing with the beta which has to be said was rock solid and great to use. I need it for some of my A level subjects such as Physics where we are given a CD which, surprise surprise is Windows only and for DT where we use a lot of Windows design software packages such as “Pro Desktop”. I think I might wait till I have the official word from Apple that it is supported under Bootcamp, which is said to be coming by the end of this year.

Gdovin.net’s 3rd Anniversary

Gdovin.net — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:57:46 +0000

Without me realizing, last Monday, October 19th was the 3rd anniversary of Gdovin.net. I knew it was coming up but I was so busy with other things I completely forgot to find the date of the official founding of Gdovin.net! Although in the earlier days, the articles I wrote were extremely in frequent and not [...]

Logitech USB Microphone Review

Gdovin.net — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:43:27 +0000

Picture from My Flickr Page As you might of heard on The Weekly Spin or on my Twitter feed, my old Logitech headset that I used to record The Weekly Spin and used for general Skype use broken and I had to return it to Newegg! Luckily it was under warranty and because of that after [...]

WooThemes: Premium WordPress Themes

Daniel Brusilovsky — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 16:00:43 +0000

I love WordPress. If you know me, then you know that WordPress is my CMS (Content Management System) of choice. I use it for all my blogs, clients, and more. Even sites like TechCrunch, use WordPress to post content online. WordPress is just plain awesome. One of the great things about WordPress is the community around it. The community of developers that contribute their time and energy into making plugins and themes that thousands, or even millions of users will use.

One of the many core values of WordPress is GPL. Because of GPL and the way WordPress treats it, I’ve always followed by that code, so when I see sites like WPMU Premium, WPMU.org, etc., it angers me, because these are great quality plugins and themes that I feel like the entire public should be able to access, not just the paying public. If WordPress is free, why aren’t the add-ons? Mozilla Firefox is free, and so are the thousands of add-ons.

One of the more premium WordPress design companies is WooThemes, co-founded by Adii “Rockstar” Pienaar. At first, I didn’t support WooThemes, because you had to pay for their premium themes. But, after recently speaking with Adii, and really understand WooThemes, their business model, and their goal. I really understand, and respect what WooThemes has built. They have over 40 premium themes, and release some of their themes for free. Of course, the free themes are the ones with the most the downloads.

WooThemes has worked with some of the best designers; Tim Van Damme, Bryan Veloso, Dan Rubin, Elliot Jay Stocks, Liam McKay, Matt Brett, Tony Geer, and Veerle Pieters.

Go ahead and look at some of the WooThemes, because they are beautiful, and can be worth the price for you.

Cloud Computing For Students

Gdovin.net — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:46:02 +0000

Cloud Computing is a great way to work and collaborate wherever you are whenever you need to work. This is especially beneficial for students because students work at home, in school, at the library and at a friend’s house. Why bother carrying a thumb drive that could get lost, dropped or broken when you could [...]

Speaking at BizTechDay

Daniel Brusilovsky — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:00:22 +0000

I’ve always had a passion for marketing — getting the word out through multiple channels. But, one of the missing ingredients in marketing is how to target the youth. So on Thursday October 22nd, I’ll be speaking at BizTechDay on how to target the youth when it comes to marketing, both traditional and new media. My session is from 1:50 – 2:45 pm in the “New Media Hall,” so go ahead and drop by!

How to Sell to Niche Markets Online – Baby Boomer and GenY/Teen Communities

As each generation ages, what they buy and how much they spend will change. Each product and service has a “best customer” that sustains its business. As these customers mature, the smart marketers will stay one step ahead of them and their money. The Baby Boomer and Generation Y communities are redefining how we market and it would be wise to learn how to anticipate their needs more effectively.

During this session, you will learn:

-How to clearly understand their ideal customer’s purchasing behaviors
-How to successfully build rapport & trust with these markets
-How Baby Boomer and Gen Y consumers evaluate brands and what they pay attention to when making purchase decisions
-How to narrate your business story in a way that resonates with Baby Boomer and Gen Y community members
-The Dos and Don’ts of marketing to the Baby Boomer and Gen Y communities

I’m excited to share my insight on youth marketing, especially since I’m taking a different approach with this presentation. I’ll upload my presentation to Slideshare on Friday as well. Thanks to Edith Yeung to inviting me to speak, as well!

Update: My presentation is embedded below. Please contact me with any comments/suggestions. There is also video of the session coming as well.

BizTechDay: How To Market To Teens Online

View more presentations from Daniel Brusilovsky.

When is ‘too early” to Start Selling Christmas decorations?

Nich Montgomery — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:25:28 +0000

Sure we should be festive and all but is selling Christmas decorations and ornaments in September and even before alright?

Don’t get me wrong I love Christmas, even as an atheist. I feel Christmas is a great way for family to reunite and share together as one. Yep, I said it. I don’t only enjoy the gifts!

Going back to the whole selling Christmas items, I feel it removes some of the impact of celebrating it and turns it into more of a business opportunity. Should be there a law that restricts people to only selling decorations a few weeks before a holiday?

Regardless of that, Christmas is approaching and if you celebrate, go out and buy some hand painted Christmas ornaments or go and buy a tree!

EyeTV DTT and EyeTV for iPhone

Rupert Maspero — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:18:32 +0000

For my birthday I got a EyeTV DTT so I can watch TV when I am at school. I also purchased the iPhone app to see if they have used all the potential that there is in an app of its kind.

EyeTV DTT

The DTT is the basic stick that Elgato offer, it allows you to watch digital TV and radio on your Mac as well as record it. Hardware wise the stick is just like having a memory stick plugged in. The software “EyeTV 3″ does not win any awards for looks but it is still not bad looking. The software consist of 3 basic windows the remote, the planner and the viewing window. In the planner if you double click on a show you can record it as a one off or the entire series, the one problem that I find is in the viewing windows you can also access a TV guide but it is slightly different from the one in the planner and you can’t set things to record in it, which confuses me a bit. Otherwise the experience is great as it is really easy to navigate from channel to channel and set up a record.

EyeTV for iPhone

The idea of an iPhone app that streams live TV from your laptop is an extremely appealing idea to me; and I am glad to report that the EyeTV app succeeds in reaching my expectation. When you choose a recorded video to watch you can read the synopsis or get straight into watching it, there is a slight pause before playback starts but part from that it was very smooth.

The EyeTV is a great alternative to buying a TV and is a hell of a lot cheaper than buying one at only £50. I would highly recommend it especially to some one who is going to university, as that is probable the perfect scenario to uses this in.

Early Espresso Podcast

Daniel Brusilovsky — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:00:42 +0000

I’ve been podcasting since 2007. I’ve been hosting and producing the Apple Universe Podcast since March 2007, and it has been a blast — yet, I’ve been the only host, and it could get lonely once in a while. I would bring on co-hosts and special guests, but every episode didn’t have someone else with me.

Entrepreneurship and youth are two big topics right now, so a few of my friends decided to start a podcast about those two topics. Christian Owens of Branchr Advertising, Mark Bao of Avecora, Alex Nichols of Take a Tee/Teens in Tech Networks and I are starting a podcast called Early Espresso (hat tip to Christian and Mark for the name). It’s a weekly podcast where we talk about youth, entrepreneurship, technology and more.

We’ve recorded our first episode, and released it a few minutes ago. In this episode we talk about some tech news, (Tweetie 2, Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, etc.), and talk about the big decision: to go, or not to go to college. A topic that has been recently discussed here on my personal blog. Alex couldn’t join us this week, but he’ll be back next week.

So go ahead, and subscribe in iTunes, and follow Early Espresso on Twitter.

The Internet Has Revolutionized Video

Gdovin.net — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:06:37 +0000

With the internet, video is becoming easier to produce, and distribute and making content available for the whole world, on-demand! This makes it more possible for independent producers to distribute their content especially with video cameras becoming as inexpensive as they are now! There are also many video sharing sites like Youtube that let users [...]

Dropbox Review

Gdovin.net — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:12:00 +0000

For those who have multiple computer and want to access files between them, usually requires the user to use either an external hard drive or thumb drive and manually move the file from one computer to another! However, that is now a thing of the past with Dropbox. With Dropbox, all you need to do [...]

4 HD Abstract Colourful Background

Nich Montgomery — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:15 +0000

It seems that whenever I find a nice wallpaper I get bored of it after a few days. If you’re like me, then you’ll love these 4 high quality abstract and colourful wallpapers.

TIP: You can click on any of the images and they’ll be enlarged with a lightbox. If you don’t know what that is, try it!

Colored Stadium

By iUneWind

Botanica

By Phanox

Aurora Borealis

By Titusboy25

The Trip

By Titusboy25

Please comment if you know of any high quality awesome abstract wallpapers and I’ll include them in the post!

NextGen Conference in November

Daniel Brusilovsky — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 22:30:01 +0000

I tend to take on too many projects, so here’s another one. Teens in Tech Networks has partnered up with teenage entrepreneur Cory Levy, to produce the 2009 NextGen Conference. NextGen is a one-day conference at Stanford University in the heart of Silicon Valley. NextGen’s mission is to help you succeed, by providing lectures, panels and networking opportunities on areas that are vital in building and maintaining your business.

We’ll have a business plan competition, where startups and entrepreneurs can go on stage, and pitch some investors of their idea. The panel of judges will then go over the business plan, and pick a winner. So far, we have Kevin Hartz, co-founder/CEO of Eventbrite, Ann Miura-Ko, Partner at Maples Investments, David Lee, a partner at Ron Conway’s investment firm, SV Angel, LLC, and Skye Lee and Brian Phillips (early PayPal employees and co-founders of Thread).

We’re still getting a lot of the details figured out, but if you’re interested in sponsoring, or speaking, please contact Cory or myself through the contact page. You can go ahead and register for a ticket today.

Also, don’t forget that the second annual, Teens in Tech Conference, or as we are calling it, Teens in Tech Conference 2.0, is coming in February 2010 at Google’s San Francisco office. You can pre-register for tickets today.

Announcement: Portfolio Page

Gdovin.net — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:18:46 +0000

I just wanted to make a quick announcement that I have now added an portfolio page to the site to showcase some of my best video work. I have only videos right now, however, I will eventually add works from my scriptwriting class and other written scripts as well in the future. The new Portfolio [...]

My Change of Heart About Apple

Gdovin.net — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:29:35 +0000

Ok it was true that in my younger years, I was very hateful towards the Mac and Apple. It was a long time ago and Apple changed it’s way and has now become my platform of choice. It all started in Grade School, my school used old Macs, still running OS 9 and using a [...]

A-levels

Rupert Maspero — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:35:34 +0000

I started my A level courses just over 2 weeks ago, and so far I am not finding them to hard. That is not to say I am getting a lot of free time but in fact the complete opposite, partly due to the fact I have joined the school Uganda appeal. We have a link school in uganda with which we do huge amounts of fundraising for, in over a year we can raise about £15,000; which last year bought them a girls dormitory.

For my A-levels I am taking Maths, Physics, Economics and DT, they all sort of point to engineering but that is not really something I want to do, but we will see. People often think that I would have a lot of work with those subject, but I find I don’t as I am never really set essays which makes the work easier to deal with.

My birthday is in just a few days and I thought I would share with you what I want for my Birthday.

Eye TV DTT
Flickr Pro Account
XMI X-mini II Mini Speaker
Nikon D90
Windows 7 (when released)

But the most exciting thing to happen this week is the announcements that in the UK the iPhone will be available on Orange and Vodafone as well as O2. So hopefully, depending on pricing I will be able to get an iPhone on Vodafone. I think that with 3 vendors selling it we might see some aggressive pricing and that is better for us.

Google isn’t Spelt Wrong with two LLs

Nich Montgomery — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:27:02 +0000

Why is Google spelt wrong? Isn’t google spelt with just one L? This is so confusing! Well actually today is Google’s birthday.

The two Ls represent Google’s 11th birthday. Happy B-day Google!

For more of Google’s Holiday/Special logos, click here.

Technology Changed my Life

Gdovin.net — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 13:24:28 +0000

The Following is an Essay I wrote for College Composition Class and thought would make a great Blog post! Technology has had a huge impact on me and has completely altered the course of my career path. The three most influential devices are: the personal computer, the Video camcorder and the iPod Touch. One of these [...]

Problems With Mozy on The Mac

Gdovin.net — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 12:28:29 +0000

When I first started using Mozy last October, I truly enjoyed the service and having a backup service where you just “Set it and Forget it” . However about 4 months ago, I have begun to experience issues backing up my data and have not been able to back-up my data ever since. I contacted [...]

Personal Update- September 27, 2009

Gdovin.net — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 12:03:00 +0000

Picture from My Flickr Page Well it’s been over a month since I wrote my last update and there have been some changes since then! The biggest change is that I am now a college student at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania majoring in Electronic Media! I just completed my 4th week of class, and I have [...]

Speaking at Macworld 2010

Daniel Brusilovsky — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 21:45:19 +0000

I’ve been holding this news back for a few weeks, and I’m very excited to announce that I’ll be speaking at the next Macworld in San Francisco from February 9-13, 2010. My topic is called “Youth and Educational Tools” and I’ll be speaking on a variety of topics, from the iPhone, to Blackberry’s, to the Mac/Windows debate, and how this affects the youth, and especially the schools.

With more and more of the next generation bringing devices like the iPhone, Blackberry, Palm, and other devices to school, what do teens really do with these devices? What’s hot and what’s not with the Mac and the iPhone/iPod? Hear from a high school senior employed in the tech industry how this is already changing schools and classrooms across the globe.With more and more of the next generation bringing devices like the iPhone, Blackberry, Palm, and other devices to school, what do teens really do with these devices? What’s hot and what’s not with the Mac and the iPhone/iPod? Hear from a high school senior employed in the tech industry how this is already changing schools and classrooms across the globe.

I’ll be speaking on February 12, 2010 from 1:00 PM – 2:15 PM, so if your around at Macworld, come on by to my session! I can assure that it won’t be something you’ll want to miss. See you at Macworld 2010!