Family History site arcalife is pretty tickled about their new technology “Life Cube”… so much so that to encourage you to check it out, they are holding a contest until December 1st and giving away $500 to the grand winner, AND $50 each to the first 5 people who comment on the winner’s brilliance (via Facebook or Twitter). Sounds like I’m entering a contest.

And it’s pretty easy to sign up, put together something fabulous in a Life Cube and share and post your creation: 1. Sign up to a free basic membership with arcalife. 2. Import and upload your favourite photos and a video (text over top is optional). 3. Share your link on either Twitter or Facebook (and let arcalife know you’ve done so). You can also sign in and build your Cube via Facebook.

Read arcalife’s post with the more official and precise contest details and to check out other examples of published Life Cubes.

EARLY BIRD REGISTRATION ENDS TOMORROW! JUST GO AND REGISTER NOW

OK Vancouver: This new conference, born out of Boulder, Colorado (in case you didn’t know, a tech hub you need to get to know) is hitting a mere FIVE cities across the continent on tour this year and Vancouver is the ONLY Canadian stop! Take advantage of these precious 1.5 days with ladies who tech, Chicks Who Click. (The other gender is of course most welcome. I like the reverse odds for you guys, kinda like a BlogHer -  and to all the dudes out there: you will like these odds. And… for those of you with women as your target market, or if you need the support of or want to connect with the top female social media evangelists, this is a not-to-be-missed 2009 event.)

Want to be enpowered? Want to participate at a tech event surrounded by your peers – brilliant and fabulous women? You need to read all about it here and then register now and join us on June 26th and be the chick who clicks that you really are, or at least, be inspired by some great insight, conversation and practical knowledge.

I am speaking on a panel with Victoria Revay (skyping in live from Nunavut – totally random, completely awesome) and with the lovely Alex Samuel from Social Signal. We’re speaking about women in tech entrepreneurship, the glass ceiling that’s still relevant, or is it?, being in the Tech Startup land Dude-Fest, the challenges, the differences, the advice given, good and bad, the path, good and bad, the successes, the inspirations, everything we’ve learned as female entrepreneurs in technology – we want to pass it all along and start a smart and healthy conversation around it.

Erica at Ahimsa did a great little post on CWC last week and nicely broke it down for you.

See you next weekend!

Quick Links:
Follow the Conference on Twitter and tag all of your content #CWC09
Follow Denise Smith (organizer) on Twitter @Deetells
Become a fan on Facebook
Read the CWC Blog at chickswhoclickblog.net

Yet another example of how Vancouver is a Digital Media Mecca: Vancouver Digital Week May 11 – 14 / 09.
Sign up, join the convo, submit your company for Pop Vox. Here are a few channels to get you into the mix and a lovely little vid from our friends and yours at Giant Ant from last years Digi week:
VanDigWeek Twitter
PopVoxAwards Twitter
Submit to PopVox
All of your Van Digi Week INFO
IPF

Not to knock any of the content, speakers, sessions, people I met, old friends I enjoyed seeing again, but I just have to say: thank-you VIDFEST for coming back to Granville Island this year. It’s one of the reasons why I think this conference is *extra* special. That, and the lack of the ocean of glowing blue bodies in the crowd from laptop monitor blasts and yes, more WOMEN! Fellas, wasn’t that nice? Lots of lovely ladies at VIDFEST. It’s a nice switch from the usual 10 to 20 per cent of the crowd that’s wearing a bra (or so I assume).

Best quote: “There are more people online than there are people in the world.” Grant McCracken (excellent name, btw)
Most shocking note: OMG – Impact Research spent what?! $150 THOUSAND dollars on a Facebook application campaign and got a mere 7,000 installs. Did I hear that right? Ouch.
Most enjoyable: The locale, the sun and the zu crew, what little there was for visiting hours.
Best new experience: Listening to Chris Anderson while watching him move around the stage in that slick, black suit.

I do have to duck out of VIDFEST early this year – the festival is still happening as I write. But I have a Slumber Queen to catch and a 3-day music festival that is rivaled by very little. Sorry VIDFEST, Michael Stipe and The Cure win this time around.

Follow the rounds of the festival over the last few days on twemes to get a snippet of all that shook down.

I am quite certain there will be a decent amount of coverage on this year’s VIDFEST across the various channels.

Starting with the mobile, check out cellmap for mapping out your whereabouts and getting VIDFEST right onto your cell.

Moving into the internets (slash mobile to some extent), you can keep up with various bloggers and writers on the VIDFEST blog, or you’ll likely find VIDFEST coverage here here here here and here here here, and no doubt many others.

If you’re Twittering, don’t forget the tweme hash mark like so “#vidfest” for your fellow tweeters tweeting to follow and, uhm, tweet back? (what exactly is the correct cyber name for these bloody things? I stopped paying attention to all of the cute online naming conventions.)

I think you can still register… perhaps – even if it is just for one day or feature.

Enjoy the show!

Last week Blog Talk Radio featured an episode about photography and kids with “Taking Better Pictures of Your Kids”. The show featured Tracey Clark and Kate Inglis from the newly launched site Shutter Sisters, a photo blog full of passion and beauty in imagery and words, giving away their tips and tricks in photography. Inevitably, a question from a listener came up about online privacy and the security of posting pictures of your children online. The show’s host, Kristen Chase, refers to Kinzin as a great choice if you’re looking for a private, niche network, to securely post photos of your kids, saying:

“… there are a bunch of really great private websites out there… called Kinzin.com and they are invitation-only access”.

Kate goes on to mention some of Michael Fergusson’s thoughts on online safety in photography: to say the internet is inherently bad is the same to say that kissing is inherently bad because it can spread disease. True enough. You can listen to the show on Blog Talk Radio in its entirety. (The Kinzin mention comes at about the 22:00 minute mark of the show.)

It’s a pretty good show and has a lot of useful content to share from both the experts in the community, the host and from participating listeners around the Internet.

Websites like Shutter Sisters and Kinzin are those special, niche networks that people are gravitating toward more and more. I’m not tired of Flickr (far from it) or Facebook (god forbid) but quality on the Internet has become more and more apparent and absolutely essential, and these specific spaces online thankfully provide me with a rich user experience.
(xposted from Kinzin Blog, with some add-ons)

xposted from Bridging Media

It’s the day after Bridging Media both Erica and I are thrilled how it all came together and that the day was received so well. About 150 people turned out, a mix of digital media professionals, Producers, Broadcasters and a few newbies as well. While my photos are coming soon (Flickr Tag “bridgingmedia” please), and more posts to be written on the summary and the all important future growth this beast, you can listen to all of the sessions, courtesy of Robert Ouimet, and can read the Live Blog of all four sessions from Rebecca Bollwitt – thank you for putting in the time, energy and efforts capturing the day. (And thanks to John as well, for snapping some pics!)

There were a LOT of people who helped out to pull this off. Sponsors, organizers, speakers, participants, attendees, all of those people that just randomly stepped in to help out where needs: Thanks to ALL of you!

“Help me help you.”

Bridging Media is a new event that Erica Hargreave and I are organizing for March 29th, 2008.

To register, please visit the Bridging Media event page – we have a limited space for numbers, so head on over there and stick your name up.

What is Bridging Media?

In a nutshell, over the past 6 months, Erica and I, along with Kris Krug and Boris Mann, have had numerous conversations and brainstorming sessions around the continuing disconnect and gap between the broadcast and digital media worlds. This is an area in which Achilles Media has been involved for a number of years, as nextMEDIA has had huge success in Banff and is the sister conference to the Banff TV Festival. So we reached out to Mark Greenspan at Achilles and he was more than happy to get behind this event here in Vancouver as a “friend of the event”. Mark also suggested we use this event as a platform to help shape ideas and Banff’s pitching competitions – he’s absolutely right.

The Centre For Digital Media has also come on board as a major sponsor as the host of the event. They have graciously offered their amazing space “The Hanger” to house our inaugural event.

We’ve just begun the plight to take this idea and make it into a bit of a beast (we hope). So far we have had a pretty tremendous and supportive response. We are on the hunt for sponsorships, will be shaping and finalizing the speakers list over the coming weeks – and we always welcome more people-power – Gregg Scott just stepped up to create our logo – thank-you Greg!

Sign up for Bridging Media now!

The Kinzin team spent the better part of their Friday evening at Launch Party Vancouver 03, showing off the application These Are My Kids. If you haven’t read or heard what this latest app is all about, please read more here.

It was a fantastic evening, to say the least. Michael, Frank, Julie and Paul held court all night to the many new fans wanting to find out more, take a look at the interface and have a spin for themselves. We are extremely grateful for the interest and enthusiasm for These Are My Kids from those of you who attended, and we very much appreciate the time that each person gave to learn more about it. It is an incredibly rewarding feeling to have such a great tech community come to such an event and to support the work that is being produced. It was inspiring and exciting.

A quick, but very necessary thank-you to the organizers of LPV: Maura, Danny, Dimitri; and to the sponsors as well: Sun Microsystems, Strutta, Techvibes, Layer7, QC Docs and Growthworks. This event is a treat. Looking forward to the next.

And onto the next…

Monday night, Michael Fergusson will be at the Vancouver Facebook Garage Event at the Vancouver Film School. There may just be a little room left on the event page, so add your name and come check out Vancouver’s newest and hottest Facebook applications. There are amazing things happening in this city, and this event shows off the best of what’s being developed for Facebook, and beyond…

And if you can’t make it out, just follow along on Miss 604′s live blogging rendition, and watch the night unfold before your very own monitor-watching, live-streaming eyes.

xposted from blog.kinzin.com

Kinzin’s newest application, “These Are My Kids”, is ready. Almost. The latest app from Kinzin is currently in the Beta phase, soon to make the leap to full launch. The app is quite stunning as-is in every way, in design and technology – it’s easy, efficient, creative, useful, private and fun – but we’d like to perfect it, so we need your help and your feedback.

A Little Bit About The Application “These Are My Kids”:

In a few points, or less, here’s what the app is all about:

• Resolves all of your photo headaches and problems of multiple publishing networks and accounts – it’s an all-in-one!
• Easy access to your personal photos by invite only – no sign-ups, no accounts, no hassle for the end user (your defined friends)
• It’s Private – Only those friends explicitly invited to view your photo books will be able to see your content
• You’re creating beautiful photographic books of your children’s lives to keep forever (soon to be available to print as well!)
• Photos and Comments are delivered to all of your loved ones with the greatest ease, inside of outside of Facebook, and even in the mail (coming soon!)

Add “These Are My Kids” here and let us know what you think! You can comment within the application (there is a prompt along the top of the app), or join the Beta Testers Group for the app and comment in the Discussion Board.