Monika's Blog

I am fortunate to live in such a great state. I am even more fortunate to be visiting my Grama in Arizona this weekend! However, the Grammys have decided to treat us all, in the Mountain Time Zone (edit: and Pacific Time Zone), as people who do not matter. Why? Because we are the ONLY time zone(s) that does not get to see the Grammys performed live!

Why does this matter? In case you didn’t realize, it is 2012. If you are 27 minutes late with the news, you are old school. Add another 33 minutes on to that? Chopped liver. So, why do the Grammys insist on treating everyone in the Mountain (and Pacific) Time Zone(s) like we do not deserve to watch these shows in real time?

When the Grammys go from show to commercial, they pride themselves in saying “Follow us on Twitter and Facebook!” but that just screws us all in these states which do not matter as they are posting all the winners as they happen…live! Which means EVERYTHING is already ruined for me.

This is not just a problem with the Grammys, but many awards shows (*ahem* Emmys *ahem*) are shunning these time zones. They need to realize that it is all or nothing these days. If you aren’t watching it/reading it/tweeting it live, then you are so “30 seconds ago.” Sports get it! The Superbowl wasn’t tape delayed. That would be stupid, right? Why doesn’t music get the same respect?

The music industry as a whole is seeking more respect for their craft and artistry, but the same must be reciprocated. People that view the Grammys are the die-hard fans. The loyal ones. These people are also living in a digital age and issues like this matter. People will not continue to put up with this bullshit, they will find other means to either watch or they will boycott these shows.

Grammys (and all “live” award ceremonies) what do you say? Can we fix this delay ‘problem’?

People of the Mountain and Pacific Time Zones (and those that believe in equality) let’s show the Grammys that we DO matter! Please RT this and tag @TheGrammys on Twitter (#grammys) and post on Facebook/TheGrammys to show them we are sick of being treated like this!

There are only a few days left to go vote for the video Hot Wild Girls in the Dorito’s Crash the Superbowl campaign! This video was created by Denver’s own Brad Scott (who has done work with Tickle Me Pink, which is how I met him).

Brandon from My Body Sings Electric (and Dirty Rotten Rhymers) even wrote a catchy song to go get you to vote:

Confused because you haven’t seen the video yet?

Let’s show the world what great talent we have here in Denver!

So, it is clear that there are some things I really dislike about this new new Twitter (*ahem* usernames *ahem*), but I have found a few things I actually like!

My cousin asked me the other day if there was a good way to see replies to a given tweet (I had asked Twitter a question, and she wanted to know the answer). I told her there wasn’t, except to search for @Sativabella and look at responses. Now there is an easy way! In your stream, click on a tweet, and if there is a response, you will see it pop up below the tweet:

Pretty nifty, right? I know that I will be using that feature.

The other thing that I love? Embedded tweets! They now make it REALLY easy to embed a tweet or conversation! Hallelujah! No more taking screenshots and uploading images to my blog. Look how pretty it looks:

@theblogfrog me, without a doubt. It is usually faster for my parents to tweet or email me than call me to get an answer. #addicted

— Monika Runstrom (@SativaBella) December 14, 2011

Also, you can Follow, Retweet, Reply or Favorite the tweet all from the embedded tweet.

I am sure there are more features out there that make new new Twitter better, so what are they? (trying to focus on the positive here, so please don’t tell me what you hate)

When major life events happen, people used to call, or at least email or even text family members to let them know what is going on. Those days are apparently gone. Now to find out major news, all we have to do is log on to our favorite social networks to discover what everyone is up to. Trust me, I am probably the worst at this. I will tweet before texting and definitely facebook over calling. But, apparently my family doesn’t mind it:

However, today I was on the other end of this new phenomenon:

(and it was not the first time):

You may not think that my brother being in Chicago is a big deal, but it was because 1) I didn’t know he was going to Chicago and 2) he was out there because he was looking for an apartment (aka he is MOVING!).

Back to my dad’s tweet though.

After starting the company with his brother 27 years ago, and selling it 6 years ago to a major conglomerate (leaving names out of this) that company has decided that my dad is no longer necessary to the business. There have been some issues (mainly that the company that bought my dads is going bankrupt, yet my dads company is still making money, blah blah blah) but that is neither here nor there.

Point is, my dad got fired and I had to find out in a tweet.

I guess this is the wave of the future and I should get used to it (especially because I do this to my family all the time, gotta love karma).

Thank god I get my parents tweets as texts to my phone, who knows when I would have seen this tweet otherwise!

Am I the only one that receives news this way?

Over the past few months I have downloaded and participated in many labs for gmail plugins that are supposed to help with everything from label organization, to allowing me to ‘unsend’ an email (it really comes in handy). But by far my favorite and most used email plugin is Rapportive.

They describe themselves as company that gives rich contact profiles from inside Gmail, but what they do is provide links to social networks from people who email you. Sounds pretty complicated, but all it really does is show you the last few tweets or Facebook updates alongside of the email you are reading.

It comes in handy both personally and professionally. As I mentioned earlier, I prefer getting emails from salespeople that you can tell have been crafted just for you and are not just form emails, and I expect the same out of my emails. Rapportive makes it easier to find out those details about people.

Once you join you can update your profile to include any social networks you want. Here is my profile:

Rapportive also makes it easy to friend/follow/link in with people you already email with.

This is one of the few labs/plugin/apps/whatever you want to call it, that I have actually stuck with and continue to use daily. I highly recommend it for anyone who spends any decent amount of time in Gmail and likes to connect with people on social networks.

My inbox is constantly filling up with requests from people asking ‘for just 15 minutes of your day’ for a phone call, or a brief introduction to their services that they are trying to sell me. Most of these emails are immediately archived or trashed, never to receive a response from me. I have honestly stopped reading most of them as people spell my name wrong, email me from a gmail account instead of a company URL, or are clearly cutting and pasting from previous emails to other people (it shows up in blue people! Come on!).

Recently though, I have had a few people actually take the time to get to know me as a person and send me emails that I not only responded to, but felt a desire to respond to.

Yes, I realize he was asking me for something, but he was also sharing an event with me, which made me want to respond. I emailed him back with some suggestions of events and told him I would let him know if I heard of any others. I also enjoyed the frankness of his comment “I’d carve out some time for you, but I assume that if you had any interest in —-, we would have spoken by now.” Which was very true, I had researched his company and services in the past and determined they were not right for me at the time.

I just love that they are showing me a side of themselves that make them more human as opposed to sending me some copy and pasted text that they have emailed to hundreds of other people (we can tell).

Now just because these people took the time to get to know me more personally, it does not mean that I will be using their services. I will, however, remember them and be more likely to continue a conversation with them later (which may lead to me doing business with them in the future).

It is just nice for an email to show up in my inbox with something different from the ‘normal’ emails that start out with ‘Hello Monica’ or better yet, ‘To whom it may concern’.

Every morning, the first thing I do when I wake up, is check my email. I absolutely love reading my email from Abe (4squareand7yearsago.com) to remind me where I was last year.

Today I have discovered a new email service from Brenden Mulligan – MorningPics. This service sends you an Instagram photo to your inbox every morning (and we all know how many Instagram photos I take).

Most of my Instagram photos are of dogs, or fun times with friends, so I am sure that waking up to these images will brighten my day.

MorningPics is still in Beta, and I am not on the list yet, but am excited to start getting these emails!

Also: I love their page where you enter you email:

Startups with a sense of humor, FTW.

UPDATE: My account just got activated, and I have already received my first email! I love the details on the photo: