Category Archives: digital

The Wedding Writer  

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The other day I saw a story in the New York Times about Vincent Mallozzi, the newspaper’s wedding reporter. I flipped out. He was the guy, who in 2008, wrote one of the first stories ever about how women were using the Internet to support each other after their divorce. My client was http://www.firstwivesworld.com.


Vinny Mallozzi worked for the sports section of The New York Times from 1986 until 2003, when he became a Weddings reporter and lived happily ever after. Here is the story about Vinny. 

Vinny is the wedding reporter.

In 2008, Vinny called to say he thought it would be  interesting to sit in on a live meeting for First Wives World so his readers could truly understand what challenges divorced women faced. He showed up with his photographer, Earl Wilson, and proceeded to stay for a few hours listening to the gripes and future plans of each woman. 

Paul, Debbie and Jonas

 
The founders of First Wives World, Paul Lambert, Debbie Nigro and Jonas Neilson, became true pioneers of the Internet because of that story. Read it here.

I was amazed that almost 10 years later, I was able to Google the story and find it. It just reminded me how lucky I am to be involved in the digital world and how many great stories I have personally created in my career as a PR agent. While most days I want to rip the hair out of my head trying to get a writer to pay attention to my pitch, there are stories like this that make it all worthwhile.

HandL Phone Case Inventor Allen Hirsch Featured In The NY Times About His Other Life 

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Full disclosure: Allen Hirsch is my client.

Full disclosure: The documentary being featured in the New York Times about Allen’s love and experience with a capuchin monkey named Benjamin, took place years before I met him.

Full disclosure: If you ever loved an animal, you will identify with Allen and Benjamin’s relationship.


Allen Hirsch is an artist, writer, real estate developer, and inventor who lives in New York City. He invented the HandL line of phone cases that I represent for public relations.
Allen’s story is told in a series of videos called “Long Live Benjamin” in the Op-Doc section of the New York Times.

The documentary was created by Jimm Lasser, a Cannes Grand Prix and Emmy award-winning Creative Director at Wieden + Kennedy in New York and Biff Butler, a Cannes Lion, Clio and Emmy award-winning editor with Rock Paper Scissors. “Long Live Benjamin” is their first film.

Before you watch the videos, read Allen’s  words. 
“I’ve always struggled to be human, to know how to act and to what purpose. As a young New York artist, living in a tiny commercial storefront downtown on Crosby Street, I documented this process through drawing and painting self-portraits, which faithfully recorded the shifting moods and musings that swirled through my mind. This practice brought few answers, but did conjure the questions, which gazed back out at me starkly from the canvas.

“After marrying a woman from Caracas in the mid-1990s, I started traveling to Venezuela, where I became fascinated with the lives of people living on the jungle coast. The simplicity of sunlight, children’s laughter and the basic search for daily necessities was enough to quiet my New York rumblings. Then one day my wife brought home a cardboard box with a shriveled baby capuchin monkey, clinging to life. His mother had been killed by locals who liked monkey soup. It was a propitious moment and I immediately knew I was meant to care for him.”

 Click here to access the videos. 

Be ready to get emotional.
 

 

From Beyond The Grave  

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David Pogue of Yahoo Tech recently promised, in a series of social media posts, that he would show us how the dead can become alive again.  Watch the video from CBS’s This Morning last Sunday to see how computers can recreate a dead person.

Pogue interviewed Paul Debevec of the Institute for Creative Technologies, at the University of Southern California, who invented the Light Stage, a machine that he says “produces a series of high-resolution photos from different angles to reconstruct a 3-D model of a dead subject’s face.”

Pogue explains that “once someone has been scanned into the Light Stage, engineers can digitally recreate him or her with about 50 different facial expressions.”

This new technology may not allow dead people to stay dead. Now that’s a scary thought. People you know from the past can now show up in your future. Pogue explains in the video. Don’t miss it.

Your Own Personal Scanner 

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Every once in a while, a friend or neighbor, asks to use my scanner. For those of you who don’t know what a scanner is, here is an easy explanation.

Wikipedia says, “A scanner is a device that analyzes the surface of an image, printed text or an object and converts it into a two-dimensional digital image. Scanners come in different shapes and sizes depending on the intended use. The most common scanner for home and offices today is the flatbed scanner.”

I don’t mind them using my scanner when they have to email a digital file to someone.  What bothers me, is that I have to get dressed,  and/or straighten up, before they enter my apartment. I don’t want them to see how messy I can be.

Those days may be gone forever once the Pup becomes available. It’s currently on Indiegogo, a crowd-funding site. It should be ready for retail in a few weeks. It’s a tiny hand-held scanner that is capable of accomplishing all kinds of jobs. I can let neighbors take the Pup home with them, scan all they want, and then return it to me.

For $169, I get to keep my privacy. 

Read about all the features below and watch the video for a fun explanation. 

Drones U

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I don’t think many DigiDame readers own their own drones, yet. I do believe that there is a strong possibility, that if we live long enough, we all will own one. 

There is one young gal, Abby Speicher, CEO of DARTdrones, that wants to prepare all of us to be expert pilots. She appeared on Shark Tank last night looking for funding for her drone training and consulting business. 

Speicher wants to make sure “that Unmanned Aerial Systems are safely integrated into the national airspace.” Mark Cuban became her investor. The company is located in Scranton, PA. offering training courses throughout the United States. Speicher is a serial entrepreneur who founded her first company at 17.


I was so happy to hear about this new venture because too many untrained people are flying drones. I’m not trying to encourage the use of UAS but I would like to see more people who know what they are doing at the controls. 

In the meantime, duck.

An Internet Radio Star Is Born 

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Less then two years ago, Katerina Cozias, a former client who became a good friend, announced to Eliot and I that she was leaving Miami to move to Los Angeles in order to pursue a career as a talk show host. Today, she has one of the hottest radio shows on the Internet called LA40. 

We met with Kati last Thanksgiving at the Mondrian in LA to discuss her career strategy.

Kati started her radio show last November.

Kati reinvented herself at 38 and there is no turning back.


We can’t believe the progress Kati has made in such a short period of time. One of the main reasons is that she lives the life she preaches on her show. Unlike many folks, Kati is not afraid of change. 

She believes that you are the happiest when you are challenging yourself. It doesn’t matter how old you are. It’s never too late. 

Kati recently interviewed three actors on why they never give up.

Click here to watch this episode of LA40.

Kati has become so popular that TV talk shows are asking her to make live appearances to share her knowledge on life changes.


To watch Kati’s appearance on a San Diego TV show click here. 

The Apple Is Ripe 

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I wanted you to know about two big tech stories this week. 

It definitely looks like a spaceship has landed in Cupertino, CA. After many years of being under construction, Apple’s new headquarters is opening in April on 175-acres. Twelve thousand employees will eventually work there. CNET has the whole story. Click here. 
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UPS Tests Drone Deliveries 

Many of us, over the years, have questioned the use of dones to deliver our packages from various retail sources. While it still may seem implausible, you have to watch this video which shows how UPS tested a residential delivery service this week on a farm just outside of Tampa, Florida. The part I found fascinating is how the roof opened on a UPS truck, a package got inserted in the drone and how it took off and returned to the vehicle that moved to a new location. Pretty fascinating. Check it out on Tech Crunch.

Did I Take That Pill? 

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Steve Greenberg, author of “Gadget Nation,” shows Kathie Lee Gifford and co-host Jenna Bush gadgets yesterday morning that will organize even the most scatterbrained home. From charging electronics in a neat and easy way, to quickly removing stains, these items will have everything in its proper place at home.

I take 11 different pills and supplements every night before I go to sleep. All of my pills are stored in one big plastic bag, ready to travel at a moment’s notice. 

My usual routine is to take one pill out of each vial until all the meds have been taken. That is my usual routine. Every once in a while,  I stare at one of the vials and think, “Did I already take you?” 

I swear, I sometimes don’t remember, even though I took the pill seconds ago. I usually can figure it out if I think about it long enough, but it’s disconcerting.

Yesterday, I found a cure all. Innovation insider, Steve Greenberg, showed the TimerCap on the Today Show as part of his product showcase. I never heard of it before. Yes, Steve is a friend, but I usually see all the gadgets he knows about when I see him on a TV show. The minute I saw the TimerCap, I knew it was for me. 

The TimerCap is a vial cap with a built-in LCD timer. The cap has been sized to fit most pharmacy vials. The timer helps people remember when they last took their medication. The TimerCap is available at any CVS and Rite Aid Pharmacy for $9.99 for a three-pack.

That is a small price to pay for a great safeguard. The older we get, the more we need items like this. 

A Much Easier Way To Take A Selfie

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I have been looking for a gadget like Podo for quite a few years. I just can’t seem to take a decent selfie. Now, Podo can take the selfie for me.

All I have to do, is stick the Podo on a wall or any surface, open the companion app on my cell phone, and make sure that it connects to the camera (Podo) over Bluetooth.

It’s really simple after that. I set the timer to get myself ready to pose, and then a series of LEDs around the lens let’s me know that my picture is being taken.  The photo then appears on my smartphone. 

Podo is also capable of taking videos, but it has  very limited capacity.  Podo has a two-hour battery life and 4GB of storage. That’s good enough for me. 

Price is around $50 on Amazon.

Shepard Fairey at Art Wynwood

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Click here for audio.

Shepard Fairey was recently in Miami to receive the Art Wynwood Tony Goldman Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award. Fairey is one of the world’s most admired contemporary street artists, graphic designers, activists and illustrators.

Goldman was a real estate developer who was mainly responsible for the rehabilitation of the Wynwood area of Miami, SoHo section of New York City, and 13th Street in Philadelphia. Goldman died at 69 in 2012. He actually lived in my building on South Beach. His wife still does 

Goldman was an early supporter of street art and commissioned Fairey to dress up the warehouse buildings in the cities he was developing. For a street artist, who most of the time illegally drew on abandoned buildings, this was huge. 

Fairey is also well known as the founder of OBEY Clothing, and “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” sticker campaign. Fairey really became famous when he created the “Hope” poster for Barack Obama. 

His work is included in the collections at The Smithsonian, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Fairey was interviewed by Artnet News last week where I taped the entire encounter. The first half is on video, the balance is my audio post. Fairey was very candid about his political views, other street artists, social responsibility, and commerce working with art.

The conversation was fascinating. Don’t miss a word. The video may be a little shaky, but the content is totally solid. 

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