Girls In Tech

Valentine’s Day is just over a week away and I thought I’d share a few sweet (and affordable) gift ideas.

Tunes

Remember when we used to make mixed tapes to express our affection to our crush? Well, thanks to the internet that is a LOT easier these days:

Slacker Personal Radio has a collection of DJ-programmed Valentine’s Day stations that you can listen to on the web or your mobile phone. As always with Slacker, if you like a song “heart” it and it will play more often, and if you don’t like it, “ban” it and it will never play again.

Slacker allows anyone to capture a moment by playing romantic music wherever you are. Also, with Slacker, in a matter of minutes, you can create a custom station based on any artist or number of artists you like and then share that station with the one you love.

Here are a few of the highlighted stations:
Rock Ballads – http://slacker.com/r/5Kyb
Country Love – http://slacker.com/r/HgZM
Broken Heart – http://slacker.com/r/5Ky5

Words

FastPencil.com offers an amazing DIY gem for those looking for affordable, thoughtful and one of a kind Valentines Day gift ideas.  FastPencil is an online publishing tool that allows you to print your own books — you can use it to make a really fabulous thoughtful gift or you could publish a handful of poems, complete with glossy photos and personal anecdotes to give the one you love. The sky is the limit.

FastPencil is currently offering users an incentive to get their book project going!
- What – A free printed book, a free eBook and free shipping & handling
- When – This offer is valid through Feb. 27th
- Who – The first 1,000 FastPencil users to sign up
- How – Visit https://www.fastpencil.com/offer/consumerpromo

Food

Have an iPhone? The California Strawberry Commission has recently launched its free STRAWBERRIES iPhone app.

All you need is to download this app and you will have tons of dinner and dessert recipes in your pocket that are instantly accessible during your trip to the grocery store. Let’s face it, nobody appreciates anything more then a home-cooked meal.

The app offers a collection of more than 50 strawberry recipes from food bloggers and chefs from around the web. Strawberries are among the healthiest foods in the world and the STRAWBERRIES app demonstrates a range of recipes such as strawberry shortcake to more exotic dishes like strawberry ceviche and strawberry dumplings.

Strawberry Recipe App is available now for free download in the App Store:
- More than 50 recipes, categorized by dish type.
- Access your favorite recipes – and shopping lists – in the kitchen, at the store, or anywhere!
- Share recipes on Twitter, Facebook and email.
- Discover and link to the food bloggers and chefs behind the recipes.

You can download the app here: http://bit.ly/8LANJo

So, please enjoy these three fabulous, simple and sweet Valentine’s day ideas and please share with us what you decide on for your Valentine!

Tags: books, california strawberry commission, Dating, dinner, fastpencil, food, love, music, peoms, poems, slacker radio, strawberries, valentine's day
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Back in June I wrote a blog post about the top 5 luxury hotel brands on Twitter and wanted to follow it up with a post about the top 5 food brands using Twitter today. Our food & beverage/lifestyle clients at Murphy O’Brien ask us on a daily basis if and how they should get involved in social media. There are several food brands using Twitter wisely and effectively. They have found a transparent brand voice and engaged their followers all while staying true to their brand essence. Here are my top 5 picks of who’s using this social media tool well and why:

LemonadeLA (@LemonadeLA): Followers – 384

A great new restaurant concept in LA now with two locations – one in West Hollywood and one in Venice, Lemonade offers over 35 varieties of freshly prepared salads, veggies, pastas, proteins, sandwiches and stock-pots all at a reasonable price. Their Tweets are fun, upbeat, full of energy and clever – they created the “Lemonade Girl,” an attractive brunette who bikes around town with a “Tweet This” sign on her back – if you snap a pic of her and TwitPic it, you win a free glass of fresh lemonade. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

Fiji Water (@FIJIWATER): Followers – 2,102

Fiji Water company is designer water that some say only snobs would drink but there’s nothing snobby about the brand’s presence on Twitter. Fiji does something right with their Tweets and that is, the @reply. There is nothing worse than a brand who doesn’t write back to their followers. Fiji communicates with their followers, responding, engaging, asking questions and answering them.

Philadelphia Cream Cheese (@LoveMyPhilly): Followers – 7,966

Philly Cream Cheese does a great job of representing their brand on Twitter – the background of their page perfectly represents the brand and also directs followers to their presence on other social networks including – Flickr, YouTube and Facebook. The company Tweets recipes and also engages with their followers with a steady stream of @replies.

Kogi BBQ (@kogibbq): Followers: 41,239

Kogi is the Korean BBQ taco truck that exploded on the Twitter scene sending out real-time Tweets about the location of their mobile food truck for hungry fans to easily find them during lunch hour. The company uses Twitter as a real-time GPS tracking system – just without the GPS. At any time of day or night you know exactly where to find Kogi’s “roach coach.” This level of accesibiltiy has made the roving vehicle a social-networking juggernaut, drawing 300 to 800 people (and a bevy of Twitter followers) each time it parks (often several times in an evening) and spawning a burgeoning cyber-hippie movement affectionately referred to as “Kogi kulture.”

Border Grill (@BorderGrill) Followers – 1,995

Border Grill is a Mexican restaurant concept in LA serving gourmet tacos, quesadillas, ceviches, and more from “Too Hot Tamales” chefs Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger. The Twitter feed models Kogi’s real-time tracking of the Border Grill food truck around LA but also offers their Twitter followers special deals by using the secret code – like “sweet tooth” for a free brownie. Delish!

Christine Kirk is a PR representative and social media explorer for luxury brands including travel, real estate and food/beverage, at Murphy O’Brien Public Relations in Los Angeles. She also holds the position of PR Manager for the Los Angeles chapter of Girls in Tech. She can be reached via e-mail at ckirk@murphyobrien.com or on Twitter @luxuryprgal.

Tags: food, public relations, restaurants, twitter
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