I’ve done some software giveaways before, but I actually have a physical product to send out to a fan this time: a Flip Mino HD! I’ll pick a winner randomly this coming Monday morning (the 9th) from the fan page, so if you haven’t already, sign up below! If you win, I’ll send you a message asking for your shipping address.

Good luck! Oh, and Pure Digital (the makers of the Flip) are in no way affiliated with this giveaway. This is all me!

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Ryan has been quite taken by the Droid SMS alert sound (as evidenced by the most recent gdgt podcast) so I decided it would be fitting to make it his ringtone on my iPhone when he calls.

Unfortunately, I realized after the fact that it would have been much funnier to make it the default ringtone on his phone for all calls. You can get the sound here for your own personal enjoyment.

I used MakeiPhoneRingtone after converting the .wav to .aac, but you can also use Fission, GarageBand or the myriad other methods available.

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If The Venture Brothers and Aqua Teen Hunger Force came together and had a little lovechild with No Reservations, I have a feeling it would look like the newest project from Anthony Bourdain and The Travel Channel. The aptly-named Anthony Bourdain’s Alternate Universe is a completely animated series that delves deep into the twisted mind of the celebrity chef (and it looks like there will be more than a few Rachel Ray jokes).

Anthony is one of my idols, not only because of his on-air persona, but because it’s so obvious that he loves what he does (even when he’s frustrated during a shoot, which I find especially hilarious and relatable). In the spirit of Tony, I’ll say that I’m looking forward to his new project almost as much as he looks forward to a new, exotic pork dish.

Via Eater National

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I tweeted this out last week, but I wanted to give some extra love to the RiffTrax guys for inviting me to guest star on their latest video short, American Thrift Part 1! My ultimate goal is to sell more copies than Tron, which featured Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm.

At only $.99, American Thrift is thrifty indeed! Help a girl out, we gotta take these rock stars down a few pegs.

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And…

Thanks, Newegg. You sure know how to make women feel special!

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Bet you never thought I was sports-inclined, did you? Well, here I am competing against Olympian Lindsey Jacobellis (badass snowboarder by trade) in the noble sport of… hula hooping.

I’m doing this for The Best of Us Challenge, an online competition being put on by the International Olympic Committee to get kids and teens involved and interested in sports and the Olympics. You can choose a challenge from one of your favorite athletes, like Rafael Nadal, Lolo Jones and (squee!) Michael Phelps. Then, just post your own video to the site and see how you stack up!

Best of all, you can win a trip for two to the Winter Olympics in Vancouver B.C., one of my favorite cities in the world. So check out the challenges and find one that you can totally own. They’ve got stuff like juggling and cartwheels too, so if the hula hoop isn’t your thing you’ve still got a chance to win bragging rights.

For the record, this wasn’t my first time showing off my mad hula skills. Maybe they should make it an official event for the Summer games?

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1. Close iPhoto.
2. Locate your iPhoto Library under User/Pictures/iPhoto Library.
3. Copy the folder by right-clicking or Ctrl-clicking.
4. Paste the entire folder into your external drive.
5. Go back to your original iPhoto Library and rename it to something like “iPhoto Library Old.”
6. Open iPhoto, and when prompted select the “iPhoto Library” from your external drive as the library you want iPhoto to use.
7. Once it loads up all of your images just fine from the external, go back and delete “iPhoto Library Old.”
8. All done!

Now, if you’re a laptop user, you’re not going to be able to view your photos unless you’re connected to the external drive. This is OK for me, but might be annoying to people who use iPhoto a lot, so make sure you’re cool with that before you do this!

This is also a good way of making a backup of your iPhoto library to an external drive. Now, commence rolling around in all that spare hard drive space like I did!

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Daniel Delaney from VendrTV was kind enough to invite me on the show, and I was thrilled to be able to try Spencer On The Go, a French food truck that patrols the SoMa district of San Francisco.

Now, I’ve become somewhat more adventurous in my eating habits in the past few years, but I’ve never tried escargot before. It did not go well. However, everything else we sampled was delicious, albeit guilt-inducing.

VendrTV is great, and they’ve found a nice niche by focusing on the very-trendy food carts and trucks that are showing up in major cities all over the country. Also check out his episodes with Gary Vaynerchuk and Dave Morin, who visited my favorite coffee spot in San Francisco, Blue Bottle!

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Look at them! They’re so melodramatic!

This one is extremely disappointed with you.

Like most things, they’re cuter in baby form:

They can’t even resist holding on to other otters! (Get them in t-shirt form!)

And there’s a whole blog about them called the Daily Otter! Thanks for the tip, @level5vegan!

I don’t know… there’s just something really great about them.

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Revision3 definitely represented big time in this video, can you spot them all? Thanks for the mention, brentalfloss!

On a totally unrelated note, I forgot to tell you guys that I blacked out during District 9. As a fear response! It’s not even scary! Can you imagine what would happen to me in a real horror movie? Anyhow, I’m a weirdo, and I was fine after 5 minutes or so. Go watch it if you haven’t already, it’s passing out good!

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Revision3 (where we produce Tekzilla) just announced a new show called AppJudgment, which also covers BlackBerry, Android and Palm Pre applications alongside the more familiar iPhone apps. Here’s the most recent episode:

My friends Scott Johnson and Eric Skyhawk have also launched a new podcast called AppSlappy, which is quickly making it’s way up the iTunes charts. They cover what’s new in the App Store, hot deals of the week, and also give us their take on what apps they’ve been using lately.

Last but not least, Sean Bonner (along with a huge cast of well-known names in new media) is hosting a new show called iPhun. It’s honest, quick-paced, and sarcastically funny in the best way. They also have more in-depth written reviews on the blog, so check that out as well.

On a slightly different note, fellow Emerson alum Jared DiDomenico has a music project called Nuclear O’ Reilly with his friend Brad Naprixas, and they created their new album entirely on the iPhone application Beatmaker (iTunes link) by Intua Software. It’s called, very appropriately, Phoning It In. Worth a listen just to hear how much effort went into it, but it’s pretty damn catchy as well. Here’s their “making of” video:

As applications (and the iPhone itself) become more advanced, users will continue to find new ways to be creative with them. Time for me to go download some new ones!

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The next time someone sends me a costume to wear on Tekzilla, I should probably think about all the possible implications of that act.

Thanks to Joël for the amazing cartoon!

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In case you didn’t hear the news from Comic-Con, I’m going to be hosting the RiffTrax LIVE event on August 20th! Now, this is way bigger than just the typical internet streaming event: it’s going to be broadcast to over 400 movie theaters across the country! The guys will be riffing on the classic Ed Wood film Plan 9 from Outer Space (thought by many people to be one of the worst films ever made). In addition, the wonderful Jonathan Coulton will be performing, along with a special segment by Rich “Lowtax” Kyanka of Something Awful.

We’re going to be recording the show in Nashville, TN, but unfortunately that theater has already sold out. So make sure you get tickets while you can from the website!

In other news, the RiffTrax panel at Comic-Con was a blast. Not only did the guys do a live riff of a video short called “Shake Hands with Danger,” but we also had the crowd plead their case for the next full-length RiffTrax feature! The selection was for one of my favorite bad movies, Dragon Wars.

By the way, here are all my pictures from Comic-Con. I got to meet so many awesome people (like Phil Plait from Bad Astronomy), that was probably the most fun I’ve ever had a convention. Although, Tom and I are heading to Dragon*Con in September, so that might come close… more on that one coming soon.

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It’s Friday, so I wanted to share a little indulgence with you that I recently came across! Foodzie is an “online marketplace where you can discover and buy food directly from small passionate food producers and growers.” What that means to me is that I can browse the site for all kinds of amazing treats that satisfy the food cravings I didn’t even realize I had until I saw them.

You can search by category (my personal favorites being cheese, sauces and salsas, and chocolates) to see what seasonal and artisanal favorites are listed. It appears that a Gift Guide is also in the works, which I’m assuming will have some deals and packages that will make for great gift ideas.

As a diehard fan of all of the ingredients contained within, the Single Malt Scotch Bars are already a favorite of mine. The fiendish development of Nina over at BonBonBar in LA, the bars come in packs of 3 and 6 — just enough to enjoy and share with a friend (if you’re feeling charitable). But for those savory cravings, I have my eye on the Peppercorn Bacon from Pork on a Fork. Which, by the way, is the best name ever.

In a city like San Francisco, we have a lot of readily available specialty and high-end food products from local producers, but it’s also nice to have a resource like Foodzie that makes browsing and picking food items (especially for gifts) a breeze!

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Yup, this is the best thing I’ve seen in a long time. Also, that ranger has some nice dual-wielding skills! I’m looking forward to seeing what other nerdy songs Vacant Manifesto have up their wizard sleeves.

Via BuzzFeed

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With the help of Team FISCH, a group of ghost hunters and paranormal experts, we went into the house in small groups (there were probably 30 of us all together). While I wasn’t on his team, Sean Bonner definitely had the best ghost hunting kit. My group was only equipped with video cameras and the gizmos that FISCH allowed us to hold. Here’s the video I took of my team’s trip inside:

June Gloom Ghost Hunt from Veronica Belmont on Vimeo.

And here are some photos:

You can also listen to some of the EVPs recorded on our run on Team FISCH’s Ning page, using the audio player at the bottom left of the page, and see all the tweets we posted during the evening. Now, while we didn’t see anything, there were points where I definitely felt the room get colder, and the hair on my arms stood straight up! I guess you can call me “ghost agnostic.” No matter what you believe, it was a lot of fun!

Thanks to Sasha Friedenberg for editing together my totally spooky video.

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Despite losing my voice yesterday, I rallied for an appearance on CNN.com this morning with MG Siegler, Ben Parr and Mark McClusky. We spoke about the new iPhone 3G S and if now is a good time to upgrade, our favorite apps, and if Blackberry has a chance to win hearts and minds with their new offerings.

And why am I the only lameass with a headset on? Seriously, Veronica. Get with the program.

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Like most things, they didn’t really care. But I’m going to place him on top of the bookshelf just to be on the safe side!

And here he is at the park, doing what he does best: being adorable.

I do need a name for him, though, so if you’ve got any good suggestions let me know in the comments!

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That’s right, a choir singing “Don’t Stop Believin’”. Love it. The kids from PS22 have also covered two of my other favorite songs: “Landslide” and “Eye of the Tiger”! I wish we were allowed to sing songs like that when I was in choir.

And make sure to watch the pilot episode for Glee on Hulu!

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