Find of the Day #2: A jewelry delivery truck in NYC? A Duke student makes a racy PowerPoint?

In continuing with this "find of the day" theme I started here, I have some really great stuff to share. I'll get to that in a minute.

I heard on the radio the other day that the average American watches four hours of TV a day. I started thinking about it and I hardly watch one hour a day, but the number of hours I spend on my computer is, as Rachel Zoe would say, UNREAL. I've been working on stuff in Gaylord College (journalism school at OU) since 8:30 and it's 1:15 AM. The WHOLE time I've been on my computer. This really showed tofay when we got into groups in my Intro to PR class (something we NEVER do in college!) and listed as many networking/two-way communication sites we could think of. I started listing off websites like StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious, etc. and none of these people knew what these sites were! At least I have a little something to show for my obsession.

One of the many things I've been wrestling with in the last week (yes, it's really minor but still worth mentioning), is how much I speak up in my PR class. It's a fairly good-sized lecture hall; there are around 100 people in my class. My professor is Russian and she always likes to ask questions (all of which are really easy, and she ALWAYS accepts your answer), and yet no one wants to speak up in the class. This is completely contradictory to one of my classes taught by a French professor (from France, accent and everything). I feel COMPLETELY inadequate in this class and even when I complete the reading I feel as if I have no idea what's going on. He asks all of these hypothetical, obscure questions and I want more than anything to be able to participate but I have no connection, no idea what to say on the material. It doesn't help that the professor is looking for a particular answer. Anyway, I literally spoke up in PR class for EVERY question our professor had and I don't know if my classmates are annoyed or not. I know firsthand what it's like to have a know it all speak up and answer EVERY question and I really don't want to be that person. But everything she asks seems so much more like a conversation than a professor giving a lecture. I mean we talked about Youtube today. I really don't want to be THAT girl.


OK, on to the cool stuff I looked at online.

Random, but cool.

First off, I found these TOMS shoes made specifically for the city of Austin. I'm jealous. It would be really, really rad if Norman could get some. But then, who wants a pair of shoes with the word Norman on them?

Second really awesome thing I looked at? Shenae Grimes, an actress on a TV show I watch, tweeted this picture when she was in NYC for Fashion week. Pretty sure I'm obsessed. Yes, this is an ice-cream truck for jewelry. As the last-minute, perfectionistic night-owl I am, I think it would be really cool to have delivery trucks for clothes and jewelry, especially in party cities. Can you imagine going to a drive-thru window or ordering clothes and accessories to your door before you go to a late night event? You heard it here first! ;)

The final discovery that's been occupying my time is reading about the Duke Sex Girl's escapades. I heard about the girl at Duke that wrote about sleeping with several players on the Lacrosse team in my Intro to PW class. Today while looking at a national online magazine for college women, I saw a post about this girl's PowerPoint and a link to it. A website had posted the PowerPoint, blacking out names and faces in photos. I read the girl's "report" and was amazed. It was a guilty pleasure that I even shared with several friends. I know it's wrong that she rated these guys sexually, that they are all embarrassed and going through a rough time as the media covers it, but it was still really interesting and entertaining.

She rates the guys based on physical appearance, performance, athletic talent, size, etc. If you are looking for something to do, take a peek at her ppt slideshow on Jezebel.com!

IMDB's 20th Anniversary

Twitter and Facebook are amazing, they really are. Millions upon millions of people all over the world use the sites every day (speaking of, if you haven't seen it, The Social Network is fabulous). I'll admit I'm addicted to them both, but I'll always have a deep and everlasting love for IMDB.com.

This love started early. When I was younger, I would watch TV shows and movies and wonder about the actresses and actors in them. I wanted to know and see more of them so I'd look up their name. This was before Googling was a verb, and there were other search engines like Dogpile and AskJeeves that competed with it. No matter what search engine I used, IMDB was always the first site suggested when I tried to look up a celebrity. 

Eventually, I created a username on the site, browsed through message boards and searched through Julia Roberts' movies I still needed to see. The site became my go-to guide to anything I wanted to know about pop culture. It's like a more reliable, more in-depth and accurate version of Wikipedia, but all the topics were related to pop culture. It's the ultimate pop-culture encyclopedia.

Using the site has become second nature for me. I don't even know what it'd be like not to have it.

Just this weekend, after seeing The Social Network, I went straight home and typed in the movie in the search bar on the site. I was in awe of the movie and wanted to relive the "zinger" quotes. Zinger quotes are what I call the most memorable quotes that viewers want to relive/revisit after leaving the theater, so we look them up online.

In honor of one of my top 5 favorite site's anniversary, I've listed what I love the most about it.

1. The Message Boards.

 Pop culture fans across the world unite in boards specified by need. If you can remember a scene from a movie but can't remember what it is, there's a board called "I need to know" for you to post your questions. My questions always get responses within 24 hours. There's also a message board that's dedicated to lists of movies related in some way. If you want to know the names of any movie made about dogs, or even as specific as Golden Retrievers for that matter, you can post your question on the message board and users will reply back with names of films that fit your inquiry.

2. My Movies.

It doesn't matter whether you're searching through old classics or upcoming releases, when you see information for the new Jon Hamm film, you want to write it down. IMDB gives you the choice to catalog your list of movies you want to see or absolutely love. On any IMDB page for a movie, there's the option to "Add Movie to My Movies." The My Movies feature keeps track of all the movies you've added and you're able to go back through the list and click the links for each title.

3. The Trivia pages.

This is probably my favorite feature of IMDB, and something a lot of people aren't familiar with. Every movie, TV show, actor and actress page has a link to a trivia page. Want to know how much the dresses Emily Blunt wore in The Young Victoria were insured for? Curious about the love affair between Cary Grant and Sophia Loren?  Didn't know Tom Hanks was once a hotel bellman for Cher?

4. The Quote pages.

This page is for anyone who's wanted to reread, requote, or relive a film's moment of greatness, but was scared they would remember or quote it wrong.



5. The purpose of the site (keeping record)

The fact that you can search someone's name and
see what movies they've been in, are filming, just finished filming, or are rumored to be in. GREATNESS.

Find of the Day #1

Among my friends and family, I'm known as The Girl Who's Obsessed With Her Computer. Since I spend a lot of time with my child, I mean computer, I tend to find really cool blogs or websites that none of my friends know about. Every day I find something new and interesting on the Internet that I'm excited about (almost always related to pop culture). It can be a funny Youtube video, a clever entertainment-news article or pictures of actors filming a new movie. I'm still developing the idea, but I'd like to incorporate these every-day discoveries into my blog. In an effort to blog more often, I'm considering posting ONE cool thing I looked at on the internet each day. It would be sort of an inside look on what I do when I'm on my computer for  long periods of time. For those of you wondering what I'm so fascinated by, you just may find out! Here are a couple things I've looked at in the last 24 hours.

Last night I found these really cool Harry Potter 7 promotional pics. They have them for many of the major characters..SO COOL!

  These are appropriate, because I have other related Harry Potter news from this week. OU just got its own Harry Potter club (Hogwarts on Campus). I went to the first meeting and it seems very exciting. It's a great group of people, kudos to the founders/executives for starting it up; they have a lot of great ideas.

 People who don't read these books: You just don't know what you're missing. SERIOUSLY. My brother used to make fun of me and now he's a huge fan. He went to midnight releases for books 5-7 with me! Book 7 is the love of my life, BTW.

Cool News about the Hogwarts on Campus Club: they're starting a Quidditch team for OU. Texas A&M, UT and Texas Tech (we Texans love our Harry Potter) all already have teams, so we could potentially play them in tournaments. Yay, Harry Potter! I can't believe this series has been a part of my life since fourth grade. No wonder I feel so emotionally attached to the characters. Did I just say that out loud??

Finally, you never know what kind of amazing surprises you'll find on Twitter. This person tweets from the perspective of Lord Voldermort and I absolutely LOL'ed at this tweet. See below.

It's true. Perez Hilton is a meanie. That's why I use Just Jared's website to read about upcoming movies or celebrity gossip. It's way less trashy and more professional. The site is justjared.buzznet.com.