tasty blog snack

Streaming live with Richard Branson 35,000 feet in the air on Virgin America!

Yesterday was the FIRST flight from SFO to the OC on Virgin America and we were there! Karen and lucky enough to be able to catch a ride. Not only being the best airline ever, Virgin also knows how to throw the best events ever.. Keep reading

Once we were in the air and it was safe to turn back on all of our electronic equipment.. we hopped on to Virgin’s ustream channel and chatted with everyone.. LIVE using their wifi from the air! It was awesome.

..and like every awesome event, it’s just not truely awesome unless MC Hammer is there

Once we landed at John Wayne Airport in the OC, we were greeted by a red carpet and a press event for the official launch of the SFO to OC router.

Here’s Richard Branson answering those hard hitting questions for the press.

I kid you not.. they actually had spray tanning, makeovers and drinks right there on the tarmac. It was also very funny because a lot of the other airline workers were wishing they could come over and party with the cool kids airline… alas, they could not. Still thought that was a pretty funny photo.

After this event, we headed up to beautiful Laguna Beach and had an awesome party near the water. Lots of tasty little treats, good drinks and awesome conversations with awesome people.

Karen and I met Ryan Sheckler who I found out is in fact on twitter.. so feel free to follow his tweets! He was very nice.

..and that was our eventful day out with Virgin! Flying with them is definitely the only way to travel. If I could, I’d sleep and live on their plane.. Hmm, can I? Richard? Please?

More photos here on flickr! Working on editing the video that I shot yesterday as well. Will post that soon as it’s done.

Yesterday I was in a bit of a hurry to catch my flight and hadn’t booked a super shuttle like I normally do to the airport . Supershuttle is bit cheaper than taking a cab but they end up getting you to the airport 2 hours earlier than you really need to most of the time. Since I had only been home for a day those two hours were worth the extra $10 I’d pay to take a cab.

So, I googled “yellow cab los angeles” and which took me to their site. I noticed they had a book online button which I have avoided in the past when booking my supershuttles because having that verbal confirmation that your ride will arrive at a given time is worth it. Not feeling like talking to a person, I gave the book online a go.

It directed me to a site called ride charge to book the cab and it was extremely simple: enter where you are and where you want to go. I was then presented with the option to use their pay by phone service. The tagline was “spend 2 minutes now to save 10 minutes later” — Yep, good idea. If you take cabs frequently and ever have to pay by credit card, you know how annoying that is (and how annoyed the drivers get when you whip out the credit card). So, since I hardly ever carry cash, I opted to test out this service.

About a little over a half hour before my cab arrived I received a confirmation email confirming my reservation. Then, I received a text message about 10 minutes out letting me know that the cab was dispatched, the name of the driver and their cab number. This is pretty valuable information if you were to leave something in the cab. Normally, I’d have no idea!

Nearing the end of my ride, I got another text message as a reminder that I can pay by phone for my ride. It included the phone number so all I needed to do was click it, and when prompted, enter how much I wanted to pay as the fare including tip. Once that was entered, the confirmation of payment shows up on the cab drivers computer and off you go.

Before I had called the number, I told the driver that I was going to be using “ridecharge” and I was “..going to call the number now to pay” — he looked at me like I was speaking another language and I just went ahead without his okay and proceeded to try this service. Within seconds of entering the fare amount, we both watched his computer screen pop up with the confirmation of my payment. “Is this you?!” he asked extremely shocked that I had just paid and tipped him over the phone as if it were magic. He kept squealing that he’d never seen such a thing and kept asking me questions.

In addition, you’ll also get a PDF receipt emailed to you which is great for keeping track of business expenses!

Oh, that’s not all.. they also have an iPhone application that determines your location and will give you a list of cab numbers in that area. Granted if you don’t use cabs that often, this might not be useful, but if you do.. then you’ll also share my excitement about finding this service!

Am I taking this Quaker Oatmeal man crush thing a little too far? Maybe so.. but with photoshop, dreams can become a reality!

Hmm.. what should I do for my 10th episode???!!!! There have been some suggestions of playing Stacker?

SHOW LINKS

Virtual Tree: http://bit.ly/9SL0x
Mariachi Band: http://bit.ly/10YUHE

Ask iJ boy: http://bit.ly/3M6Wm
Ask iJ girl: http://bit.ly/QGJAc

Milkshake video #1: http://bit.ly/7sgWc
Milkshake video #2: http://bit.ly/2bRWqi

Video response girl: http://bit.ly/4EdQfS

THEME SONG BY GEOFF SMITH!
His website: http://thegeoffsmith.com
Geoff on twitter: http://twitter.com/geoffsmith

This is pretty awesome! A Heinz Ketchup keychain — thanks to Alex for the awesome Ketchup treats I’ll blog the rest of the goodies when I get a chance!

Happy Earth Month / Day everyone! I made a fun little video of an iPhone app iPhorest that plants a REAL tree with every application purchased.

GET YOUR APP HERE in the app store.

The conservation fund will plant a tree along the Gulf Coast for each iPhone app purchased. So, get your app and help save the earth

Post a video response to my video when you grow your tree and I’ll approve it! Would be fun to see everyone’s trees.

**UPDATE**

Here was a behind the scenes video I posted on my otherijustine channel

(if the video lags, click the HD button on the video player to reduce the quality)

..and here it is! The video from giving Mozy’s 1 millionth customer a 7 day cruise to the Riviera and unlimited Mozy storage backup — FOR LIFE!!

We also had a contest to guess the prize of the big contest. That winner was Eric Nagel. Congrats to everyone!

Thanks to you guys for coming along for the ride by watching the video ..and another thanks to everyone who tweets me and @mozy when you see the commercials on TV and hulu!

The long awaited twittering desktop application from Atebits is.. finally here! Tweetie!! You may be familiar with their iPhone application because it is by far one of the best apps on the iPhone for twittering. It’s fast, it’s simple and you can use multiple accounts!

Above is a screen shot of a user profile.. thanks Lady Gaga. Also note on the side I added some of my other twitter accounts!

It’s so great to be able to tweet from all of them within on application.

Twittering from the desktop app is quite simple and you can choose from which account you want to tweet from. Want to add a photo or shorten a URL? Just as easy!

The only thing that I can see that is missing from this application is more emphasis on trends! This is such a huge part of twitter now, and tweetie has it hidden away in the search bar. Hopefully this will be fixed up in a later release.

You can get a free download that’s ad supported or buy it for 14.95 until May 4th.. then it jumps up to 19.95! If you can sup

OMG!!! I’m at the airport right now and saw this little guy taunting me as I walked through the Pittsburgh Air Mall — I had to get it!! It’s a comfy little panda for me to nap on yay!

Here’s a quick little video from the photoshoot I did yesterday for Pittsburgh Magazine! Can’t wait to see the photos — will share with you when I can

I’m sad to leave Pitt so soon. Hardly had a chance to even see everyone I wanted to but I’ll be back soon enough! Yay!