Lowther Rinse Repeat

Vancouver Start Up Tagga Launches August 12, 2008

Good friends of mine, Amielle Lake and Ryan Holmes, have recently launched their new startup tagga.com.  Tagga is a Mobile Bookmarking Platform - a free service that lets anyone tagg real world items and send web snippets to their mobile phone.  I think it’s a really cool startup that has a lot of potential as the company moves forward and gains traction in the competitive SMS market.

With tagga, an advertiser only pays per action or is free with embedded ads.  All traffic generated from the SMS campaign is fully trackable through tagga’s analytics reporting - enabling advertisers to accurately track campaign ROI. They’ve also got some great revenue sharing options available to bloggers so if you’re interested, make sure you check out the blogger resource section.

Tagga Features:
•    Enable anyone to setup and launch a text message campaign within minutes
•    Enable print and web publishers to monetize content through distribution on  mobile phones
•    RSS to mobile features and easy embed scripts
•    Enable any web content to be sent direct to phone or email

Tagga hasn’t just been developed with marketers and advertisers in mind - they’ve set up some cool features that are useful for everyone. I personally love using tagga for a couple of their features.  I’ve set it up so that if you text jennmae to 82442, you’ll receive my personal contact info straight to your mobile phone.  I’ve found that this is great for when I’m out at networking functions and have run out of business cards and I’ve also used it on my about page on this blog.  I’ve set one up for my work contact info and one for my personal contact info.

I also love the tagglet tool.  It has a simple drag and drop install on your browser and you’re off.  Any website you navigate to, you can use the tagglet tool to send info from the site to your mobile phone.  I find that this is particularly helpful with addresses.  I no longer write down addresses of businesses I need to visit now, I just highlight the address on their site - hit the tagglet button, and it’s sent straight to my mobile phone.

I’m running tagga’s Social Media Marketing Campaign.  We’ve got plenty of fun campaign initiatives coming up and it’s already been featured in both Tech Crunch and Mashable.  I’ve been having a great time playing around with the site and coming up with fun campaign ideas for tagga.  Make sure you check them out and set up some taggs.

Sex and the City - My New Favorite Movie June 1, 2008

Yesterday afternoon I went and saw Sex and the City with my best friend and there is no one I’d rather have seen it with. And I have to say that I loved it. It made me remember how much I loved the show and how I’d love to buy the box set so that I can watch the show in its pre-cut for non-HBO TV glory. It was great to see the diverse set of people that were in the line up and the number of gorgeous women completely dressed up to see the movie. After the movie, Angela and I headed to Joey’s on Broadway and had a celebratory - or 3 - Cosmo in tribute to the girls from SATC. It was the best way I can think of spending my Friday night. With the person I’d chosen to be best friends with for the past 13 years - talking about what is going on in our lives and basically laughing our asses off for a few hours.

Before I went to the movie I’d read some scathing reviews - I didn’t let these taint my opinion of it before watching and judging for myself. I think that these movie reviewers totally missed the point of the movie (and the show generally) - and why we love it so much. They focus on the materialistic and sexual aspect of the storyline, but miss the mark on why i think that women really love it. It is about friends that will do anything for you. Who - male or female - doesn’t need friends that won’t judge you and will drop whatever they are doing at the drop of a hat to come to your side when you need them. These are the people in your life that make everything we experience worthwhile. What do your accomplishments mean, if you don’t have people like that to share them with.

The clothes and accessories in the movie are great and living vicariously for a couple hours in a lifestyle that I can’t afford is perfectly fine. But, the complaining that I’ve heard and read about this movie - and more generally women in the city - over the past week or so tends to hit a bit of a nerve with me. I rather dislike that people assume you love the movie, show, and characters solely because of this vapid pursuit of ‘Labels’ - I find this association to be completely demeaning. These people really should sit down and watch the show looking at the relationships and bonds that are developed. Without the extreme bond that the Girls of SATC have, we wouldn’t watch it. It’s great to see a group of strong women who would do anything for each other as the star of the show. How many other shows can you think of that revolve solely around women who are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves?