Thanks to Virgin Mobile and the #VirginMobile25 I got to go with Lady Gaga to the Monster Ball Tour! It’s a moment I will never forget.

These are the type of videos you can expect:

Log on to Shaker — the grand prize winner from this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt “startup battlefield” — and you’ll find yourself in room full of Facebook members represented by avatars.

“In real life when you go out you see your friends, you see your friends of friends, and they introduce you to people. And this happens on Shaker,” co-founder Gad Maor said. “It’s like real life. It’s another way to do Facebook.”

When you log in to the service, users pick a room and can see if anyone in their Facebook network is there. You can buy people “virtual drinks” and start up chats with other people in the vicinity.

Users can see what they have in common they have with other people in the room. The virtual space includes a wall of “likes” featuring the different Facebook likes of the people currently hanging around. The site is now in closed beta.

But Shaker’s win was highly controversial. Skeptics dismissed it as a warmed-over Second Life, the much-buzzed-about virtual realm that never caught on beyond a small cult audience.

The founders insist their app is different. Featuring users as they are in the “real” world, according to their Facebook profiles, rather than through another identity built specifically for a virtual world is a major step forward in attracting players, they said.

Some judges agreed.

“It reminds me of a casual version of Second Life, except it solves two problems Second Life had. One is getting users,” said CBS Interactive president Jim Lanzone. “People go into Second Life for the first time and spend a half hour trying to figure it out.”

The new video blog is on TV! And I’m the first in San Francisco to do it. Working with Marc Scarpa and my Pop17 production, we are on Comcast On Demand. All you have to do is go to Get Local, select Entertainment and watch Vidblogger Nation. I promise you will love it! Our content is fantastic. It’s just as good as any TV show, but in the vlogger format. You can read about it from Zennie at the SF Gate – he says:

“Because its something new, traditional television has been slow to pick up on it, giving a door for Scarpa and for Comcast Corporation and Comcast Ventures to walk through. But first, Scarpa had to find the talent.

There are vid-bloggers representing ten cities in America, from Atlanta, to Portland. As to how this blogger became involved, it was from a recommendation by Ms. Austin to Mr. Scarpa, because I’m a regular vlogger and spend about half my time in Atlanta. Sarah and Marc sent a Facebook message, which led to a long conversation with Scarpa.

What I and other vid-bloggers do is make 2 to 5 minute videos around a set of words like “Favorite Places,” which could lead to a video of favorite places to go in your city, or some other interpretation of the words. You then use the camcorder to take your viewers on a kind of tour of those places, at least where you can get a location release signed to do an interior shot, or do an exterior shot when you can’t, or use photos where available. You combine that with talks, quips, and whatever else to make the final show cut.

The idea is to form a kind of video narrative about the place you live in.”

Ken Lam took this photo a couple years ago inside a small garden in the east village, NYC. The small park used to be an apartment complex that got burned down and the land became a neighborhood communal garden. I love it! There are greens, ferns, and even a pond. I used to live in the East Village in an apartment we used to call the youtube house because Brooke Alley Brodack, Caitlin Hill and I lived there.

I love gardening so much. When I interned for English as a second language at the San Pedro Elementary school, in San Rafael, California, I spent my free time constructing a garden. Since most of the students are low income latinos, there is little help with nutrition. This is because the school district applied and was granted subsidized lunches. The sad part is, the food is all microwave burritos, donuts, and hot dogs. There is little to no nutritional value for these growing children. I built a garden there and planted tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, relish, celery, and other nutritional garden plants. The 3rd grade class and I made a large salad party at the end of the year and the kids were able to learn about nutrition while building a garden.

The summer before building this garden at the children’s school, I spent the summer building a garden in Oaxaca Mexico with Amigos De Las Americas. This was to help fight infant mortality in Oaxaca. One out of three babies will die from malnutrition there this year. It’s because their mother’s don’t have the resources and education to integrate nutritional grains and vegetables into their traditional recipes. I worked on organizing cooking lessons as well as the construction of a large garden. We planted amaranth grains and other plants.

The teleprompter takes so much preparation and experience! Anchor, Kym McNicholas, worked with me on the above video. I did the styling! Love this necklace! It’s my favorite from Forever21. Oh and I can’t wait for the new iPad 2!!! Eeeek- someone please buy me a white one for my birthday! lol

It’s incredibly creative and I’ve never met someone so science and technology driven in their fashion sense.

Oh and I loved interviewing these really great Stanford University students in the video above. Fun!

In business, one of the most important things is to find a passion and a demand in the market. My passion comes from how technology helps people improve quality of life and do their personal best. As a reporter of technology trends for Pop17, the stories that interest me the most are how people can bring their passion to life and change the world with tech tools.

There are so many ways to use tech tools to improve the lives of others. These are the stories I like to highlight the most! For example, Kiva.org is a site that I like to support because they help to change the lives of so many entrepreneurs by allowing individuals to make micro loans to support small business. During times of disaster relief the internet has changes people’s lives through making it possible for crowd sourced fund raising. One loan can give people a step ahead and a step closer to alleviating global poverty.

Bill and Hillary Clinton are supporters of micro loans. So when my sister, Rebekah, and I made a short film about micro-loans for Hilary Clinton’s social network contests, Rebekah won the grand prize to work in China for a summer semester abroad. The exchange took place this summer, 2010, as an example of how Rebekah’s life was changed as a result of harnessing the power of the internet and technology. 

In a recent interview for a Pop17 blog series, I interviewed Tammy Camp about making change through technology. Tammy is a technology entrepreneur, speaker, and writer.

Here’s an excerpt:

Tammy: I made a Kiva loan to some lovely ladies in Dominican Republic. They need $400 more! Will visit on my next trip down. It is where I go to in Dominican Rebpublic so if the loan is complete, I will go down there and visit and see the $$ at work.
Sarah: How do you take the opportunity to be hands on when you are in the DR?
Tammy: They are female entrepreneurs, like myself. I know the country of Dominican Republic very well and understand the market segment. I’ll be able to advise them and provide insight on how they can grow their business. Plus give them encouragement.
Sarah: Since the recent earthquake there are so many people all over the world- we see their conversations on twitter- how do you keep your concerned followers up to date when you are there? What does a typical day look like for you there?
Tammy: I’ll livestream from the schools down there via Ustream, shoot video and post them on my blog here and also use Twitter to share my experience in real time.

Stories like Tammy’s are inspiring. For example, the one red paperclip guy is fascinating. This is a story of an ordinary man, Kyle MacDonald, who changed his life and the lives of others by trading his way up from a red paperclip to a house in 14 trades by using the internet. I love seeing how people can time and time again, use technology to turn lemons into lemonade. He helped others by making trades for their career advancement, like his 10th trade to Jody Gnant, who traded a record deal for her music in exchange for a year’s rent from her home in Phoenix, Arizona. The book, One Red Paperclip, is authored by Kyle who I was fortunate enough to sit down with at MIT in Massachusetts for ROFLCon.

I’m pretty much one of the biggest advocates for technology because I like to look at the people who use it and how that changes their lives. Technology is a way to change the world. If I could do anything with technology it would be opening up the lives of people to the resources technology has to offer. Everything from using the internet to find employment to aiding the disabled with tech tools that improve their lives show that change can happen with the right resources. Technology makes our lives easier and advances our quality of life.

Being a freelance video editor, software and hardware improvements can make the difference of what I can and cannot produce via the computer. I love Apple software and also software for PC’s, however, I’m more of an Apple girl today with exactly five excellent Apple computers.

I’m a fan of saving paper. We are moving away from print and closer to using electronic data transfers for information exchange. Having lots of computers is not always necessary, unless you are transferring massive amounts of data. When uploading data to my server, I like to keep the computer running without having to multitask.

Ever since I was 12 years old my friends and family looked to me for support with their computers. Today, I study and investigate computer information for reporting on various new outlets. I’m an online video journalist. You can see my work regularly on Forbes.com and Pop17.com. In the past, I was the head of video- video editor for the west coast- for Gawker Media, including Gizmodo. My favorite video project was the iPhone launch.

Recently, IT has been more than study for me. I’ve been dabbling in tech design and development. I’m the lead designer for the video player and the Facebook application game. Development and design are key elements. I learned how important communication and management become when running projects that I do not fully understand. I know a little HTML and CSS and am learning HTML5. However, most of what the developers on building the facebook games I’m not an expert at. I do reading and research so that I can speak the language and communicate with them.

Design is one of the other elements that IT is about. Other than the software that designers use, there are more tools available for people who want to design from their browser, software, or application. There are logo generating sites and easy tools to crowd-source design communities. I’ve organized several design competitions with my audience before and generated great results.

Finally, I’m seriously in IT when it comes to networking. Isn’t IT all about social media these days? My social network communities on Pop17 are really powerful and influential online. I have worked very hard for over 5 years in Silicon Valley to gain access to certain individuals and build strong interpersonal relationships. I have about 1,000 strong tech contacts that I regularly communicate with and 500,000 monthly video views to Pop17 live seminars. On twitter we have 30,000 followers and I was even featured in Vanity Fair as one of America’s Tweethearts. Today, I think of IT leaning more towards social media than ever before. Social media is the biggest trend to look out for right now.

I speak at many conferences, seminars, webinars, universities and tweet-ups on the topic. I also get many requests from other companies seeking advice and, in the spirit of social media itself, we have been open to sharing. To that end, I put together a blogging code of ethics.

There’s a lot of controversy in the blogosphere about izea/pay-for-post and the general issue of companies paying bloggers to generate content about them. While some people feel it’s perfectly fine, as a more traditional journalist, I’m one of those who does not.

Here is my top 8 list for blogging ethics:

1. Fact Check: Don’t spread rumors. Double check your facts.

2. Update: If news changes or stories progress update old posts and text with current and relevant information. When you make a mistake or make incorrect statements reverse and update them. Don’t update and erase. Update with a line through or note.

3. Tell it how it is: If there are stories, images and/or videos being posted, mixed-mashed, photoshopped or damaged report those findings in ways that could have a false representation of the event that actually took place.

4. Disclosure: Avoid letting advertisers influence content. If a company is paying for posts that needs to be disclosed.

5. Ego: don’t ever begin to believe that you’re better, smarter or more priveledged than your audience. they will see it as arrogance and you will lose them, quickly. your fans are everything. without them, you’d be nothing.

6. Minimize harm: Don’t call names. Have integrity and credibility

7. Honest and Fair: Don’t plagiarize, link to where you get your ideas

8. Be accountable: Treat others how you wish to be treated, have a mission, admit to mistakes and typos, be wary of doing favors for advertisers so they don’t influence the content.

The best metaphor for a melting pot in the United States is the grocery store check out line. No matter who you are or where you live you shop for groceries. Well that’s not entirely true if you live in New York City. Actually, we leave the New York melting pot to the subway. Thus, I restate, the best metaphor for a melting pot in the United states is the grocery store and the subway.

(Caitlin Hill and I on the subway)
The check out line in a grocery store brings everyone together. Just like they say in Ready Set Bag, a documentary about grocery baggers, some people are dressed to the nines and others are showing up in their slippers. I’m working with the creators of this documentary to make a brand extension web show on blip.tv.

There are 8 million people in New York and most of them live in NYC. I lived in New York City for a few years and took the subway almost every day as my primary mode of transportation. There are thousands of languages spoken on the subway every day. No assumptions are made.

You never know what you are going to get with the variety of culture; however, certain elements remain for the same. For example, young and able people get up when a pregnant woman or elderly person enters the train cart and they give up their seats. People with strollers are assisted by other people when going up and down the stairs. People try to mind their own business and help out. There are hustlers and you must be on guard to watch your purse, and you will be tolerant and respectful of other cultures.

If the United States were like the New York subway or a grocery store in every small town, nook, and cranny we wouldn’t right and the wisdom of the crowds would prevail. St Jean Crevecoeur is an American farmer who wrote “What is an American” in the second half of the eighteenth century. The point of view in his letter is similar to my point of view because we both believe that tolerance is the key to world peace.