San Francisco Fashionista’s have been waiting quite awhile for this. No longer do we Frisconians need to look towards New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles with envy, thinking “why do they get to have all of the fashion forward fun?” The fashion gods have smiled upon us and appraised their gloriousness on our beautiful city with blessing it with our very own version of the interweb’s famed, undeniable click- read- and-bookmark, fashion publication… Ladies and gents, Refinery29 San Francisco has arrived.

How are we stylish mere mortals going to celebrate its launch, you ask? By having a Shop Crawl! The Epic Shop Crawl is a four hour event that stretches amongst San Francisco’s best boutiques. TODAY, April 28, starting at six in the evening! Refinery29 has teamed up with 10 San Francisco boutiques. Each set to suit any and every San Francisco lady’s style.  Not only will there be sales at participating stores entitling shoppers up to 30% off the entire night, there will also be fun giveaways, Refinery29 photographers snapping pictures of you, and free treats from delectable local eateries. Click here and RSVP now so that you don’t miss out on this amazing shopping opportunity!

To see the boutiques in on the epic-ness (the Bell Jar and Acrimony, to name a few of them) and for the ultimate Refinery 29 San Francisco Shop Crawl Cheat Sheet, head over to my blog, http://www.thebeautybohemian.com.

Happy Shop Crawling and a Warm Welcome to Refinery29 San Francisco!

By Julie Blaustein

Photo by Chris Brennan

FairTrade USA is the leading certifier of fair trade products in the United State. They are responsible for auditing and certifiying transactions that take place between US companies and their international suppliers and most importantly, guarantee that farmers and workers that produce Fair Trade goods are paid fair prices and wages.

Nimisha Ambati of Club Dine In! who has a most sustainable blog about eating and being physically sustainable, provided the following recap of the event. “Fair Trade hosted a sustainable party to launch its new name and brand identity along with its kickoff of National Fair Trade Awareness Month. Appropriately, the double celebration was held at Temple Nightclub – one of the greenest nightclubs in the nation. Temple Nightclub was the perfect venue as it combines modern design with decor dating back to the 11th Century, has an extensive composting and recycling program, has an on-site garden for their restaurant and is energy efficient.”

By Julie Blaustein

Trendy Lime will be celebrating its 1st. anniversary with a special edition of JETLAG at the sizzling hot Butterfly in San Francisco, September 10th.

Join San Francisco trend-setters, world travelers, and social media fans, WHERE FASHION MEETS TRAVEL and win a “Any City” round trip with JetBlue! The trendy jetsetters of San Francisco & Bay Area are invited to dress up to the nines to celebrate Trendy Lime’ 1st. anniversary at JETLAG. Served on board of this flight: JETLAG-only delicious mix of Travel, Fashion, Music, and Socializing to be enjoyed by the most discerning tastes. Food bloggers, Gratitude Gourmet and Club Dine In gave the venue and the food a thumbs up during a private tasting.

Admission is just $10 until 11 pm with an RSVP, or $10 all night with pre-sale tickets that you should purchase now as they are limited.

The perks of attending the JETLAG celebration include:

• Round Trip with JetBlue (any 2 cities!) for the lucky TrendyLimer  – To qualify you must be part of the A-List Crowd or join now at Trendy Lime group on FB
• “All you Can Dance” package by DJ Nader & DJ Michelle Musial
• 1st Class pampering with Mary Kay goodie-bags
• Fashion in the Air: “Fresh fashion experience” is brought to you by San Francisco renowned designers “ANYA” and “RockChiq” and presented by the stunning models from around the world.
• Spectacular gourmet creations by the chef and owner of “Butterfly” Rob Lam, complimentary between 9.30-10.30,
• Trendy Lime birthday cake at midnight

Sponsors and Partners include: JetBlue, Mary Kay, Mesaic, Red Bull

Media Partners: Bub.bliciou.us, Eclectic a la Mode, FailCon, Fashionaholics, Jetset Extra, Laura Loves Art, Mashable.com, Moda Epidemic, Vator.tv, 360 Fashion Network.

Follow the buzz about Trendy Lime’s 1st. Anniversary  and  Special Edition of JETLAG at #jetlagTL

JETLAG is brought to you by Trendy Lime and Michael Nader. Trendy Lime is a social media driven producer of upscale social, networking, and networking events for trend-setters and world travelers. Our San Francisco network of international socialites is 3,000 people strong and counting. Soon we are planning to bring Trendy Lime events to other world metropolis. Our distinguishing feature is combining elements of fashion, travel, and technology at the events. Our Mission is to provide unique event experience for the most discerning guests, while supporting good cause initiatives and collaborating with local businesses. DJ Nader (Michael Nader) is the Co-Founder of Feel Group and is the owner of several successful San Francisco establishments including Harlot and Morac.

Take a peek into a hackathon assembled on the fly.

By Marissa Louie, July 2

What happens when someone come up with a half baked idea that could -potentially- change up the commerce game, then decides to act upon it?

We are about to find out because in the past few hours we’ve assembled a team including up to 8 developers, 1 designer, and myself on the fly to hack it out and see if it will work:

• William Nelson
• Craig Benson
• Sugam Pandey
• Steve Enzer
• Lucija Kordic
• Ari Greenberg
• Joanne Sun
• Michael Arace
• Suyash Joshi
• Marissa Louie

We even have a sponsor who called with a generous offer:

Special thanks to appbackr, The New Way to Finance Your Apps.

The premise: I came up with an idea for a new platform about a day ago. Then we announced the hackathon on a whim.

The plan: Spend up to 48 hours developing an iPhone app while challenging ourselves to produce something of value to society.

This weekend should be a blast. Perhaps more fun than the trip to Belize, surfing, and golfing outings I cancelled in order to build this!

About the Author:

Marissa is a contributor to Adotas, BusinessWeek, and Huffington Post. Follow her on Twitter: @malouie

Marissa Louie is the Founder and CEO of HeroEx, San Francisco’s affordable 1 hour delivery service, where customers buy items then have them delivered in 1 hour or less.

Contact her at (510) 375-1941, or email marissa@heroex.com.

I’ve heard of fashion being affected by the changing technology. You know, jackets that hold and charge iPods. Hoodies with built in speakers. And I won’t even consider purchasing a purse without an internal pocket designed for holding my cell phone. But the most forward-thinking and innovative trends are often impractical. That’s why you have to go to the modern art museums to see most of the ideas being put forth.

The WTFJeans brand is looking to make technology more reasonably integrated with our current fashion, launching a line of denim pants that have pockets specifically designed for your gadgets. The size of the pockets are cut to fit things like smart phones, iPods, and even USB portable drives. That’s handy. I suppose it makes sense for menswear, as we girls already have those easy-access purse pockets and all.

The pockets in the WTFJeans are also lined with microfiber, so your iPhone screen won’t get any additional damage done from sitting in your pocket all day. Maybe the screen will actually get a little cleaner, as it rests happily in your pants. Additional needs have also been considered, as the WTFJeans hide certain pockets, such as the one created to hold USB drives. You know, in case you’re a spy that just escaped with the files copied from that megacorporation you’re trying to bring down.

Jokes aside, I do like that clothing designers and manufacturers are finding reasonable ways in which to incorporate modern needs into their designs. I won’t be wearing the jeans anytime soon, but I know a few guys that would consider hiding a USB in a specialized pocket. These are also the same guys that would forget to take the USB back out of their specialized pocket before throwing their jeans in the wash, but that’s not really my problem, now, is it.

Necessity is the mother of all invention. Now how about a couple more super-pocketed purses for me?

[source and image via Gizmodo]

Ke$ha, a Los Angeles based singer, moved 610,069 downloads of her first single “Tik Tok” in a week placing her at the number 2 spot for one week downloads ever with Flo Rida’s “Right Round” at number one in one week sales (with Ke$ha as an uncredited singer). That number is remarkably similar to the number of times New Moon was illegally downloaded online during it’s first week of release (610,000). That number pales in comparison to the first week illegal downloads for Avatar which came close to one million illegal downloads.

Illegal online downloads during the theater run doesn’t appear to have much of an impact on the box office numbers, the challenge for the movie industry comes when the films are released to DVD/Blu-Ray. With Netflix and other cost effective (or illegal and free) options for watching movies, it’s become harder and harder to sell DVD/Blu-Ray discs. According to the Wall Street Journal, 2009 was the first year since 2002 that ticket sales out did DVD/Blu-Ray sales, challenging the existing business model of the movie industry. The music industry faced a similar challenge with the appearance of digital downloads but they were able to recover from the disaster that Napster could have been after a little resistance. The did lead to the near death of the compact disc.

The movie industry isn’t quite there. With new release digital movie downloads costing up to the monthly membership at Netflix (and I mean the good membership with 3 movies at a time), what is the movie industry to do in 2010 to turn that around? SmartMoney recently released a list of things not to buy in 2010 and along with newspaper subscriptions, new college text books and CDs was DVDs. Perhaps it’s time the industry lower the cost of a digital download and move the home release date closer to the theatrical release date. This will allow for two money making opportunities for the industry and allow for the movie watcher to choose the type of experience they want and trump the massive amount of illegal downloads. Of course, with Avatar passing $1 billion dollars at the box office, the need for change is not as immediate but as the quality and availability of downloads become a bit easier for the non-techie, that may shift quickly.

We did survive the death of the VHS, I think we can make it through the next shift.

The Big in Japan folks, who make the popular ShopSavvy app, sent me some stats I found entertaining, so I thought I’d share with you.

The popular app, available for iPhone and Android, scans bar codes and lets you know where in your regional area the item can be found at different prices. It also prices the item online. I was standing at Macy’s at 5 am on Black Friday, debating on purchasing luggage. I tried the ShopSavvy app myself. Unfortunately, I could not get it to scan the UPC code on the luggage. I’m apparently the only one who had trouble.

More than 612,000 bargain hunters used Big in Japan’s barcode-scanning app on Black Friday alone, which is 7 times more than on an average Friday.

Data from the 18+ million scans by ShopSavvy users from Nov. 27-29 reveal that the most scanned product during Black Friday weekend was Sarah Palin’s new book, Going Rogue. Really? Other top products included:

Top Toy: Zhu Zhu Pets Hamster Mr. Squiggles
Top Video Game: Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
Top Camera: Nikon Coolpix
Top Laptop: Sony 15″ Laptop w/Intel Dual Core Processor
Top Netbook: Compaq Netbook w/Intel Atom Processor
Top Desktop: eMachines Desktop w/AMD Athlon Processor
Top HDTV: Emerson 32″ LCD 720p HDTV

The five most popular retailers for ShopSavvy scanning were:

1.      Walmart
2.      Best Buy
3.      Target
4.      GameStop
5.      Macy’s

The five most popular metropolitan areas for ShopSavvy scanning were:

1.      New York
2.      Houston
3.      Los Angeles
4.      Dallas
5.      Chicago

Did you use ShopSavvy on Black Friday? Did it help or hinder?

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Cheers!
Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

Just a few more days until Thanksgiving followed quickly by Black Friday, the official beginning of the holiday shopping season. It’s true, there are some amazing deals that can be found on Black Friday but those deals come at a price. Waking up ridiculously early to shop with thousands of other people trying to get the best price on a new television or pair of designer jeans. This can be incredibly effective but the benefit doesn’t always out weight the difficulties, especially for a non-shopper. That’s where the web comes in.

For the non-shopper, there is another great shopping day, the Monday after Thanksgiving (this year, that is November 30th). Cyber Monday, the official kick off of the online shopping season, is a huge day for online retailers. This is the perfect time to track down great deals online, free shipping and discount codes. This may require waking up early but nothing beats the ease of shopping in your pajamas for those prized holiday gifts.

Of course, the web is vast so finding those deals can be another challenge. That’s where CyberMonday.com comes in. This site is the central hub for Cyber Monday deals at every store from Home Depot to Overstock.com and everything in between. They consolidate the deals from over 650 online retailers making it easy to search and find what you’re looking for. You can shop by category, deal of the week or a simple search.

So here’s my early holiday present to all of you, enjoy the Friday after Thanksgiving and worry about gifts for the holidays on Cyber Monday.

Happy Shopping!