Oh my GOD, yes I am still alive. I recently started writing another blog - for SocialVibe - and I have been a horrible mother to TechDarling. Please forgive me? I'm back. I will update on the regular I swear, just please don't leave me.

Ok I'm done begging. Let's see, lots of new tech stuff happened in the last month or so, including the iPhone 3G - which I've had the opportunity to play with. For the first time in my life I actually WANT one, which is crazy, because I'm a die-hard iPhone-Hater. Maybe it's because of the fabulous accessories that you can dress it up in. But I'm more interested in the fabulous accessories INSIDE of it. They have all these amazing applications, for Facebook, Twitter, etc. That and my Blackberry Curve has been acting a fool the past few weeks. It's only a year old!

Moving on, we had an earthquake today here in LA and I'm going to be honest, I've never experienced something so exhilarating/terrifying in my life. I was on the 11th floor of a high-rise and the entire building started swaying and shaking. I thought for sure I was going out the glass wall that I was sitting a mere six inches from. But alas, I made it out alive.

The aftermath was the crazy part.... almost instantaneously, all of my social networks began going off like firecrackers with updates about the earthquake. "Did u feel that?!?!" "Earthquake!" "That was at least a 5 or 6-er" Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, I had at LEAST 20 IMs in 10 minutes. The actual quake wasn't that bad, but the flood of communication that came after was what REALLY shook us up. The cellphone networks weren't working for hours afterward.

It's true what they say... the future is mobile. Web 3.0, my friends. I know this because I am a victim of this disease. Every time I go somewhere, do something funny, see something unusual, etc, immediately I want to let my network know. I met Magic Johnson a couple of weeks ago and the first thing I did was post it on Twitter. My entire office is on Twitter and sometimes I catch us using it for inter-office communication! It's not just Tweets that have got me and the rest of the world crazy... there are countless other devices and applications that make computing-on-the-go easy as pie.

And in keeping with the mobile theme of this post, I'd like to talk about out a very smart alarm clock.

The Tyrant, by Alice Wang. It is a damn tyrant, because if you don't get up when it starts ringing, it kindly picks 3 contacts from your mobile address book at random and calls them every 3 minutes to let them know just what a lazy bastard you are. My friends would haaate this, as would the countless other random contacts in my phone. And since I am a regular at sleeping through my alarm, I'm going to guess it would happen quite often. What? I'm just not a morning person.

Thanks to my very good friend Matt for telling me about this one. I think he thought of me because he used to be my roommate and witnessed me sleeping literally all day on the regular.

via Engadget

If you actually met me in person you would shake your head and give me a disapproving look. Why is this? Because I blog about all these fabulous tech gadgets and accompanying accessories yet own very few of my own. The laptop bag I use is just pathetic, really. I could go out and buy your run-of-the-mill bag, but... knowing that all these fabulous bags exist, I just can't settle for less than I know I deserve. And what do I deserve?

Well, I think I've found it. Firstly, I love Marc Jacobs. L-O-V-E. Were it not for him being gay, I might consider proposing marriage. At least to his clothes. It is a well known fact that Mr. Jacobs designs a mean handbag, I much prefer them to the more popular Gucci, Fendi, Louis Vuitton or Prada handbags. Truthfully I think most of them are fugly.

Getting the point here, feast your eyes upon this bad boy (or girl).

The Sloane Laptop Bag from Marc by Marc Jacobs is simple enough to not be tacky (as so many laptop bags these days are... Trust. Me.), but stylish and well-crafted enough to be worth the $290 price tag, which is a fraction of the cost of a regular Marc Jacobs handbag.

The only downside to this bag is that I really don't like buying leather, seeing as I am vegan and all. But the metallic trim and trademark logo lining are just plain sexy. Also, I have no clue the size of this bag. Will it fit my MacBook Pro? Or just my MacBook? The world may never know.

via Geeksugar

Mashable claims that all Twitter-ers fall into one of two categories.

1. You drink the "noob hatorade" and don't tell anyone about it for fear it will become so popular (think MySpace, Facebook).

2. You try your damndest to get everyone you know on there.

I suppose I'm a part of both. Granted I've only been Tweeting since Fall 2007, so I can't really claim OG status on that one, but I have been known to urge my friends to get on Twitter. It's wildly popular with my colleagues, and it's more fun to update than any other social network. Something about the simplicity and instant gratification.

So here are Mashable's 7 Steps to Getting Your Mom on Twitter.

1. Find them some valuable people to follow

Politicians - @BarackObama, @JohnMcCain2008, @HillaryClinton, @RonPaul2008 (I used to follow him), @JohnEdwards.
Pop Culture - @MCHammer (I'm sure your Mom will be all over that), @RSS_PerezHilton
Internet Celebs - @iJustine, @kevinrose (is the Digg founder considered an internet celeb?)

You get the point.

2. Get them a desktop or mobile app

This is important, because using Twitter.com to tweet, respond and message is downright painful. Point them to a list of cellphone Twitter apps or other Twitter tools. Once they have an app that makes it as easy as instant messaging, it’ll stick.

3. Respond to their Tweets

Twitter is going to get really boring, really fast if no one is responding to them. I mean really, if a tweet falls in the Twitterverse and nobody hears it, does it make a tweet? Again, make it look and feel like an instant messenger. Once they make their own friends, they won’t be so dependent on your responses.

One way to force them onto Twitter is to tell them that you can’t talk on IM but if they want to tweet you during the day, that’ll be easier for you. Trickery always works.

4. Introduce them to Twitter Lingo

Tweet – A tweet is a message of 140 characters or less, sent through Twitter.

@ - Use this symbol before the name of the person you want to respond to. When you do, the person you’re sending it to will see it as a reply them instead of just a regular tweet in their feed.

Hashtag – A predetermined phrase that starts with a # sign that Twitterers use to categorize tweets. When someone want to talk to a particular group of people, they’ll use the hashtag after their message. Everyone else will still get the message, but anyone who searches that hashtag later on will only follow the designated tweets.

TweetUp – A gathering of Twitter users; normally a luncheon or a casual meetup. Stormhoek has infamously contributed wine to these types of gatherings.

Fail Whale – The Fail Whale is the symbol of twitter down-time. When twitter is down, the page displays a whale being carried by birds. Common phrases referring to the whale include “whale sighting” and “launch your harpoons”.

DM – A DM is a direct message sent from one Twitter user to the next. Only the recipient and the DMer can see this message, as opposed to the rest of the Twitterverse.

Twitterverse – The universe of Twitter users; everyone who “tweets.”

Plurk – the service that Twitter users swear they are switching to every time there is a whale sighting.

FWIW – A common acronym meaning, “for what it’s worth.” Hey you’ve got 140 characters to talk, and I’m surprised Twitter users haven’t come up with an entire tweet made of acronyms.

For the rest of the list check out Mashable.

And follow me - @theoneinpink, of COURSE!