Another week = new stories… Here are my favorite tech stories from this week. Feel free to leave a comment below, I would love to read your thoughts. Enjoy!

I Think We All Need a Pep Talk….

I came across this link on my twitter feed and couldn’t resist sharing. I love this video because it not only makes you think but it definitely puts a smile on your face. Everyone needs some motivation sometimes and I get that from this video. Take a moment and spread some encouragement. “We can cry about it or we can dance about it.”

Are you feeling the Kid President’s Pep Talk?

Is Samsung Trying to Take Us to a New Galaxy with the S4?

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Last Thursday, Samsung announced the Galaxy S4 and its amazing new features. If you haven’t heard about the S4 read here. When I first heard about this new phone and its new features I’m not going to lie, I was ready to trade in my iPhone. But since the inital heat has cooled off I have come back to reality. My opinion on the new S4 is it’s definitely a smartphone that is ahead of it’s time, BUT I don’t find any of the features any more useful than my iPhone. Given the chance I still would get the S4, but only because it’s the newest, hippest thing. Only time will tell if the S4 is actually worth all the hype. To see the techsperts thoughts click here.

What are your thoughts on the new Samsung S4? Are you running out to get it?

Facebook wants to update us ONE MORE TIME…

Facebook never wants its users to leave the site (or at least that’s the feeling I get with all these updates). As an attempt to be the only news source we ever use, Facebook is adding weather forecasts to events and public places. So now when you set up an event, especially one outside, it will include a predicted forecast for the location on the date of the event and estimated high and low temperatures. All of the information will be powered by Weather Underground.

Is this an update that you really need?

Why Should Adria Richards be a Household Name?

As a women in tech, really as a woman in general, it is important that you read this story! This story really grinds my gears and I think it’s important you share it with others to get the word out.

Last week, web developer and blogger Adria Richards had a horrible experience at the PyCon tech conference and decided to write about it in detail. Below is a snippet of her story (but you can read the full details here);

The guy behind me to the far left was saying he didn’t find much value from the logging session that day. I agreed with him so I turned around and said so. He then went onto say that an earlier session he’d been to where the speaker was talking about images and visualization with Python was really good, even if it seemed to him the speaker wasn’t really an expert on images. He said he would be interested in forking the repo and continuing development.
That would have been fine until the guy next to him…
began making sexual forking jokes
I was going to let it go. It had been a long week. A long month. I’d been on the road since mid February attending and speaking at conferences. PyCon was my 5th and final conference before heading home.
I know it’s important to pick my battles.
I know I don’t have to be a hero in every situation.
Sometimes I just want to go to a conference and be a geek.
But…
like Popeye, I couldn’t “stands it no more” because of what happened –
Jesse Noller was up on stage thanking the sponsors. The guys behind me (one off to the right) said, “You can thank me, you can thank me”. That told me they were a sponsoring company of Pycon and from the photos I took, his badge had an add-on that said, “Sponsor”.
My company was a Gold sponsor as well.
They started talking about “big” dongles. I could feel my face getting flustered. Was this really happening? How many times do I have to deal with this? Can they not hear what Jesse is saying?

Richards snapped a picture of the two men (shown above) and posted her disgust on Twitter. She also alerted organizers of the conference, which I give major credit to because they took immediate action. According to reports, those men were fired for their actions.

You would think that after enduring this overwhelming situation Richards would be commended for taking a stand and speaking up for what she felt was wrong. Actually the opposite has happened, Richards has received harassment in the form of threats of rape and death. Also, her personal site and her employer’s site have become targets for digital bullies forcing them to go offline.

Unfortunately, yesterday Richard’s employer, SendGrid, posted this status on their Facebook page:

Effective immediately, SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards. While we generally are sensitive and confidential with respect to employee matters, the situation has taken on a public nature. We have taken action that we believe is in the overall best interests of SendGrid, its employees, and our customers. As we continue to process the vast amount of information, we will post something more comprehensive.

What do you think about this situation?

Until next time…

Xo Deena