Hello hello!  So after three weeks and a seemingly endless plane ride, I’m back in the states and back in action on the sidebar!  I had a fantastic trip and I’ve come home with some hilarious stories and a multitude of pictures to share!  I also am coming home with some killer American-Gladiator calves after what seemed like hiking across three countries and lugging my huge backpack around, (rawr!)  My friend Becca and I started out in Dublin, headed west to Galway, then South before heading to Scotland and then lastly to England.  We partied with the Irish Navy, (Ya, the Irish have a Navy!,) hiked through the misty Highlands, crashed at supposedly “haunted castles,” and made some friends with awesome accents along the way.

As much fun as I had there are some things that I definetly missed about the states.  Here’s the list of top 5 things:

• Seeing “The Dark Night.”  It seems to be a social phenomenon.  It just came out in London, and was totally sold out at the IMAX theatre.  But no worries, Im going tonight.
• American Money.  Pounds, Euros, there were too many coins and bills for me to totally understand, and with the dollar worth half the value of the Euro, my wallet is definitely hurting!
• My cell phone and internet access.  Paying per 20 minutes of internet at hostels was totally lame, and with $1.29 a minute for cell phone use, I was technologically stranded!
• Water with ice.  They show no love to the ice cube unless requested.
• My own bed.  Enough said!

All in all though, I wouldn’t trade my travel experience for anything.  I hope all is well with you guys out there, and I look forward to catching up!  Hit me up on Me.dium my username is “Jenniferlauren”and feel free to check out the rest of my pictures on Facebook.

The Orientation session of mid July experienced Me.dium’s street teams as they blanketed the University of Colorado campus with special black envelopes, stickers, and other merchandise.  Nearly five hundred envelopes were passed out during this two day period.  Inside the envelopes were Me.dium stickers, a social name card and a Me.dium invitation in one of the two formats.   Some students were asked to join the Social Revolution and others were given  details about Me.dium’s Social Search functionality. Tell us which message appeals to you? (click image to enlarge)

Our street team members said they were greeted warmly by students and parents alike.  A group of kids said they had put up Me.dium stickers all over their dorm room, while a few students even yelled to our street team out the window to tell them how much they liked Me.dium. My cousin, who was in this orientation group, said that he saw Me.dium representatives all over campus and that we were definitely making our presence known.

The goals of our recent campaign were to drive traffic to four unique landing pages and to increase downloads and socials searching. Our campaigning isn’t stopping here.  As the school year approaches we will be attacking campuses with another round of eye-opening marketing.

Colorado Daily recently wrote an article about Me.dium and included some information about our orientation efforts.  Check it out and leave some comments or ideas on what we should do for our campus push this coming fall.

Friend me on Me.dium (worldsnow) or send me an email at cmaller@me.dium.com

The Me.dium sidebar got a nip, tuck, facelift or all of the above.  With a few new options, the social sidebar is looking fierce.  A new multi user chat capability, a direct Facebook connection, and a Me.dium social search box will have users socializing away on the new and improved sidebar. Peter, Ginevra and I tested out the new features by rendezvousing for a small chat this morning discussing some of PJN’s lesser attributes (which he has many of), sorry Peter.  Here is a few screen shots of what the new options look like.  If you haven’t downloaded the sidebar,  you now have three more reasons to do so.  Friend me on Me.dium (worldsnow) and lets test them out!

  I went and saw Batman, The Dark Night this past weekend and was not disappointed.  Touted as one of the best action flicks of all time, it delivered on all the hype. It was dark, it was gritty, and it was definitely a deviation from all the other Batman movies.  I went to see the 4:20pm showing on Friday and thought that arriving twenty minutes early would be plenty of time to get a seat.  To my surprise, half of Boulder decided to forgo work and hit the cinema.  Instead of sitting in the break-neck section, me and friends traded our tickets in for a later showing. After waiting for about forty five minutes we got seats 15 rows up almost directly in the middle,perfect movie viewing position.  The Dark Night smashed box office records by taking in over 155 million dollars this past weekend  (I almost went again on Saturday).

Heath Ledger’s performance was more than acting.  He took a role and made it his entire life and will most likely be awarded with an Oscar.  It is my speculation that this is the end of the Christian Bale era as Batman.  Not because of Bale’s acting (he was great too), but because Heath Ledger’s character is irreplaceable.  Not to mention, Christian Bale is taking over the Terminator series.  Most of the time, these movies come in trilogies and it seems nearly impossible to follow up after producing something as awe inspiring as this last production.

Suggestion: hit the movies as soon as possible and bring a snack, this movie runs around two and half hours.

If you want to talk movies or about anything else, contact me on Me.dium (worldsnow)

It is orientation time here in Boulder and there are incoming freshman everywhere. The University of Colorado campus is popping with tours, registration groups, and some lost students have even been venturing to the University Hill in search of food and fun. The incoming group of students, for the fall of 2008, represents the largest freshman class the University has ever seen. My cousin is arriving in Boulder middle of this week to attend his own session of orientation, hopefully he sees a better four years of football than I did. I just finished college and he is just getting started, can you say jealous?

Hopefully, I can properly teach him the “ropes” of Boulder, i.e where to go on the weekend, where to get the best used books and what restaurants are best for late night visits (Cosmos, Cosmos). If anyone has any suggestions on places I should take him while he is here, leave me some feedback on the blog or friend me on Me.dium (worldsnow).

For the company, the incoming freshman represent an opportunity. In the next few sessions of orientation, Me.dium will be hitting the streets. Teams of 3-5 people will be on campus “repping” orange and black to increase usage of the social sidebar and to put it at the forefront of CU social networking-THE CU Social Network.

So far, the new search engine has been a success. Me.dium has been popping up all over the Internet, ranging from the New York Times to Mashable, and the tweets have been non-stop. Thanks to everyone that has been so receptive of the new Social Search Engine. More posts to come as our Social Search Alpha evolves!