Thinking of taking a road trip down to San Diego to check out your favorite characters at Comic-Con 2009? Check the searchable schedule their Web site to find out when Stan Lee, Ludacris, Freddy Kruger and the Wonder Pets will appear at the convention.
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Ever have a fashion idea in your head, but you can't find what your looking for in the store or have no way of making your idea a reality? UsTrendy.com puts the power back into your hands.
The Web site allows up-and-coming designers to post their designs online and users then vote for their favorite pieces. The top picks are produced by UsTrendy and put out in stores as part of that season's collection. The site also allows users to vote for their favorite models, with the top pick earning the backing of UsTrendy who will help promote the models.
Members can sell and buy products from other users in the UsTrendy store by using PayPal and are elgible for various giveaways and contests. The current contest, the Prom Dress Giveaway, will give one girl the chance to go to prom in a one-of-a-kind designer dress. Visit www.ustrendy.com/prom-dress-giveaway/ for more information.
By The Associated Press
Ladies, picture this: You search for weeks before finding the perfect gown for an inaugural ball. You're thrilled; its silhouette and color are exactly what you had imagined.
Then, on the night of the fete, you spot another woman wearing the same dress.
Oh, the horror!
A new Web site, www.dressregistry.com, hopes to limit these social nightmares by allowing you to "register" the gown you're wearing to a specific inaugural ball. It includes a place to detail the color, length, designer, neckline description and other distinguishing characteristics. You can even upload a photo.
The genius behind it? A man.
Andrew Jones got the idea after his wife traveled from their home in West Palm Beach, Fla., to New York City to buy a gown for a charity ball in their hometown -- solely to avoid seeing the same dress at the event.
"I kind of put two and two together and I said, 'I think there's a way technology can help us here,' " said Jones, a 42-year-old automotive industry consultant.
The dress duplication problem has long caused anxiety among women.
Hollywood's A-list stars know their garb may end up on a magazine page -- with a side-by-side comparison to someone who wore it better. Jones cited first lady Laura Bush's "Oh, no!" moment at the 2006 Kennedy Center Honors, when she was one of four women wearing the same red Oscar de la Renta gown. Bush quickly changed into something different.
"If it could happen to the first lady, it could happen to anyone," Jones said. "With the inauguration, it just all came together in my mind. I thought it would be a great time to roll it out."
At specialty stores in the Washington area, some thought the Web site a novel idea but suggested it may not be foolproof.
"Nothing's exclusive anymore," said LaShea Green, couture buyer at Saks Jandel in Chevy Chase, Md., who had not yet heard of Jones' Web site. "I don't care how much you register, there's going to be someone (at an event) who didn't register."
So far, inaugural partygoers have registered about 100 gowns for more than two dozen official and unofficial events, including the Constitution Ball, the American Indian Inaugural Ball and the Green Inaugural Ball hosted by Al Gore. As the inaugural festivities near, the registries keep growing.
"I've had people self-registering their events every day," said Jones, adding that he's recorded some 300,000 hits and more than 10,000 unique visitors since the Web site launched Dec. 1.
Every woman has had that dreadful moment in a store's dressing room where she wonders "does this make me look fat?" One Web site has taken this ever-so-common occurrence into its own hands.
MyShape.com has created an online personal shopper with the goal of helping women have style while wearing clothes that fit and flatter their body shape. And the best part about it? It's completely free. All you have to do is go to the Web site and enter a few details about yourself, including your personal style (are you romantic, glamorous, artistic, classic, trendy, or modern?), style variety, risk level and other questions that allow your Personal Shop to cater to your wants and needs. To fully complete your profile you must enter your measurements and fit preferences. The site is secure, so don't be shy.
Once you're done, it's time to shop! Your Personal Shop will pick out clothes in styles and sizes that flatter your body type based on the measurements and preferences you entered. With designers like Ella Moss, Michael Kors, Kenneth Cole and Donna Morgan, you're sure to find some pieces to add to your wardrobe. If you're confidant in your ability to shop on your own, you can forgo a Personal Shop and comb through the unfiltered myShape Marketplace yourself. But beware, only those with a Personal Shop enjoy free shipping and returns.
Kids always want to do want grown-ups do, but news stories remind us that Facebook and MySpace aren't the safest playgrounds. But then there's KidZui.com, which, according to chairman and CEO Cliff Boro, incorporates "the best aspects of MySpace and Facebook ... in a way that works for kids" -- and for their parents.
To satisfy the kids, the site's features include customizable "Zui" avatars, a live feed that keeps them connected with friends and lets them chat and share content from
1.5 million kid-appropriate sites.
To satisfy the parents, all friend requests require parental approval from both sides, the content categories available to each child can be changed and reports on your child's recent searches and interests are generated weekly. Membership is free.
And for both the kids and the parents, the site also includes the Homework Helper, which matches Web pages, photos and videos to grades from kindergarten through eighth grade to help kids find resources related to their subjects of study.
Like their parents and older siblings on Facebook and MySpace, kids on KidZui can "befriend" John McCain, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, who each have KidZui profile pages. And future political experts can analyze the "befriending" results at www.kidzui.com/election2008.
Kids can also keep their friends up to date on their every move and mood, whether it's "moody" and "doing homework" or "energetic" and "by the pool."
The markets are down, but traffic is up at HeatEatReview.com, a site that includes reviews covering every shelf of the frozen-food aisle.
The recent 10 percent increase in site traffic, reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, could be the result of tightening dietary purse strings. And while the three-year-old site is older than the current economic downturn, the possibility lines up with what motivated founder Abi Jones. She tired of $7 takeout and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for her office lunches.
And with the site's help, you don't have to put up with those, either. Dozens of regular contributors across the U.S. have written reviews of more than 500 products from 100 brands. You can search by food type, rating or -- if you find that your tastes run consistently parallel to one particular critic -- by author.
You should be following us on Twitter, where we are posting breaking news, links to our favorite stories and what we're covering. We're also posting from meetings and events as they happen.
Twitter is a social media microblogging platform where users keep their "followers" up-to-date with what they are doing with short posts of just 140 characters or fewer. The service launched in 2006, but it has taken off like gangbusters this year.
According to Compete.com, Twitter more than quadrupled its users from November 2007 to June 2008. There are now more than 1.2 million Tweeters.
Lest you think it's just for kids, a Time magazine article last month reports the largest age demographic is 35-to-44-year-olds, which make up more than 25 percent of users. And the 55+ demographics are growing, too. Interestingly, more than 57 percent of Tweeters are from California.
Here's where you can find us, so you'll know when the pagination system crashes or when we get cranky phone calls or drunks barge in to city council meetings:
Editor Phillip Sanfield: www.twitter.com/editorbreeze
Managing Editor Toni Sciacqua: www.twitter.com/dailybreezeME
Assistant City Editor (and pets blogger) Josh Grossberg: www.twitter.com/dbdog
Crime Reporter Larry Altman: www.twitter.com/dbreezecrime
Courts Reporter Denise Nix: www.twitter.com/dbreezecourts
Beach Cities Reporter Andrea Woodhouse: www.twitter.com/akwoodhouse
Gardena, Lawndale, Hawthorne Reporter Sandy Mazza: www.twitter.com/dailybreezeSM
Harbor Area Reporter (and pets blogger) Donna Littlejohn: www.twitter.com/dbbark
Copy desk chief Jack Mulkey: www.twitter.com/jacko75
Features Editor Leo Smith: www.twitter.com/dailybreezearts
Prep Sports reporters Tony Ciniglio and Dave Thorpe: www.twitter.com/breezepreps
Soccer columnist Nick Green: www.twitter.com/LAsoccerblog
"Oh, so THAT'S what he said!"
Everyone has had the moment where, after hearing a song on the radio a million times, you finally realize what the real lyric is.
A word or phrase misheard in this way is called a mondegreen, and that word was recently added to the latest edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. More than 100 words were added to the dictionary, including the ones listed on the front page of yesterday's Daily Breeze. Many of them are a mouthful, but this one is an earful. Merriam-Webster defines it as "a word or phrase that results from a mishearing of something said or sung."
According to Merriam-Webster, the word traces its origin to the mishearing of the line "laid him on the green" in a Scottish ballad as "Lady Mondegreen."
You've likely never heard that song, but you can find a collection of more than 100,000 misheard lyrics on the Web at http://www.kissthisguy.com/.
If that phrase sounds familiar to you, you're one of people who have misheard the line "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky" in Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze," after which the site is named.
The site is searchable by both artist and song title. If that's not enough for you, there's even an RSS feed of the funniest additions of the week. Happy (mis)hearing!
The Internet Archive, a digital library that makes it possible to find Web sites that may no longer be normally available, fended off a bid by FBI to get information about one of its patrons. If you want to see what the library offers go to the Internet Archive and try out the Wayback Machine.
The sale of the Santa Monica Ferris Wheel is bound to make many people recall their times riding the wheel above the pier. Of course, there will soon be a replacement but if you're nostalgic here are a few links that explain how the Ferris Wheel came into being.
The Ferris Wheel is named after its designer George Washington Gale Ferris, who conceived of the wonder of the time for the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. For an account of the project go to The Big Wheel.
If you miss the Santa Monica Ferris Wheel too much to wait for its return you might want to consider a trip to London, the home of the --- British Airways London Eye. The 443-foot tall wheel was the largest in the world, before the 525-foot Nachang Star opened in 2006.
The Star lost its title as world's largest when the 541-foot Singapore Flyer opened to the public in March.
But the Flyer is expected to lose the title at end of 2009 when the 676-foot Great Wheel of Bejing will open.
But if those foreign Wheels aren't enticing then visit Steve Wilson Rides, Towers and More. The site features images of amusement rides around the world.
And if you crave speed and thrills then check out Coaster Buzz, which lets you know about roller coasters and news from amusement parks around the world.
