Do you need a running partner? How about the world famous ultra-marathon man, Dean Karnazes? Zozi’s new program makes that possible. This San Francisco-based startup recently launched Guru Experiences, where celebrity experts conduct unique adventures for small groups.  National Geographic Explorer Mireya Mayor and world record kayaker, Tao Berman, are among the ranks of professionals that zozi found to kick off their service.

Since their launch in 2009, providing new experiences has been the goal of the company.  Now serving most major cities in the U.S., their daily deal service includes a broad range of activities for people looking to get out of their comfort zone.  Dance classes, cooking courses, and exclusive tours have been the norm for zozi, but the Guru program takes it to a new level.

For the Dean Karnazes experience, guests will run all morning in Big Sur along the California coast.  Dean will share inspiring experiences, advice, and insight. Afterwards, a healthy lunch is served overlooking the Pacific. Sounds great to us, but we might need to hit the treadmill a bit to prep for that one.

Here are the other current Guru Experiences: Snowcat or Squaw Valley Skiing with Jonny Moseley, Sunset Safari with Mireya Mayor, Find Your Stride with Eric Orton, Whitewater Skills with Tao Berman, and coming soon…Chris Lieto-Ironman Champion, and Maya Gabeira-Big Wave Surf Champion.

These exclusive experiences come with a nice price tag, but their rarity makes them hard to pass up. There are set dates for each of the opportunities, so check out the zozi website and register for your own one-of-a-kind Guru Experience.

Here at ABCey, we’ve found that adventure can be just clicks away! Zozi is great for the brave, Sōsh finds all the hot spots, and Wanderfly gives guidance when you’re on the road. How do you find things to do? Which zozi Guru Experience would you like to try out? Let us know in the comments or say hello on Twitter!

We know the feeling, you want to get your special someone something this Valentine’s Day, but as it’s fast approaching the supermarkets seem to be jam packed with cheesy V-day gifts that speak little from the heart. To help you tug on your loved ones heart strings, we have researched four delightful websites that will assist you in buying unique gifts or creating something on your own for your significant other this Valentines Day.

1. Uncommon Goods has accumulated quite an assortment of unique products.  You can find everything from mushroom kits to eco picnic baskets. Maybe your girlfriend is a strange health nut;) You’re sure to find something for any type of person.  This site is dedicated to gifts, so you can search by holiday, gender, and category. This would be a great place to look for those difficult to shoo shop for and who don’t have this amazing footed bowl.

We also like the Wooden iPhone Case for $44

2. Etsy is a super sweet website that most of you know which specializes in selling all things handmade and vintage. If you don’t have the time to create but still want something unique, then we recommend Etsy for quick and easy Valentines Day shopping. There is a whole tab dedicated to the holiday, including handpicked items that are sure to charm.

Pick up this Walnut Wooden iPad Stand for only $20! Great for those that have aquired iPads over the holidays.

3. Best Friends For Frosting is a lovely little website that features hundreds of adorable homemade recipes from the best baking blogs around the world. We know techies have a soft spot for sugar, so treat yours to something homemade. Recipes are conveniently categorized under tabs like Holidays, Desserts,Themes and DIY, so you’re sure to find exactly what you’re looking for in a matter of moments. A number of recipes also consider those who are vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free, making it easier for everyone to enjoy your homemade sweet treats.

Try whipping up a batch of these Conversation Heart Valentine Sugar Cookies.

Still haven’t found the right gift? This next one should help you out…

4. Svpply We aren’t quite sure how to say it yet either, but that’s a “v” not a “u”. It’s kinda like a Pinterest, but for shopping only.  You can follow your favorite people and stores, save stuff that you want to buy later, and find great online products.  Back to the point of this post; Valentines Day- you can set search specifications to find exactly what you want to find for that special someone!

Our favorite find was this geeky Unlock Doormat from blessthisstuff for $59:

5. Rent the Runway is your go to online resource for your V-day attire this season. I’m sure many of you have heard by now, but you can rent a top-tier designer dress for a fraction of the retail price. Since formal dresses rarely get much wear anyway, this is a great way to wow your man on less-than-royal budget for just a night.

We hope these ideas inspire you to find that perfect gift this Valentines Day! If you know of any great websites or V-day inspired recipes feel free to share here or find ABCey on Twitter.

Looking to travel this spring? Hunting through different travel sites for convenient hotels and cheap flights can give you a headache. Event planners are on the move, whether it’s for conventions, galas, or fun. This is why we tried Wanderfly, a travel recommendation engine that goes beyond flights and hotels.  Users tailor the settings to fit their budgets and interests, and the site uses your social networks and other travel search engines to give suggestions.

ABCey is planning an event in Washington, D.C. this spring for a company attending the International Trademark Association’s Annual Meeting, so we decided to let Wanderfly help with our travel itinerary.

We set the specifications for San Francisco to Washington DC, $600 per person, early May, and for 4 days. The coolest part of this site is that you can add your interests.  For this trip we decided that our interests were: landmarks (can’t miss those in DC), food (event planners have to eat), and outdoors (May is lovely).  When we hit the “Get Going” button, we were transported to the front steps of the White House…well, not really, but it gave us everything that we needed to get there.

The first thing we did is check out the flight and hotel options.  Wanderfly uses content from travel sites such as Orbitz, Hotels.com, Facebook, Foursquare, Yelp, and Mashable.  We found flight options and hotels with reviews and tips right on the page. The activities suggestions are really what makes the service unique.  For us, it recommended highly reviewed restuarants, hiking trails, and all of the important monuments. If you log into Facebook through the site, it accesses your network’s knowledge and allows you to post a question asking for advice.  

Interested yet? Even if you don’t know where you want to go on vacation, Wanderfly will make recomendations for you based on your interests and budget.  We suggest that you try them out! It is free and easy to plan vacations, even if they’re imaginary. Have you ever used Wanderfly? What travel services do you generally use? Let us know in the comments or find us on Twitter!

Do you ever find yourself coming across beautiful things on the web and not knowing what to do with them? Trying to remember everything you see can be difficult, and remembering to share them with your loved ones can be even more difficult.  That is why we fell in love with Pinterest!  Pinterest is a virtual pinboard that lets you organize and share all of the beautiful things you find around the web.  According to Lauren Drell, this invite-only social platform, launched in March 2010, has the mission to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting”. People can pin and organize items to help them plan their weddings, decorate their home, organize recipes, and sort their favorite images. Images are shown in a bulletin board format with links to the original URL of the item and the user who posted it first, so you know where it came from if you are in need of more details.  To add to the excitement, you can browse other people’s pinboards to discover new things and get inspiration from other people who share similar interests. This wonderful invention comes from designer, Evan Sharp. Below is a recap of an interview Mashable conducted with Sharp. We hope you find it interesting and take the initiative to join Pinterest!

Backstory of Pinterest- How the idea came about…

Sharp grew up printing images off the web and collecting them in a folder.  He and two friends wanted to create a place where you can go to upload or collect things on the web and simply organize it the way you want to.

Why the Bulletin Board-Style Aesthetic?

They wanted a style that felt personal but also the feel of a collection of a variety of different images.

Where Does the Inspiration for the Design Come From?

Sharpe’s inspiration arises a lot from physical spaces of discovery like: museums, libraries, or retail spaces.  ”If you think about how things are presented and laid out, you start to realize that the entire space is organized to allow you to discover all the things the store is selling”, said Sharpe.

What Was Sharpe’s Original Vision of the Target Audience for Pinterest?

Although Pinterest is huge with the ladies in planning for weddings and decorating their homes, Sharpe originally envisioned it being popular with architects and designers.  He is happy with the way it has turned out though!

Pintrests Growth Has Trickled Up — why is that?

They didn’t spend a lot of time trying to get tech coverage.  ”We didn’t build this company to build a really hot tech startup; what we wanted to do was build a product — and also a company — that we wanted to work on for the next five or ten years.”

How Does Having a Background in Architecture Help When it Comes to Web Design? 

Architecture is difficult and takes a long time to master the “third dimension”.  Sharpe explains that he worked hard to master this tough process and,  ”a lot of [the process] is about technique and spending the time designing, but there’s such a rich history of architecture and a great body of theory and knowledge, and an enjoyable part of [moving to web design] was learning to take abstract ideas and concepts and then solve them tangibly.”  This explains why Pinterest runs so smoothly.

Lessons Brought from Facebook to Pinterest:

Having worked at Facebook prior to his invention of Pinterest, he explains that learning how Facebook operated was very valuable for Pinterest’s success as a design product.

What Does Sharpe Pin?

He pins stuff he finds interesting and inspirational about architecture.  Star Wars fans follow him, because he pins stuff about Star Wars as well!

Judging From the Userbase and the Pageviews and Anecdotal Evidence- why is there an obsession with Pinterest?

Sharpe think it’s twofold — at a basic level, it’s just a great place to go to see things that are interesting to you. Every time you go, you should see 50 to 100 things that hopefully are relevant or interesting to you. But the flipside of that — and something [he] didn’t expect when [they] built the product — is that there are are tons of people using the pictures to find things that impact their everyday life. People doing crafts projects, planning birthday parties, designing a home on the cheap. There are all sorts of life tips that come out of Pinterest. So now, not only are you finding stuff that’s interesting, but you’re also getting off Pinterest to do the things you’re finding on the site. What that means is that, at the end of the day, Pinterest can really complement your life instead of being a timesuck.

In “Pin Etiquette,” it says that Pinterest is not a Place for Self-Promotion. How, then, can Pinterest best be used by brands as a marketing tool?

A lot of brands are using Pinterest to promote and share more about their brand.  The idea behind the brand makes sense on Pinterest.

What is the Company Culture Like at Pinterest?

Filled with exciting people who want to work, love the product, and everyone has real interests and passions outside of Pinterest.  People who are generally interested in the world is what makes it a very fun environment to work for.

ABCey Events just can’t get enough of Pinterest! Make sure to check out the website, get an invitation, and start your pinning! We look forward to following your pins soon!

WIth Thanksgiving just around the corner, we thought we would give you a few fun facts about this special holiday.  M.J. Stephey, from the Times, tells us 10 bizarre facts. Enjoy!

1. T-Day or a Tray: In 1953, Gerry Thomas, from Swanson, had 260 tons of frozen turkeys to serve, so he ordered 5,000 tons of aluminum trays and got an assembly line of women to dispense small amounts of turkey, corn bread dressing, peas and sweet potatoes, which became the first ever TV dinner.
2. Football & Feastin’: The tradition of watching football on Thanksgiving started in 1876, when the newly formed American Intercollegiate Football Association held its first championship game. Less than a decade later, more than 5,000 club, college, and high school football teams held games on Thanksgiving Day.
3. Franksgiving:  In 1939, FDR said that Americans should celebrate Thanksgiving one week early, hoping the decision would spur retail sales during the Great Depression.  Americans did not like this new deal, so the mayor of Atlantic City declared that the residents would have two meals, Thanksgiving and “Franksgiving”.  It wasn’t until two years later, in 1941, that Congress adopted a resolution and declared Thanksgiving to be held on the fourth Thursday of November.
4. Mary Had a Little Thanksgiving Obsession: The woman who wrote the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb” also played an important role in making Thanksgiving a national holiday. After a 17-year letter-writing campaign, Abraham Lincoln was finally convinced to issue an 1863 decree recognizing the historic tradition. 
5. Americans at the Abbey: In 1942, London’s Westminster Abbey held Thanksgiving services for U.S. troops stationed in England. The Church’s pew sang America, the Beautiful and The Star-Spangled Banner, with more than 3,500 soldiers in the church.  This was the first time a foreign army was invited to take over the grounds of a 900-year-old church.
6. Pardon Me, Mr. President:  When President Harry sympathized with a Turkey in 1947, the annual tradition of pardoning a turkey before thanksgiving began in the White House.  
7. Slow Roasting Tradition: It took more than 150 years before all 13 colonies celebrated Thanksgiving at once, in October 1777, although the first Thanksgiving was held in 1621.  George Washington loved the holiday, while President Thomas Jefferson disliked it, calling Thanksgiving “the most ridiculous idea” ever conceived.
8. Turkey and Chicken and Duck– Oh My!: A store in Louisiana claims to ship more than 5,000 turduckens a week before Thanksgiving day.  I bet you wonder what a turducken is? It is a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken.  Now that is a lot of meat.
9. Fast vs. Feast: Thanksgiving is all about eating an abundant amount of great food.  Ironically, it was initially supposed to be a fast, not a feast.  The settlers at Plymouth Rock celebrated the day by prayer and abstaining from food.  But when Wampanoag Indians joined them, celebrated the 3-day celebration with dancing, games, and feasting.  
10. What’s in a Name?:  Three towns have been named after this special holiday — Turkey, Texas, Turkey Creek, La. and Turkey, N.C. — each with less than 500 residents.  It is said that t the pheasant’s name came from Christopher Columbus, who thought he was in India when he arrived in “The New World” and, therefore, named the pheasant a “tuka,” an Indian term for peacock.

We’re loving Event Espresso over here, even though we haven’t had a chance to use this events registration and management plugin for WordPress just yet. One of the most important choices you can make for your meeting, conference, or event is the website design. The onsite registration and calendar module features make this a great choice, among many other reasons! They seem to keep adding new features too such as a custom form builder, early bird registrations, Groupon integration and Facebook, Twitter, and Mailchimp addons. This is looking like exactly what we need for some of our clients & their events!

Event Espresso has all the event management tools you need, from accepting payments to reports to promotions.

• Custom descriptions
• Multiple event dates
• Multiple event times
• Multiple event prices, surcharges, member pricing
• Event location and mapping
• Custom email confirmations
• Event categories
• On-going events
• Attendee limits
• Group registrations
• Make events a blog post
• and more!

This premium plugin for WordPress allows you to turn your existing blog or website into a fully featured event management website. If your organization offers classes, workshops, events, trainings or conferences for which participants need to register in advance, Event Espresso can make you a hero. This online event registration system can save your organization countless hours of administrative time, create a “green” and paperless event registration process, reduce costs and be available to take sign-ups 24/7. Everything from custom confirmation and reminder emails to payment management, and quite a bit more is all included and automatically handled for you.

The plugin even creates registration forms so attendees can sign up right on your website. Attendee information is also stored right in the WordPress database, allowing you to have access at any time. If you don’t have a PayPal or Authorize.net account, it’s okay. Event Espresso now offers alternate methods of accepting payments. Registrants can now download a PDF invoice or pay by Cash/Ckeck/Money Order, Bank Transfer, Authorize.net, and PayPal. There is even an option to pay by bank transfer!

Thanks Event Espresso. This is a great tool and we are sure to use it here at ABCey Events soon!

ABCey Events was super excited to be a part of the massive 3,000 person 2 day red carpet Tesla Model S Event that was held this past weekend in Fremont, CA at the former Toyota NUMMI plant & now Tesla factory. We were hired by the well known Los Angeles based Event Management company, Best Events to act as a local resource for production elements such as Staffing, Florals, DJ, etc. SF Local Favorite DJ Mancub spun some chill tunes for a record amount of time both Sat and Sun, and the crowd seemed to love him!

Saturday began with an investor event, followed by International Media, then VIP and the main Customer Event for those who have put a deposit down on this fancy electric vehicle. The car is to roll out next year as a 2013 model with prices at around $57,400. Tesla says the S will have a range of up to 300 miles, depending on which battery option the buyer chooses.  What’s more, the Model S is eligible for a $7,500 federal tax credit that helps bring the cost down to $49,900.

Those who have preordered the vehicle were able to take a tour of the company’s facilities and do a test drive in a prototype (although they weren’t allowed to drive it themselves)! Guests were also allowed to tour the factory to see how it is made and learn some details about the car’s features from Tesla CEO Elon Musk. drove onto the stage in a burgundy Model S. From the car emerged seven people: five in the front and back seats and two tow-headed boys from the rear-facing seats, all of whom seemed to be carrying large duffel bags and backpacks. As Musk began to talk to the crowd, a ninth person person, sprung from the front trunk, surprising the crowd, which roared with laughter. The obvious point, made well with the display, was that the Model S has tons of cargo room — even under the hood since there’s no engine there. Tesla later tweeted that front + trunk = “frunk” — which will likely catch on quickly.

The souped-up Tesla can reportedly accelerate to 60 mph from a standstill in 4.5 seconds, which is two-tenths of a second quicker than the 2011 Porsche 911 Carrera with a manual transmission. We must say, the event was a huge success and everything seemed to go off without a hitch.We love you Tesla!

If you would like to view the full album of our own personal pics from the event, please click here!

We’re hoping that we get to the point where Sean Parker, the Napster co-founder and Facebook founding president calls us as last minute to pull together an event that warrants over 300 facebook “likes.”  He was celebrating the arrival of his latest venture, Spotify, the European-based music-streaming service that launched in the United States earlier this year and quickly picked up more than 10 million subscribers. Stanlee Gatti was the lucky planner that was hired to produce this incredible last minute event. He says that his crew had to pull the whole thing together in less than two days. “I got the phone call at 12:08 a.m. on Monday night.”

The graffiti theme continued inside the warehouse where soaring Rye Bar cocktail stands and bars teemed with every top-shelf tipple imaginable. All the better to pair with the bounteous McCall Associates buffet stands groaning beneath sushi and lobster bars, spit-roasted suckling pigs, pounds of fresh-sliced proscuitto and Parker’s personal favorite, Mac & Cheese copiously sprinkled with just-shaved truffles, six pounds of the pungent tuber which McCall Executive Chefs Lucas Schoemaker and Josip Martinovic had flown in from France. Amid the exhuberant extravagence, a few whispers about a potential bubble burst wafted upward to the warehouse ceiling bumping into towering chandeliers. “This isn’t old school because the first tech boom was never this good,” observed one partygoer, with a joking aside. “This is about kings and artisans of the court. So it’s more like medieval school.”

Spotify allows users to easily play music and share it with their friends in real time via their Facebook profiles. The collective hope is that increased access and exposure to new music will result in a boost in sales for record companies and maybe an incentive to subscribe to the full-fledged versions of the services on offer.

“What we discovered is the product consumers were willing to pay for was convenience,” Parker said. “Solving the piracy problem can’t happen unless you build a service that will compete with it. The party drew many Silicon Valley and music industry luminaries, including the managers of Top-10 pop acts such as Eminem and Bruno Mars. Zuckerberg made a brief cameo in the pit during Snoop Dogg’s raucous, expletive-laced set while socialites, including author Danielle Steel and former Mayor Willie Brown, mingled with guests on the long white couches that lined the room. (Lady Gaga was rumored to be making an appearance, but that didn’t happen.)

For the entire SF gate article, read here.

I was really excited to learn that my highschool bud, Josh Brooks (previously the VP of Programming and Music at Myspace and Head of Content at Project Playlist) has just launched the project that he has spent the last year working on: Postcard On The Run. There’s been some great press on this, including a recent article in TechCrunch by Greg Kumparak and even our fav Pete Cashmore of Mashable is tweeting & posting about it; “Postcard on the Run lets you send mobile photos as instant postcard keepsakes.”

This is a fun and simple mobile app that does exactly what it says it does! The iPhone app will let you use your phone’s camera to create postcards that will be created and shipped out by the company, through the MAIL (yes, we said Mail). Along with your photos you take on the phone, you can also use existing Facebook photos to create postcards.

This is a quick, easy, and cheap way to free your photos from your phone’s digital photo library and get them into the mailboxes of your friends and family. They’re also launching as a platform to allow other developers to add photo printing/mailing to their own apps.  Postcard On The Run can be used anywhere there is cellular or Wifi coverage and orders will be en route within 24 hours. It is now available on iPhone and coming to Android.

Check out these cool features! (We particularly love the scratch and sniff one)

• GPS Stamping: Want to rub in the fact that you’re relaxing on the beach in Hawaii? You can add a small map graphic to the back of your postcard showing the location it was sent from, confirming that the toes in the water on the postcard are in fact your toes in the water.
• Postal Gopher: Seeing as no one really sends each other mail anymore, it’s probably pretty unlikely that you actually have all of your buddies addresses. POTR built a feature they call “Postal Gopher”, which can automatically e-mail or SMS the selected postcard recipient and request their address in your honor. Once it receives a reply, Postal Gopher automatically adds the address to your address book for safe keeping, slaps the details onto the back of your queued up postcard, and sends the card on its way.
• Coming Soon, they say: Scratch and Sniff (seriously!)

Postcard On The Run is also launching as a B2B service, with an SDK that allows third-party developers to integrate photo printing/shipping services as a means of optimization. They’re currently working out SDK partnerships on a case-by-case basis (even the revenue split is case-by-case; for some partners it’s 70/30, others it’s 50/50).

We’re most excited to set up a Postcard On the Run booth at our next big event. ABCey Events is always looking for new innovative technology to bring to our attendees, and we’re sure this will be a huge hit.

Gotta love their tagline too: Postcard on the Run….New Technology, Delivered the Old Fashioned Way.

Is Google+, also known as G+, Google Plus or Plus, really a competition for Facebook? As you already know, the major difference between the two is in the privacy settings. Facebook does allow you to create lists, but they’re incredibly time consuming and you can’t post directly to just those in a certain list (you can only view). Google+ allows you to manage the content as you post it through creating Circles of your networks. Also, there is that magic +1 button that apparently might influence the SEO presence of our posts. Today, for most of us Facebook has become a natural part of our every day communication process. G+ is great, but do we really need another social network to post to if we already have one, or two, maybe 5 that already serve this purpose? It really would be great to just have one platform for all of our online activities. Among tweeting, posting, blogging, sharing one can easily get confused. Personally, I am loving the Huddle video chat feature and have already conducted a few hour long business calls. Just make sure you take a shower first!

Does G+ have a chance of beating out Facebook? Should Facebook be even concerned? In any event, here at ABCey Events, we always look forward to changes and plan accordingly!