Awesomesauce – First Chair Clothing

Midwest transplant, PorchDrinking.com supporter, and First Chair Clothing founder Carmen Mazzocco first set foot in Denver in 2007, and immediately took to the local sporting culture like a fish to water. She answered some questions for us about her company, herself, and (of course) her favorite beer:

Awesomesauce Double Helping- Cooking Comically and Thug Kitchen

While I LOVE most typical food blogs (really, what else is Pinterest for, besides clicking on a recipe and then falling down a rabbit hole in the internet and reading about every fatteningly delicious looking dish that blogger has ever made?) they can tend to get a little cookie cutter (“Hi, I’m Jennifer/Sally/Sandy, a stay-at-home mother of two ADORABLE munchkins, and I love to cook!”) That’s why I find both of the below food blogs so entertaining- they’re SO not in that mold.  (Fair warning, there is some, uh, *salty* language to follow…) Read More

Awesomesauce- Internet Comments

We’ve all been there- right before making dinner, you hop on your laptop to do a quick check of Facebook and your email, and six hours later you look up with a glazed expression on your face and absolutely no idea where the last quarter of your day went.  Read More

Awesomesauce- Songza

If you’re anything like me, your music listening habits are somewhat…unique…

Basically, there are very few times in my life when I have a particular song or artist in mind that I HAVE to listen to at that particular moment.  More often than not, what I want to listen to is based on vague feelings or snippets in time (which might explain why I have an iTunes playlist labeled “Cool Fall Days” and another labeled “High School Girls”.)  Read More

Awesomesauce- TodayIFoundOut.com

I have a reputation among my friends for being sort of a know-it-all.  It’s mostly random, useless knowledge which makes me a useful trivia partner, but it mostly just takes up a lot of extra brain cells that I could be using for, I don’t know, nuclear physics or something more helpful to the world at large (unless you count winning some free beer as being helpful to the world at large.) Read More

Awesomesauce- Lifehacker

It’s time.  I need to tell you my biggest secret. I’m in love, I’m in love and I don’t care who knows it! … with Lifehacker. Why, you ask?  I thought you never would … Read More

The Pronunciation Wars- GIF

In case you hadn’t heard, the longstanding debate regarding the notoriously tricky pronunciation of “GIF” has been settled once and for all. Read More

Awesomesauce- #myfriendsaremarried

Being the old, married person that I am, my newest Tumblr obsession may seem a bit odd to you, but bear with me.  We are all familiar with the standard GIF Tumblr layout by now, I’m sure (if for some reason you aren’t, go check out this one and this one right now.  We’ll wait until you get back…) Basically, the author gives a scenario, and then presents the reader with a GIF that mirrors their reaction to the situation.  For example, this, this and this. Read More

Instagram, the Sellout?

Many people mourned the day that Facebook bought Instagram for a whopping 1 billion dollars (to be read in a Dr. Evil voice) a little over a year ago. They saw the sale as the beginning of the end for the independent app, and luckily their fears have been largely unfounded to date. True to his word, Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t changed much about the service in the intervening 12 or so months. That being said, the first signs of Facebook interference…um…influence are beginning to show.  Read More

Awesomesauce- Fab.com

As a long-time lover of the MOMA design store for their beautiful, useful gadgets, I was surprisingly hesitant to give Fab.com a chance.  Both retailers are known for their amazingly (and sometimes famously) designed products, but that is where the similarities end.

Boasting Ashton Kutcher as one of their early investors and a slogan of “Smile, you’re designed to”, Fab.com is like a lot of other flash sale sites; they feature a select group of products at discounted prices for short periods of time.  What sets it apart from a site like Gilt.com, however, is its variety of products.  While Gilt focuses on luxury and designer goods (that, honestly, I can’t afford, even when they are discounted), Fab focuses on the quirky, the modern, the simple and the useful.  Read More

The Rise of the Phablet (Or, How We’re All Turning Into Kim Kardashian)

Brace yourselves, ladies and gentlemen – it’s here.

The hybrid phone/tablet combo that several different handset manufacturers have been threatening to produce has finally arrived.  Samsung released their Galaxy Mega this week, and it sports an absolutely massive 6.3-inch display.
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Awesomesauce- Letters of Note

My brother and I were lamenting the other day that people just don’t write like they used to.  Specifically, we were comparing letters from the battlefield or from across an ocean to the tweets and text messages of today. When the two are juxtaposed, the everyday ramblings of an 18^th century average Joe or Jane seem almost poetic in comparison to 140 characters on a screen.
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Can Amazon Actually Get Any Bigger?

Amazon.com, the world’s largest online retailer, just acquired Goodreads, the social networking site devoted to…wait for it…good reads.   No really, Goodreads is a forum for book lovers (we’re still around, you know.)  The site allows users to read and post book reviews, keep a digital bookshelf of what they’ve read or intend to read, find book clubs around town, etc.

But, what does this acquisition mean for the average book lover?  Read More

Awesomsauce- AIM

Ever wished you could just chat with someone via Skype, instead of feeling obligated to video chat?  Sick of FaceTime? Tired of texting your friends?  We’ve got the answer for you!

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Awesomesauce- TeeFury

While t-shirt websites like Threadless or Society6  are awesome for their incredible designs, fantastic selection, and amazing tees (seriously, they’re really soft) I find them lacking in a few key areas.

1. Their tee selections just aren’t nerdy enough.
2. I have to wait for a good sale to buy a tee- I can’t bring myself to spend almost 50 bucks on a hoodie or twenty bucks for a tee (OK, unless it’s an Homage tee…Homage tees are my Kryptonite.)

Enter TeeFury, stage right. Read More

Pope, or Nope?

In an increasingly connected and digitally literate world, some things remain old-school.  Which is part of the reason that ABC, NBC, CNN, the BBC, and seemingly EVERY news outlet ever was obsessed by conclave this week.  Read More

Awesomsauce- BrainPickings.org

Classified as “a human –powered discovery engine for interestingness” BrainPickings.org brings you “the things you didn’t know you were interested in- until you are.”   Maria Popova, a self-titled “interestingness hunter-gather and curious mind-at-large” curates the site full of intelligent and insightful articles.  While the content can be a bit highbrow at times (she is an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow, after all,) the site provides a welcome change to the usual “10 people on Facebook you should Defriend” articles and pictures of cats that you usually find Stumbling around the internet.
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Mayer’s Sheen Wears Off

When she was first hired as Yahoo’s CEO in July of 2012, Marissa Mayer was seen as a role model for modern working women.  She was the first female engineer at Google.  While pregnant, she was hired as CEO at Yahoo and took on the huge task of overhauling and revitalizing the dying tech giant. She reportedly only took a few weeks of maternity leave, and worked through most of it.  She also had more money than most of us would know what to do with, and a pretty darn good looking spouse to boot.  Many women viewed her as the anti-Anne-Marie Slaughter; the rare woman who was able to manage a new baby, a home life, and an amazingly demanding and rewarding  job.  Read More

Awesomesauce- Flipboard

If you’re like me, you have a bit of social media overload.  Between checking my Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram feeds, AND making sure I’m caught up on my Google Reader, I can’t keep up with everything that’s going on.  That all changed when I discovered Flipboard.  Read More

Awesomesauce- Uncommon Goods

If you’ve never heard of Uncommon Goods, you’ve been missing out.  The sustainable and eco-friendly purveyor of awesome stuff has been around since 1999 (that’s the same year this song was released, for some perspective.)  They feature awesome handmade, specialty, and sustainable gifts for almost anyone you can imagine. Read More