After months (and I mean months) of planning, the blog redesign for techipedia is finally live.

This wouldn’t have been possible if not for a few people, so I’d like to thank them for their awesome work.

First, thanks to designer Patrick Winfield of 10e20 for the excellent graphic design work. Pat was very patient, and as you can tell, he did an excellent job. Also, thanks to Chris Winfield for giving me a hand on this project.

Second, the backend coding, for the most part, was handled by web developer Cesar Serna, who also did a fantastic job.

Thank you so much for your hard work!

I know there will still be some tweaks that will be made in the upcoming days, but I’d love your feedback on the new design.

As I was traveling on my last of three conferences, Chris Kieff tagged me on the 4×4 meme that’s going around. The idea of this meme is somewhat like previous memes, but it’s four times full of fun. You’re given four questions and you need to provide four answers. Then, you need to top it off by tagging four people. Here goes…

4 Things I Have Done in the Past 4 Years

Clearly, the past four years have been the most enjoyable years of my life. Here’s why:

1. Just over three years ago, I got married to a wonderful guy named Brian.
2. I’ve traveled more than ever before. Brian and I celebrated our honeymoon in London. I went to the West Coast for the first time to attend search engine conferences, with trips to Seattle, San Jose (twice!), and Las Vegas.
3. I started writing for some of my favorite blogs in the industries and topics I’m most passionate about.
4. I started a blog about my schwag addiction (okay, this was just a fun tidbit I couldn’t pass up!)

4 Jobs I’ve Had

Awhile ago, I used Twitter to talk about one of my favorite cold remedy vitamins, Airborne. It was then that two friends suggested Zicam to me. When stocking up on medication for the winter months, the high recommendations of Zicam had me buying the oral mist.

On Sunday night, after a rather interesting Superbowl XLII, I felt the onset of a cold. As most of these cold medicines suggest, you should take the medicine at the first sign of illness. I immediately thought of my Zicam and was eager to try it out to kill the cold before it really gets bad.

Monday morning, to continue to fight off whatever this may be, I took the recommended dosage of Zicam a second time. I went on my day realizing that I had lost the sense of taste. I ate leftover nosh from the game: really spicy salsa and chips. The spiciness did not impact me. I had some Hershey Kisses. The chocolate taste was dull, as if almost not there.

How do you leverage different social networks? I am fascinated by the amount of social networks that I’m part of, but better yet, I’m intrigued to find that I assume different “personas,” at least in terms of choosing friends (and using the networks), on each social site. Are you the same?

Allow me to explain:

I first embraced social networking in the late 90s when I joined SixDegrees.com. I was pretty liberal when choosing my friends, but the social networking phenomenon didn’t take off and SixDegrees died. They had a great idea, though, and it finally became popular in the last few years.

First (Real) Stop: Friendster

In 2001, I took the plunge into Friendster, and as an early adopter, I befriended just about anyone I had some sort of association with and reciprocated every friend request. I have 148 total friends on Friendster at this time, and as you can tell from the chart below, a lot of them are “random” in the sense that I don’t have a clue who they really are.

I’ve been tagged against my will by Jane and Jason in one of the latest memes: do you respect media snackers?

Well first, what the heck is a media snacker? Watch this short video to see:

Here’s the transcript for the video-phobes:

Media Snackers. What’s it all about? Well, you see the world has changed and it’s not turning back. Media snackers are young people. No longer is there a set menu of mass media delivered at specific times and to the masses. Print, radio, [and] television is now “push the red button and go interactive,” “text in your request,” or “let us tell you a story.” The internet and technology ownership has changed everything: digital TV, mobile phones, iPods, weblogs, instant messaging, [and] social networking. The media landscape has shifted from the linear to one of many layers consumed by creative and empowered individuals. Young people of the new WWW generation snuck in whenever, wherever, and on whatever they like. Crucially, their expectations have changed. Everything is multi: multi-screens, multi-channeled, multi-conversations, and multitasking. Totally connected groups are average sharers, creating as much as they can consume and using free sites to display it all. Whereas before when computers were only found in banks and offices, media snackers have access at home, in school, or in libraries — all for free. Remember visiting arcade centers to play games? Media snackers play at home and against the world. How about taping your favorite tunes off the radio? Media snackers simply download them from the web and carry their whole music collection with them. Previously, to have a mobile phone, you needed a large bank account. Media snackers just have pockets. Media snackers are young people.