Image via HTC

Each morning when I wake up, the first thing I do is reach for my smartphone to read my email, look at Twitter and check out the front page of the Guardian. Never does a morning go by where I don’t do these things before breakfast, or really, even sitting up. The HTC Flyer may just replace the smart part of the smartphone as my morning companion, especially on a weekend morning, where this phase of my day lasts at least an hour.

Upon my first impression of the HTC Flyer, I was surprised by it’s weightiness, especially considering the screen is just 7 inches. I’d actually consider the slight weightiness for size a pro, as it is light enough to be incredibly portable, yet feel sturdy. It could be more sleek in design, but the screen is crisp and clear.

I can’t emphasise enough just how portable the Flyer is, although that feature is a bit lost on me. All this talk of being portable, the truth is there is one place that heavily outweighs the rest of the places the Flyer could be used. My bed. I have been able to carry it around everywhere with ease, but I prefer the Flyer with a cup of tea, curled up in bed, comfortably reading my favourite blogs and for pure enjoyment rather that a tool on the go.

If I did want to watch a film on it or more than my usual amount of YouTube videos of baby animals, I’d prefer a larger screen considering the Flyer is more like a roommate than a travelling companion. Unfortunately the speaker is in the back, and when my lazy morning self puts the Flyer down, the sound gets a bit muffled in my duvet. But for an improved web-browsing and life-organising experience, the Flyer could easily replace what I do on my smartphone or on my laptop while lounging around. The reader is also nice, and easier to use than my Kindle, but I am still so committed to the look of the Kindle ink, it’s lightness and all of Amazon’s features.

The Flyer really is a gadget for transition. For me it’s the transition of getting up in the morning and wondering what’s gone on in the world since I fell asleep, and relaxing before bed. Although it’s meant to do as the name implies, and fly around with you wherever you’re headed, I only used it upon landing.

It’s all quite surreal. Here I am in a swanky bar in a central Colchester retail park, rubbing shoulders with 30 local mums and waiting for uber Essex girl Denise Van Outen to make an appearance. Which she duly does, sporting a trademark cheeky grin to go with a personality that turns out to be even bigger and bubblier than can fit on your plasma.

She’s here as the face of the “On The Go” Mum roadshow for mobile network Three, whose innovative grass-roots approach aims to celebrate local mums and show them how to get the most from their phones.  Having formed a less than orderly queue, we finally cornered Denise for a chat about being a mum and the role of technology in her life.

How do you feel being a mum?

Exhausted!  Its physically and mentally very tiring.  I am constantly on the go and trying to juggle things.  Its not easy trying to work and keep a happy calm home.

What is the hardest part of being a mum?

Having to be so many different women.  I have to be a wife, mother, business woman, actress.

What is your Favourite Gadget?

My iPad. It’s a real life-saver with the kids.

What is the role of technology?

It makes everything so simple.  The key thing is to accept technology and embrace it.  The genie is out of the bottle.

Our research has shown women need more reassurance than men when it comes to technology. Why do you think that is?

Because women do not like making mistakes.  We often think that men are more technical but actually mums can benefit more from technology as mums tend to do most of the organisation in their house.

Which 3 pieces of advice would you give to a technology company wanting to connect with mums?

1. Keep your message simple
2. Stress doesn’t make people buy, so keep customers relaxed and talk to mums in an informal way
3. If stress doesn’t sell, smiles do, so get your sales staff to crack the occasional grin!

@belindaparmar is the founder of @ladygeektv.  Please join the Lady Geek’s campaign to end the stereotypes and cliches when talking to women  http://www.facebook.com/LadyGeekTV

(Image via Marta Manso)

In the film Mean Girls, Lindsay Lohan’s character Cady is a math whizz. She captures the attention of her math teacher and the high school math team the Mathletes, but the person she really wants to capture the attention of Aaron, the hunky guy that sits behind her in class. Cady decides he won’t be interested in her math interest, and she goes with her “instincts”. She dumbs down and asks him for some rather ill-advised math help. The result? She starts failing…

A recent study “Effects of Everyday Romantic Goal Pursuit on Women’s Attitudes Toward Math and Science” has uncovered that this has some scientific standing, and that women don’t pursue study and careers in science, math, engineering and technology (STEM) because, wait for it…they want boys to like them. *Head hits desk*

Actually, this isn’t quite what the research concludes, but it is how it is being interpreted.

The findings come from a series of studies that were undertaken to determine why women continue to be underrepresented at the highest levels of STEM.

The authors found converging support for the idea that when romantic goals are activated, either by environmental cues or personal choice, women—but not men—show less interest in STEM and more interest in “feminine” fields, such as the arts, languages and English.

“When the goal to be romantically desirable is activated, even by subtle situational cues, women report less interest in math and science. One reason why this might be is that pursuing intelligence goals in masculine fields, such as STEM, conflicts with pursuing romantic goals associated with traditional romantic scripts and gender norms.”

In part of the study participants viewed images related to romantic goals such as romantic restaurants, beach sunsets and candles or intelligence goals such as images of libraries, books and eyeglasses.

Are we really that simple? Candles equal romance. Books equal school. What if people were shown a mix of these images? What would happen then?

After exposure to the romantic, intelligence or friendship goal cues, participants completed questionnaires assessing their interest in STEM vs. other fields and their preference for various areas of academia. Results showed women—but not men—exposed to cues related to romantic goals reported less positive attitudes toward STEM and less preference for majoring in math or science fields compared to other disciplines. This did not occur when they were exposed to cues associated with intelligence goals.

But what if I want a romantic partner that is also intelligent?

Overall, the findings suggest women’s romantic goal strivings, triggered by environmental cues or by personal choice, have important implications for gender inequality in STEM.

My problem with the study isn’t really the findings, but how the study was designed. First of all, only 350 people were surveyed. Second, eyeglasses and books are categorised as a “smart” thing—people with glasses who can read, can also be romantic—and beach sunsets and candles are “romantic”. What does it mean to be romantically desirable anyway? Can one really classify romantic activities versus other activities so swiftly? Is that really what gets women going? Personally, I’ve had bad dates at romantic restaurants and great dates at the Imperial War Museum.

The way studies like these are designed aren’t going to benefit women. They are rooted in gender stereotypes and cultural constructions we should be looking to dismantle. What are the real reasons women are underrepresented in these fields? It isn’t because they are out scouting for boyfriends or because they are worried technology isn’t sexy (plus, it totally is). What is the industry and our education system doing to deter women from these fields? Where is the support?

There is a difference between what women want, and what is expected of them. The authors of this study should have tried to answer these questions without submitting to such stereotypes about women, romance and intelligence.

This article originally appeared on the Huffington Post.

Women play the games and use the gadgets to transform their lives, so why is the technology industry still marketing to them as if they slept with fuchsia-clad, faux-diamond-studded Barbie dolls tucked under their arms?

Women are smart, economically powerful and increasingly active in the way they look to technology to enhance their lives. This isn’t my opinion, it’s fact. Look at the figures: according to research we conducted with Forrester, over half of women attempting to make technological purchases walk out of shops (Source: Forrester Research 2010) because they simply can’t find what they are looking for. The missed opportunity here is calculated at £0.6 billion per year in the UK alone (Source: Forrester Research, 2010)

The more you look at women’s market share, the more baffling the industry’s approach becomes. Out of every 10 gadgets, four are bought by women, and we’re talking high-end consoles and digital cameras, not steam irons or hair curlers! Furthermore, in the 25-34 age bracket, women make up the lion’s share of all gamers at over 50% (Source: YouGov/Lady Geek Feb 2011). So the question remains, why is the industry still trying to palm them off with patronizing, dumbed-down products?

This question is particularly relevant given the lessons that ought to have been learnt from Dell’s disastrous Della website (a site that gave you recipe tips with email suggestions). After all, money always talks, and with such a cash cow waiting to be milked, millions must surely have been spent on expert consultants examining just what it is that “women really want.”

Sadly wherever the money’s been spent, it hasn’t made any marked impact on the products themselves, where stereotype continues to prevail. Take HTC’s new Bliss phone, with its calming wallpapers, calorie counter, shopping apps and irritating ‘charm indicator’ that flashes when you get a message. When this was being designed, someone really should have taken a step back and asked just who really wants a Barbie charm hanging off their phone.

Compare this to the eminently masculine stylings of the Motorola Droid 3 phone and its “it’s not a princess, it’s a robot” tagline, and you get the picture. Instead of marketing to women (and men) as the complex, informed and fundamentally varied customers they really are, the battle lines have been set out from a 1970s template, with Android “dudes” on one side, and glitz-fed bauble babes on the other.

To frame a complex issue in the simplest of terms, women want smart devices that enhance their lives. They don’t want to be bamboozled by jargon but nor do they respond favorably to being marketed to like pre-teens cooing at the latest Justin Bieber add-on. Frankly, the current approach smacks of marketing so lazy it needs its pulse checked.

To end on a bitter-sweet note, consider the iPhone PMS SOS Betty Crocker app, which sought to cure pre-menstrual tension through cocoa-laden product vouchers. What we are witnessing here is a marketing approach that is perilously hard to swallow, and that is a reality the industry is simply going to have to digest.

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As an American living in London, the riots and now looting that has spread over the past nights evoked comparisons to the Rodney King uprising. A glaring difference to the 1992 event’s media coverage is the role of social media. On Monday, Twitter saw the largest ever spike in UK traffic with 3.4 million visits.  Newspaper headlines scream “Nail the Twitter Rioters” and “Looters co-ordinate raids via Twitter and BlackBerry as messages of rage spread like wildfire”. How accurate are these claims, can we really blame social media as the fire behind the looters? Is technology facilitating violence?

There is no doubt social media is having a role mobilising violence and a portion of the community, and that BBM appears to be the medium of choice. Messages have included specifics like “Everyone in edmonton enfield wood green everywhere in north link up at enfield town station at 4 o clock sharp!” and the sensational, “if you see a fed… SHOOT”. This is troubling. But the power of social media has shed some light on London’s situation in ways that are inspiring. The idea that a simple hashtag or a Facebook page can build solidarity among thousands (or more) of people is the light at the end of this scary tunnel. Rather than see social media platforms as independent, each with their own function, this outpouring of community support for London has inundated a myriad of sites.

@Riotcleanup, a Twitter account to help mobilise efforts to clean up the destruction left behind, already has over 85,000 followers (and growing rapidly). Their tagline is “Clean up OUR communities”. A Tumblr called “Catch a Looter” has been set up to help identify those involved. Even the Metropolitan Police has set up “London Disorder – Operation Withern”, a Flickr account that posts pictures of looters. #Tweetalooter and #Catchalooter have become popular hashtags. #Riotwombles has also become a popular Twitter topic and aims to keep track of cleanup locations and how to get involved. The Facebook page “Post riot clean-up: let’s help London” has over 18,000 likes.

To call technology the fuel to the fire of violence in London is a dangerously sweeping claim. Social media and instant messaging have had multiple roles, but their force for good is not to be overlooked. London’s response to the riots exemplify the positive power of social networking.

The BlackBerry PlayBook’s tag line is “powerful”, “portable”, “PlayBook”. It is ⅔ of those things. Yes, it is powerful – it loads and surfs the web faster than my iPad. Yes, it is portable – half the size and weight of my iPad. But a “PlayBook” – it is not. This is a new product so understandably the App World is pretty bare, but the ‘top purchased app’ is “File browser” – a file organiser, and the ‘top free app’ is “Navita translator” – a translator for your emails… fun?

Given the flash capability of this tablet, the game choice is severely limited and does not make the most of the tablet. “Hangman” is the top downloaded game – again, fun?

Although this tablet is more ‘WorkBook’ than ‘PlayBook’ (at least with the current state of the App World), as a tablet it does have some really strong features.  It has amazing screen quality and front and back cameras (great for if / when there is a Skype app). It’s portable, easy to hold, easy to type on, and has Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint ‘to go’ – again more ‘WorkBook’ than ‘PlayBook’.

I would add ‘easy to use’ to that list – which it absolutely is – once you get the hang of it. But going from iPad to PlayBook with no idea how to use it meant when I first opened it up on the train I must have looked like I’d stolen it – turning,  searching for a menu button, and swiping all ways. Once I had got over the mental block of there being no menu button, I found the PlayBook to be very intuitive.

But the question is: who is BlackBerry targeting with this tablet? Historically, BlackBerry have always targeted teens and corporate users with their phones – and the target here seems to be the same. The BlackBerry Bridge feature allows BlackBerry handset owners to ‘bridge’ their phones with the tablet. This means users can sync and view their SMS, BBM, calander, contacts, e-mails and other data between the devices. Although this is a great feature (for BlackBerry owners), with corporates getting the benefits of synchronising information, faster browsing, and Microsoft Word, Powerpoint and Excel, other than improved Internet browsing, the Tablet does not offer teens anything new – just their BlackBerry’s on a bigger screen.

As much as we all want our 5 a day, most of us have to choose between a BlackBerry or an Apple. So which should you buy? All round the BlackBerry PlayBook to me seems superior to the iPad. It’s faster, more portable, nicer to hold, and looks better. However, I mostly use my iPad for apps and web browsing. So if the App World switched to the App Store (or came somewhere close), then I would be trading my Apple for a BlackBerry. And this may soon be the case, since rumour has it, the BlackBerry PlayBook will soon support Android Apps – which will make the App World – and BlackBerry PlayBook altogether more ‘mall’, and less ‘market stall’.

What do you use your tablet for? Is it a workbook or a playbook?

PlayBook from ￡399

All through school I thought of the ‘IT man’ as the guy who changes the ink in the school printers and keeps the stocks of paper replenished. Lessons seemed to involve a painful amount of dull work on Microsoft Word and Excel. Needless to say I got to know the ‘help’ paperclip very well, but was far from inspired into an IT career. It’s time that IT education broadened its horizons, and Helen Clough from IT Support Company Integral IT takes us through some of her ideas to boost female interest in an IT based career…

“Although the UK workforce is 47% female, the IT & Telecoms sector is home to only 17% women (IT & Telecoms Insights 2010). Not only that, but this figure was 22% a decade ago, highlighting a downward shift in the role women are playing in the IT industry.

The worrying thing is that girls consistently outperform boys in IT-related subjects at school, but very rarely continue their studies to pursue a career in IT. Much of this can be attributed to the fact the IT Industry is considered male dominated, geeky and overly complex, but what can be done to stem the tide and introduce a new lease of life to this female absent world?

IT Inspiration Clubs
The IT world influences so many of the things that fascinate the young female generation. The fact is that not a lot of these girls understand or are aware of the IT being key in making the fashion, design and music industry the successes that they all are today. If organisations teamed up with schools to bring to life the role IT plays within these areas it would almost certainly help portray a more exciting image than the current stereotype the industry is lumbered with.

Workshops with female IT professionals
Exclusive workshops and courses with women in IT-related jobs, who are passionate about what they do would help teenage girls get that much needed hands on IT experience. Speeches from female IT entrepreneurs and innovators would inspire them to think the same and generate their own ideas of what IT could do for the world. If you plant the seed, then sometimes it grows, which is no doubt true for encouraging young women to gain an interest in an IT career.

Enlighten and Educate Career Officers
This could be a vital cog in the machine for bringing more women into the world of IT. Traditional thinking combined with social stereotyping will rule out the prospect of career advisers opening up the idea of IT related job to female students. Maybe it’s a lack of understanding into the reach of a role in IT and where it can take you that opts them away from highlighting these possibilities? The fact is most schools and colleges do now use, whether in house or external, career advisers in the educational process – one of the crucial elements of the career decision making process for any student. I firmly believe this is a key area that needs developing to drive greater interest in IT.

Writing this post has made me even more aware that changes need to be made into the way the female audience perceives the IT industry. So much needs to be done to create a working environment which isn’t as drastically single sex orientated. A massive amount of government intervention is needed and organisations need to form closer relationships with schools to get the ideas and interest across from an early age.”

Helen Clough: www.integral-it.co.uk

What do you think could be done to encourage more women into an IT career? Please leave comments and suggestions below, we’re excited to hear what everyone else thinks could be done to change the tide!

Last week we held an event in partnership with JCPR for XBOX. As we all know mums are the CEO of the household and the gate keeper to the living room. Mums tend to decide what goes in the living room and what is used. So the question was: can XBOX could win the battle for the living room?

Showcasing new content due out for Christmas, we invited the most influential mums in the UK, including Justine Roberts Founder of Mumsnet, Liz Fraser Parenting Guru, Emma Jell Founder of Mashup and Ella Dolphin Publisher of Grazia.

Held at the Saatchi Gallery in London, the mums got a chance to ask Kudo Tsunoda (Creative Director for Kinect) questions on whether gaming can have a positive effect on family life, followed by testing out the new content, as well as getting a chance to speak with game developers.

This was about grass roots marketing and having an honest and open debate with mums, not just flattering clients with what they want to hear. The aim was to help XBOX win the battle of the living room.

“The XBOX media mums event was excellent – really good to get the opportunity to have a dialogue with the guys who actually develop the product.” Lucy Banks – Exec Creative Director at Bauer Group.

“The event hosting was flawless, the staff went above and beyond and the information was invaluable.” Laura Rigney – Founder of Mumpreneur UK.

Get in touch if you want help in engaging with and selling to influential women.

Belinda@ladygeek.com or Lucie@ladygeek.com