women

Sole female, minor coder wins hackathon with anti-spoiler app

As the father of a 5-year-old girl who adores all things princess but also digs stars and comets and mastered the user interface for both Android and iOS in about half a day, I'm always on the look out for Geek Grrl role models. So the new hero in my household is Jennie Lamere.

This 17-year-old grrl loves both reality television and hackathons and tapped into those two passions to win the grand prize at the TVnext hack event in Boston last month. Her brilliantly simple hack, first detailed on evolver.fm, is designed to prevent spoilers on Twitter while watching live TV.

Surely we've all shaken our fists in the air when a fellow "Walking Dead" or "Game of Thrones" fan in a different time zone tweets about the latest character to get eliminated while you're still popping popcorn and getting the couch ready for the evening's gore-fest.

Lamere's Google Chrome app, Twivo, allows users to block any tweets related to a certain keyword or words for a specified period of time, allowing you to keep up with the rest of the Twitterverse during commercial breaks without ruining the show you're watching.

… Read more

Girl Scouts to award badge for video game development

While camping, gardening, and public speaking are important to being a stand-up scout, the Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles has decided that video game development should also be included as a prestigious badge.

The Girl Scouts has teamed up with Women in Games International to create the new badge, according to GirlGamer. The aim is to get the scouts interested in engineering and software development. The badge will be part of the Girl Scout's STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) curriculum.

"Our ultimate goal is to create a STEM-aligned video game badge for the Girl Scouts of … Read more

The Sheryl Sandberg I Know

It was a sunny and warm afternoon in July when I dropped by Facebook's old headquarters on California street in Palo Alto, just two blocks from Stanford University. As the editor-at-large of Mashable, I was a frequent visitor of Facebook HQ, mostly for product launches and the occasional interview.

This visit was different, though. I wasn't there as a journalist looking for a story; I was there seeking advice from one of the people I respect most -- Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.

At the time, I was in talks to start and run the digital arm of a … Read more

Big shift in who's driving and what

For the first time more women in the U.S. have a driver's license than men. Its just one of the major shifts in modern driving.

According to the same University of Michigan study, the proportion of teens and young adults with license is down, especially for males. Men 25-29 showed a big 10.6% drop in license holdership in the 15 years up to 2010.

That leaves a greater share of women out there driving, and they tend to buy smaller cars that use less gas and they tend to have lower fatality rates on the road.

Another … Read more

The new PCs specially designed by women for women

It's odd how women are often lumped into one homogenous group.

You know, like men, wolves, or southerners.

We're supposed to believe that all women think alike, act alike, and, of course, emote alike.

Yet it's not as if women are generally seen to be using a different sort of PC from men. They tend to lug around the same equipment.

The vastly sensitive brains at Fujitsu have decided this prejudice must end. Which is why there is now the Floral Kiss.… Read more

Presidential debate memes: Binders of women, a job for Jeremy

In another example of what's fast becoming an American tradition of instant and amusing political-debate memes, a Web site called Binders Full of Women popped up before tonight's presidential face-off had even wrapped up.

The site surfaced following Mitt Romney's response to an audience member at the town hall-style debate who asked about gender inequality in the workplace. Romney said he had received "binders full of women" from colleagues while seeking to fill cabinet posts during his tenure as Massachusetts governor.

And thus, the Tumblr site Binders Full of Women was born. It features a fast-accumulating array of amusing images -- from pictures of binders with the word "women" on the cover to a photo of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton typing away on a BlackBerry with superimposed text reading "Romney still uses binders? LOL." … Read more

Celebrate Ada Lovelace Day

How to get women more involved in technology as a career is a conversation that we've been having lately at CNET.

We hosted a Women in Tech panel at CES in January, with (at the time) Google Vice President Marissa Mayer, Cisco CTO Padma Warrior, and Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr and successful entrepreneur. CNET editor Molly Wood wrote a column back in May about why we need to keep talking about women in tech. If you question why there's still a reason to keep focusing on this issue, all you have to do is read some of the comments on our site to see that sexism is still thriving. … Read more

Thank you, Marissa Mayer. Now don't mess this up

commentary I am going to make you uncomfortable. I'm going to make myself uncomfortable. I'm going to talk about the intersection of leadership, gender, motherhood, and personality. More specifically, I'd like to talk about Marissa Mayer, who is a new breed of woman in technology and business and -- as a pregnant CEO -- a role model of the highest order.

I've been lucky enough to meet Mayer, the newly appointed Yahoo CEO and hopeful savior, twice. The first time made a lasting impression. I had just been promoted to editor-in-chief of CNET Reviews, and I … Read more

The 404 1,088: Where we get the short end of the shtick (podcast)

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Jeff, unimpressed with last night's Macy's Fireworks display, left his own message in the sky.

- San Diego fireworks fail ends as quickly as it starts.

- Dear Interns: Think twice before tweet-talking your coworkers.

- Men are from Reddit, women are from Pinterest.

Bathroom break video: Anaheim from Daniel shows us how to output 404 shirts using an mPower garment printer!… Read more