24th March 2009 is the first Ada Lovelace Day, where people are blogging about women in technology that they admire. The aim is to highlight female role models and encourage women to become leaders in technology.

Ada Lovelace (1815 – 1852) is often referred to as the world’s first computer programmer.The daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron, and the admired intellect, Annabella Milbanke, Ada Lovelace represented the meeting of two alternative worlds: the romanticism and art of her father versus the rationality and science of her mother. In her attempt to draw together these polar opposites and create a ‘poetical science’ during the Victorian age, Ada collaborated with the renowned mathematician and inventor, Charles Babbage.

Find out more about Ada Lovelace and her work on the Analytical Engine at the Science Museum website.

Today, I’d like to introduce another less-known of the “Women of Technology”, Hedy Lamarr for her work in the Invention of Spread Spectrum Technology.

Although better known for her Silver Screen exploits, Austrian actress Hedy Lamarr (born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler) also became a pioneer in the field of wireless communications following her emigration to the United States. The international beauty icon, along with co-inventor George Anthiel, developed a “Secret Communications System” to help combat the Nazis in World War II. By manipulating radio frequencies at irregular intervals between transmission and reception, the invention formed an unbreakable code to prevent classified messages from being intercepted by enemy personnel.

Lamarr and Anthiel received a patent in 1941, but the enormous significance of their invention was not realized until decades later. It was first implemented on naval ships during the Cuban Missile Crisis and subsequently emerged in numerous military applications. But most importantly, the “spread spectrum” technology that Lamarr helped to invent would galvanize the digital communications boom, forming the technical backbone that makes cellular phones, fax machines and other wireless operations possible.

As is the case with many of the famous women inventors, Lamarr received very little recognition of her innovative talent at the time, but recently she has been showered with praise for her groundbreaking invention. In 1997, she and George Anthiel were honored with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Pioneer Award. And later in the same year, Lamarr became the first female recipient of the BULBIE™ Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award, a prestigious lifetime accomplishment prize for inventors that is dubbed “The Oscar™ of Inventing.”

Proving she was much more than just another pretty face, Lamarr shattered stereotypes and earned a place among the 20th century’s most important women inventors. She truly was a visionary whose technological acumen was far ahead of its time.

Oreillynet.com had a great series of articles on “Women in Technology” two years ago that introduces many women leading the way in technology today along with some current discussion forums on this topic…sad to say there’s not much discussion going on there. Perhaps women are too busy “doing” to be “chatting”?

The idea for this post was brought up at PledgeBank, where 1550 bloggers pledged to write about women in technology for Ada Lovelace Day. If you don’t have a blog of your own but still want to participate, leave your post in the comments at Findingada.com.

~Update~ Lotsa great posts coming in for Ada Lovelace Day!

• Check out the full list here
• Check out the Hedy Lamarr list here
• Read the best Hedy Lamarr post here

Mikogo’s online meeting program is one cool tool I wouldn’t want left out of my toolbox!

What’s Mikogo???

Mikogo is a free desktop sharing tool that can be employed for a range of uses, including:

• Online meetings
• Product demos
• Web conferencing
• Online presentations

We’ve been using Mikogo here at the office for customer support issues that could be aided by seeing the client’s computer screen or by allowing the client to see ours…I can’t tell you how much time and frustration has been saved by using Mikogo for these matters. I’ve even used Mikogo to troubleshoot computer problems my college student daughter was having from afar, and I intend to use it soon to view files on my Mom’s computer directly so we can pare down the selection to just the essential files she needs to send to me for a project. This is a great tool with much potential for helping you in many aspects!

Mikogo is free and easy to use, and they just introduced a new feature that allows the ability to add Mikogo within your website content to make it more convenient to access than ever - no need to send peeps to another website to log in! Click on the button and the “Opening Mikogo.exe” window will appear followed by the Mikogo “Join Meeting” window.

Check out the handy buttons I’ve added below to start a Mikogo meeting - they offer three different buttons to choose from:

Let me know if you use Mikogo! Tell me how Mikogo helps you in your life

Valentine’s Day is right around the corner and Spring isn’t far behind - Love and Passion are in the air!Passion means having strong emotions for something or someone…and often your level of passion for a project or goal means the difference between failure and success.

One of my passions is muscle cars, and for Dave Ressler it’s Corvettes. Dave’s passion for Corvettes led him to possess the finest collection of Corvettes in existence and provided the foundation for his powerful drive in the world of business where he owned two fast-paced automotive dealerships. With such passion, Dave is driven by not only his mind, but also his heart…and there’s no better guarantee of enjoying life and gaining success!

Check out Dave Ressler - Corvette Collector Extraordinaire to see more pics and details on his fabulous collection of rare Corvettes.

Life’s too short to not do what you love…following your passions are sure to bring you ultimate happiness and potentially, a successful business too. Passion…What’s yours?

With the new year,  I’ve made a personal vow to improve my efforts in getting things done in a timely manner and to put more energy into making money outside my day job. Today I was introduced to two blog posts that do a great job in explaining motivation/procrastination and getting out of ruts.

First we have The Social Reformer, a blog written by Ruben Harris ( @redstarvip ) with a post titled “I’ll Give You A Million Dollars” which defines motivations and responses to better undertand why we procrastinate - with understanding comes the ability to change, yes?

Next I want to introduce you to Mywifequitherjob.com, a blog written by a couple  (@mywifequit ) who are entrepreneurs and run a successful eCommerce site. Their post today, titled “Are You Stuck In A Mental Rut With Your Small Business? Learn How We Got Out” goes into detail of the rut they found themselves in while building their business and how they got out of it.

Lastly, you may think it odd to see a pic/reference here to a roller derby queen, but this is a lady who is never stuck in a rut and really knows how to whip a problem - Katarina Whip:

I hope you’ll find both of these posts as inspiring and educational as I did! Please come back and let me know if they’ve helped you in any way