Inside the Mind of Suz

Revlon’s done it again!

Lately it seems like Revlon releases a new line of lipwear and I fall sucker for their commercial and decide to try it out. I’m still a lover of the longwear ColorStay Ultimate Liquid Lipstick product and wear it rather often, but the new ColorBurst line intrigued me.

Revlon said the feel was lighter, but still creamy/not drying, and the color was vibrant. I like that. I always wanted to like lipglosses, but I smush my lips together too often to commit solely to that type of lip product. Longwears and lipsticks seem to be where I gravitate.

I bought a tube before I even took a look at MakeupAlley’s reviews, and that never happens! Revlon made a “Plum” shade, so that’s the one I grabbed. Usually when lipcolor comes in Plum, it works well with my skintone, and Colorburst was no exception! I absolutely LOVED how it looked on my lips!

Now, I just put it on to see what it would look like. I didn’t test it with food, drink, daily wear or any of those factors I usually do, but I will. I was just very surprised on how great this lipstick looked and felt on my lips. There isn’t going to be an issue with smushing with this product! Kind of felt like I had chapstick on. Seriously! So, I tend to reapply chapstick a few times per day. Surely doing that with lipstick (that feels the same way) won’t be an inconvenience, right?

I recently purchased a lip brush because that is now I want to apply lipsticks from here on out. I actually have pretty full lips and don’t want to look like a crazy lady who can’t “color inside the lines”. It should be here within a week, then I’ll continue with more of my testing. I’m also looking into lipliners.

My only issue is that Revlon does not have this product on their website anywhere. Does anyone else think that’s odd? I want to see all the colors and info. Their website still says the ColorStay Ultimate Liquid Lipstick is “new”, which it’s not. THIS product is new. *gives Revlon the side eye*

I made the original draft of this post a week ago and since then, CVS has announced a Revlon BOGO. Perfect timing! Now if only it’d stop snowing long enough for the roads to clear and allow me to get to a CVS store…

It’s no secret that I am absolutely addicted to my iPhone. It pretty much owns me and I’m completely ok with that. Almost every day, I discover a new reason to be appreciative of the developers that gave us jailbreaking and the Cydia store. Seriously, if you haven’t jailbroken your iPhone, you are missing out on a crapload of cool features and apps.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I have entirely too many photo apps. There are so many that do so many neat things, and I can’t get enough! I’m constantly taking pictures with my iPhone and often I’ll reach for it before my cute little point and shoot. That never used to happen when I was a Sidekick owner.

The knock on smartphone cameras, in general, is that it takes a few seconds and maneuvers in order to start it up. By then, your “moment” may have passed. On an iPhone, you must exit the app you are using, find your camera app (or double-tap home button, if that’s your set up), and then wait an additional 3-4 seconds for the camera to be ready to capture your shot. Then, you have to go back to the app you were using and your progress/work/spot will be lost.

In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t a huge deal, but for camera whores like me it is. This is where new jailbreak app Snappy comes in!

With Snappy, you simply tap and hold your status bar for a second or so, and you’re ready to shoot! It doesn’t matter if you’re in another app or if your phone is locked. Snappy will instantly load and you are good to go! Its design mimics the native iPhone camera, so there isn’t anything new to learn there. Simple and fast camera shooting for $1.99.

Here’s a video that does a better job of explaining the awesome features of Snappy:

Count me as a fan!

I’ve been reading some reviews of Maybelline’s Color Sensational Lipcolor around the internet, so my interest was piqued a little. I hadn’t tried a new makeup product in a while, so I figured I’d give it a shot.

I’m not “all in” on this, and let me explain why.

First, the color selection leaves much to be desired for women of color. There’s a handy little Shade Finder, that includes shades for women with a darker skin tone as well as light and medium. And then it breaks it down further into Naturals, Pinks, Plums, and Reds. Sounds like a great setup, right? Not so much.

I took a look at the selections for Dark skin tones and picked out the ones I thought would compliment my skin tone. I’m not what I’d consider light-skinned. But I’m also not really dark. I’d say I’m a medium in the chocolate spectrum; think Gabrielle Union I picked out Plum Paradise (Plums) and Get Nutty (Naturals).

I tried Get Nutty because it was what looked like the darkest available Natural available. All it did was make my lips the exact same color as the rest of my face. It was really weird because it looked like it’d give me a little reddish tint. It did not. Disappointed. (more…)

I don’t know about the rest of the iPhone Nation, but I have a crapload of apps. And by crapload, I mean I have an unhealthy amount. I’m not sure the number, because I have so many of them tucked away in folders (Thanks, Categories app!)

But as one accumulates a large amount of data on their phone, backup takes forever! And iTunes has a default setting where once you connect your iPhone, it not only syncs, but also backs up everything. And that takes forever! I wanted to sync some new apps the other day, and I swear it ended up taking close to an hour! Well, maybe not, but it was like 3 times longer than usual.

I thought, “this is ridiculous! I must turn off this auto-backup!” It’s not like I’m never going to backup, but I want to be able to do it when I want to! If I just want to sync a couple of newly downloaded songs or apps, I don’t want to have to sit around for an eternity while my iPhone backs up.

I found a lot of ways to disable backup for Apple computers and a few for PCs. I would be required to edit the iTunesPrefs.xml file manually, which could lead to me messing something up.

So, I looked for another method and found one that worked well, and didn’t require much work on my end. I did backup the iTunesPrefs.xml file beforehand, just in case, but that wasn’t really necessary. This method, put together into a nifty little program by Mark Wagner.

It’s called QuickDisable and you can get it here. Remember, this particular file is for PC users. Don’t use this if you have a Mac, because it will either not work or will screw your iTunes up.

Next step for me is making an entry in one of my GTD apps that reminds me to make a weekly backup in iTunes. (I’d simply run the program again and enable auto-backups.) Because, with my luck, something unfortunate will happen and I’ll need a recent backup to fix everything! Actually, with the new iPhone 3.0 software coming, I definitely think an up-to-date backup is required after I re-jailbreak.

Last night, the new version of Twitterrific hit the app store. The reason I knew was that it was a top trend on Twitter right as I was heading to bed. That doomed me, of course, because I spent the next hour and a half playing with Twitterrific.

When I first got my iPhone and decided to get into Twitter, Twitterrific was the first app I downloaded. I thought it was ok. Nothing spectacular. It was free and did what it promised. But as I quickly grew addicted to Twitter, I started making other accounts to coincide with some of my other websites and blogs. At that point, Twitterrific didn’t support multiple accounts, so that was the end of my affair with the app. No hard feelings whatsoever.

My research led me to Twittelator Pro or Tweetie. After a few days of research, I purchased Tweetie and haven’t looked back…until last night! (more…)

I’ve gotten away from posting makeup reviews lately. I’m now making an effort to bring that back!

Makeup companies are all a bunch of copycats. If L’Oreal does something, then you know it’s only a matter of time before Maybelline, Revlon, Cover Girl et al follow suit.

Now, all the rage is longwear lipsticks. (Try saying that 5 times fast!) I’ve purchased products before that makes the claims that you’ll have color for 12 hours without application. You can even eat and the color will stay put. That’s what she said, right?

I came away rather impressed by L’Oreal’s Infallible Lipstick and Lipcolor products as well as Cover Girl’s Outlast Lipcolor. After those tests, I liked Outlast better. Then CG came out with the lipstains, which I absolutely love. I’ve been wearing those more often than lipsticks or lipcolors. But that will probably come to an end because those pencil-like tubes dryout waaaaaay too fast! It’s just not cost effective to buy one of these and have it dry out in a couple of weeks when I have lipsticks that I also like that I can continue to use for months. Work on this, Cover Girl! Your lipstains are great otherwise!

I’ve seen the commercials for the new Revlon Colorstay Ultimate Liquid Lipstick. A quick Google search gave me a few reviews that were quite favorable! MakeupAlley reviews are mixed. Judging from the description, it looks right up my alley, in terms of lipstick needs. So, I decided to give it a shot! (more…)

The other day, I said that I was going to take a look at the LinkShare Link Lookup WordPress plugin. I feel like it’d come in handy on the blogs I run for musicians since I’m part of the iTunes partner program. It’s such a hassle to have to log-in, find the song/album I’m looking for, copy (edit) the code, and place it in its corresponding blog.

This plugin will allow the blogger to click an icon on the post page that will bring up a pop-up that allows you to insert a link or code directly to your post or page. Here is a description:

Just click on the red arrows on the top right of the write posts page. This opens a side bar that lets you search the LinkShare databases for commission paying links in two different ways. The first lets you convert a URL from the advertiser’s site into a commission paying link. The second lets you search for items by keywords.

I’m going to try it out right now. Let’s see… I’m currently diggin’ the resurgance of Kelly Clarkson, so I’m going to try to look her up.

I tried method two, opting to choose a keyword for my search. First of all, I think only allowing one search term is ridiculous, and secondly, the results returned weren’t exactly Kelly songs. I got a bunch of results that were from A Tribute to Kelly Clarkson, as well as some karaoke singles. So, the only “real” Kelly result I found was her collaboration of “Because of You” with Reba McEntire on Reba’s 50 Greatest Hits album. I clicked the “add image” link and nothing happened. Same with the “add text” link. Nothing was inserted into this post. So, a big FAIL for that method.

The first option was to take a URL from the iTunes store and paste it into the sidebar. From there, you click a button that encrypts the link with your affiliate code so you can use it on your site. I looked up Kelly’s new album “All I Ever Wanted” and copied the Pre-Order link from iTunes. LinkShake Link Lookup did generate a link for me and here it is: Pre-Order Kelly Clarkson’s new album, All I Ever Wanted! It’s the Limited Edition Deluxe version, yo.

So, I guess the plugin only half works for me. The method that I really wanted to use, search and automatic placement into my post/page sucked. That was really disappointing. Being able to stay within my WordPress admin area while searching and placing LinkShare products into my posts would have been awesome.

However, it still is easier to do it this way rather than log-in to the LinkShare portal, IMO. Combine that with the Amazon Reloaded for WordPress plugin, and I can still get the product’s image rather easily. So, I think I’ll keep this plugin and hope they fix whatever reason the keyword search option doesn’t not work properly.