She’s had over 120 different careers!  Over the years, Barbie’s been many things, including a Doctor,  an Astronaut and a Race Car Driver – quite a bit more prolific than the average 7 -10 jobs a person is supposed to have over their career.

So what was the result of the vote? Quite excitingly (or maybe the result of a rigged popular vote?!), Barbie is going to be a Computer Engineer! Oh, and a News Anchor as well- the result of the Girls vote.

Much better than the Teen Talk Barbie of ’92, which was programmed to say “Math class is tough!”

I love that Computer Engineer Barbie (her 126th career!) is going to be kitted out with a smart phone, a laptop case and a Bluetooth earpiece and her t-shirt has binary code all over it.

Hopefully this will inspire more girls to study computers, engineering and start coding away!

The sunset at 1:11 and the view out of the airplane at 2:57 are really nice.

This music is like a lovely sunny afternoon. More from Washed Out here if you’re interested.

Lovely stuff.

Anyway, I saw lots and lots of interesting things on my trip.

1. Disused storefronts and buildings used as media space.

2. A really great Google Maps / local business partnership – spotted outside the Y3 store on W13th Street.

3. Obama cupcakes from Chelsea Market.

4. An amazing plea for a tip on the bill from Cafeteria in Chelsea – 18%!  The service barely constituted a standard 15% tip… just saying.

5. The incredible elevator (that people were lining up on the coldest day of the year to take) that only goes up and down one floor and the madness in the Apple Store below.

6.  The amazing New York Bomb Squad logo. I didn’t believe this was real when I first saw it, but a quick chat with some NYPD officers verified its authenticity.

Did you know that these panels are two stories high and are the equivalent to the length of half a football pitch?

5 minutes in and I’d already bought 3 books and signed up to an Amazon Prime free trial.

I’m suggestible, aren’t I?

Zip Car have released a truly awesome app and this, alongside this recent news means my resistance to the iPhone is slowly breaking down. Come one, developers, get developing! There’s a big Blackberry app market as well!

The boyfriend and I are big fans of Zip Car, having used their service here in the UK and back in Canada. Cheap membership, no annoying rental offices, local pick-up and drop-off – what’s not to like? And with this app, their service has been taken to the next level.

You can look for cars in your local area and then narrow down by class and by make.

Then once you choose which car’s for you, you can reserve it there and then. That’s right. No print outs, no trips to rental offices in the middle of nowhere.

You just hit ‘Yeah, Book It!’ and you’re good to go.

Then when you’re ready to pick up the car and drive off, hit the drive button and your iPhone turns into a key fob that even beeps like a horn!

Curry are doing it with their new Currysdigital concept stores, Comet are creating their own concept stores and HMV are starting to roll ‘experience’ focused outlets, with areas that people can test games, hang out and buy snacks.

In Tel Aviv, we went to a store / restaurant that without a doubt beats all of them, without even trying that hard.  Max Brenner, the self-described bald man, has opened up a chain of restaurant / stores across the world with the aim of creating ‘a new chocolate culture’. And he has definitely put his money where his mouth is. The story of the new chocolate culture is woven through every single aspect of the store and restaurant.

Starting with the very large and very wonderful menu.

The opening page of the menu tells Max’s very personal story of how he fell into the chocolate business; without any sugarcoating or spin. This was so different and unlike anything that I had ever seen on a menu and it really drew me in and made me want to find out more.

The menu is split into sections, with wonderful images and copy alongside.  It was such a feast for the eyes, that if I could have ordered the entire menu, without turning into the Stay Puft Marshmellow Woman, I would have.

When we ordered, our waitress told us about a contest they were running where people could submit their doodles on the existing logo to win a chance for their design to become the new logo. So we set about doodling on the handily provided napkins with a very competitive spirit!

One of the best parts was the attention to detail. Everything had a cute little quirk and something memorable about it.  The cups with a special hole for a straw design, the mirrors inside and outside the loos with nice messages, even the way they gave us the bill and our change. All great storytelling fodder.

And the food, you ask?  Well, the presentation was amazing and it tasted absolutely divine.

If you have the chance to go to a Max Brenner restaurant (if you’re in Israel, NYC, Philly, Oz or the Phillippines), I urge you to drop everything and go! Check the great website here.

We’re both really busy people (and slightly lazy) who rely on technology more and more to help life go a little smoother, so the BA Flights app helped enormously to check-in in London and again in Tel Aviv. We’re both massive fans of BA and would much rather pay a little more to get comfortable seats, great service and the lovely Terminal 5 experience.

If you fly BA regularly, then this is an app for you.

In Israel, the currency is the shekel and while we were away, the exchange rate fluctuated between 6.50 to 6.25 shekels to the pound. For some reason, currency conversion has always made me go a bit cross-eyed, so it was handy to get our hands on XE.com’s iPhone app. It’s very, very easy to use – all you do is choose your currencies and then plug in the amount in the relevant currency box, hit the enter arrow and presto changeo, you get the new amount in your currency of choice.

Of course, you could always use the calculator function on your iPhone, but that wouldn’t be as fun or have the most up to date exchange rates.

And last, but definitely not least was the brand spanking new Ocado app, which we used to make sure we had a grocery delivery on the day we arrived back from Tel Aviv. I’m already a massive Ocado fan (great customer service, fantastic & easy to use website, great deals and a very wide product selection), but this app has taken my Ocado advocacy into the stratosphere. You can use their ‘instant shop’ option and put everything you order most often into your basket, you can search for new products, things you’ve bought most recently or have a browse through Ocado’s recommendations to you.

Once you’re done shopping, you can view all your items in image or text format to check everything through and then go through and pick the most convenient delivery slot.

See them all here

Charlie walked into work this morning and I thought he’d picked up a smoking habit over the weekend – fancy foreign cigarettes, to boot. Thankfully, he hadn’t become a smoker, but was holding one of these little beauties that Tank Magazine produced after the smoking ban in 2007.

And they are really lovely and unexpected. Complete with foil wrapper and embossing, this is definitely one of the most interesting ways I’ve seen of getting folks to appreciate classic ‘breathtaking’ novels and fits in with my thinking about the power of authentic, tangible things in an increasingly ephemeral, digitally focused world.