The minute I meet Eileen I like her.  Eileen Gittins, CEO of Blurb Books is warm, direct and funny.  She is one of those women who you know would give you a straight answer if you asked her a direct question.  I want to know more about her story. How did she get from being ‘an artist at heart’ to one of the most successful female entrepreneurs in San Francisco generating $45million in revenue in 2009 and shipping 1.2 million books to more than 60 countries?

And how did she manage to get VC funding of over $1million when just 5.7 per cent out of a total of more than $20 billion of VC funding in North America goes to companies with female bosses?  What is about Eileen that makes her just successful?

I ask Eileen about how she started the business.  She talks about the ‘kitchen cabinets’ she held, where she would group her friends and share her ideas.  The more people she told about her business, the more she became confident in her ideas.  This openness and exchange of ideas is something she says is fundamental to Blurb Books today.

The thing that most struck me is when I ask her about whether it was a struggle getting funding she looks perplexed.  Its almost as if it never entered her mind that her gender would be an issue despite the facts showing how difficult women can find it. She laugh and tells me;

‘VC’s don’t care if you are a horse, as long as they can make money from you.’

Eileen is not intimidated by being in a room of men ‘thinking they know best.’  She knows she knows best.  She learnt two valuable lessons in getting VC funding.  The first was be crystal clear about what you do.  You can’t expect anyone to invest in you if they don’t understand what you do.  The second lesson was to have a big vision.  Blurb’s vision is to democratise publishing and give everyone in the world a voice- far more impressive than trying to ‘encourage people to self publish.’ This is already becoming a reality with Blurb for Good which allows philanthropists and nonprofits to create and use books as a mean to generate awareness for social causes.

I can’t help feeling that there is an even bigger lesson to learn from Eileen.  One we don’t speak about in our interview.   A lesson every woman should adhere to.  The art of being fearless.  Not caring about or even noticing we are pitching our business to men or women.  Not caring if we get rejected.  Not needing to be reassured at every level. Culturally women, are still taught to be ‘obedient’ and the word ‘ambition’ is still used in a derogatory way when associated with women.  Eileen turns these outdated notions upside down.

Ask forgiveness not permission.  The most useful lesson to each and every female entrepreneur.

Cross-posted from Girly Geekdom

The ads for the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini could not have been more tempting. Elegant model fingers slickly trip-trip-tripping on the highly touch sensitive screen had me drooling from the get-go. Cradled perfectly in the palm of my hand with a screen size smaller than an average credit card, the Xperia X10 mini is beautiful, responsive and sharp. Looking at the Xperia-exclusive Timescape social networking feature and a beautiful camera -

this tiny and probably highly lose-able phone was practically begging tocome with me to Glastonbury.

The phone helpfully came with a micro USB charger, 5 colourful snap-on backs and a 2 GB micro-SD card. Me, the X10 Mini and my untested sleeping bag were ready to go.

Superfast internet, a responsive touch screen, a powerful processor and the killer Google Android operating system powerthe social mind-meld that it is the Xperia-exclusive Timescape

.Timescape mashes missed calls, texts, multimedia mess

ages and Facebook and Twitter updates into a one-stop shop for social networking on a home screen. Responsive, reliable and beautiful, it was a pleasure to use and a great way to check in with Twitter, Facebook and messages quickly.

The sharp 5 megapixel camera took beautiful pictures during the day and night. Even when crushed by revellers at 10 pm and battling with strobe lighting and the surging excitement of an energetic crowd, the pictures of Muse performing on the Pyramid stage came out perfectly. So well, in fact, that other festival-goers commented on their sharpness as I took them. Each photo could be easily and instantly uploaded to YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, sent as an email or MMS, which had my friend in a fit of jealousy.

The fast processor and Android operating system does come with a drawback – the battery drained faster than a kitchen sink. This problem culminated in the X10 mini dying twice in one day leaving a very lost me frantically handing over the device to the lovely phone charging guys by the dance tents for an emergency 1 hour charge. Oops! I spent a lot of time in Orange Chill n Charge tent over the festival. On the plus side, I did get to see Ellie Goulding play an acoustic set in the tent. Unfortunately, I could not take a photo as… my phone was charging. A little investigation on return home revealed that the X10 Mini constantly scans for network so, if you are in a low network area or a particularly busy area (for example, Glastonbury!), the X10 Mini’s battery will get sucked up just finding a network. Recommendation – switch the phone to airplane mode when confronted with this problem.

Overall, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini is a very impressive small smartphone, especially in comparison to the unresponsive HTC Tattoo. With the slick Timescape giving the phone a social networking edge, its £200 price tag, great processor and the Android operating system gives this impressive smartphone a great edge.

The Pyramid Arena at Glastonbury 2010. Taken using the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini.

Oh – is that a woman speaking in the new PC World ads? Yes, that’s right, it is! Hooray a woman? Oh wait. Oh. Oh no.

Do you see the difference? The boy uses his computer to do stuff. The woman acquired it because she just cannot resist acquiring stuff when she’s shopping for fun because, you know, women like to shop. Even better when she can buy more shoes, right?

Believe it or not, and I suspect PC World doesn’t, I use my computer to do stuff. In fact, I am writing this piece on my laptop. I am also streaming music from Spotify, I have (one, two, three, four…) 9 tabs open in a Safari browser and another 3 open in Chrome (I am an equal opportunities geek). iTunes, Tweetdeck, Adobe, a mail client, a photo editor, MS Office AND iWork are all open right now and running smoothly(ish). All pretty useful, all pretty convincing. So maybe it would be nice to know if the proposed Samsung netbook can, for example, connect to the internet instantly or run concurrent browsers. PC World could show the kind of media the Samsung netbook does support or enhance. PC World Dolly Bird, on the other hadn, does not care but aren’t her shoes awesome?

Women are diverse and have competing needs and there is definitely a market for accessible technology, especially where you are not a power user. HOWEVER, PC World then follows up the Bargain ad with this little gem:

You’ll never guess what? Girls like to drink lattes and go to nightclubs! Wicked, innit? Also, this netbook is cheap. So is this all-in-one printer/scanner/photocopier/blackmail machine. PC World had a second chance to get this right and failed. Failed.

It is simply not enough to keep projecting female stereotypes in the hope this strategy attracts women and their purses. Women are as diverse, as disparate and individual, as men. PC World needs to talk to women like they are humans, not caricatures straight from a dumbed-down version of Legally Blonde.

The ads also disturbingly depict technology and, therefore, their products as a boring diversion, cruelly siphoning off money from the really fun things, like shoes and cocktails. I’m going to put my hand up here and say that many women find technology fun – it enhances their life and provides a constant source of entertainment. Make the product more appealing for women – sell the product, sell technology, sell a lifestyle, not the other things your customers can buy from other places.

Having discussed women and gaming a couple of weeks ago, you can imagine how pleased we were to find out Wednesday’s announcement that OnLive will finally go live on 17 June.

Having had 11 months to refine a marketing strategy to appeal to the widest possible market, OnLive produced a product that got so much right and falls down at the last possible hurdles. The subscription fee model that will appeal to a broad range of consumers (read: women, too)? Check. The ability to work on both Macs and PCs without additional hardware requirements? Check. A microconsole to stream video games direct to a TV? Check! A fast, streamlined, informative website? Check, check, check. Check.

Now let’s look at the games – oh, dear. So close! The “featured games” on the website include Assassins Creed 2, Metro 2033 and the upcoming Prince of Persia.  Every single one of the games listed is graphically violent, arguably not the way to appeal to many female gamers.  By contrast, the most popular games for the Wii console (the most popular games console with women) are of the Super Mario Brothers/Mario Kart variety and multi-player sports games.  Two exceptions – the hugely successful Call of Duty and Lego Star Wars, my personal favourite, which involves shattering Lego walls, Lego objects and Lego storm troopers – no blood involved.

Given this evidence, the available games choices for OnLive needs to be rapidly re-examined to attract women gamers. Ignoring the huge female gaming market is a perilous tactic for OnLive, which gets so many other aspects right.  Making sure female gamers are catered to could turn OnLive from a quirky, interesting gaming footnote to a superstar player.