Today’s “Cool Stuff” edition is a bit different: CharityBox is something I’ve been working on for the past 2 months! I think it’s a great idea (although I might be a bit biased) and wanted to share it with you all.

CharityBox is a browser extension that allows you to raise money for charities by shopping online. Links to online shops are automatically turned into affiliate links and if you buy something from that shop a percentage goes to charity. Beyond that though the extension also shows voucher codes giving you discounts and special offers.

It’s currently available in Chrome and Firefox, so try it out and let us know what you think! We’re working hard to get a Safari one up and running, plus we’re constantly adding new features. For now, we’ve chosen one charity to which all the raised money goes to (this month it’s Dogs Trust), but we’ll be adding the ability for you to choose your own charities soon. We’ll also be adding a more social element to it all where you can see how much your friends have raised and for which charities.

If this all sounds slightly familiar, you’re right: I’ve written about CharityBox before. Two years ago we won the second CharityHack with this idea and got flown over to San Francisco. Back then we couldn’t find the time to take the idea further and create a stable version. Well, now we finally have!

Do you like the idea of CharityBox? Go ahead: install it, try it, tweet about it and raise money for charities!

So yesterday I attended the BAFTAs… and it was amazing, surreal and pretty much an evening I won’t forget. I’m still getting all my thoughts together for the actual blog post and will need to take some proper photos of the goodies I collected.

One of the other bloggers that was also invited (Alex from Alex Loves – check out her blog!) shared this funny video this morning that I know you all will love:

Yeah, Anne is pretty much a shoe-in for Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars. But then I think she wholly deserves it. Her performance of I Dreamed A Dream is breathtaking; I get chills each time I see it.

Yay, the BAFTAs are tonight! And I’ll be there live tweeting the entire thing. For the past week I’ve been looking at evening gowns and looks, trying to prepare for tonight. I’m super happy with the dress I got (see it here); it’s so pretty and flowey!

It doesn’t stop me though from dreaming about designer dresses: if I had an unlimited budget, what dress would I get? I found these 6 dresses from Valentino, Reem Acra and Ellie Saab, which all look awesome. I’d so love to wear any one of these. My favourite one is the red Valentino, followed by the light purple Reem Acra. Which one would you wear?

Valentino

Reem Acra

Ellie Saab

I’m curious to see if any of the celebrities choose “my” dresses… they are all so gorgeous and I can come up with a number of actors that will look awesome in them!

Season 3 is coming… It’s only 2 more months until Game of Thrones returns! Weirdly enough they still haven’t released a proper trailer yet, but one is scheduled for February 24th (sort of, HBO On Demand will have the trailer on the 25th, meaning it will have debuted online at least a day before that). I’m surprised that HBO are leaving it to only a few weeks before the actual air date; it’s one of their most popular shows, wouldn’t they want to promote that a bit more? Or do they have so much faith in it that it doesn’t require any marketing?

While we’re waiting, why not enjoy these cool necklace inspired by the Game of Thrones houses? They’re from etsy store The Scottish Girl Shop and are £13.89 each. My favourite is obviously the Stark one with their Winter Is Coming motto.

Which one is your favourite?

Skyfall was one of my favourite movies of last year. It had fun action sequences, an awesome villain and a great story. Plus I just love Daniel Craig as Bond. I wouldn’t be surprised if Skyfall wins Outstanding British Film at the BAFTAs. I’m also rooting for it to win Best Cinematography at the Oscars, cause I loved how it was shot.

Thanks to Appliances Online I’m giving away two Blu-ray copies of Skyfall! To enter the competition leave a comment behind answering:

if you could create your own movie, what would it be about?

Be creative, be original, be fun! The winner with the “best” answer will win one of the two copies. The other one will be drawn at random. You’ll also get a second entry if you’re following me on Twitter and tweet about this giveaway with the hashtag #missgeeky. The competition is only open for UK residents and will end on Friday 15th 15:00.

I’m still super nervous and stressed excited and happy that I’m going to the BAFTAs! It’s my first black tie event though, so there wasn’t anything in my wardrobe that seemed suitable for it. Solution: shopping trip! After trying on a ton of dresses and asking Twitter followers for their opinion, I finally found this awesome purple dress from Coast:

I love it! The top part looks so elegant and fits perfectly, while the skirt has three layers and is just beautiful, soft and flowy. And the purple colour makes it stand out!

The only thing I’m a bit worried about is the length; I’m already wearing high heels in that photo and I’m scared it might be dragging a bit too much on the floor. I don’t have time though to get it altered, so I guess I’ll just have to live with it and have my fingers crossed that I don’t blunder, trip and make a fool of myself.

Here’s how the dress looks on a proper model (see how long the dress is in that photo?):

Despite the length, I’m so happy I found this dress. I’ve got a pair of champagne coloured heels and a champagne coloured clutch that I think wil go nicely with it. Now I still need to decide on jewellery, hair and makeup. I think I have a couple of necklaces that could work with that neckline, otherwise I’ve got a pair of shiny earrings. My hair is thick and sleek and usually tricky to work with, so I think I need to wear it down. For makeup I think a champagne/purple smokey eye might work and a my-lips-but-better lipstick…

What do you think of the dress? Any tips or suggestions for hair and makeup?

This sound like fun! Alchemy, magic and gargoyles…

Here’s the description from Amazon:

Alexandra Belarus is a struggling artist living in New York City, even though her family is rich in real estate, including a towering Gothic Gramercy Park building built by her great-great-grandfather. But the truth of her bloodline is revealed when she is attacked on the street and saved by an inhumanly powerful winged figure. A figure who knows the Belarus name…

Lexi’s great-great-grandfather was a Spellmason – an artisan who could work magic on stone. But in his day, dark forces conspired against him and his, so he left a spell of protection on his family. Now that Lexi is in danger, the spell has awoken her ancestor’s most trusted and fearsome creation: a gargoyle named Stanis. Lexi and Stanis are equally surprised to find themselves bound to each other. But as they learn to work together, they realize that only united can they save the city they both love…

Alchemystic by Anton Strout is £4.99 on Amazon.co.uk and $7.99 on Amazon.com.

• Engineering the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony: It’s interesting to see a behind-the-scenes of the tech used during the opening ceremony.
• Mercator Puzzle: Simple browser game where you need to drag and drop the countries to their right spot.
• The Jane Austen Word List: Historical fiction author Mary Robinette Kowal wanted to get her vocabulary for the “Jane Austen” era right, so you created a spellcheck dictionary based on all the works of Jane Austen.
• Why I Play Violent Video Games: Interesting post by Maddy Myers about how she got into games. I came across the post through the awesome image “Gamer Girl” featured below.

• Presenting the Tron Basketball Court: My future mansion needs one of these. It’s a Tron-esque glass floor with embedded lighting elements. It looks awesome.
• The Panasonic Toughpad Press Conference: A hungover not-a-tech-journalist covers a tech press conference.
• The Cabin In The Woods Title Sequence: Interview with director Drew Goddard and main title designers Jarik van Sluijs and Pamela B. Green. There’s so much detail in this title sequence and it’s great hearing about how it evolved.
• Catcase: Is it bad that I want one of these? It’s a bookcase with internal cat shelves:

• 50 Amazing Photos from Cat Heaven Island: Continuing with cats, these photos are adorable.
• Birds on Twitter: Cool project where someone hooked up an old keyboard-turned-birdfeeder to a twitter account.
• A Pickpocket’s Tale: The spectacular thefts of Apollo Robbins.
• PokeNoir: I so want this to continue.

If you’re following me on Twitter, you might be swamped by my tweets about this by now, but: I’m going to the BAFTAs! I’m getting tickets to the red carpet, the awards ceremony and the dinner afterwards. I’m super excited and still a little bit in a state of disbelief. I’m hoping I can tweet on the night itself (fingers crossed that the Royal Opera House will have good reception), but I’ll definitely be writing up a blog post about the night!

Each year BAFTA selects an illustrator to create imagery based on the five Best Film nominations for the tickets, programs and menus on the night. This year they’ve been designed by Jonathan Burton from Handsome Frank and the posters look awesome. Each of the film posters has a limited run of 100 editions for £60 (plus P&P) in the Handsome Frank shop. They don’t seem to be sold out yet, so if you really love one of these posters now’s the time to get it!

I can’t wait to see which of these will be on my program! My favourite is the Argo one, even though that wasn’t my favourite film. Which one is your favourite?

Via FirstShowing

This marketing campaign from Lego is awesome. To celebrate Lego’s 55 year anniversary Montreal-based creative agency Brad has created 55 illustrations using Lego to represent movies, songs, books and more.

Geek In Heels has featured all 55 of them and I can recommend having a look and see how many you can figure out. Here are my six favourite ones:

Via Geek In Heels