Naming Matching - it's fun, go play. The names are based on the fact that a lot of design businesses use a color and an animal for their name.

Cell Phone - love or hate it

I was at Sparkeltopia Monday and she had posted an interesting article by Ben Stein for The New York Times on his perspective of cellphones, titled Connected, Yes, but Hermetically Sealed. Go read it, it's very well written and offers an interesting point of view.

I don't totally agree with his point of view. Ben's perspective is that we're now ball and chained to cell phones and that we don't think anymore and wouldn't the world be better with out them. He blames the cell phone for causing too much connection {the business employee always reachable} and for lack of connection {kids walking down the street texting but not talking}. I believe the cell has gotten a bad wrap. The problem is more far reaching then blaming an electronic device. It's more that most Americans* have lost the ability to set healthy boundaries of personal space. An employee can set the rules down that they're not available after hours, the person who wants to do an activity undisturbed has the ability to shut the phone off, the kid that texts will still turn to the friend beside them to talk about what another friend said.

The cell phone is a tool, how are you using it?
*i say America because i only know this culture

Have a different opinion?

Banner

I made the background for my new banner at this fun website: BG Patterns
You can make lots of color and pattern combos.

Sign Up Addict

I love signing up for new online programs plus i'm sucker for making lists. I don't use them all equally but at one point i have used it. If i run across several sites that offer similar services, i will go with the better design (visuals or layout/navigation). The hardest part is keeping all the passwords straight and which email address i registered with - i have yet to make this into a list for fear it will fall into the wrong hands and suddenly people can sign in and create lists of things i would never do... or just lock me out of my account.

Here is just off the top of my head places i'm at:

• Squirl.info - lets you record all your collections online - latest sign up
  
• GoodReads - Lets you list all things having to do with books
  
• Listography - Lets you list all things related to anything in your life - very simple site
  
• Flixster - Keeps track of all those movies i watch and lets me create lists to further categorize them (seen in theaters, rented, own, chick flicks...)
  
• Del.icio.us - lists links and organizes by tags that you can further organize into groups
  
• Flickr - organize your photos and now short movies
  
• Google Video - only because i can't get youtube to work with the screen name i want
  
• Blogger - list my thoughts
  
• Facebook - those little aps are addicting plus i'm staying in touch with old friends i had previously lost touch with.
  
• MindMeister - cool interactive way to create mind maps - start with one word/topic in the middle and branch out from there and then branch out from the second words...
  
• Spark People - online community for health and weight loss - i get their emails and occasionally sign in - it seems like a great site if i would use it

A few I know about but haven't used:

Remember The Milk - Easy way to keep track of all your tasks, to do lists, meetings...

43Things - similar to Listography, it lets you list anything but with a better design

All Consuming - like Squirl it lets you catalog lots of things but i think i prefer goodreads/flixster/squirl's layouts better.

Happy Exploring!

P.S. Thought I'd add things i'm avoiding:

Twitter - mostly because i already slack on keeping up with this blog and facebook, why do i need to sign up for something else i'd neglect?

Second Life - i think i'm only avoiding it at this point because i don't have the computer power to run the site. Marillaanne is quite involved with it and teases me with shots of what she's doing. The possibilities with it are huge but time consuming almost addicting some would say.