As the TechCrunch post says, if you aren’t using del.icio.us yet, this new Firefox extension they are reporting on should convert you. I have been using del.icio.us on and off for awhile. Recently I began to implement all of my bookmarks and links into it. Conveniently, this extension has come along that extends even further what I was doing and augments it by allowing tagged bookmarks to completely assimilate Firefox. Cool.
Bookmooch
Awhile back, Inside The Net had the creator of BookMooch on their podcast. I really enjoy using BookMooch. I have an account on there and also at PaperBackSwap. For the most part, both sites are wonderful and a good way to get rid of books I do not want. I have scored some weird and very interesting books via BookMooch. There are a few authors I always search for when I have a credit and I have been able to acquire some great books.
Newspaper Blackout Poems
Newspaper Blackout Poems is an interesting project that takes newspapers and cross out words to make a poem. Each week, the creator of this blog offers a challenge (this week’s is Nikola Tesla’s obituary) paper and posts the best user submissions.
This looks like a lot of fun. A lot of interesting games and constraints can come out of this project. I am reminded a lot of Regime Change, which is a program that remixes news articles.
The City Of Death
A new feature on my blog is Soup Saturday. While making my weekly soup, I watch a DVD from Netflix. This week I watched The Forth Doctor's adventure in The City Of Death.
Doing The Twit(ter)
You may have noticed that each day, or a few times a day, I have been updating my Twitter page. I have been trying to keep it to once or twice a day so people who visit this blog can see what I am up to that day without the self important, every twenty seconds, updates that the program is prone to I am sure. I love some other people’s updates because they are very interesting people.
O’Reilly Radar also reports that presidential candidate John Edwards is on Twitter. That is pretty cool. The linked blog post also has an interesting discussion of Edwards being on Twitter.
Jill Walker’s posts about Twitter have been very useful. Like Dr. Walker I am enjoying logging my day. Adding a Twitter update to my morning routine has been a useful way to ask myself "just what am I doing today?"
There are a variety of ways to tweet. SMS, the web, and other ways. I have been doing it via my profile. I hate text messaging. There is a Firefox plugin so users can tweet via their browser.
There are some other fun things people are doing with Twitter: Twittermap is a mashup of Twitter and Google Maps. I added myself to it, but I haven’t seen anyone nearby yet. Twittervision gives a live feed of tweets from around the world. Twitterific is a Mac only widget for your desktop. Someone needs to create one of those for Windows. Oh there is one. It doesn’t track your friends tweets though.
I think there is a lot that can be done with Twitter. I like the constraint created by having only 140 characters. A writing project I am working on right now involves short bursts of writing like that.
Perhaps I should release it via Twitter when it is finished?
Quick Fix Magazine: March 2007
For the March issue of Quick Fix, I took pictures of the band Pulling Teeth from Maryland for an interview my friend Justin contributed. You can download the complete issue or check out all of my pictures of Pulling Teeth.
Weekly Reader
A few weeks ago The New Yorker had an interesting article about Google’s book scanning project and the snags it is hitting because of lawsuits. Interestingly enough, right after I first typed this bullet point a BBC news article came up in my reader about Microsoft criticizing Google’s program.
The spring issue of The Quarterly Conversation is now online. Among the contributors this time are some of my favorite bloggers: Veronica Esposito from Conversational Reading, Derik Badman from MadInkBeard, and Dan Green from The Reading Experience.
A Jeanette Winterson manuscript was found on a train in England. By a fan hilariously enough.
If you have time in July, head to Wisconsin to check out the GLS conference.