So Halloween and Thanksgiving have come and gone, which means the holiday season is here! In celebration of Starbuck’s festive drinks, I give you a venti-sized Things I Love: Gift Giving edition.
1. Give the gift of random chotchkies. Etsyis an online marketplace for handmade art items, i.e. useless junk! Perfect for that annoying friend who won’t tell you what they want. The coolest part of this site are the creative viewing interfaces.The Time Machine lets you “travel through space and time” while browsing items. The Geolocator puts all Etsy sellers on a 3D globe. The showcase features best-selling items, in an interface where you can move the blocks around like a puzzle. It’s pretty awesome. Babushka dolls, anyone?
2. Give the gift of time. Internet resources for people who measure time by the second.
a) Tinyurl lets you shorten ridiculously gargantuan URL’s into manageable packets to send in emails.
b) Stinto lets you create disposable chat rooms for group discussion. Save friendships by avoiding the inevitable gchat vs. msn discussion.
c) Dodgit lets you avoid Internet spam by creating a fake “receive-only” Internet address for all of those pesky online registration forms.
d) Grand Central is a cool little program that gives you one special phone number that calls all your phones. It also gives you one voicemail box and has a handy visual voicemail function. Google recently bought the program, which is still in private beta. I signed up a while back, but still haven’t heard anything. Only US availability right now.
e) LifeHacker: The ultimate resource for people who shave time in five second increments.
3. Give the most generic gifts ever…in the least generic way possible:
Chocablog: All sorts of obscure and not-so-obscure chocolates described in tantalizing detail. They save you the calories by reviewing the chocolate. Warning: I had to physically restrain myself from running to A&P at 3AM after reading some of these descriptions. On a whim, I recently bought Lindt’s 99% cocoa (NOT CHOCOLATE), which comes with this funny disclaimer:
If you REALLY want to give a gift card, check out Charity Choice Gift Cards, which offer fully tax-refundable philanthropic gift cards. Or trade-in your Sears gift card for something a bit more useful at Leverage Card or Giftcardrescue both of which offer insurance policies against bankruptcy. Or if you really want to be a creative, give the gift of the Best Buy Gift Card with built-in speakers.
Over the weekend, I was fortunate enough to attend a conference in Toronto modeled after TED. The speaker’s were a diverse lot ranging from authors to internet entrepreneurs. Although it didn’t quite have the star power of a real TED conference, it still managed to have its moments. This week’s “Thing’s I love” edition is inspired by some of what I saw:
1. Bumptop: one of the coolest things I saw at the conference was a neat little program called Bumptop. Anand, the company founder, was a U of T Master’s student, who turned his thesis into an opportunity to revolutionize a space that hasn’t changed in long time- the computer desktop. Bumptop is an interactive 3D interface that gives you unprecedented control over your desktop. He showed us an updated version of his awesome program, which I am now beta-ing! This is a great example of where technology should be headed over the next few years- the program is innovative, intuitive and really functional (it mimics a real life desk space). Microsoft should be taking notes. Check out his TEDtalk here:
2. Urtak U2 feature: I know I’ve blogged about Urtak before, but this update deserves another mention. The U2 feature let’s you see how the answers to two questions relate. Now you can investigate all sorts of “useful” correlations! For example:93% of people who feel chocolate is a luxury spend five hours or more on the computer a day. Go crazy… but remember correlation doesn’t equal causation [post hoc ergo propter hoc]
3. Dragon’s Den: BBC Version One of the most interesting things about the weekend conference, was the opportunity to interact with and hear from a number of young entrepreneurs. I’ve always admired those with the gumption and commitment to start their own businesses. In fact, I hope to be among them someday. It’s pretty amazing what you can do with a great idea and a lot of drive.
So that leads me to my final “thing I love” : the television show Dragon’s Den. The show’s concept essentially sends aspiring entrepreneurs into the “den” to pitch ideas to the “dragons”- successful business magnates. The entrepreneurs hope to raise capital from one or more of the “dragons, who in addition to investing their own money also provide contacts, mentorship and advice to the young businesses. Although I could do without the cheesy music and some of unnecessary drama, the show is actually very compelling. Most of the ideas are horrible and it can be almost painful to watch some of these people embarrass themselves in front of the camera. But, every once and a while, there’s a brilliant idea that can start a bidding war among the dragons. The CBC version is pretty entertaining, but I’m a bit partial to the British version because the UK dragons seem to be willing to invest huge sums of money in ridiculously risky products. Plus, they almost always seem to fight each other. In good Canadian fashion, the CBC dragons are far more sensible- although probably harsher on the entrepreneurs. Check out both the UK and the CBC version.
