Using Springpad to Organize Your Life
November 7, 2009 by Jason Bean
Filed under Freebies, How To, Kids & Family, Reference, Shopping, Software & Online Apps
I just heard about a new online tool recently called Springpad. It allows you to quickly organize and share a variety of bits and pieces of information that you collect throughout the day that are important to you and put them into defined structure and places.
The other benefit of Springpad is that it harnesses the power of the social networking world and allows you to interact with and share your collections of data with those that are important to you too.
I would say the power of Springpad doesn’t rely in it’s ability to collect your information though, it’s more powerful in the way it allows you to organize, share and complement what you’ve saved with other important information that’s related. This is the part of Springpad that impresses me and is both most helpful to me.
For example, I can save restaurants to my Springpad collection and there are integrated links for making reservations at that restaurant with OpenTable if available and restaurant reviews from Yelp as well.
For homemakers you can quickly and easily make meal-planning tasks as you go about your day, collect recipes, ask friends for cooking information and then allow Springpad to help build your shopping list automatically.
Springpad integrates with Gmail (for synching your contacts and Google calendar events), flickr for sharing and organizing your thoughts with or related to photos, Facebook to help you share information with your Facebook friends and of course with twitter so you can share links and have alarms and reminders sent to your own account.
Dopplr – Putting Your Travel Plans on the Map
November 6, 2009 by Jason Bean
Filed under Business & Career, Social Networking, Software & Online Apps

Prior to getting into consulting and technology development, I spent about a decade in the travel industry. I quickly moved into a technology role within travel so I became quickly interested in any new travel related technologies. To this day I still enjoy keeping tabs on some of the travel tools that are now available online.
The Dopplr website is a very interesting travel tool that doesn’t serve as a reservations assisting application, but is used more for sharing and interacting with your reservation after they’re booked. In addition, it also lets you share your travel plans easily with your …read more
Color Scheme Designer 3
November 3, 2009 by Jason Bean
Filed under How To, Reference, Software & Online Apps

Are you color blind? Maybe you just design like it. Color can really pull emotions out of us that we maybe didn’t expect. When you’re designing a new graphic, website, or some other piece of art, getting the colors right can be pretty important.
The Color Scheme Designer website is now in it’s third major iteration and version for users and it will give you quite a bit of information to make sure your next color palette for that project will be exactly what you needed.
The site let’s you select your color preferences on a color wheel and then depending on …read more
The Digital Hotlist 2009
November 3, 2009 by Jason Bean
Filed under Business & Career, Social Networking, Software & Online Apps

2009 will go down in history as the year everything at least seemed to change if it didn’t really change completely. It’s become a new world for many people with lots of change in a variety of areas. Perhaps the one thing that still remained the same is that the web is still almost central to much of what we do.
MediaWeek has released their 2009 Digital Hotlist that covers just what has been happening in the world of the web and technology.
Facebook – up from #2 on the list in 2008. This site is larger in population than most …read more
What’s Going on Outside.in
November 2, 2009 by Jason Bean
Filed under Communication, Reference, Social Networking

I see more and more efforts and opportunities to try and get smaller as the world around us gets overwhelmed with more and more information. For some reason as the world appears to get smaller in front of us, there’s a desire to get more in touch with what’s happening around us locally as well.
Outside.in is working on putting it all together for you. They want to let you know what’s happening, right where you are, right at this moment. It’s being all collected and packaged together in this "hyperlocal" goal.
If you’re a visitor to the site, you …read more
John Hodgman a.k.a Mr. PC’s Blog
October 31, 2009 by Jason Bean
Filed under Celebrities, Science & Technology

If I say "Mr. PC" most people would know who I’m talking about immediately. If you don’t know who I’m talking about then you probably don’t watch TV or keep in touch with the Apple vs. PC. commercials.
Mr. John Hodgman is more than just the PC guy in the commercials. He’s actually quite the intellectual and comedy writer. If you visit his site you can read lots of his opinions on everything you can imagine.
Before he went on television, JOHN HODGMAN was a humble writer, expert, and Former Professional Literary Agent living in New York City. In this capacity, …read more
GROUPON – Collective Buying Power Coming to Your City
October 29, 2009 by Jason Bean
Filed under Contests & Sweepstakes, Freebies, Shopping

My wife shared a link with me this evening that looks pretty interesting. It’s a coupon and discount site called Groupon, but it’s more than just coupons. It’s a marketing tool as well and the idea is to swarm a location or establishment with business. What company wouldn’t want that kind of attention?!
With coupons, you did like I did tonight and save a few bucks on a variety of different grocery items. Groupon let’s you save real money on some really great stuff that you’d like to do, but you didn’t want to spend the full price on it to …read more
The Turtleman – Noodling for Snappers
October 28, 2009 by Jason Bean
Filed under Online Videos, Sports and Recreation, Weirdness

My wife just shared this video with me. I grew up in Kentucky and love my home state. There are some very eccentric country folk living in the Bluegrass state though.
Now noodling, the sport of catching catfish by sticking your hand and arm into a hole and letting them bite it, is one thing. But noodling for snapping turtles is something completely different. I’ve been fishing and seen a snapping turtle break a broom stick like a twig. You can believe these suckers he’s catching would take a chunk out of whatever they wanted that they could reach.
HavenWorks.com Leaves Me Speechless
October 27, 2009 by Jason Bean
Filed under Government & Politics, Weirdness

There are those times where you uncover a website that you’re just not sure what to do with when you find it. The HavenWorks.com site is just that kind of site. My friend Simeon actually sent me a link for this site. It’s something to be seen for sure.
I’m really not sure what to say about the HavenWorks.com site. It does literally leave me speechless. It appears that it’s a randomly thrown together collection of links and information on current news events and politics.
The design is the draw, or repellant depending on your viewpoint. It reminds me of a …read more
U2 Concert Live on YouTube – Is It Now U2be
October 26, 2009 by Jason Bean
Filed under Celebrities, Music & Audio, Online Videos, Social Networking

Perhaps we should just shorten it to U2be. What do you think? Not sure why I hadn’t heard of this concert happening before now, but you can watch U2 perform live on YouTube tonight from their Rose Bowl concert.
I went and saw the U2 in 3D concert at my local IMAX theater last year (or was it two years ago?) and it was amazing. My first thought of watching a concert in a theater wasn’t too high of an expectation, but it turned out to be a really great experience.
I’m guessing watching a concert live on YouTube might be similar. …read more
















