Products I Love XXVI

One tool I can't live without is a real lifesaver, and it serves a dual purpose. Keynamics makes a nifty little device that's super simple -- and super useful.

The Aviator Laptop Stand is intended to be used on planes, so you can rest your laptop on a seat tray and not have to hunch forward to work. But I've found it to be the best laptop stand for everyday desk use bar none.

It keeps your laptop off the surface of your desk, which increases airflow around the computer and aids in cooling. It also tilts the laptop forward gently for a more ergonomic approach to the keyboard.

And at $20, it's super inexpensive. Just three pieces of plastic you can snap together. I've used other laptop stands -- metal, padded, all much more expensive -- and this one's the best.

Moving Money

I know Where's George is sooo 1998, but 10 years later, it's captured my imagination like nobody's business.

The idea is simple: Each dollar bill has a unique identifier on it, and were you to enter them into a database, and track instances of a dollar bill's possession, you could monitor its travel throughout the world.

For the last few weeks, I've been religiously stamping my dollars -- $1 bills only; it's George for a reason, Media Dieticians -- with a stamp purchased from Holmes Stamp & Sign and releasing them back into the wild.

All my dollars have been virgins -- no previous entries, these -- but my sense of money and how money moves has been heightened.

Where does your money go? It's not that difficult to tell.

Awesome Career Development Fire Sale

This is an unbelievable offer and opportunity that I just have to share.

After 16 years in Chapel Hill, Jeff Davidson of the Breathing Space Institute is moving to Raleigh, and until the end of the month, he's offering an incredible package deal -- all in the name of cleaning out stuff he doesn't want to maildeal with. Check it out:

$78 worth of Books

• The Complete Guide to Public Speaking (Wiley, 324 pages) $16.95
  
• Marketing Yourself and Your Career (Adams Media, 238 pages) $12.95
  
• Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Things Done (Alpha/Penguin, 324 pages) $18.95
  
• Complete Idiot's Guide to Managing Stress (Alpha/Pearson, 372 pages, $18.95)
  
• The 60-Second Procrastinator (Adams Media, 142 pages) $9.95
  

$198 worth of CDs and Audio Books

• The 60-Second Procrastinator (Oasis Audio, 140 minutes) $19.95
  
• Surviving Information Overload (NIBM, 72 minutes) $14.95
  
• Relaxing at High Speed (ACHE, 32 minutes) $9.95
  
• Blow Your Own Horn (Simon & Schuster, 60 minutes) $10.95
  
• Time, Stress, Simplicity (Skillpath PersonalQuest, 300 minutes) $59.95
  
• Getting Articles Published (PR Leads, 57 minutes) $19.95
  
• Selling Your Book's 'Sub Rights' (PR Leads, 59 minutes) $19.95
  
• Foreign Rights Sales (PR Leads, 60 minutes) $19.95
  
• Creating a Brilliant Book Outline (BSI, 53 minutes, $15.95)
  
• Giving Better Presentations (Dreamcoach, 55 minutes, $16.95)
  

Plus CD and Article Bonuses

To order, go to this special Web site and enter the description "career advancement" and the amount... $99.

These items are from major publishers -- at list price -- so it's quite a package deal. I don't often post stuff like this, but holy cow.

The Grand Kinoki Foot Pad Experiment of 2008

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Originally uploaded by h3athrow

Not long ago, I bought some Kinoki foot pads on a whim because of an infomercial I saw on television.

They're supposed to be a detox tool, and despite some speculation that they're a scam -- including a segment on 20/20 -- we decided to buy some. We considered the $20 fun money.

Long story short, they didn't seem to do anything. Over the course of a couple of weeks, I wore one pad on the bottom of a foot while I slept. In the morning, the pad was dark, supposedly because impurities had been removed from my system. They're supposed to lighten over time -- as you become more pure -- but I could detect no change in their coloration. And I felt no physical change at all over the course of the two weeks.

There are better ways to detox your body. Kinoki pads are just a fun novelty.

You can see the whole photo set, as well.

Learning Kicks A$$

But what I love most about SXSW is this.

You have an idea. You meet someone. You share said idea. And magic happens.

I described an idea I had to John from Metanotes, and he made it happen. The result: Everything I Know About X, I Learned from Y.

We're going to find a proper place to host this (right now, it's a gift), and we'll see what happens.

For now: What have you learned... from whom?

Life Drawing

I've been on a bit of an idea binge tonight, planning much of my media intake for the year in terms of book summary services, newsletters, and the like. And while it's been awhile since I've spent any time with ChangeThis, a 12-page piece by Ralph Perrine has rekindled my interest in the service.

Drawings That Will Change Your Life offers four different hand-drawn models you can use to make decisions, set priorities, and otherwise make your life work better. It's a bit of a pitch for a calendar Perrine's selling -- that contains 12 different drawings -- but there's enough meat here that you can start using his ideas immediately.

My favorite might be the 360 Degree Awareness drawing in which you map what you're aware of -- and make new connections among existing ideas, tools, partners, and projects to come up with something entirely other... something you weren't aware of. A useful exercise that might help you discover a new direction.

Booknook Perhapsness

When LibraryThing launched, I signed up, but did nothing. When Shelfari launched, I did the same. When Goodreads launched, I did more, and I'm trying to figure out why.

It might have been because a friend who'd added a lot of books invited me to Goodreads, so when I joined, I added a handful, too. For the others, I was friendless and didn't have that inspiration or model to follow. Now, I have a couple of friends in Shelfari, but no books. And I have one friend who actively used LibraryThing, but no books.

I've put my energy into Goodreads. This introduces a quandary -- and a possible solution.

When this happens, this happens a lot. And in this age of Web 2.0 creativity, the chances of being introduced to similar services in short order increases. What to do? As things are, we must choose. Which platform do we choose? Why? Is it because of how many friends we have there? How many books we've listed? Personal preferences for the features and functions?

The possible solution might be something akin to the Friend of a Friend project. Just as we're struggling with how to keep our social networking service friends lists consistent -- which, honestly, I don't think is all important, we might want to keep our other shared lists consistent.

In the case of books, versus friends, I think the need might be stronger. I haven't taken the time to look into whether the three bookshelf management tools I've mentioned offer list export and import options. If they don't they should. That begs the idea of list consistency so exports and imports can include similar data fields and, therefore, consistency.

Are switching costs so high -- or value of service exclusivity so high -- that this is a bad idea? I don't think so. If I could export and import my lists at will, I'd maintain all services equally. I'd probably, as I suggested tonight to my friend who's a LibraryThing fiend, maintain one predominately and consistently... and then update the others occasionally. There's little downside to anyone following this approach, just upside.

Is anyone working on this? Does anyone else perceive it to be a problem and opportunity? Which one of these services do you use?

Discuss.