A Visit to WEBS - the Yarn Mecca!

Big topic of discussion lately: people turning off their Facebook accounts so they can get some work done.

Need help disciplining your online time? Try this Firefox Add-on called LeechBlock, which shuts you off when you need it to.

But before you log off, read Jackie's take. (And, if you like it, link to it on your Facebook page, lol!)

by Jackie Brousseau-Pereira

If you haven't been on LinkedIn lately, you should really take a look at the new features on this professional social networking platform. (I'm posting about it here with links to some super posts over at CIO magazine.)

LinkedIn is a professional Facebook, with job listings, forums and user groups that can really help you find a job and connect to other professionals.

There's a lot of blah blah blah about "building your brand" these days, I know because I spout it myself to my students.

For kids who are within a few years of college graduation, this means: getting lots of internships, working hard on whatever you do and producing some really good work. I mean really good. Not just blogging about the Red Sox. Every ten year old now has a blog about the Red Sox.

One side effect of watching the Olympics is thinking about what it would be like to pick up and move to Vancouver, which everyone is saying is a very livable city.

The Daily Beast has a nice little piece today on Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley, the bachelor Vermont farmer whose early experiments photographing snowflakes gave us some truly fantastical images.

I'd seen different references to TED Talks, whose theme is: Ideas Worth Spreading. It's an annual gathering of a diverse group of technologists,  thinkers and doers who talk about all kinds of interesting things.

You can see the range of speakers and topics here.

TED 2010 is taking place right now, and this year it's easier than ever to follow on the web. 

I asked my students what their favorite websites are, and, naturally, I hadn't heard of them. Of course, by the time I finish this post, these sites may be out, but both are a lot of fun, and they taught me about digital entrepreneurship in their own twisted ways. Their common components: good ideas, low startup costs, good curationa, and their users produce the very product they also consume. Brilliant, in Soylent Green kind of way!

Back when I wrote for The Boston Globe, there was much handwringing among editors about how to get those younger readers.

Sometimes it seemed like the older, loyal readers just weren't enough for them, and so, decisions got made. They did away with things like Confidential Chat (an age-old reader-generated content feature that was its own kind of Facebook.)

If you're a fan (or not) of Dwell, you might like Ms. TwentySomething's new blog, Unhappy Hipsters.