the watchmaker’s notebook

This is one of those things we would like to keep to ourselves, it’s so wonderful. It’s beautifully wonderful, and we love it. It’s Ron DeCorte’s Notebook, a place where he examines the fine art of the tiny timepieces on our wrists. He takes apart finely made watches and explains what is so wonderful about them, what makes them unique, and points out the fine details that the common observer would most likely miss. And in addition to the individual timepieces he examines, he has a more generalized guide to watches called TimeZone’s Watch School. There, you can learn about the mechanics of watches, their pieces, and how they work.

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We are amazed with the rise of social networking software. There is so much of it, and it has really taken over as the BigApp of the day. No real big surprise there: humans are made to connect with each other. Even the early BBSes were about connecting with other people and sharing lives. The current category killer is MySpace, which took Friendster by surprise (though for those of us who were on Friendster at the time, not much of a surprise with it’s “who is going to buy it?” and “why the heck is it so slow?” discussions that were rampant). With MySpace, you know who owns it: Fox. It’s already a sell-out.

For millions of teens, that doesn’t matter. They are creating their identity through and with MySpace. Danah Boyd has an interesting article that discusses identity on MySpace.

The First Season of Grey’s Anatomy has a MySpace page. We think it’s disengenuous that it would try to friend us.

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And speaking of things that aren’t there, lifehacker (*heart*)  had a download of the day recently that was all about Microsoft’s Virtual PC. The Virtual PC allows one to run instances of applications without, theorhetically, messing up one’s own system. Joy.

Some software, of course, you don’t even have to install on your own machine. Richard MacManus just wrote an article of “best of breed” online office apps (that is not to say they are all “free”). We are willing to give writerly the old college try.

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And then there is productivity. At our company, we go to a lot of meetings. A lot. And they aren’t always wonderful sparkly good ones where information is generated and passed on. Of course not. Not every one is golden. But 43 folders has a nice article about 9 tips for making your meetings for productive. We know we need it. Because we Americans are working more, but getting less done. Ouch.