mmmm what that i taste? a slight reminiscence of our alien ancestor’s pure spiritual mystery? thanks dan ackroyd.

on the other hand, it would make a pretty sweet christmas gift.

Leave it to productivity and blogging expert Merlin Mann to simultaneously affirm and explain my belief that The Wire is one of the best TV shows ever, and prove that my method of blogging is entirely inefficient and pretty pointless. a recommended read to hopeful bloggers & storytellers.

as good as apple’s auto-correction is on the iphone keyboard, Swype looks like it blows it out of the water in terms of sheer speed. just like T9 on your ancient cellphones [tongue-in-cheek], which Swype’s creator also helped invent, it aims to create the fastest, most efficient way to input data on a device. can’t wait to try this out on tomorrow’s devices.

an electric knife, a juicer, an iron.

i obviously don’t read enough movie critics and IMDB forums, because i didn’t know there was such an uproar by some over my favorite movie so far this year. i mean, obviously the circumstances of the movie are taken from the concerns of the environmentally aware, but please. it is a gorgeous, touching, hilarious, and almost wordless satirical film. each attack on the film’s motives is hilariously absurd to me.

i’m hoping i’m preaching to the choir, but for anyone who hasn’t been to it, everyone should be aware of the majesty of ted.com, a site of lectures by experts / active participators in all aspects of science, politics, technology, medicine, and everything else you can think of.

in terms of sitting-forward computer time (a.k.a. work), and leaning-back computer time (a.k.a. video/music consumption), ted.com has increasingly become my go-to video site for leaning-back time. at 20 minutes or less, they are the perfect length for my sporadic pockets of free time. its super inspiring to watch such passionate and knowledgable people talk about how they are trying to make this world a better place.

although you can’t really tell by my infrequent blog posts and even worse blog promotion, i am really OCD with my digital life’s organization. everyone has their own weird little things that they obsess over. for me, one of those things is keeping track of everything in my life in the most time-effective and least-amount-of-brain-power kind of way. because of it, i’ve decided to do a short series of blog posts in which i’ll pass along the tools and processes that help me get things done. call this post #2 of the series, since jott.com fall in this category as well.

enter evernote. the concept is simple: capture, sync, and find. save and catalog all things that you may ever need to access in one platform. save your site bookmarks, code clippings, your random ideas, and images from vacation in the same place. all your bases are covered since it has a great web application as well as a native OSX and windows application and a mobile portal for your phone’s web browser. if you have a phone with internet and a computer you’ll never be without your evernote’s brain of cataloged information.

one of the most impressive features is that you can upload pictures with words in it, and when you do searches it will search the actual text within the images. realistically, you can scan your receipts / invoices / whatever into your isight on your macbook and store them digitally as well.

the scope of the system is shockingly larger than most other methods of storing information online, which definitely makes it worth a look. oh yeah, free beta signup.

i have been theorizing about this kind of service forever, but jott really nailed it: call a phone number and tell it something, then it turns your words into text and puts it wherever you want it. what do you want to do with this info? you can email it to yourself or attach it to a todo list. anytime you dont have a computer or Internet to get a hold of someone or update a blog is no longer an issue.my favorite thing is that you can also call yourself and leave a reminder and jott will conveniently text you when you wish to be reminded. super-duper useful. and of course, it is free to sign up and try!

bjork’s new video for wanderlust is one of the best music videos i have seen in years. bold statement, totally true. all of the art, which is an almagamation of various styles of animation and compositing, is the highest of calibers. now if only i could see it at one of the 3D screenings. definitely too beautiful to post a awfully compressed youtube version of it.

edit: now you can view it in 3D on the encyclopedia pictura website!

everyone knows this is an important election year and there are more candidates than i have fingers. and with gameshow-like debates and too much sensationalized commentary in the media, it can be hard to actually find what candidates lie closest to your beliefs.

glassbooth.org is the best resource for an election that i have ever seen. you can take a 5 minute survey and see which candidates you closely align with. you can also pick any candidate and issue and read their stance with citations to the laws, articles, and speeches that they have put their stances in. it feels great to cut through all the commentary and get right to the points that matter.

not to mention the design is beautiful and clean.

golark is the new social event website on the block. it has been heralded as digg for events by mashable.com, which is quite a site to make quite a claim. the submission process is super easy, and everything responds super fast.

it just launched and all it needs is a quality community to latch on and make this an excellent event finder. congrats to my friend todd hamilton, who is half of the team that created it.

i recently found another gold mine of a website, ffffound.com. it’s like del.icio.us, but for images. not only is it a brilliant idea, but the community is full of artists, designers, and photographers so the average quality of found images are super high. now whenever i’m feeling visually uninspired, i head over to ffffound and fish around.