kathleen forden

why all the lowercase?

first off – how i write my blogs – it’s with tribute to e e cummings’ orthography

i write in this manner because it pleases me and it appeals  to the design person hiding inside of me

tools i use for my lifestreaming and self learning

publishing/blogging/mobile

wordpress – for my blogs, easy and i love the owner and followers passion

addictionary – great website for new words entering our society, worth a visit a day

rim blackberry curve 8330 – i love it except for occasional memory issues with all my apps, use it for a quick camera as well

the flip - world’s easiest camcorder

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domains and software

godaddy – cheap domains – find a discount before you checkout by searching on google

vlingo – talk to your phone and don’t worry about typing ever again

viigo – easiest way in the world to read hundreds of blogs and resources daily with your bb

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marketing/resources

twitter -  for sharing resources i find and feel might interest others looking to learn

friendfeed to learn and discuss subjects of interest or just trivial discussions about life experiences – major geek city

hootsuite – great website to promote multiple accounts on twitter or to handle streams of folks you are following – offers stats and the ability to schedule  tweets

delicious - my favorite place to create bookmarks online for use anywhere

facebook – my personal friends only hangout, i now think of it as the friend and family reunion site

linkedin – my professional life and resume with references and groups i belong to

igoogle – great place for office tools on the fly, calendar, email, custom apps, my home page

cluetrain manifesto – a book written in 1999 that applies more today than ever before

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fun

playfoursquare - cool app to play and discover new places and old friends

brightkite – cool place to connect with people and places around you

pandora - online radio that allows you to create stations the fly without signing up

hulu – great television and older movie station, these folks get how it should be done

The brain’s “seeking system” is hard-wired to obsessively love Google, Twitter, e-mail, and other electronic communication devices, fueled by the opioid neurotransmitter dopamine, according to neuroscientists.

Seeking. You can’t stop doing it. Sometimes it feels as if the basic drives for food, sex, and sleep have been overridden by a new need for endless nuggets of electronic information. We are so insatiably curious that we gather data even if it gets us in trouble. Google searches are becoming a cause of mistrials as jurors, after hearing testimony, ignore judges’ instructions and go look up facts for themselves. We search for information we don’t even care about. Nina Shen Rastogi confessed in Double X, “My boyfriend has threatened to break up with me if I keep whipping out my iPhone to look up random facts about celebrities when we’re out to dinner.” We reach the point that we wonder about our sanity. Virginia Heffernan in the New York Times said she became so obsessed with Twitter posts about the Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest that she spent days “refreshing my search like a drugged monkey.”

http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2224932

as many of my friends and family members know, i’ve been dreaming and planning my move to the Netherlands and possibly Amsterdam within the next decade to work with some of the most progressive technology folks i’ve ever met.

here is just another example of why i feel this way:

smart products that can change the world – they test them first in Amsterdam

http://www.amsterdamsmartcity.nl/#/en/home

Check out the video

i just finished watching district 9 and i can only say “wow”

go see it and see for yourself

here is what Rotten Tomatoes says about it

Consensus: Technically brilliant and emotionally wrenching, District 9 has action, imagination, and all the elements of a thoroughly entertaining science-fiction classic.

i could not state it better

howdy fellow internet fans and die hards

i’ve been missing a bit from the blogosphere due to travel and deadlines for work
plus the reality of :

running two e commerce sites
having people working for you
trying to develop and plan two new ventures
finding time for friends who are in need
finding time for fun with friends
while i keep self educating daily and sharing resources
to help others learn
PLUS taking care of myself, my family, our house
and paying the personal and corporate bills and taxes

i’m finally whipped – hitting the wall

as a technical project manager during my day job, one of my core strengths is the ability to streamline and setup pipelines without obstacles to reach the end goal

time to turn it back on for my life outside of the day job

first change – my blogging,  tweeting and lifestreaming
they are all a priority to me as they allow me to feel alive and help me keep being me
but if i change the way i do them, i can make it easier on myself

ideas are floating around my head on this and i’m doing some research into tools that can help as i debate the best path for me
i’ve decided to just start blogging when i can and to share 3 or 4 resources or links with a short detail of why i recommend it
feel free to let me know if you find anything of value

thanks for reading  and sharing

kathleen

my son turned me onto a blog written by a young student at Cambridge

Alice and Kev is the name of this blog and i’ve been completely blown away by it.   if the following is of interest to you, i say read away and learn dear reader – experience, read and learn….

This is an experiment in playing a homeless family in The Sims 3. I created two Sims, moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any job promotions or easy cash routes. It’s based on the old ‘poverty challenge’ idea from The Sims 2, but it turned out to be a lot more interesting with The Sims 3’s living neighborhood features.

I have attempted to tell my experiences with the minimum of embellishment. Everything I describe in here is something that happened in the game. What’s more, a surprising amount of the interesting things in this story were generated by just letting go and watching the Sims’ free will and personality traits take over.