I never really got into Digg . I’ll admit it. It just wasn’t something that I felt was useful for my purposes. What I keep up with online is fairly targeted. Design blogs and tech news. But mainly design. And obviously there are other people out there like me - and someone who really felt that this was a niche market to tap into. Enter Design Float .

I was introduced to this site by Alyssa (thank you!) and loved it instantly. If you’ve seen Digg, you’ll recognize the concept. You add articles you think are worthwhile. If you see one you like, ‘Float’ it. If it doesn’t belong or it’s just not a worthwhile read, ‘Sink’ it. Kind of reminds me of Battleship. But forget about boats and life preservers. This is social media for designers! Articles currently fall into 12 categories which are also broken into subcategories. It makes finding what you want to read that much easier.

Design Float is the brainchild of Andrew Egenes, who, by the looks of his own site is very talented (and by the looks of his picture, cute too!) Thanks for building something incredibly worthwhile for us creative types!

If this is the first you’re hearing of Design Float, go sign up now! Don’t forget to add me (medialush) to your contact list!

EDIT: One wee issue I’m coming across.  When searching for a story to avoid duplication, I wasn’t getting results so I went ahead and entered the URL, but low and behold it told me it was a duplication.  Not to mention that my search results didn’t even yield anything with a title remotely close to what I was searching for.  We’ll see if they iron this out soon.

A couple days late, but it was a long weekend here in the Great White North, so sue me.

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*I really enjoyed this article because I have a really strong dislike for Flash.  Or I suppose it’s more that I dislike the way people misuse Flash.  There are times and places for it, but splashed across an intro/gateway type page, with swirling text and images that have little to do with the purpose of the actual website?  Just say no to bad Flash.

Since becoming enamoured with Google Reader a few months ago (yes, I was a latecomer to the RSS phenomenon), I have amassed a subscription list of 75 feeds. I’m sure this pales in comparison to many people’s subscription lists, but I’m having a hard time keeping up. Now that I’m not working (which sucks BTW), I still find it hard to get through all of my feeds. I go to bed with an unread count of ‘0′ and wake up to 200+. If I miss a day, I find myself at 1000+. How do other people manage?

Part of my frustration (I think) comes from the fact I’m such a fanatical organizer (at least when it comes to my PC - my room is a mess). Every feed has to be labelled and filed accordingly. Starred items have to be tagged appropriately for later search-ease. When I read feeds, I like to read all of the articles under one label, and then move on to the next. Except suddenly some of my labels are bursting at the seams and there are a ton of articles to go through.

I think I’m making this too difficult for myself. RSS feeds are supposed to make surfing easier, after all. But the allure of clicking on those cute little RSS icons splashed across the top of every new and interesting blog I find is just too much. The fear of one day thinking ‘What was the name of that awesome blog about *insert subject here* that I found last week?’ is always in the back of my head. So I add it to GReader. Then I notice the 564 unread articles and my anxiety starts to rise. How am I ever going to catch up and actually absorb some of what I’m reading? So the vicious circle starts again.

What exactly is the point of all this? I guess what I’m trying to say is that in the effort to make our lives easier, sometimes we make them more complicated - without even trying. Keeping up with RSS feeds is just one aspect of ‘life made easer, made more difficult’. Sometimes getting away from the online world for a few days really is a relief. With no pressure to blog, check your e-mail, Twitter about doing laundry, reply to a wall post, or respond to an instant message, it’s a reminder of what life was like only a few years ago when we weren’t connected 24/7. Until you log on again and realize that you need to catch up on everything you’ve missed.

Domize is potentially a great new resource. If you haven’t heard of it, let me introduce you! Domize is an instant domain search tool, popping up results as fast as your hands can type. Aside from the instantaneous results, Domize allows you to preview any domains that are already taken by simply hovering your pointer over the .com, .net, or .org extensions. This is particularly handy to weed out the ‘taken’ domain names that are currently used for nothing but a placeholder.

However, if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Domize does not (at least, as of yet) provide results for any domains with extensions other than the big three (com, net, org). For someone like myself, who lives in Canada, I would be interested in seeing the availability of the .ca extension. I’m certain I’m not the only one who feels this way. In addition, it would be nice if the provided ‘alternatives’ were actually useful, instead of just the same word or phrase with a letter (or two, or three, or four) dropped off the end. As in, “MediaLush.net is taken, but MediaLus.net and MediaLu.net are available.”

With a few little tweaks, Domize could be a valuable resource. It’s great for people who know exactly what they want within a narrow scope, but for the rest of us, we’ll have to wait and see.

Domize.com

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I think I’ll make this a weekly post too, talking about which beta’s I’m currently testing and what I like and dislike about them. In a way, this post will actually be a tool of sorts for me because often I have so many sites that I’m trying, I tend to forget about some. Although, perhaps that’s my true analysis of the site: it’s forgettable! Regardless, let’s take a look at what I’m trying out right now:

Toluu: Social media for RSS lovers like me. Find out which feeds your friends are reading, and hopefully discover some new ones. Love the idea. I’m an RSS monster (I have 1000+ articles to read skim in GReader as we speak. Just got an invite for this today from Corvida, so I’ll elaborate next week when I’m really in the thick of it.

Aviary: A perfect example of me forgetting about a beta. “Aviary is a suite of rich internet applications geared for artists of all genres. From image editing to typography to music to 3D to video, we have a tool for everything.” I’ll tell you, the reason I forgot about this one is simply this: their beta offers testing on only some areas of the site, and I was lucky enough to get to try out their pattern maker and image editor. I have no interest in making patterns and I really prefer image editing software that is running on my hard drive. I’d like to give their desktop publishing and word processing software a whirl, but I guess I’ll have to wait.  Edit: Good little article and interview about Aviary at Webware.

BrightKite: I’ll try just about anything when it comes to social media, but I have to admit that after signing up for BrightKite, I was a little bit leery. After reading the purpose of the site (“Discover who visits your favorite places. Join the community in real time. | See where your friends are and what they’re up to, in real time. | Meet real world friends. Reveal your location, befriend, and chat with people around you.”), I realized that it’s essentially stalking made into a social media site. So I’ve officially decided that this site doesn’t deserve another minute of my time. I have issues with cell phones and being able to be contacted 24/7, let alone posting every move I make on the web for all to see.

Sites I’m going to try in the next little while: I want to get working on cataloguing my exceptionally large book, CD and DVD/VHS collections. I’ve registered for Shelfari (open registration) and Lib.rario.us (public alpha) both of which allow for book cataloguing, although Lib.rario.us also incorporates DVDs, music, and games. At first glace, Shelfari definitely has a far superior design and user-friendlier interface, although I love that Lib.rario.us allows you to search through numerous international Amazon collections for the exact product. We’ll see what the next week brings!

Also, I have invites for the three sites listed above. If you’re interested, e-mail me and I’ll send an invite your way! info[at]medialush.net

Gone on a wee road trip until Wednesday at least.

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My absolute favourite new (to me) font is Ballpark Weiner.  It immediately makes me think of lipstick scrawled on a mirror.  It’s curly cursive that isn’t overly thin so each twist and turn is evident.  It’s strong but still capable of being very beautiful and feminine.  I’ve used it for the ‘Coming Soon’ sign on my domain here.

I’m notorious for starring things in GReader and going back to them later - particularly when I’m working and don’t have the time to read long articles.  So anything that piques my interest is starred.  I’m going to start listing those links every week, beginning today.

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