Greetings from Savannah

I'm writing this from the e-Learning 2006 conference in Savannah, GA. First trip for me to this very cool city. Having some great southern cooking (tonight was the "Low Country Boil") and fresh seafood in the evening and lousy conference food during the day.

This has been a great conference weekend because I have spent several hours exploring some of the newer web apps that I have wanted to explore but have only had the chance to scratch the surface until now (like this blog for example that I created in November but only started getting serious about this weekend).

I sent an email to the e-learning faculty list about the www.writely.com website where you can create Word-compatible documents, and store them online, and open them up to collaborate with others, and much, much more. Perfect example of useful but free web applications that are changing the world in many ways.

Today I created my first batch of custom postage stamps at zazzle.com They're a little bit pricey for 39 cent postage stamps, but my wife is going to love them and I'm thinking that the grandmas are going to love getting letters that have their grandkids on the postage stamps. Can't wait to get them.

This pic wouldn't work well for the postage stamp, but it makes my heart warm to see these kids jumping off rocks into a very cold swimming pool in Texas in early January. They would have been swimming in the very cold Gulf of Mexico except that there were jellyfish all around.

Books I want to buy AND then hope I find the time to read them:
1. Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers by Scobel and Israel (Scobel is the widely read Microsoft blogger)
2. Small Pieces, Loosely Joined: a unified theory of the web, by David Weinberger
3. The Future of Ideas, by Lawrence Lessig
4. Freakonomics, A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, by Levitt and Dubner