T N.

Weekly I send articles to staff members regarding things relevant to our line of work, but to save them time, I highlight important parts of the articles. I have a markkit bookmark on my bookmark toolbar - whenever I find an article that I need to highlight, I press the button and my cursor becomes a yellow highlighter. Unfortunately markkit doesn´t work with the New York Times, but it does with most everything else I´ve come across.

Yesterday I told a friend that I hate hearing/watching/reading people who just talk or write and don't DO. Then lo and behold, Swissmiss posts about this organization and their Do Lectures.

This appears to be like the indie, underground brother of TED. The organization differentiates itself from TED by having talks by people who actually execute ideas, but I'm not really that convinced. The talks I tried to watch meander, without any real destination, and I'm not really sure by the end what they did.

The talks appear to take place in a small wooden cabin, and I'm sure everyone is wearing ecologically responsible clothes. I'm sure they don't wear shoes. I'm sure they go home and eat the eggs hatched by their chickens, if they eat eggs at all. I'm sure they won't even eat seitan because it's in some way accepting meat by resembling meat. Maybe for all these reasons I just can't engage in a single talk I tried to watch. I guess I was wrong - I prefer the thinkers who don't really do anything.

Livestrong.com is a website for people serious about improving their health and fitness. I used this to keep track of my eating habits, calories and exercise. It was easy and gave me insight into what I was doing well and not so well (as in, ease up on the avocado smoothies). The best part is that the website doesn´t bombard you with junk email. There are periodic emails that come with information, but the articles are actually engaging, and more importantly, short!

I was turned on to this site by my sister: theittybittykittycommittee.com is an amazingly adorable site managed by a kitten foster mom in Seattle. She posts photos of all her new litters with her cute names for them (the latest crew is the Bartletts - Imogene, Marcel, Georgie and Clarence). Folks in the Tacoma / Seattle area can contact her for adoption. The photos are awesome, and the kittens are super cute.

I used InSuggest a few times to find sites similar to ones that I already love but I found that their suggestions became pretty repetitive. I came across Timetotag, which apparently finds similar sites based on tags. Perhaps InSuggest does the same thing, but it's hard to tell how their system works. Timetotag seems to have some things they can still work on - I couldn't figure out how to search based on multiple tags, it seems to rely on user-generated content, the design needs some work. However, they seem to have the right idea.

I use this site to purchase gift certificates for my sister. Nordstrom is one of her favorite places to get shoes, and with a gift certificate, she can get what she pleases. Ordering doesn't call for registration (which is nice, for a change), and delivery is prompt.

It's a mighty useful site that has moved to: www.ugged.org

Specifically, the hall of shame is here: http://www.ugged.org/blogs/ugg-hall-of-shame/

I got turned on to the world of Nespresso by a friend. Nespresso machines are a gift from some higher power; the coffee is literally what gets me up in the morning. The little capsule getting punched in the machine is a sound like music to my ears. The capsules range from $0.50 to $0.62 for the premium blends (which aren't necessary really). I calculated that to be about $31 for the month if I have 2 cups a day - compared to the $5 a day I might spend at Starbucks, it's well worth it. You can only get Nespresso capsules through the website, but it's super easy. You can get as many capsules as you want delivered for $6, and if you split the cost of shipping with a friend or two, that's nothing. They arrive, without delay, within 2 days of ordering. Seriously amazing stuff.

http://www.nespresso.com/#/us/en

I love jewelry but I generally hate to shop. My sister told me about this website, started by Kate Bosworth and one of her 'stylist to the stars' friends (I know, it makes me laugh just to write that term). It's one of those membership sites where you pay $30 a month and can pick one piece of jewelry to be delivered to you. If you don't want something that month, you just say no thanks, and nothing gets charged. If you forget to choose, then the credit rolls over to the next month... there are stipulations that you need to read, of course. There's also a 'style profile' (another term that makes me laugh) that tells the website what you might like in your jewelry showroom. The website is new, worth checking out for the ladies. My sister received hers for the month and loves it.

Update - I tried this for a couple months, and as the other ladies have reported, the jewelry doesn't last long. It's like H&M for jewelry, so I can go to Francesca's Collections for that.

Started by former fashion insider Scott Schuman, the Sartorialist (or SartoriaList) is a compilation of photos taken of very well-dressed regular people on the streets of New York, Paris, Milan - all the jet-set places to which Schuman travels. It's kind of like thumbing through the pages of Vogue Italia but without the advertisements. And it also kind of proves that fashion isn't about what you wear, but how you wear it.

Brain Pickings is the brainchild of Maria Popova. It resembles sites like Kottke and Swiss Miss - these folks compile the latest and greatest blurbs related to art, culture, music, film, design, literature, sustainability, etc. Basically anything happening in the world that's interesting would be covered here. Popova interestingly and often enough uses the word "curate" and regards herself as a curator, and there's no doubt that she does indeed curate a museum of modern culture.

While putting together a website mock-up, I needed to figure out what font I was looking at so that I could reproduce it elsewhere. I googled and found My Fonts' 'What the Font' feature (http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/). You upload an image of the font, and the feature helps you identify it. It got Bodoni for me but not Slash Hmk, which was a bit more complicated. So obviously it's not perfect and might not get you what you want, but it's pretty neat.

When you date a man who plays sports in the dead of winter, you should know about Under Armour. This stuff is heavy duty gear, and it looks good too. It's much better to go into buying Under Armour already knowing the sizes since the stretch factor really plays a part in the fit. It could go either way (the size you normally wear or one size smaller). The Under Armour website is nice, though you could find some things for cheaper in stores (unless you're bent on a certain style, but this stuff goes under clothing). I needed to order from the website out of a hurry, and I got the items just in time to get it back to my then boyfriend.

It's hard to know which download sites are trustworthy. I needed the Bodoni font in a hurry so I checked Dafont on Sitejabber first. Fortunately there was at least one review, from a reputable reviewer so I went for it. In seconds and for gratis, I got what I needed! Dafont also shows you search results of other sites that offer the font (for a fee).

During the week I have little time to stop and read articles of interest, either ones that I run across or those in my Google Reader. Instapaper solves the problem by letting me click on my little ¨Read Later¨ toolbar bookmark when I´m on a website or article that I want to read later. It saves it all on my account and allows me to read it on the weekends, when I have more free time. Think of it as a temporary bookmark. The best part is that I can download all of the saved articles into Kindle form and get it sent to my Kindle.

I'm allergic to scents, so why am I reviewing Bathandbodyworks.com? There is no B&BW in Guatemala, so when I returned to the states I needed to get some for some Guatemalan friends who asked for me to bring it back. Gladly, but only using the online store. Walking into an actual B&BW leads to an assault on my olfactory sensory system. Can't. Handle. That. Also, fortunately the girl who wanted the most scents could pick them out online first (since they sometimes stop carrying certain scents) and then I could just run the information through and get it on time to bring back to her.

This one's for all the ladies out there who go through hundreds of facial products looking for the one that makes you look japanese. Ahhh, the japanese part got you, right?

Japanese women are known for their beautiful pearl cream skin, and it's no wonder - they seem to use good products. Komenuka bijin is one of those lines that i love. The great thing about the website is that shipping is free if you order over $80 worth of products, and that's not hard to do since products range from $30ish and up, and all are worth getting, from skincare to haircare to bodycare.

Unfortunately i can't seem to obtain shiseido japan products for a reasonable price, and shu uemura is pretty good but not so spectacular. And even if shiseido japan were easily available (the only place i've found them was at the porter square food court in cambridge, in 2003), i think i'd still be loyal to komenuka bijin. Definitely plan on making my whole repertoire that when i return. Komenuka, i've made the mistake of leaving you before, out of parsimony, but never again.

This website seems useful. I have some more months of living outside of the U.S., and where I am, the latest or more independent films aren't available in the theaters or stores. So if I run into reviews of movies that I'd like to see, I generally try to remember (and generally fail) or add it to my Netflix queue right then and there. I guess this website does the work for me, syncing to my Netflix and adding to my queue as I see and click. So... now I'm writing this review to remember to use this website to remember which films I want to watch. Huh.

GOOD is what Very Short List should be - news and snippets about interesting things happening in the world, from business to education to design and the environment. And not just interesting things, but the idea is that stories center around things that matter, GOOD things. Sometimes they lose their minds a bit and cover subjects like Lady Gaga's meat dress, but most of the time the stories are short, sweet and to-the-point.

I learned about this tool from Alexis Madrigal's column in the Atlantic. As part of my job, I go between typing in English and Spanish. And even though my Spanish is pretty poor, considering 4 years living in Latin America, I still know where accents go, based on the way words sound. Rather than going back and forth between my Spanish/English keyboard menu, which is kind of a pain, copypastecharacter is a super easy way for me to get those tildes in place without sweating it. Truly awesome tip.