“# Transparency & Values: Twitter constantly reminds me of who I want to be, and what I want Zappos to stand for
# Reframing Reality: Twitter encourages me to search for ways to view reality in a funnier and/or more positive way
# Helping Others: Twitter makes me think about how to make a positive impact on other people’s lives
# Gratitude: Twitter helps me notice and appreciate the little things in life”

- Zappos Blogs: CEO and COO Blog: How Twitter Can Make You A Better (and Happier) Person

Know how dorky you feel when you find you’re bopping along to your iPod in a public place? Feels 2x as dorky if it’s bopping to a showtune

“Time to have us a good old extension cage match. In one corner you have the Hawaiian punch of the link sharing world - Mahalo Share. In the other, weighing in with way too many link sharing resources is Shareaholic.”

- Add-on Cage Match, Mahalo Share vs Shareaholic! | Firefox Facts

“Share, bookmark and e-mail web pages quickly without leaving your browser. Shareaholic makes it easy for you to submit the web page you’re on to your favorite sharing or bookmarking service, including: digg, del.icio.us, facebook, friendfeed, google bookmarks, google reader notes, kaboodle, magnolia, mixx, myspace, pownce, reddit, stumbleupon, tumblr, twitter, and ycombinator. You can also e-mail the web page directly to a friend.”

- Shareaholic - The browser add-on extension to share, bookmark and e-mail web pages quickly

Xoopit: I’m grooving on this plugin for gmail/firefox that lets me browse all my videos, photos and file attachments in a convenient way.

We knew this day would come. Lice...yuck!

As we struggle to contain the lice outbreak on our kids' heads, we share the following resources and insights:

1. Think carefully before using pharmaceutical lice remedies like Nix. They are based on a natural derivative from chyrsanthemums, but that doesn't mean they are necessarily safe or effective. At the very least, you may find that your household gets MORE itchy before it gets LESS itchy. (That's how it worked over here.)
2. Don't just treat your household. Ensure your daycare or school CAREFULLY examines all kids' heads, and commits parents to treating kids with lice or nits.
3. Educate yourself. The most detailed resources we've found are at http://www.headlice.org
4. Spring for the fancy tools. The plastic lice combs that come with most lice treatment products don't begin to do the job. The tea tree oil-based Lice Stop product available at natural health stores contains a much better, metal comb; you can also buy a higher a quality comb from your pharmacist.
5. Expect to spend a lot of time and money solving the problem. We're currently spending 2-3 hours per night going over each head with a finetooth comb; and we've already spent $100 having bedding and clothing laundered after we ran out of hot water. (To kill lice, you have to use HOT water and HOT dryer heat.)
6. Consider getting professional help. We've just called in the pros at http://www.lice911.ca to make sure we get the job 100% done.
7. Build lice checks into your routine. We realize our little one has likely had this problem for a while. If we'd been doing weekly lice checks, we could have tackled this problem much earlier, and had an easier time of it. From now on, we're doing weekly checks on each kid.
8. Whatever you do, don't blog about your family's lice. It will only lead to trouble. I'm just sure of it.

How we perceive technology has a lot to do with how we use it. I've recently written a blog post that talks about how we can personally use the web to support social change. In Five ways to shape the soul of the Internet, I argue that

The social value of the Internet is determined by how each and every
one of us uses the Internet as a communications medium, social space
and support tool. How we experience the Internet in our daily lives --
whether we experience it as a dehumanizing void in which e-mail
replaces face-to-face interaction, or as a meaningful community in
which we discover new commonalities and connections -- is a choice we
make every day, with every message we send or browser page we load.
Those choices can add up to personal and social alienation, or personal
and social transformation.