Webing It

Currently Craving: more ukrops chocolate chip cookies

This is not necessarily pregnancy related but might be useful information for all my fellow bloggers (and blog readers) out there who are spending lots of time around the computer like me. Two useful sites:

1. Pandora this site RULES! create your own radio station... no longer any need for iTunes really unless you want to be able to listen to songs over and over again. what you do is type in the name of a song or an artist and the site will start by playing that song or a song by the artist. then it custom creates a radio station based on your like of that song. it continues playing songs by that artist and others like it. from there once you create a FREE account you rate songs thumbs up or thumbs down. and from those ratings the station gets smarter and smarter about what you really like. it goes on forever and has no commercials and NO FEE! you can create as many stations as you like based on all the music that you like. i've been enjoying it all morning and am finding it to be just one more way to stay tied to my computer (ack!) thanks to max and the producer he's working with today for sending info about this one along.

2Blurb i read about this site on another blog once long ago and i can't remember where. maybe kiki's (?) and definitely somewhere else too. this is a fabulous -publish your own book- site. you can put in as much text as you want. you can make a photo album of all of your own digital prints. you can make a cookbook. you can record your vacation. and the best part is that it will "SLURP" up your blog and make your blog into a book with minimal need for you to make adjustments to it. the software is free to download and use. then you upload your finished product and pay for it according to how many pages, size, hard vs. softcover etc. the prices seem reasonable for what you're getting. i have not seen one of their books in person yet so i can't comment about the quality. but i did download the software and i have tried 'slurping' the dog blog. it was very easy and i LOVE having the ability to fully customize every single page or just let it go on it's own.

i am a big fan of this idea because i am an archivist. i record EVERYthing i possibly can and i have a hard time throwing things away. i seriously have diary entries from 1983! what's so great about the blog is that you can include photos too. and in general all of this blogging is a great record of life. pregnancy, babies, travel, whatever... it would be a shame to lose it all when the next step of technology comes along. so my plan is to SLURP up babe's blog after she's born and then we'll have a beautiful record of how she came to be (or of my own neurosis, however you want to define things). and i can start fresh with her baby girl blog instead of a pregnancy blog.

Check them out while you're playing around online and if anyone has tried Blurb or knows someone who has i'd love to hear a review.