There are lots of inexpensive tools on the Interwebs that are really useful. I like finding them.

I discovered the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen when my marketing class team chose to use it for our group project last semester.  After initially dismissing the device because it seemed like an expensive gadget (two versions for $150 and $200) that couldn’t do anything my laptop couldn’t do, I quickly changed my mind and bought one.  It made taking class notes and recording interviews for my summer internship significantly easier.  And I know this blog is for the broke, but this thing is totally worth the money if you’ve got it.

Briefly, the thing contains a small camera that records what you write via microdots printed on special notebook paper.  While writing on this paper and recording your text, it can also record any sound it hears and syncs this audio to what it is recording with the camera.  Consequently when tap your pen on the paper you have been taking notes on, the audio that was recorded at the time of writing will magically come out of the pen’s speakers!  All of this information can then be archived on your computer (Mac or PC) via software that nicely organizes your notes and makes all your crappy handwriting searchable!  To get a better idea of all this, take a look at this video from Livescribe.  If you’re still not getting it, you should try a little harder and search “Livescribe” on YouTube – you’ll find tons of video demonstrations of the pen.  Oh, and here’s an example of a “pencast” – Livescribe’s online tool for sharing your downloaded notes.  While I think these things are pretty useless in general, I really like this one.

Most of my (unproductive) Internet time is spent on Twitter, Facebook, and looking at my various RSS feeds.  Typically, I browse my various Twitter accounts using Tweetie (Mac only), my Facebook Newsfeed using the Adobe AIR Facebook Application, and my RSS feeds using NetNewsWire (Mac only).  These browser-free options are all great, but I am always looking for more efficient ways to view all three of these things at the same.

Yesterday, Mashable.com had a post about Streamy.com.  This is a site that aggregates your Twitter, Facebook, (as well as various other social networking sites) and RSS feeds all into one website.  It even accesses my Google Talk account to let me IM folks.  It has been around for a while, and when I tried it out in the past I found it was really buggy – it never did let me add my Facebook account to my profile.  But after playing around with it again last night for about 30 minutes I was able to load all my various accounts into it, and it works pretty darn well.

It can be slow in refreshing some information and I had to reload the page a few times to get me out of loading limbo, but it has come a long way.

I’ve been thinking about starting a blog for a while, but I could never decide what to write about.  Nor have I ever had any really compelling reasons to put in the effort if I did think of a good blog theme.

But then I thought:

1 – I’m an MBA student who will graduate in a year, and a blog would give me a great way to express myself to potential employers who don’t know me at all.

2 – I spend HOURS in front of my computer reading about the latest and greatest internet tools being created every day.  I try to talk about these things with non-dork friends, and they look at me funny.  Now I can just invite them to read my blog if they want to know more about things like….blogs.  Or caffeinated Google search results.

3 – A blog will give me a great way to organize all my interesting Internet finds into one place, so I can look them up later.

Ultimately, I want this blog to be a testimony to my hatred of paper.  More specifically, to my manic sprint to a life where EVERYTHING I do, write, read, and (perhaps) say will be translated into 1’s and 0’s, stored on an unfathomable number of computers around the world, and instantly accessible from my MacBook.