Since we’re always discussing project management and organizational strategies, here’s something for anyone who needs more than ical. A new tool — a free virtual email assistant named Sandy, which can be found at I want Sandy.

The idea is clever. The downside is that Sandy could become annoying (not like our Sandy) since she reminds you of everything via email….which means more clutter in your inbox.

I haven’t signed up, but it’s free in case anyone is interested.

Take a couple of minutes for some comic relief. Visit http://www.whoneedsdesigners.com/

From the latest issue of Springwise, a trend enewsletter. A company called Mobile Mentor has jumped on one of the fastest growing trends around. Pretty cool! Plenty smart.

If linguistics interests you, join the live webcast produced by the New York Public Library. The following is from the website.

“There You Go Again: Orwell Comes to America invites historians, linguists, cognitive experts, journalists, government officials, and political consultants to assess the current state of public discourse — and journalism’s response to it — one year before a hotly contested presidential election. The panels explore the past, present, and future of deceptive political speech, and assess what can be done to bring more realism and honesty into the conduct of America’s public affairs.”

Meet Your Neighbors, but Just Not in Person

is the title of an article in Monday’s NY Times about socializing close to home….real close, like in your neighborhood..or closer yet, in your apartment building. Two companies appear to have captured the market there to date. One has been around since 2004. The other only since March of this year.

I think it’s a pretty clever concept. Am curious as to what everyone else (well not everyone else, but lots of folks) think.

Could something like this fly in Chicago? Would anyone use it….maybe in the dead of a Chicago January when you had a craving for some great Thai food and were tired of all the neighborhood places you knew.

Hey high rise dwellers…. would you use a network like this?

In doing some research for a client, I stumbled upon I Did Not Know Acrobat Could Do That. It looks like it has some interesting articles for folks who want to make the most out of the software, and cheers to that. But the design and overall tone of the blog are…hard to decipher. Is this guy really excited about Acrobat? Or are his corporate bosses making him pose that way on the home page? It’s like he’s totally into it, and the blog is labeled as “a cool place to learn about Adobe Acrobat,” but I guess I don’t know if I want a company telling me how cool it is. If I were 12 and watching a commercial on MTV, maybe. But as a grown-up with expansive (and expensive!) software needs, I guess I’m a little jaded.

I see this as an interesting evolution in corporate blogging - blogs set up by people in a company, about their company and what it does. It’s hard to tell how much of the content is corporate speak filtered into the blog, versus stuff the guy is genuinely interested in. It’s fascinating to see this trend evolve.

There’s a great web site where you can share your reading tastes with other people. It’s called Shelfari. Warning, it is addictive! But I think it has potential for information sharing. Similar to LinkedIn, you have to invite friends, though anyone who wants to look at your list may do so. So far I like it.

While I love that people occasionally take the time to send me an e-card, so many of them suck. And now that spammers are mimicking Hallmark’s e-cards, it’s tempting to never open another one again.

But if you get a card from Some eCards, you better open it - because it’s likely the coolest e-card you’ll ever get. Seriously.

Brandy Agerbeck runs Loosetooth.com, a business that’s really more like her life. She does all things creative, including graphic facilitation, art, she sells her wares, and she has a hedgehog.

Oh, and here’s her Loosetooth.com eNewsletter.

She manages to take good care of herself, have a successful career, and exude creativity at every turn - I really admire her sense of style and her commitment to being herself no matter what. Just something to think about!

Oooo, I love this topic. Not just because I’m a devoted, rapid, voracious bibliophile. But because I love hearing about what others are reading and enjoying.

I’m currently reading the first novel in the Dresden Files series. I really enjoy intelligent, provacative sci fi and fantasy, and this one so far is fun and smart. Some other favorites I’ve reread recently are the His Golden Materials series and Octavia Butler’s works. Recently I finished some wonderful books that I’ll share: We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates; The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (based in Chicago and being made into a movie!); and I reread all the Harry Potters. Ready for the big release of #7 this week!

I’m a big magazine fanatic as well. My subscriptions kind of capture my interests well: feminism (Bust, Bitch), Pop Culture (Wired, EW, Mental Floss, TV Guide), Music (Paste, Spin), Writing and Business (Business 2.0, Direct, B2B, The Writer, Bee Woman), and a smorgasbord of miscellaneous (Scientific American, Psychology Today). I also really enjoy checking out the mag racks for new finds.

Then I finish off each night with Google Reader, where I subscribe to a bunch of rss feeds. I got the Chicago news in there, some national news, politics (Huffington Post is pretty impressive), and a bunch of feeds designed to get me thinking of story ideas (medicine, science, small business, tech, and the widely vast and varied Digg).