Working in Movement

The web is full of all kinds of useful stuff. Information, ideas, products, services, bullshit, etc. When looked at like that, it's no different than the non-Internet world, just faster and you pay someone a monthly access fee to get to it. But, since there's so much of it, how do you make sense of what's available? If you're looking for a specific product, book, DVD or CD, the reviews on sites like Amazon can be helpful. And sites like epinions specialize in reviewing stuff.

How about sites that recommend stuff out of the blue, stuff that sometimes turns out incredibly useful, or at least interesting? The old Whole Earth Catalog was such a source, but it bit the dust a long time ago.

Enter Cool Tools. Tools is put together by Kevin Kelly, former executive editor of Wired magazine, and one time editor of Whole Earth Review, the successor to the spirit and intentions of the Catalog itself. Like Catalog, Cool Tools works on the principle of recommendations and reviews from it's readers. (Kelly has to like the idea before he will publish it, though.) Some may be surprisingly useful, even though you had no idea it existed or you might conceivably needed it.

Take, for example, shower slate. What do you do if you're in the shower and a great idea hits? Can you hold onto the idea until you unlather and towel off? Does the idea evaporate into the ether in the meantime? Do you make a dash for pen and paper, perhaps slipping on a wet floor and breaking something you can't afford to by without?

Not with shower slate. Here's the blurb from Tools:

Ever have an idea in the shower and have no way to record it...and then it's lost forever? I use a "Dive Slate", a small (4"x6" ) sheet of sturdy white plastic with a plain old fashioned golf pencil attached. They're cheap (around $5--$6), available on the net at various dive shops, fit nicely behind the soap holder or hung in the shower and work well; they're meant to be written on underwater by divers, so unless you shower under Niagara Falls, your thought will be captured until you erase it. -- Vincent Crisci

Medium Dive Slate 3.5 " x 5.5" $4.18 Scuba Central or try Amazon for an extra large thought (8" x 10"), $10

There are hundreds of such ideas and reviews on Cool Tools. Highly recommended.