Shiny New Things

I'm not going to lie: being benched for a week due to surgery wasn't too shabby. I wasn't in too much pain, just woozy, so I was able to accomplish something I've been meaning to do for years: watch Dexter. The entire first season and half of the second, to be exact. Suffice it to say I'm obsessed with the show now.

But sitting around doing nothing isn't my specialty, and I admit it's been hard to sit on the sidelines and miss two things I really wish I wasn't missing: SXSW and ASAE's Great Ideas conference. Granted, I would have had to pick one or the other either way, and to be honest I don't have any real desire to go to Austin other than to socialize...so I guess missing Great Ideas was the greater loss. I wasn't planning on going anyway, but somehow being stuck at home while also missing it makes missing it even worse.

But all is not lost; thanks to the trusty interwebs I've learned about several shiny new things this past week, despite being not at either conference:

• Wish Flash worked on your iPad or iPhone? There's now an app for that: iSwifter.
• Google is going to be launching a new social network called Circles. The great thing about it is supposed to be the way it allows you to share information the way you do in real life: e.g. some stuff for work, some stuff personal, etc. I personally will believe it's the next great thing/Facebook killer when I see it, after being totally underwhelmed by both Buzz and Wave.
• Foursquare got a supposedly great new upgrade, which includes stuff like recommendations and deals. While I wasn't super-impressed, I admit it kind of reinvigorated my interest in Foursquare. I still think it's kind of a bum deal for users--I've spent more time than I like to admit checking in on Foursquare and still have exactly zero free or even discount things to show for it after a year and a half using it pretty faithfully.

Well, time to squeeze in a few more episodes of Dexter before I head back to work tomorrow....