What is it? Basically, 750words.com presents a blank canvas for you to do a daily mind dump. It it a journal? A blog? A free-association experiment? Yes.

Everybody uses it differently, and their use often varies day to day. Some people sit down, start typing, and don’t stop until they have 750 words with no plan or structure whatsoever. Some people use it as more of a personal journal.

My entries tend to be a cross between a journal and a mind dump. I usually type out what’s at the forefront of my mind that day, and in so doing, I usually get a better grasp on it myself, and it becomes easier to articulate should I talk or write about it later. I don’t worry about making sure everything makes sense or ties together. I’m just trying to get it out of my head and onto (digital) paper.

Though you can technically go back and read everything you’ve written in the past, that’s not the point. It’s not meant to replace journaling or blogging, but rather to supplement it.

Be forewarned; it’s a fairy significant investment. 750 words is probably more than you’d expect – this blog past is just under 500. It usually takes me anywhere from 12 to 20 minutes to get to that 750th.

The rewards are also significant, though. While the system looks very basic at first glance, it has some fairly complex analytics that break down what you wrote, and give you some great feedback. On top of telling you how long it took you for to write 750 words, and how many words you typed for each minute you were typing, it also gives you a pie chart of what you’re concerned about (abstractly speaking), and how you’re feeling.

Click for a closer look into my subconscious

It also allows you to see how all of that data has fluctuated over time, your most commonly used words, your fastest time to 750 words, etc. You even earn badges for meeting different criteria like writing for 5 days in a row, getting to 750 words in less than 15 minutes, etc. Those little rewards make this little app stand out as something unique and worth investing into.

Even if you don’t do any regular writing (ie blogging, journaling), I highly recommend trying 750words out. The impact that it’s had on me isn’t exactly massive, but I’ve definitely had a clearer mind the past three weeks. You’d be amazed at how therapeutic it is to just vent anything and everything once each day.

And how awesome you feel when you get the Phoenix badge.

My friend Molly sent me the link, and I found it absolutely captivating. I couldn’t stop thinking about it afterwards.

Like I said, they weren’t too far off at all. Half of that video looks eerily similar to parts of my daily life that I don’t even think twice about. Sure, the GPS was a little over the top with its animation, and I’ve never bought concert tickets at a cash machine (aka kiosk), but I buy movie tickets just outside the theater on a system that looks almost identitcal to that one just about every time I go. And watching movies on demand? It pretty much looks exactly the way AT&T envisioned it 15 years ago, and that’s only been status quo for a couple of years now.

And right there is one of the things that really amazes me about this campaign. That 15 year old footage of the “future” could easily be used in a commercial to have that installed in your home today. When I saw the on-demand movies segment, I didn’t even bat an eye at it. But, when it was filmed, most people couldn’t even comprehend how that would ever be possible. Television was built on broadcasting. There was no interactivity. Television stations had a program schedule, they broadcast to it, and you received their signal that they controlled.

But a television on which you could control what you wanted to watch and when you wanted to watch it? That’s Star Trek. I bet you didn’t even notice that those kids were watching a wall-mounted flat screen, did you? In 1993, most people had never even seen one. Star Trek, man.

Even more interesting to me, though, is that the concepts of the internet and mobile technology are completely vacant from each of those scenarios. The woman used a phone booth to video into her home; the iPhone 3GS could do that. The man sent a fax from the beach; email was a fun but unreliable tool in ’93. The student from the other side of the world “borrowed” a book by linking into a webcam feed as opposed to downloading the text of the book from a repository. People didn’t understand the concept of one giant interconnected link of millions computers, thus most of the clips were based around one to one communication.

At first, I thought that AT&T had no idea that the internet was going to be as huge as it is back in 1993, and thus they didn’t use it in any of their examples. The more I’ve thought about it, though, I’ve realized that they knew; they just had to dumb it down so people could grasp it.

You're gonna want that 'Woo Woooo!'

Still, I think it’s fascinating to see today’s technology applied to the early 90s lifestyle and communication standards. It’s almost like looking at Victorian images of the future that still have everything running on steam and helium in the year 2000. They took established technologies and just expanded on them as far as their imaginations could go; they hadn’t even conceived the idea of combustion engines or computer transistors, which made steam all but obsolete overnight.

If mobile technology hadn’t exploded like it had, phone booths would still be everywhere, and they’d be far more advanced. If the internet hadn’t erupted, we’d still rely on the one-to-one connections that phone lines can supply. Faxes, phone calls, and one-way video feeds would be it.

Thank you, Al Gore.

I know of very few iTunes users that have taken the time to rate their library, and even fewer that know the merits of doing it. The main benefits of having your library rated are in the making of Smart Playlists and Party Shuffles. Both create playlists based on various criteria; one such criteria being song rating. For instance, if you were suddenly hit with the urge to listen to some good jazz (some GOOD jazz), you could create a Smart Playlist of only music in the Jazz genre with a rating of 4.5 or more stars. Boom. Done. Consider yourself well-jazzed.

But of course, this only works if your library is rated. Otherwise, you would either have to manually create that playlist or just skip through the playlist when a sub-good song came on. Lame.

Ultimately, though, for 99% of people an unrated library is completely fine for their needs. And honestly, if it wasn’t for I Love Stars’ ease of use, I’d probably still have an unjudged library. But therein lies this app’s genius; it’s simplicity.

All I Love Stars does is add a slot on the taskbar along the top of Mac OS that shows the rating of whatever song you’re currently listening to if it is rated, or an empty rating slot if it isn’t. To rate a song, just click on whatever star you would like to rate it with, and you’re done.

Another very simple, but somewhat genius feature is that if you’re listening to a song that hasn’t been rated, when the song is 3/4 finished, I Love Stars will make a very subtle ring noise to remind you to rate it. At that point you’ve heard most of the song, and should have a good idea of how many stars it deserves. So get to it, man!

After installing the application, just listen to your library the same way you always do while your working or doing most anything on your computer. Spend three seconds every few minutes to rate songs as they play, and before you know it, you’re library will be largely rated. Will your life suddenly be unlocked to a completely new level of potential? No. But should the opportunity arise to take advantage of your newly rated library, you’ll be fully ready to embrace it.

I just wish I could give “How You Remind Me” 0 Stars.

You need to get a Gravatar of your own.

Gravatars (or Globally Recognized Avatars) are exactly what their extremely vague name implies. They are avatars or profile pictures that work across multiple blogs; and they make them more beautiful. To put it simply, you create a Gravatar account, tie it your email address, and upload an image of yourself. From that point on, anytime you leave a comment on a Gravatar-enabled blog using that email address, your comment will have your beautiful image instead of the boring generic one. It’ll even roll back out to any comment you’ve posted in the past.

“So just how many blogs are ‘Gravatar-enabled’?”, you ask? Well, Gravatars have been integrated into nearly every major blogging platform (WordPress, Blogger, Movable Type, etc); they’re ubiquitous on the web. There’s a very good chance that every single blog you frequent supports Gravatars.

Now that you’re completely convinced of the merits and importance of getting a Gravatar, make it happen, son! Go to http://en.gravatar.com/, and either create a new (and free) account, or tie it to the (also free) WordPress.com account that you likely already have. Convenient! All that’s left is to walk through their extraordinarily easy process of adding email addresses and images, and you’re good to go. Simple! The whole process takes less than five minutes. Speedy!

By doing so, you’ll be doing humanity as a whole a favor. You and your comments look more legit, Bloggers’ comment listings look more fresh and dynamic, and Everyone Else gets a better comment-reading experience. Humanity as a whole.

So, once again, I beg you. Please get a Gravatar. Speaking on the behalf of bloggers everywhere, we vastly prefer our blogs’ comment listings be filled with actual representations of you than an image that does nothing but scream “I don’t have a Gravatar!”

At least scream something more productive.

This blog has been horrifically overdue for a jump-start for far too long now. I can’t imagine anyone disputing that my blogging report card this past year is one giant F-. Why, I even had the audacity to “relaunch” with a new design a little less than a year ago. Since then, I’ve posted three (3) full blog posts, and possibly a dozen aside updates. I should be ashamed of myself, and as luck would have it, I am.

Fortunately, as luck would further have it, I’m not too ashamed to admit my mistakes and move past them. And in this case, moving past them looks a whole heck of a lot like what you’re seeing right now.

I started the redesign process with some vague ideas and sketches in early June, but it wasn’t until mid-July that I really started to spend a significant amount of time on it. One big hurdle was that I wanted to design it from scratch myself. This being the first site that I’ve ever actually designed as opposed to just focusing on the code, it took a good deal of practice, experimentation, scrapped ideas, and helpful feedback from a few friends. In the end, I ended up picking a color scheme and general visual style and running with it, designing it largely as I coded it.

Early on, I was significantly influenced by the hyper-retro visual and musical style of the iPhone game, Eliss, as well as the indie, subtley-throwback sound of Phoenix’s latest album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. Clearly, these weren’t direct inspirations, but they helped point me toward the style I eventually went with, and I think the blog still considers them grandfather figures.

So now, two months, dozens of hours, a thousand lines of CSS, and countless iTunes playlists later, it’s live. Still a work in progress, mind, but live and functional. I’m definitely happy with where it is, and very excited about getting back into the habit of posting new content.

And yes, as the Recent Cabeebage section of the sidebar may lead you to believe, I am going to start putting up some technical (by my standards) posts. And Websinal? Well, I suppose it’s those posts that fall somewhere between Personal and Technical. Gadgets, apps, life on the web, social media, technology, etc. It should probably be called Geeksinal.

I should probably be called Geeksinal.

One can welcome oneself back, can’t one? When it’s done in a rhetorical sense, then I think yes. Yes one can.

It’s been nearly four months since I’ve made a post on Cabeeb.com. Absolutely inexcusable, if you ask me. The lapse is due largely in part to my blogging energies being focused on redesigning and rethinking this site from the ground up rather than trying to feed fresh content onto what was already there.

Therefore, four months later, I give you Cabeeb 2.0, in which I decided to completely change up the format with the new design. To help differentiate the content, the single pipeline approach has been done away with. Instead of having one stream of incoming content, I figured it would be better to complicate everything and have several. This serves many purposes. First, I’d hope that having lots of different content will make the site more interesting to visitors. Not only is there more to consume should you so choose, but every time you visit, hopefully at least a few of the streams will have new posts. Which ties directly into purpose 2: it’ll make it easier and more enjoyable for me to put up new stuff. Maybe I don’t feel like writing a full post, but I’ve got some video footage to post, or a new book that I can put up. I can, and I will. So, what are these new sections? Oh, I’m so glad you asked.

Articles
These are the posts that, up to this point have completely made up my blog. Poignant thoughts, intriguing conceptualizations, bone-jarring revelations; these are just a few of things that you should not expect in these articles.

Video Blogs
A new sensation in my world. Instead of writing something, why don’t I SHOW you?! Or better yet, just uninterestingly and monotonously say exactly what I would have otherwise written. Hey, it’s a work in progress, so give me a break.

Random Videos
Videos that I think deserve their place on Cabeeb, but don’t fit into the “blog” category. Most of these will be short clips of something stupid or ridiculous happening. Maybe even stupidly ridiculous. We can only hope.

Archive Post of the Week
I’ve been writing on this blog for over two and a half years. Most of the stuff I wrote way back then sucks, but there are a few gems. Why not capitalize on work that I’ve already done? I can’t think of a good reason, either.

Musical Addiction
I get addicted to songs to varying degrees. And like any true junkie, I want to share it with all my friends. To consolidate space, I will hereby redirect you to the official explanation of the Musical Addictions section.

Reading
I read quite a bit and I want to tell you all about it. So, as I’m reading a book, I’ll put up occasional updates/thoughts about it, and then write a quick post-thought after I finish. I’m not exactly sure how it’ll work, but work it will. Trust me.

That’s all I’ve got for now, but I’ll be adding even more sections as time goes by. I’ve got lots of ideas that I want to implement, but I decided to pass on them for launch. And generally speaking, there’s still tons to be done in functionality. I haven’t really worked on the searching or archive post navigation at all. And I am aware that the design is very stale and unpolished, which I’m going to shortly rectify. I’m all about function over form when it comes to my blog, so I wanted to get it working before I made it pretty.

So there you have it. Cabeeb is back; hopefully with a fury. Feedback is very, very welcome and appreciated. Unless I don’t like it; then it won’t be welcome nor appreciated.

Love.

The future of birthday greetings is now.

As much as I love it, my phone is getting one heckuva work out.  Of the 40 or so people that I follow on Twitter, I get mobile updates for about ten of them.  There are nights where I will receive upwards of 30 or 40 text messages over the course of a couple of hours, and send another dozen.  It’s only slightly less hectic than it sounds and infinitely more entertaining than it really has any right to be.

Fortunately, I’m on a phone plan that gives me 1,500 text messages a month. Unfortunately, even that exorbitant amount wasn’t enough for this past billing cycle.

@twitterbuddies You owe me 10 bucks.