Kaboodle's cool collage feature

Kaboodle has some very neat features they've added recently. I was particularly impressed with their collage view of a list of items. Here's one I created for a dress I am thinking about having made:

fabric

This functionality is very close to my outfit builder functionality for Dressr... should I worry? Choosing not to, Kaboodle and Dressr have very different focuses.

Pappy...

I don't mommy-blog that often (other than my Parenthacks), but my daughter is acquiring vocabulary at an amazing rate, and I wanted to share my favorite word: pappy. Pappy is her attempt at "happy", and I think a pretty cool thing for a 15 month old to have in her vocabulary. She'll use it to indicate "life is good, doesn't get much better than this" -- playing on the playground, eating ice cream, hanging out with both her dad and I. It's a wonderful reminder for me that simple things are enough to make her happy, and I should enjoy the same things.

(How did she get the word happy? I can't claim much credit here -- it's a combination of getting happy face stamps on her hand (random fun thing) at childcare, and a book we have called Baby Faces that features babies with different emotions. The first page in the book is "happy" and J. seems to have pattern matched that and the happy faces and figured out a pretty abstract concept.)

Dehydrated Milk

Mary McPhail recently had a post that I'm going to call "Pay Yourself First (not!)" -- that I agree with. It's about how the "Make Mine a Million" newsletter for women entrepeneurs came with the advice that you "pay yourself first." Now I didn't read the newsletter, but here are my thoughts:

Basically, you have to invest in your business as much as possible in
the beginning, with the hope/plan that it will start to pay back sooner
rather than later. My symbol for this -- dehydrated milk. My mother
fed us dehydrated milk for years growing up to save money -- but by the
time we hit highschool and college, they were making enough to pay for
private school tuitions. Feed the business, then hopefully it will feed
you.

Gotta go wake the baby up!

Austinist has a nice post up about places for kids to eat cheap or free.

How did I miss this?

Turns out Beth also blogged about bags and purses at Blogher. There's a shot of a very cute green (faux?) leather bag with a (very neat) inside.

The neat thing about this is that people remember Beth because she took shoe pics -- it reminds me that doing small, unique things can really make you stand out. (I'm reminded of someone who held the auditorium doors open for everyone at my highschool Girl's State program every day -- by the end of the week, everyone knew who she was.) For those of us who aren't always the most socially saavy of people, have a "gimmick" is having a built in ice breaker. I know I'm always more comfortable in large social settings when I have something to do -- even if it is a self appointed task.

Is There any There, There?

I've been thinking about how to make money with Dressr, specifically, and Web 2.0 applications, generally, today. Along the same lines, a friend was talking about another technology business, saying "I just can't tell if there is any there, there." I think that just about sums it up -- cool apps are so easy to build with all the wonderful tools and APIs that are available on the web today, but when it's all said and done, "is there any there, there?"

What exactly is the "there"? I suspect it depends on your goals. I divide most things into two categories -- projects or businesses. A Google Maps mashup that you whip up in 4 hours, without a revenue model beyond adwords, is probably a project. A business -- well, a business at least has revenue, and ideally has profits. Myself, I want a business, not a project. That means I've got to figure out how to make money, not just get users. (The get acquired quick scheme seeming just as unlikely as any get rich quick scheme...)

But until I've figured out how to make money off of Dressr, I'll call it a project. Once I get serious about revenue -- and have some validation that the ideas I have for making money will work -- I'll start calling it a business!

So I didn't go to Blogher (although I wished I had after reading the list of people Asha had met), but you've got to love a tech conference that spawns a flickr photo set of shoes. (Via Beth's Blog, but pointed out by Charlene Li.)