Today I happened to check it out on my iPhone, in Safari, and got a surprise.

IPhone version of the same site

Nicely compressed experience for smaller screen

The theme came with an iPhone specific version as well! If only creating a great experience for other sites on mobile devices were this easy.

This theme is called Bueno, available (free) from WooThemes.

Discovered a mega list of links to tips on how to be organized on The 99 percent recently.

One of the links tells you how to empty your email inbox in 30 seconds.

So I cleaned out mine, and it worked!

Emptiness

I didn’t exactly follow the recommended method… I wanted to make sure I didn’t forget anything really important. Here’s what I did.

1. Created the archive folder as they suggested.

2. Created two other folders: “Do this,” for stuff I really DO need to address, and an “On my mind” about stuff I’d like to research, read, and perhaps design or write about.

Then, I viewed all my mail by sender and spent maybe half an hour tossing some of the old stuff out, and moving a few things to the two extra folders. After that, I moved all the rest of the emails to the archive.

Nice! It looks like a cleaner slate anyway.

Gates of Hell at the Cantor Art Center, Stanford University

I’m now officially a Mayor of not one, but two places on foursquare. Including the Gates of Hell at Stanford. It took me a few weeks to figure out how this works, but it’s pretty easy. If you’re pining to be mayor of a few places too, here’s the scoop.

I noticed while biking through the Stanford campus that places were listed on foursquare somewhat randomly. Like The Gates of Hell, Rodin’s great sculptural doorway at the Cantor Art Center. I figured that if there was anywhere I’d like to be mayor, this was it. Didn’t look to be too popular so I thought I had a chance. Over the last couple of weeks, on my regular bike loop, I just stopped to check in. Perk: I get to enjoy the sculpture… the Gates of Hell as well as the entire Rodin sculpture garden, beautifully set outside the museum. Nice cafe there and there’s been a great exhibit of Chinese drawings at the Cantor too. Result: I’m now the mayor of the Gates of Hell.

Also noticed that people were creating places in foursquare. A playground near me is listed as The Island of Misfit Toys Since we meet for our daily design team scrum stand ups at the “War Wall” at work (rooms in short supply) I listed it on foursquare… two days later, I’m the mayor. (I guess I’m the business owner too? Meaning I could offer local specials and coupons to the team?) Anyway, kind of fun.

Elephant and sun flower

Here’s a selection of pictures on Flickr.

Also, the local Master Gardeners run an email and phone hotline for help with solving plant problems. Great organization— the participating gardeners on the tour seemed to belong to a special species themselves — all very knowledegable, helpful and seemed to have genuinely sunny personalities. Maybe the outdoors, and all that time with growing things, rubs off on them. Kudos, I’m hoping a little of that sunshine dander will  settle on me and those around me as well. It’s so beautiful here this time of year!

I discovered Etsy through pictures posted by Etsy sellers of their crafts on Flickr. I’ve only made one purchase there, a gift which I’m anxiously waiting for from the maker in Thailand. (Imagine… the maker emailed me to insure that the date they would ship it would be ok, and to ask me preferences on how they would make the bag). The purchase was extremely easy to make with a nicely integrated Pay Pal experience, proactively warning me about some processing they had been encountering with certain types of transactions.

Even if I’m not actually shopping, Etsy’s Get the Look newsletters are filled with fun pictures and creative ideas. Unlike the usual merchant newsletter, these are items selected and edited by different people. So you see a range of tastes and ideas. There is the handmade and vintage aesthethic running throughout of course: not a (current) brand in sight. What a breath of fresh air!

Amsterdam view... Bikes boats and bridges

Wonderful trip to Amsterdam. Most photogenic moments, all captured on the iPhone: astonishing number of bicycles, the canals, bridges, and Dutch delicacies. Thanks to colleagues at our Cisco offices in Amsterdam as well as the folks at Blast Radius for being such wonderful hosts.

Here’s my Flickr set of photos.

PS about these photos and filters on the iPhone: I’ve tried out a number of the camera applications, and sometimes get carried away with the filters a bit. By default I usually use Best Camera now. It has enough built in filters that can be experimented with quickly to get a quick result that adds a little extra punch or flavor. I’ve also tried more bizarre things using JotNot, but it’s much more work with less predictable results. However, JotNot is awesome for capturing receipts and printed materials, like all your travel receipts and sending them to Evernote… so you can submit receipts easily on return home, or file them easy access before next April 15.