I have been addicted to Etsy for the past week. It keeps me up late at night whether I’m online or not. Either I’m endlessly browsing through pages of cute handmade crafts, or I’m dreaming up my own ideas and sighing about creating my own shop someday.

I only have two issues that keep me from starting now. One is that I don’t have the time or space to do any major projects. I have classes and homework to keep up on if I’m going to graduate in three years. (Yes, I’m going to be in college for five years total… stupid requirements.) The other issue is, I don’t have a steady address near a post office, and that is basically essential when running an online business where you need to send customers a product. If I lived at my parent’s house, that would be possible, since we live quite literally, two blocks from the post office. But I’m at college, where I change apartments once or twice each year, and tiny college apartments are not easy to work out of, trust me. Especially when you have to share that tiny apartment with a roommate.

Still, I love Etsy. I’ve found so many great things, made my first purchase, and met some great people as well. I love the seller’s attitudes on Etsy. They have a passion for what they do, and all things handmade, and love to support their community of artists and crafters. Hopefully I’ll be able to be a part of that someday as well. I mean, it’s making me contemplate dropping out of college. If that’s any indicator of my passion, I will have a shop someday! Haha!

New favorite website! Not that I really had a specific favorite before, but I think I have one now: sketch.odopod.com This site is SO much fun. You just sit there and sketch… whatever the hell you want. The canvas is your browser window (Want a smaller size? Shrink the window!), the brush your mouse or trackpad. Or in my case, this site made me bust out my Wacom Intuos Tablet and play for a few hours. :P

Things I love about this site, is the textured background. It has that grainy paper feel that just gives it that little bit of realism rather than the obviously generated, perfectly white computer screen you get most of the time. Another thing I love, is the texture of the colors. I can’t decide if it’s like marker or like chalk. But the properties of the utensil (whatever it’s supposed to be) are very intuitive, with slower motion bringing it to a smaller point for detail work, and the fattest width when you scribble quickly. The other thing I love is the limited palette. Whoever made the color choice, made it very interesting. The colors aren’t loud or vivid and they all work very well together. It gives every users work just a little bit of professionalism because it takes away any garishly bright colors your average 14 year old would first pick.

Overall, I love the Indie feel of this site. I just don’t know what it is about it other than the above mentioned that makes it so homey. Great job Odosketch creators! Check out my sketches!

So, it’s about time I explain an obsession of mine. OMGPOP. OMGPOP is described as, “a place to hang out, play free online multiplayer games, chat and make friends.” And it does just that!!! It’s fantastic.

They started out as iminlikewithyou. Very cute, no? But kinda long. I kept accidentally typing inimnlikewithyourmom or some other mangled form of that. I liked “IILWY” better, but omgpop is way easier to type.

Anywho, my all time favorite game on there you should know if you follow me on Twitter, is Blockles. Or, their version of Tetris. I love it! I can play for hours. I’m not fantastic at it, but it’s amusing nonetheless.

Look! I'm winning!

One thing I love about this site is the interactivity. You can play with other people and you get items that lets you scramble opponent’s screen, send them lines, take away your lines, etc. It’s an added element of fun for me.You have the option to start a game without items though, for you hard core rule abiding tetris players.

Some other awesome games OMGPOP has include, Hover Kart (Mario Racer), Letterblox (Scrabble), Jigsawce (puzzles), Draw My Thing (Pictionary), and Balloono! What’s better than moneys and water balloons?! They have several other fun games as well.

So go sign up and add me as a friend and we can play some Blockles or Balloono together!

EDIT: They removed the original Blockles due to litigation from Tetris, which I am very unhappy about. Unfortunately, I no longer use the site. I hope it returns someday. Until then, it’s boycott for me.

Every once in a while I run across one of those anti-internet/anti-social media people. You know the ones, they get a facebook or a Twitter but then delete it because it’s “fake” and you can’t keep in touch with “real people,” or have a “real relationship” with people. They just dismiss the internet like it’s an inferior form of communication. Well, that really irks me, because I’ve met some of the best people online. And sure, some forms of the communication are missing, like facial expressions, body gestures, tone of voice, etc. And admittedly, some people probably would ever be friends “in real life”  because of prejudices thinking, “they’re too ugly,” or, “they sound stupid,” that we usually use to sort people.

But on the internet, the words and the ideas are still there… that’s what matters. People who have just met, say in a chat room, can just dive into deeper conversations getting to the core of our person faster and know who we really are. Because, honestly, it’s easier to open up when you don’t see someone’s facial expression. We can pretend we didn’t cringe when someone types that they’re 41 and when you thought they were 28, and you can keep talking. Point here being, we can set aside any visual prejudice and just have open, raw conversations with anyone. And I’ve found that the internet is the place where I have some of my richest conversations, that last the longest. Not in one sitting, but in talking over months and years.

And now for a hilarious quote from an acquaintance I saw leaving facebook… his reasons were, “Because the internet is the most fake and illegitimate form of meeting people and maintaining communications, I’ve ever encountered. I could just be doing better things with my time.” Sir, if you ever happen to read this, I have met a countless number of worthwhile people on the internet, and it has been my strongest tool of maintaining communications. Especially with my friends across the country from summer programs. One friend in particular I e-mailed daily for a year and a half, and we still e-mail each other now at least twice weekly. Another I’ve been in contact with for nearly four years now.

Saying that, I want to ask those people, who dismiss the internet as a “real” form of communication then,  if they don’t read books, or have never been effected by a poem, because that’s the same thing. It’s the use of words for communication. As my friend Wil (@javajunky) said in our online conversation about this, “Text can convey a lot. Literature would be nowhere if it weren’t true.”

I fell that dismissing online communication is pointless for that reason. And if these people only want a “full relationship,” face to face with “real people,” then they better stop using phones, reading the news, and watching TV too, because those all dilute the full on experience you get face to face with another person. So, good luck, hypocrites. I’d like to keep all of my online friends right here. And who knows, someday I may get to meet them “IRL” as well.

There are an innumerable amount of third-party applications to use with your Twitter account. Some are useful, some are just fun. Here are 44 so far that I’ve found and have sorted by general use.

* = requires your password

Account Managers & Updaters

*TweetDeck – A desktop client that gives you multi-column use with the ability to sort your users, @replies, DM’s, search keywords, tag clouds, trending topics, and more. You can even incorporate your 12second.tv account to update when your friends post a new video! Great if you have a high-traffic account or follow a lot of people.

*Twitteriffic – My favorite desktop client lets you read and post tweets. Free account has an ad only once an hour that you don’t even notice. Or you can buy it and get it ad-free. You can also get the app for iPhone and iPod Touch.

*Twhirl – A desktop client that runs on both Windows and Mac and can connect to multiple Twitter, laconi.ca, Friendfeed, and seesmic accounts.

*Splitweet -  A twitter client aimed at corporate users where you create a free account to keep track of mulitple twitter accounts.

*TwitTwoo – Allows you to post messages to your twitter directly from your blog’s sidebar.

*TweetByMail – Update multiple Twitter accounts by mobile mail.

*Twuffer – Allows you to compose future tweets and schedule their release.

Graphing

TweetStats – A personal favorite that shows you your monthly tweets, tweet density by day, aggregate daily and weekly tweets, who you @reply the most and percent of your posts which are @’s, your interfaces used all in bar-graph form! In another tab at the top, you can see your tweet cloud with or without @’s as well as your number of twooshes (exactly 140 character tweets).

*Twistory – Gives you daily and weekly charts of your tweets and allows you to sync all your tweets to Google Calendars or iCal.

TwitterCounter – A line graph that shows your amount of followers for the last week, month, or three months. You can also compare two accounts together.

Twitterholic -Gives you a small graph and a big list of the amount of your recent followers and updates. Also suggests similare people for you to follow based on your location or description.

TwitGraph – Creates pie charts of your Twitter profile.

Photos and Sharing

*TwitPic – Another popular favorite that lets you share photos on Twitter. You can upload photos via your computer or mobile device.

*Pikchur – Another photo sharing site that connects with many other sites as well.

*TwitterFeed – Feeds your blog to twitter at intervals you can control.

*Facebook Twitter App – Connect your Twitter to your facebook account!

TweetBars – Puts your tweets into email, websites and forum signatures.

TwitThis – Adds a button to your web page or blog post that twitter users can use to send a link of the page t their twitter account.

Filters

Search.Twitter – If you have a twitter account and don’t know about this you must be under a rock. This is a very powerful search tool that finds anything and everything you could want to find within Twitter. Find Hashtags, keywords, users, @replies, links whatever you can think of.

Monitter – You get three columns to enter in keywords that sort all recent and updating current tweets with those words. You can also limit the location of the search to be anywhere within 10-100 km/m of whatever location you type in.

TweetGrid – Choose different grid layouts where you can then follow the live-updates of tweets using those words.

HashTags – Have you ever seen people putting #’s in from of words in Twitter? That’s a hashtag. People use it to keep track of global conversations about the same topic. You can search on follow these conversations here.

*TweetChat – Chat with other tweeters in rooms that are sorted my hash tags. For example log in and go to the “twitter” room and you’ll see all tweets that have the tag #twitter. Makes it easy to follow and reply to conversations with a global audience without having to follow everyone.

TwitScoop – Tag clouds of what’s trending on Twitter. You can also narrow the search by certain users or keywords to rack conversations.

Retweetist – This just-launched site shows you the most retweeted URL’s and people on Twitter.

re.twit’d – The most re-tweeted posts in the last hours, day, week, and fortnight in all of Twitter.

*MyCleenr – Sorts all your Twitter contacts by the last time they posted and allows you to delete user who haven’t updated in a long time.

*Twollow – Automatically follows people on Twitter for you based on keywords. Free and premium accounts. Premium obviously allows more keywords.

*Twilert – Lets you receive regular email updates of tweets containing your brand, product, service, and any other keyword you’d like.

*Tweet Scan – Download your personal Twitter archive.

DM Deleter – Deletes your Direct Messages for you. Either all of them or from a specific user.

Twitority – Similar to using search.twitter but it sorts by authority. Try typing in a username or keywords.

Who Should I Follow? – Enter your Twitter username and it gives you suggestions of people you should follow. You can specify by popularity and distance from your location.

Cursebird – A real-time feed of people swearing on Twitter! You can also search by username.

Rankings

Twitter Grader – Measures the reach and authority of a Twitter user. Also suggests people to follow.

Twick Size – Enter your username and it tells you the size of your… Twick. Then again, does size really even matter?

*Twitterank -  Find yours or others’ ranking. Enter your password and you can post it to Twitter.

Twitemperature – See how hot or cold you are on Twitter!

*TweetValue – How much is your twitter account worth? Enter your password to tweet the results.

Retweetrank – Find out what rank you are by how many people have re-tweeted you recently!

Other

Quitter – Give it your Twitter username and your e-mail address and you’ll get an e-mail anytime someone unfollows you on that account.

Generatus – Can’t think of something clever to tweet? Insert your name, gender and tag filters and Generatus will make one for you!

Historical Tweets – A funny parody of what historical figures would say if they had been on Twitter.

GigaTweet – Counts the number of Twitter messages and provides a few graphs of the overall network.

Flickr my Background – Connect Flickr to your Twitter account and put your recent flickr photos at your Twitter background!

Tweet Clouds – Create Tweet clouds of common words you say or just from free text.

My First Follow – Just put in your username and share with your twitter friends who you first followed.

Well, that’s everything I’ve found. If there’s a third party Twitter site that you like and I haven’t included, feel free to e-mail it to me and I’ll add it to the list! And don’t forget to tell your friends about all these fun and useful sites! And feel free to follow me @yoha_ahoy!