Take a look at the stylish and funny tee shirts for the pregnant women in your life. There are t-shirts that say: Give me a break, I’m creating Life over here; Watch the love grow…; Bump (with a road sign); I’m not pregnant but my gut thinks I am. There is also a maternity shirt that shows how big baby is in terms of fruit for a given month in a pregnancy. Nothing says I’m pregnant like this merchandise.

There is a lot more than this available at:

www.cafepress.com/yourdigitallife

With the GoogleScreenSaver, you can pick and choose directories of images or just specify all your images and then the screen saver randomizes all your images, puts borders on them so they look like old prints and starts throwing the pictures on your desktop in different sizes and angles so that it looks like a table covered in your favorite photos.

When we have parties, we leave the monitors and TVs (hooked up to the computer) on so that our friends can see our favorite pictures and sometimes we even specify pictures from past get togethers to folks can remember the good times from “back in the day”. As a matter of fact, the way we let our friends know Carlin was pregnant was by throwing a party, picking a ton of photos, throwing a couple of pics from her ultrasound, and then just waited for folks to notice. It was great to see all the double takes we got!

I just started a new job not too long ago and I use it there as well as it is a great conversation starter with my new co-workers.

Lastly, I just enjoy seeing photos from my wedding, my family, vacations, etc…It reminds me of all the great things in life.

If you don’t have the GoogleScreenSaver (it comes bundled with Google Pack, which offers a lot of other great functionality), you can download it from the link to the right. Once you have the Google Pack installed, right click on your desktop, go to properties, click the “Screen Saver” tab, select GoogleScreenSaver, click “Settings” to choose your folders and start enjoying the greatest screen saver (in my opinion) out there!

MP: What is Joe’s Goals?
Ian: Joe’s Goals is a simple online goal tracking application. Basically it lets you define a list of goals on the left hand column while the days of the week are shown across the top. Click the corresponding box to mark what you’ve completed each day. You can even record multiple check marks where needed. For example, I could have a goal called Practice Guitar and with just two clicks I can record that I practiced Monday and Thursday.

MP: What does Ben Franklin have to do with your Web 2.0 application?
Ian: A while back I saw a blog post talking about how Ben Franklin developed and tracked a list of 13 Virtues in his effort to improve himself. He used a pen to track his daily progress on a pad of paper he had printed up for himself. I thought the grid format was innovative and I soon figured out a way to incorporate it into my idea for a goal tracking application. A number of people even use Joe’s Goals to track Ben Franklin’s original 13 Virtues.
http://www.emaginacion.com.ar/cym/gain-more-virtues-by-benjamin-franklin/
MP: How does Joe’s Goals help me meet my goals?
Ian: The application came about because I wanted a way to track my daily habits (both good and bad). The idea was to give visibility into the way you are spending your time so that you could easily tell if you spent the last week progressing toward your goals or if you spent your time sitting in front of the TV drinking Dr. Pepper and eating potato chips. The tracker will hold as many goals and vices as you want and tracking them just takes a click of your mouse once you are logged in.
MP: How has Joe’s Goals been received by the Internet at large?
Ian: I’ve been very surprised by the warm reception. It has, naturally, been on digg and reddit along with a half dozen other popular blogs including LifeHacker and the Yahoo 9. Overall people have been very enthusiastic about Joe’s Goals, and I now have over 100 links from personal blogs praising the application. I’ve also been featured on TV, on radio, and in newspapers. I never expected this little application to go so far so quickly.
http://www.joesgoals.com/index.cfm?openaction=press
MP: What has surprised you most about the way people use Joe’s Goals?
Ian: The overwhelming enthusiasm has certainly surprised me. People all over the globe have tested the beta version and the wide variety of goals they’ve tracked has been astonishing. People have used Joe’s Goals to help them exercise, eat healthier, quit smoking, control spending, etc. The goals that really get me excited are the ones related to other people. I love it when someone uses Joe’s Goals to make sure they compliment people, kiss their spouse each day, spend time with their kids, or pray for someone. I found this data so exciting I created a public area of the site called Get Inspired in the hopes that others will also be so impressed.
http://www.joesgoals.com/get_inspired/index.cfm
MP: Where is the application headed?
Ian: Like any Web 2.0 application: if you aren’t building new features you are disappearing. I have a number of big things planned for the application. There are also a lot of user requested updates and changes that are in the queue. One of the big features I’m getting ready to roll out is a “notes” feature that will let you add notes to your tracker in addition to checks. The basic idea being that if you skip a workout or get in late to work one day you can simply add a note to explain why it happened. I’ve been using this feature for a couple of weeks to track my blessings and journal about my writing activities. 

Share with us your best ideas for a fun project showcasing ‘Summer 2006′! It can be a purely digital project, like a photo slideshow, or something tangible like a calendar to keep summer with you all year.

We’ll ask a question like this weekly to get you thinking – post a comment here, or…

If you want to start contributing, just register and an email will be sent with a user name. You can then log in and start blogging away! When you finish your first post, just click ‘Save’; it will be sent to us for review and posting. If you become a regular contributor, we will grant you ‘Author’ status and you’ll be able to publish your own posts immediately. We look forward to hearing your ideas!

CafePress.com is probably the most popular site around for these kind of projects, and having just set up a store myself I can tell you it’s really easy to do. If you’re only ordering your own design (there’s no minimum order), and not offering it for sale, it’s even easier. There are tons of sites out there that offer this service (just search for ‘custom t-shirts’ to check) – if you know of some good ones, please let us know about them!

Here’s how the process works with CafePress.com:

• Select the photo you want to print, or create your own image using Paint, Photoshop, PowerPoint, or any other image creation program. Keep in mind the size of the product you’re creating for, be it a t-shirt, mug, etc. Save it as a PNG or JPG file when you’re done. Need some help with formats? Refer to their image workshop.
• Go to ‘Make your own stuff‘
• Choose the product you want to make (there are 90 or so available)
• Upload your image, review and purchase!

As I’ve been working on this t-shirt creation process, I keep thinking of fun reasons to make shirts:

• Family reunion
• Adult sports league (dodgeball and kickball come to mind)
• Gift to the wedding party
• Birthday party
• A million more I’m sure you’ll think of…

We’d love to hear about your custom project ideas – comment here, or write a post and include a picture!

http://www.mypublisher.com/default.php