On the Twitter homepage, the site describes itself as “…a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” But the communication ability of Twitter extends well beyond what you do on a daily basis.

Lisa was giving a presentation called “It’s a Google World—We Just Live In It” at the Minnesota Government IT Symposium and I tagged along to give support to her before and after her presentation for people with questions. Me with my laptop, ready to post updates and answer questions via Twitter as accustomed to at most IT/Web conferences, I was completely taken aback. Not a single person in the room had a laptop with them. There wasn’t even any public wi-fi available.

Is our government that disconnected that even the tech sector is afraid of technology? I was prepared to catch numerous people on Twitter during the conference, but didn’t “hear a tweet”. I did, however, get a response later in the evening from the IT Director for Cook County, MN that asked how they could be using Twitter.

The answer seemed simple to me: there wasn’t a clear answer, because its uses are almost limitless. Emergency Snow Removal, school closings, community updates, upcoming events, volunteer opportunities. We all could be more active in our communities with faster, more available communication—I believe that it’s just a matter of time before more people and institutions are embracing new media as a truly viable platform.

And of course, I’m on Twitter: @paularmstrong.

Buttons. They’re everywhere. What started out as a physical, tactile object (did underwear really have buttons?) has even made it’s way into the internet due to its functional purpose: push this, get that. You might be thinking, “So what?”. Like me, until today you’ve rarely considered buttons. And why should you? They’re just there. So obviously we take them for granted. Poor little buttons. I say it’s about time we give the button its day in the sun, its 15 minutes of blog fame.

:: continue reading this ocean post ::

Blogimal: Kangaroo.

Interesting Fact: I can write with my toes (or maybe scribble).

Browser of Choice: Firefox, baby

Program that is Always Open: Outlook

Daily Grind: Gmail, CNN, Basecamp, Harvest, and azul7 (promotional wink wink)

Best Site on the Web: azul7.com, obviously. (I really can’t think of an answer for this)

Worst Site on the Web: hamsterdance.com (Hoopdang! that’s bad)

Blogimal: Snow Monkey, I think? I’m pretty sure people only call it that because we’re in Minnesota, if we were in California it’d be called a Sun Monkey. What’s with all the regional weather discrimination anyway?

Interesting Fact: Sometimes my car does not start ten minutes at a time, but I make good use of the time… I call friends and family.

Browser of Choice: Used the most out of habit: Safari. Boy this question sounds serious though, like “weapon of choice”, choose your browser wisely…

Program that is Always Open: Entourage (my 2nd favorite TV show)

Daily Grind: azul7.com , duh. Oh, and Google, just once in awhile.

Best Site on the Web: I can’t honestly commit to a “best”, I think the digital and interactive landscape is changing so rapidly it’s almost impossible to pick the best. The best this month might be 3rd best next month.

Worst Site on the Web: tampax.com (Honestly, sideways navigation makes me want to puke.)

Blogimal: Bunny Rabbit, but I don’t know if that is really the best fit for me. I wanted to be a fox or a unicorn, but Liina would not let me be a unicorn because SHE does not believe them to be real.

Interesting Fact: I was born on the summer solstice when the sun reached its highest point in the sky, resulting in the longest day of the year.

Browser of Choice: Foxfire with 7 to 27 tabs open at all times.

Program that is Always Open: Photoshop, Illustrator, iTunes, macMail, iCal and Adium

Daily Grind: Yahoo, Gmail, You Tube (the world must watch Charlie The Unicorn), ABC (who needs a TV), Facebook, Facebook Mind Jolt Games, QBN, Wells Fargo and Lynda(so I can nerd out)

Best Site on the Web: See above it is mainly the sites that I use everyday.

Worst Site on the Web: This is hard, there are so many, but I would have to say MySpace because it is so prevalent. I knows me so Ugly. How do you know if your website sucks fill out the Does Your Web Site Suck? Checklist.

Blogimal: Don’t know? It better not be a hyena.

Interesting Fact:  I once had a mustache. I wish that I still had it.

Browser of Choice: Safari/Webkit Nightlies

Program that is Always Open: Terminal & iTunes

Daily Grind: scribbls and forecast.weather (weather is nice)

Best Site on the Web: It’s a tie: hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com or
scribbls.com

Worst Site on the Web: microsoft.com

Blogimal: Lynx.

Interesting Fact:  Hmm. I am a total geek.

Browser of Choice: Mozilla Firefox

Program that is Always Open: Mozilla Firefox

Daily Grind: Google, Facebook, DailyPuppy and CNN.

Best Site on the Web: Anything google does. Email, docs, calendar by Google

Worst Site on the Web: MySpace

Blogimal:  Birdie

Interesting Fact:  I love pumpkin pie (If it is pumpkin, I generally love it - minus pumpkin lattes. That is just nonsense.)

Browser of Choice: 50% Firefox - 50% Safari

Program that is Always Open: Mozilla Firefox

Daily Grind: Daily: NyTimes, Startribune, Youtube, and Google At least once a week LinkedIn, Plaxo, Twitter, Wellsfargo and Huffingtonpost.com

Best Site on the Web: Wellsfargo.com (online bill pay and all my accounts are in one place-LOVE IT)

Worst Site on the Web: All governments sites out there (except careeronestop.com of course)

Blogimal: Peacock

Interesting Fact:  I was born in San Francisco - Haight Ashbury to hippy parents.

Browser of Choice: Firefox

Program that is Always Open: Outlook, Harvest, Word, Excel (lame, I know)

Daily Grind: Harvest, Basecamp, GMail, and Netscape Some faves (not daily) - youtube, ebay, thriftyhipster, and reverbnation

Best Site on the Web: barackobama.com

Worst Site on the Web: johnmccain.com

Blogimal: Meerkat

Interesting Fact:  Grew up in the town of Blue Earth which is in Fairbault County, when the city of Fairbault is in County but Mankato is in Blue Earth County.

Browser of Choice: WebKit nightly builds

Program that is Always Open: There are a lot of them: WebKit, TextMate, Apple Mail, Adium, iTunes, Twitterific and Last.fm is always running so you can music stalk me. And when my computer just isn’t running slow enough, I open Photoshop.

Daily Grind: Google Reader is open all day.

Best Site on the Web: The “Blog” of Unnecessary Quotation Marks quotation-marks.blogspot.com
Regret the Error regrettheerror.com

Worst Site on the Web: Any site not designed by Azul 7 (natch)

Blogimal: Porcupine

Interesting Fact:  I made my own 200 serving wedding cake with my husband!

Browser of Choice: Safari

Program that is Always Open: Photoshop

Daily Grind: CNN, Communication Arts, Facebook, and Martha Stewart ( I know, very embarrassing)

Best Site on the Web: Google and Blurb

Worst Site on the Web: MySpace Pages - too much freedom for people to use bad fonts and color combinations

Blogimal: Husky.

Interesting Fact:  I have dual citizenship with the US and Ireland due to a distant relationship.

Browser of Choice: Firefox - because of the developer tools - but I want Chrome for the Mac.

Program that is Always Open: Quicksilver is always open in the background, even when there are no programs open, but I usually have Firefox and Mail open too.

Daily Grind: I am always looking up a solution to a problem, or learning something new, using Google.  And I have to have a tab open to the NY Times.

Best Site on the Web:  My favorite sites aggregate other useful information from the web.  For example, I’ve come to rely on Lifehacker.com for cool tips about getting things done.  And there’s nothing like getting lost in a chain of someone else’s favorite sites at ma.gnolia.com.

Worst Site on the Web: Back when I was a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (don’t tell anyone), the most-hated and most-needed site was the Microsoft technical solutions website (technet.microsoft.com).  They had all the answers we needed every day, but you couldn’t FIND them using the search tools.  All the geeks used Google to search the site.  Worst, you had to use IE - the site was broken for most other browsers.

Blogimal: Barracuda

Interesting Fact: I am from Texas. Like big hats and guns.

Browser of Choice: Firefox

Program that is Always Open: Outlook and Firefox

Daily Grind: MarketWatch

Best Site on the Web:  MarketWatch

Worst Site on the Web: …

Blogimal: Octopus… I chose my blogimal because I figured an octopus sprays ink… writers use ink… and, of course, the eight slimy tenticles that we have in common. I hide them well.

Interesting Fact: …She forgot that she is not a Octopus but Septopus.

Browser of Choice: I tend to alternate between Internet Explorer and Mozilla.

Program that is Always Open: Hands down, Microsoft Word. If they could just provide me with a freakin’ dictionary, my life as a writer would be complete. But no. Instead, I have to rely on the thesaurus, which isn’t even that great. Take that, MS Word!

Daily Grind: There are too many to list! Let’s see… I’m addicted to spoilerfix.com (anxiously awaiting the next Lost spoiler! Yes, I also read the ends of books first), people.com, cnn.com, and sometimes foxnews.com if I want to entertain myself with the overly-dramatized version of a story. I use Wikipedia more times a day that I could ever count… Adsoftheworld.com, adage.com, oh, I also like to torture myself by hitting up travelzoo.com and looking at all the trips I can’t afford! And, who could go more than a few days without checking facebook?

Best Site on the Web:  I <3 Google (apparently, enough for me to type <3, which is nothing short of ridiculous). Especially when they have new illustrations for their icon. You know, the ones that correspond to the day? Like a few weeks ago, it was teddy bear day. I would never have known if it weren’t for Google. When I think of all the teddy bears that might have suffered…

Worst Site on the Web: Any website that I can’t figure out how to navigate. If a sudoku puzzle were to suddenly transform into a website, it’d be this one: bbdo.com

I am unfamiliar with the world of interactive.

There, I said it. Cat’s out of the bag. Or maybe it was never in the bag, because most of you have probably figured this out after the repeated, wide-eyed, blank expressions that result when anyone mentions things like wireframes, scripts, or coding to me. I have absolutely no clue what anyone is talking about.

So, you’re trying to tell me that when someone says javascript, they aren’t offering me some alien variety of coffee? Too bad, I have an insatiable coffee addiction. And when Liina says wire flames, she is actually referring to wireframes and, talented as she is, cannot spontaneously combust websites online? Thank god, I don’t need the CIA on my case. Again.

I’m a writer here. Who knew I’d have to learn an entirely new language to work with interactive? In fact, after my first day here, I left the building in a state of confusion far beyond the typical bewildered fog that surrounds me. I ran straight to my trusty Webster’s dictionary, which I affectionately refer to as Big Red (unless I have to carry the thing, in which case I’m something rather less than affectionate). Believe me, it’s big. Like bigger-than-my-physics-textbook big, a feat I hadn’t thought possible prior to the discovery of this sixty pound red dinosaur at a garage sale last summer. There is just one teeny, tiny problem about my good friend, the dictionary- it was published before I was born.

This really hadn’t been a hindrance before my first day at Azul 7, when I lived in a world shrouded by the pleasant belief that websites appeared magically from thin air. However, the time was finally upon me to look up all the outlandish internet terms I’ve heard of but never understood before. Such peculiar terms as javascript and bandwidth. So of course, I turned to Big Red and searched its dusty pages for enlightenment in the form of wireframes.

I found nothing.

I moved on to scripts. A passing mention of manuscripts and old documents. I tried interactive. Something or other about human contact. At this point, I was getting pretty frustrated with my former friend. I decided to look up the mother lode- the internet.

There it was, between internee and internist: internaught.

My dependable old dictionary did not even contain the term internet. Maybe that’s why it was sold for fifty cents at a garage sale, cast off the shelf in a fit of cruelty, only to be replaced by a newer, smaller dictionary that accepted and defined our digital future. I felt betrayed and deceived by my affable giant. There was nothing left for me to do but visit the source of my confusion- I went online and quickly found myself on Wikipedia.

There amidst pages and pages of user-produced content, I found clarification and subsequently lost two hours of time. I now understand that javascript is not my precious coffee but instead a language for coding websites, and wireframes are layouts containing descriptions of a website’s functionality. So, the next time someone slides down the slippery alphabetical slope from wireframes to wire flames, not a thought of spontaneous online explosions will enter my head (Okay, well maybe just one. It’s a pretty cool idea, after all). Not only this, but I’ve learned what the ‘dev’ team is and AJ shouting “SCRUM!” in the mornings doesn’t even sound like a strange German word to me anymore.

Thus far, this experience has led me to two conclusions:

1. I’m going to get the hang of this.

2. I’m going to need a new dictionary.

Nevertheless, don’t ask me to define the internet. We’re in the process of doing just that.