Pinterest is a public online scrapbook for images you find on the internet. It’s 100% visual. The entire site consists of images that are displayed in an infinite scroll–no matter how far down on the page you scroll, there are always more images to see. You can view everyone’s pins or only the pins of people you’re following (who can be friends or complete strangers).

It’s one of the best time wasters on the internet, not just because of the fascinating images you can find on Pinterest, but also because you’re building something while you skim the images. You’re not creating the images, but you’re compiling pinboards of related images that interest you. Every time you pin or repin an image, you’re adding it to your virtual memory, a memory that you share with the world.

That’s pretty cool.

As of this second, Pinterest is the 113th most-visited website on the web. Lots of people are using it. You probably should too, even if it’s just for an occasional visit. Here are a few tips to get the most out of the site:

1. Pin vs. Repin vs. Like:  When you find an image on the internet that you want to share on Pinterest, you “pin” it through one of a variety of ways (the best one is below in #2). If you’re skimming Pinterest and see an image that you want to add to your boards and share with people, you “repin” it. And if you want to remember an image but don’t want to add it to the infinite scroll, you can “like” it. For me, if I really love an image, I Repin it. If I just like it, I Like it.
2. Right Click to Pin: Without what I’m about to tell you, pinning an image can be a little annoying. There are several ways to do this, but the best way is to get the Google Chrome Pinterest Right Click extension. If you don’t have Chrome, check your browser’s extension or plug-in list to find a similar tool. Once you add this extension, you can simply right-click on any image or video and select “Pin This Image.” It’s awesome.
3. Hover to Enlarge: One of Pinterest’s few failings is that sometimes you can’t see an image well enough on the infinite scroll, so you have to click on it to see it better. I know, that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but the beauty of Pinterest is the ease with which you can skim through images. So do yourself a favor and get the Pinzy extension too. If you hover over an image on Pinterest for a second, it’ll enlargen to full size.
4. Don’t “Follow All” of Someone’s Boards: I learned this lesson the hard way. For over a year, whenever I followed someone new on Pinterest, I followed all of their boards instead of selecting individual boards to follow. A few weeks ago I found that I was hardly ever visiting Pinterest because the infinite scroll was clogged with images of wedding dresses, artsy furniture, makeup, shoes, and kid’s toys (well over 60% of Pinterest’s users are female. I love females, but I have absolutely no interest in the specific types of pins I mention above). So I’ve had to go through and unfollow individual boards while continuing to follow the stuff I’m interested in. Save yourself some time and do that up front instead of “following all.”
5. Don’t “Follow All” Friends on Pinterest: This is both for the reason above and for another key reason. Once you become a Pinterest member, if you hover over your name in the upper right and select “Find Friends,” Pinterest will present a list of your Facebook friends who are on Pinterest. There will be tons of people in this list. Don’t touch it. At least, don’t follow all people (which Pinterest makes very easy). The reason is that you are probably “friends” with people on Facebook whose images you are not at all interested in. These are the people that you’ve deleted from your Facebook feed. Pick and choose the ones you’re actually interested in following.
6. Don’t Auto-Share to Facebook: This is just annoying. At first I thought it was clever, but I’ve found that it just doesn’t work well, and it’s annoying to see the lists of people’s pins in my Facebook feed. If you want to share a specific image on Facebook, just do it manually.
7. Don’t Pin Too Much at a Time: This is a weird one that you have to experience to truly understand. Basically, sometimes you’ll go to Pinterest and you’ll see a ton of cool images on the page. You might want to Repin or Like several of them. But then you realize that they’re all from the same person, and if you Repin or Like too many of them, they’re going to see that and might think it’s weird. Plus, the beauty of Pinterest is that it’s a hodgepodge of pins from all sorts of people. If you Pin or Repin a ton of images in a short amount of time, you’re monopolizing your friends’ feeds.
8. Don’t Pin Off-Theme: I see this all the time now that I’m in the process of removing uninteresting boards from my feed. I’ll click through an image of high heels to unfollow a board labeled “Design,” and then I’ll see that there are actually some really fascinating examples of web design and architecture on that board. The high heels are off theme–they don’t belong on the Design board. Help your followers out by properly categorizing your pins.

I was going to recommend a few boards to follow, but the fun of Pinterest is discovering the boards that you connect with. Don’t be afraid to “follow” the boards of someone you don’t know. They’ll take it as a compliment that you appreciate their taste. And if you’re into cute animals and people, funny things, cool houses, beautiful locales, and impressive infographics, follow me on Pinterest.

Oh, and congrats to Charlotte for winning the Tournament of Cuteness Battle Royale 2012!

When I say they “work,” I mean that I don’t fast forward by them. I mean that I actually watch some commercials. Because they’re entertaining. Because they move me. Because they make me feel something–pride, joy, nostalgia. Something.

Do they make me want to buy products? Hardly ever. Although I suspect that their intent isn’t always to sell (or at least sell right away), but moreso to brand themselves into your mind so someday when you’re ready to buy, you buy from them. The key is that you actually remember what the commercial is selling.

Here are a few of my favorites from the past year or two. Lots of car ads. I won’t go into why they work, but maybe I’ll discuss that in the comments. What are some commercials that you enjoy watching? (Oh, and if you’re interested in this sort of thing, subscribe to this blog.)

• Savored: Pay $10 for a reservation at a nice restaurant through the site, and then get 30% off your meal at that restaurant. No coupons or printouts–you register your credit card so you can be a smooth operator when the bill comes.
• Groupon Rewards: Instead of trying to find new customers, this program helps you keep the ones you have coming back again and again. The more they spend (with their credit card–no coupons or printouts needed. That seems to be the trend), the more deals they unlock.
• Munch on Me: Weekly deals on specific dishes at restaurants. That way restaurants have complete control over the inventory, and they can “teach” customers to try (and fall for) dishes that maybe they usually wouldn’t try.

But the most interesting twist on the daily deal site is Sneak Peeq. I’m not sure it’s the best, as I’m having a hard time understanding the concept, but there’s definitely something interesting going on here.

Take a look at the screenshot from Sneak Peeq at the end of this entry. We’re looking at a large box of chocolates–a single box, mind you. Not everyone who participates gets a box of chocolate.

You know the street value of the chocolate ($67), but you don’t know what the current price is. That’s hidden. You see, every time someone sneaks a peek at the price, the price goes down. [Update 11/8: Apparently Sneak Peeq underwent a redesign the day after I wrote this entry. The concept is similar, but not exactly the same.]

There’s no catch to this–you get 10 peeks a day to use anywhere on the site. You sneak, it tells you how much you personally made the price go down, and then you have 15 seconds to commit to buying it. So every time anyone sneaks a peek (peeq?), the price goes down for everyone…but only one person can buy the item. Once someone buys it, the price for the item jumps back up to retail, and only more peeks will start to lower it again.

You don’t know when the item has been purchased, so you might hold off on your last peek in the hopes that the price will be really low, and then when you finally peek, you see that someone else already bought the item and you’re stuck with a much higher price.

Very cool, right? I agree. There’s some gamification here, and you have the potential of getting a really great price. There’s also an incentive to share with your friends, since they’ll help the price go down. And sure, you might “lose” out on a great deal, but you’re only losing a minute or so of your time.

Where I’m stuck is: What does the company selling the product through Sneak Peeq get out of the deal? At the end of the day, maybe this chocolate seller sells 20 boxes of chocolate for roughly $25 each. So they’re losing money on each product. And sure, they’ve gotten some exposure from the site, but after using my peeks trying to get the price lower, I’m not any more likely to buy that chocolate at full price elsewhere. I’m just more likely to return to the site tomorrow to use my peeks for a possibly low price. What does the merchant gain?

Solve that puzzle with a satisfactory answer and get 20 Jamey Points.

“Most people view themselves as complete strangers, which makes them reluctant to put away money for a later date. But Bailenson and his team discovered that if people view a virtual version of themselves digitally aged by several decades, that hesitation disappears instantly. In one study, contributions to hypothetical retirement accounts went up by 30 percent.”

This is me in 50 years.

So basically, if you logged into your retirement account and saw that the profile photo staring back at you wasn’t your current cheery, young, optimistic face, but rather your old, saggy, tired face, you’re significantly more likely to put more money into your retirement savings.

This is big. 30 percent is very significant.

So let’s imagine what else you can do with this facial aging and manipulation software:

• There could be a goal-oriented fitness website that tracks your progress as you try to get in shape. Before you start doing anything on the site, it shows you a photo of how chubby you’ll look in 6 months if you don’t work out at all and continue your current eating habits and don’t work out. Every time you work out, the future photo looks better and better.
• There could be an “age her!” feature on Match.com that lets you see what a woman (or man, for you ladies) will look like in 10-20 years. Perhaps it could show your aged photo next to theirs so you could decide if you could see yourself growing old with her.
• Use the software to discourage kids from taking hard-core drugs like crystal meth. Show them photos of what they’ll look like in a year if they get hooked disfiguring drugs like that.
• Similar to the 401k, what if you could use a variation of the photo system for long-term planning for things like travel, cars, houses, etc. If you’re saving for a trip to Italy, when you log into your savings account, you’d see a photo of “yourself” in a gondola in Italy. Same with the car or the house.

For a while now, I’ve used two different platforms for listmaking: Outlook Notes and Backpack. There are pros and cons to both. Outlook Notes are stored on my computer and synced to the Notes app on my iPhone, making them easy to access when I’m at home or on the go, but not at my work computer. Backpack is beautifully designed software that I can access online anywhere, but it leaves me wanting more.

So a few months ago I mocked up the exact kind of listmaking app I wanted. The examples I used were story ideas, but I’d happily use this software for any type of list. Note that this is for personal use, even the “thumbs up” option. I find that I go back over my lists of ideas many times,

A friend of mine started to create this software, but he got caught up in some other things (family, friends, paying jobs…really?). So the other day I was chatting with another developer, and he recommended a free site called Trello.

I’ve been using Trello for a week now, and I’m happy to report that it’s quite close to the listmaking software of my dreams, especially for idea logging, sorting, and tagging. It is a must-have for writers and compulsive list makers.

Trello has various ways of helping you break down ideas. You have multiple pages to use, and on each page you can create multiple lists with different tags to sort the individual ideas. The ideas themselves are on cards that you can drag and drop to any list on the page or to any position on a list. If you click on the card, you can store a wealth of information on it, as if they represent index cards with a few lines on the front and a full description on the back.

I would highly, highly recommend loading Trello and giving it a try. It’ll take about 5 seconds to have your account ready, and Trello’s tutorial is cleverly built into a preloaded page that you can play around with as if it’s one of your lists.

Let me know what you think after you give it a try. What do you currently use for lists and sorting ideas?

The other site I wanted to mention today is a blog called Dear Photograph. I love media that overlaps physical objects with digital objects, and this site pulls this off brilliantly. Basically, they’re digital photos of a person holding a printed photo in front of the place where the printed photo was taken, creating one seamless photo of old and new. I’ve posted an example here. Accompanying the photos are one or two-line descriptions that heavy with nostalgia and wistfulness. Almost all of the photos have people in them, which I think adds to the nostalgia of the overlapping photos.

Do you have any photo-sharing sites that you subscribe to or regularly visit?

The price hike happened a few weeks ago. Since then, Netflix has lost a million subscribers. So the other day, Netflix members got an e-mail from the CEO indicating that in order to alleviate further dissent, Netflix would divide into two different companies, Netflix (for streaming) and Qwikster (for DVDs by mail). Two separate services, two separate queues, and the price hike (if you subscribed to both, just now separately) is still in place.

I’m amazed that this is something that people are outraged about. We’re all talking about watching movies at home, right? That’s it? And yet we’re outraged? I’m truly hoping that Hastings has a whole slew of e-mails in his draft box, all ready to send at the right time. Some messages I’m eagerly expecting:

• That Qwikster will be divided into two separate services, one for DVDs, the other for Blu-Ray (called Bluester).
• That he’s giving into to public pressure and reuniting the DVD and streaming services, but he’s sticking with the name Qwikster instead of Netflix “because he can.”
• That he has no idea of what to do, so he’s having a contest to determine the best solution–just like the million-dollar contest for someone who could create a better recommendation engine for the site. Again, he insists that the solution be called Qwikster.
• A picture of Hastings giving us the finger, followed by a short note saying that he’s made enough money, and he’s shutting Netflix and Qwikster down immediately. The P.S. would inform me that I have 7 days to return my copy of Ella Enchanted before he sues me for a million dollars.

Honestly, the switch wouldn’t be a problem if every movie and TV show streamed on Netflix. But they don’t–the selection of streaming video is actually quite small.

So here’s what I think Hastings should actually do:

1. Recombine the services, reduce the prices to what they were two months ago (but still delineate pricing between DVDs and streaming), and give every Netflix subscriber (and recent unsubscribers) two months free. But announce that changes will be coming in the following form.
2. Pledge to get every movie (and maybe every television show) on the streaming service by January 1, 2012. However, when they reach a critical mass, the way they charge for streaming will change. Unlimited streaming when you every movie available is preposterous. Us consumers shouldn’t expect that. We should expect to pay for what we watch. Thus the streaming plans will be determined by hours, with the caveat that you can roll over unused hours to the next month. That way consumers will assign a specific value to a streaming video, unlike right now, when $7 = infinity. $7 should never equal infinity anything. I think that change may actually help Netflix sign studios that currently don’t allow for streaming. As part of the exchange, Netflix should give them data, tons of data. When do people watch different types of movies? When do people pause movies? What types of product placements cause people to open a new tab in their browser in search of the product? What movies and scenes do people watch more than once?
3. Announce that from now on, every year on July 1, subscription prices for all services will go up in correlation to postage increases and inflation. DVD rental today should not cost what it did in 2005, nor should it cost the same in 2016. It’s not sustainable that way. However, in recognition of loyal customers, you get grandfathered in for DVD rentals. So if you pay $10 for 2 DVDs a month now, you’ll always pay that much for the rest of your life. This is not only good for loyal customers, but it would also be great for Netflix–imagine the business they’d do every year on June 30th!

In all this fuss, people are forgetting what Netflix does right. Netflix has amazing, forgetting, transparent, and informative customer service, and that’s getting lost in all this fuss. Get rid of the fuss and go back to being an affordable, convenient, consolidated service, and we’ll go back to remembering why Netflix is awesome in the first place.

What do you think? What’s your solution?

First, a preamble: I love games. Especially board games. I’m not much into hard-core video games, though. I don’t play World of Warcraft or Halo, and I don’t own any of the newest gaming systems. In fact, I had an iPhone for a year and a half before I downloaded a single game. I thought that playing games on my iPhone would be a complete waste of time.

And in a way, iPhone games are time wasters. But most iPhone games are designed to just last a few minutes. You play a few rounds, advance with three gold stars, and then return at a future time. No big deal.

Also, just to add a little bit of clout to the following list, I not only own a lot of iPhone games, but I also read a blog called Touch Arcade that reviews a ton of iPhone games every day. I kind of let Touch Arcade do most of the filtering for me, and then I try out the best of the best.

Okay, the list!

1. Birzzle  Warning: This is not a game that lasts just a few minutes. Not when you get good. It’s Tetris meets Bejeweled, but with birds, and a little more flexibility with where you can move the birds. Incredibly addicting.
2. StupidZombie  You may have heard of a little game called Angry Birds. But the much lesser-known StupidZombie is way better (and a little different). From a single position on the screen, you shoot a limited number of bullets at zombies scattered across the screen. You try to take out all of the zombies with as few bullets as possible. It’s tons of fun trying to maximize each bullet and shoot around obstacles, and the bullets bounce off the walls, so an errant shot can sometimes produce surprising results. A must-own.
3. World of Goo  The physics of this game is incredible. You build structures using little balls of goo–towers, bridges, cranes, etc. It’s a little tough to describe, but I guarantee you’ll find this one fascinating. It’s even better on an iPad.
4. Draw Race  This game is incredibly simple and admittedly grows old, but it’s such a cool concept that it deserves a spot on the list. You’re presented with an empty racetrack on which you draw your car’s eventual path. Then you pass the phone to a friend and have them draw their car’s path. Finally you press “Go” and watch the two cars race against each other as they follow the path you set for them. Really interesting concept. Draw Race 2 just came out and vastly improved the graphics, so that’s probably the one to download.
5. Cut the Rope  A piece of candy dangles from a rope, and your job is to get it into the mouth of the monster waiting at the bottom of the screen. All you have to do is swipe your finger across the rope to cut it. It starts out simple, but with a variety of obstacles and ways to move the ropes and the candy, this game can keep you entertained for hours (spread across many days).

Runners Up: Tiny Wings, Vine King, Pocket Frogs

What are some of your favorite games that are missing from this list?

I love that there isn’t a perfect system for discovering new bands and artists. Instead, there are a plethora of systems that people can use depending on their tastes and preferences. You have the classic word of mouth in addition to iTunes Genius, Pandora, and YouTube, as well as the more recent Spotify.

But you also have these little niche websites that are absolutely fantastic. I’m sure I’m missing some, and I’d love for you to add to this list in the comments. Hopefully one of these will mesh well with your style.

1. mySpoonful: This is my favorite of the bunch. If you like indie rock, go to this site right now and subscribe to their subscription list. Every day you’ll get exactly one e-mail with a link to a new song that’s free to play and free to download if you like it. I love the daily deal aspect because you don’t have to remember to go to the site every day, and it’s only one song, so you can listen to it while you brush your teeth in the morning. One and done. These are bands you’d otherwise never hear of, but many of them are excellent.
2. thesixtyone: This is a beautifully designed website that can keep you transfixed for hours (or just for a few songs). Basically, you go to the site and it picks a song for you to listen to. You can listen to it in the background or you can watch the screen as little tidbits about the artist or band pop up around the screen. If you like the song, you can buy it from the site.
3. 8tracks: Remember back in the days of CDs and cassette tapes when you could make a mix tape and share it with a friend? 8tracks brings that concept to the cloud, and you don’t even have to own the music to share it. You create the mix tapes right there on the site and then share it with friends and the general public. Or you can just listen to “tapes” that have already been created on the site. (Do you remember your first mix tape? Mine was made by my first high-school girlfriend and only contained two songs, but I listened to it over and over: “Romeo and Juliet” by Dire Straits and “All I Want Is You” by U2.)
4. turntable.fm: This is by-invite-only so far, but I love the concept. I’d say that it’s Twitter for music. When you go to the site, you join a “room” of random people listening to music, and you take turns selecting a song for everyone to listen to. There are many other ways to recommend songs to people, but I think the key is that it’s live–everyone is listening to the same music at the same time, so it’s a shared experience (like watching a movie in a theater). Full disclosure: I haven’t tried this site yet, but I love the concept and have heard that it’s all the rage in Silicon Valley.