Feeling like the smelly kid

I, like many of you, are totally obsessed with Twitter.  But I've noticed something about this little web 2.0 app that could.  Sometimes, it makes me feel like the smelly kid at lunch that no one wants to sit with.

I think it's just because the Twitter experience can be a bit overwhelming and since there's so much going on, and you're not involved in much of it, you feel like you're not involved at all.  I often feel that my friends in real life, care more about their twitter friends when they are tweeting.   I know it's silly, petty and mostly untrue but there's something about this system that makes me feel that way.  I feel like I'm constantly waving my arms saying "look at me, look at me!" and no one is looking.  Sad.

anyway, follow me on twitter and please say hi. I'm feeling very lonely in the twitterverse.

</marissa>

Xoopit: The greatest gmail plug-in ever!

I think I may have found the most useful plug-in ever.  It's called Xoopit and it's awesome.

Basically what it does is find all your media sent you via gmail and displays it at the top.  For me, a graphic designer, this is a major time saver.  I need to find that picture of Lisa Loeb that her manager sent me to put on the website?  Well look at that!  There's a thumbnail right there with the picture I need.  When I click on it, it goes directly to the media!  Fabulous.  I can't tell you how obsessed I am with it.

So how it works:  You go to xoopit.com and sign in using your gmail account.  Then xoopit begins the arduous task of cycling though all your emails and finding media.  This process takes a while so give it an overnight cycle before it kicks in.

Then you install a firefox plug in that will actually work with gmail to display your media above your email like this:

After all your media has been catalogued you can see it in gmail or you can go to xoopit.com/feed and they show you all your media in 1 handy-dandy site.  You can even separate everything by media type.

Basically, this is the coolest thing I have ever seen and I demand that you try it out immediately!

</marissa>

Craft or Crap?

Last night I had a business dinner at Craft's Private dining room.  I was totally expecting Tom Colicchio and his band of Top Chef's to come out, do a quick-fire challenge for us and then dazzle us with their culinary offerings.

I was sadly mistaken.

First off, the pros on the experience.  The dining room is beautiful.  There are carefully chosen decorative elements gracing the dining room.  One wall is completely taken over by a chain-mail wine rack which was surprisingly empty but beautiful non the less.  There were sliding doors to reveal and hide the actual kitchen which looked immaculate.  Even the bathroom doors were elegantly hidden behind a sliding door.  And our waiter was fabulous and so nice. Oh and the wine was pretty good.

The cons though, far outweigh the pros.

Unfortunately, the food was kinda...eh.  I found the vegetables to be overcooked, kinda soggy and dare I say it, oily.  Nothing was presented all that well which killed me because on top chef, he's always preaching presentation.

I must say that dessert was pretty good but there was WAY too much of it.  We were served a chocolate cake, a benoit, 2 dishes of ice cream and a meringue and then given a scone to take home with us.

So all in all if you were going to throw a party at the craft dining room I would say skip it, save your money.  It just didn't seem that worth it to me.