Do you love books? We do. Do you want to make a difference? We do. Buy your books at BetterWorldBooks and make a difference in the lives of others. Oh, and free shipping!

OK. I know. I left Portland for Pasadena, but I think I'm still an Oregonian. I ran across the Oregon Bounty site tonight and it made me a wee bit homesick. It is a beautiful site. Very cool. Enjoy it...wherever you might be!

We heart GoodTube! GoodTube is an internet community dedicated to Good, a video sharing site for nonprofit organizations and people involved in volunteerism worldwide. It provides charities with a way to showcase their work, reach potential donors and inspire viewers. It is a place for video enthusiasts with a Good message to connect with a global audience. GoodTube is a nonprofit, non religious enterprise, and it is 100 percent free.

If you want to share the story of your nonprofit, please check out GoodTube!

There's a new phone in town. Frankly, I'm a little skeptical. You see, I am a pocket-carrying member of the iPhone Lovers Society. Have been for several months. I heart my iPhone so much, I can't remember how I functioned without it. True, I make my living by being hooked up to the e-mail like an IV drip, but that's not the only reason my rubber-sleeved machine is my best friend. This phone allows me to best live the life I've chosen to live--time management-wise. Not to say that my life is the best life out there, but in charting a course towards maximizing economy of time, functionality and information, the iPhone frees me up--as long as I heed some caveats and rules:
1. No texting or email answering while driving
2. Try not to over-tweet when with the family
3. Experience comes first, communicating the experience, second

Although thoroughly convinced that the iPhone cannot be replaced, I'm intrigued by the new Android-based social networking tool: the Cliq. The premise of Motorola's stab at seizing the smart phone dollar is built around the "social skills" angle. It's email, Facebook, Twitter, phone, text and calendars all integrated, with both the touch screen AND a QWERTY keyboard. Despite the intriguing possibilities of this new kid in town, I'm still convinced that you'll have to pry my iPhone out of my cold, dead hands!

When it comes to electronic rights for out-of-print titles, whose side are you on? Microsoft, Yahoo and the the nation's top copyright official--or, Google, libraries, tech groups and various activists. Should Google win the monopoly on e-production rights, or should we heed the warnings of the U.S. Copyright Chief, Marybeth Peters, who worries that Google's win would undermine Congress' ability to govern copyrights, and spell disaster for books published overseas.

It's odd, to me, however, that Microsoft would be crying foul when it comes to monopolies. Just saying...

I haven't seen my daughter in six weeks. She's living the dream--taking a post-college trek through Europe with her backpack and an open mind. I'm thrilled for her, and yet.

As a mother of three (and stepmother of two), I always keep one eye open and one ear available for the middle-of-the-night phone call. The dreaded emergency. But I delight in the daylight hours, where I've been able to stalk my child via various web-based interfaces.

Charlie Rose in conversation with Marc Andreessen, co-founder and chairman of Ning and an investor in several startups including Digg, Plazes, and Twitter. Best known as co-author of Mosaic, and founder of Netscape. He is on the Board of Directors of Facebook and eBay.

Monday morning last, I stumbled across my lawn in the usual fashion--briefcase, purse, gym bag and sloshing coffee--and lo and behold, my car had become a canvas for a knife-wielding punk. "Malicious mischief" my insurance claim would later call it. At that moment, I had other words for it. Both doors had been deeply marred with four-letter words, and one side offered the sentiment, "I love war." The rear of the car had been sliced through the middle in one long stroke. Ten years in this house and never had anything like this happened.

After filing a police report, initiating an insurance claim, getting a body shop to detail the two thousand plus dollars of repair required, my rage had spilled over into sadness. My sweet husband had affixed copy paper over the offending words, and then spent the day hunting up temporary remedies to lessen the blight. To no avail though, the cuts were deep.

Laura suggested that maybe this was the time for car magnets, and I had been pondering the idea as well. Why not. After all, Honda Elements like mine are often seeing zooming about town with signage of some sort. I e-mailed a guy I'd met at a networking event not long ago, and, voila, in less than 48 hours my lemons became, well, if not lemonade, at least seltzer with lemon squeezed in. My car now sports band-aids for the cause!

I still would like to get my hands on the punk, though.

When I was a little girl imagining what I wanted to "be" when I grew up, the words "strategic communicator!" never once appeared in my daydreams. That just goes to show that we live in a world where jobs, careers, identities and entrepreneurial ventures are evolving at humming bird-flickering speeds.

One of the main reasons we got into the business of "strategic communications" is that we believe that the old carpenter adage, "measure twice, cut once" is also crucial to the field of marketing and communications. My co-founder-in-crime, Laura McCulloch, likes to say, "Our culture is running as fast as it can to stay five steps behind!" The pressure to micro-blog your existence before it changes has superseded conscious, well-thought out business strategy, and we'd like to address that. We may twitter in bursts of 10Mbps, but our important business decisions should be made at human speed. In other words, when it comes to identity creation, we believe in developing carefully, launching once.

In service to our claim, welcome to BridgePoint Creative--the website! Though we've been in business for several years, we've taken our time developing our brand. Client-by-client we've built bridges across the country, up and down the West Coast, and over the river and through the woods. We're grateful that, at long last we're able to share our world with the larger world. We'd love to hear what you think.