street legal gas scooters

Street Legal Gas Scooters on CafePress 

Vintage Mod Target Baseball Jersey

From: MOP Media

Framed Tile

From: Auslan Design Soccer Scooter Football T-Shirts

UK Scooter Pop art Blue Framed Tile

From: Auslan Design Soccer Scooter Football T-Shirts

See more designs like these on CafePress

Buzz Machine 

Content farms v. curating farmers

Tweet: Content farms v curating farmers: Deeper insights in Demand Media's model & finding opportunity in finding quality.

I spent an hour on the phone the other day with Steven Kydd, exec VP of Demand Studios, to understand their model?using algorithms to assign content creation based on search and advertising demand and to minimize cost and [...]

The entrepreneurial journalism class report

Tweet: Report from my entrepreneurial journalism class: Cause for optimism
Wednesday was the best day of my year: the jurying for my entrepreneurial journalism class at CUNY. The jury awarded four businesses a total of $57,000 (thanks to a grant from the McCormick Foundation). Here's how it works.
Because one of them could be the next Google [...]

Is journalism storytelling?

It's accepted wisdom in the news tribe that journalism is storytelling. They have become synonymous. Journalists are storytellers. I hear that over and over again, especially in discussions of journalism education, and when I do I see everyone's head nod. Lately, I'm not necessarily nodding.
I'm not so sure journalism is storytelling anymore.
One reason: [...]

Cool Tools 

Leeners Pickling Kit

My daughter loves pickles and has expressed some interest in making her own, so I'm thinking of getting her the Leener's Pickling Kit, which can be used to make either dill pickles or sauerkraut, and includes a 2-gallon lead-free ceramic crock made in the U.S.

-- Paul D

[We asked our readers what cool tools they are giving to their friends and families this year. Here is one in a series this week of suggested gifts mentioned in the comments that we are highlighting on the front page. Submit your own recommendation in the comments. -- ES]

Leeners Pickling Kit
$35

Available from Leeners

Hometown Puzzle

For Christmas this year I gave my parents a personalized puzzle featuring a custom map of the area around their lake cabin. "From any starting point, we'll create a 400-piece puzzle of a six-by-four-mile area using U.S. Geological Survey maps. A house-shaped piece in the center represents the address you choose. Shows main roads, contour lines, water features, vegetation, and notable buildings. Arrives in a presentation box with space for a personal message." If you search for a promo code, you can save 20%. (Order by 12/14/2009 for Christmas delivery.)

-- Jason Palmiter

[We asked our readers what cool tools they are giving to their friends and families this year. Here is one in a series this week of suggested gifts mentioned in the comments that we are highlighting on the front page. Submit your own recommendation in the comments. -- ES]

National Geographic Store Hometown Puzzle
$40

Available from National Geographic

Call for Submissions

We're looking for recommendations for the following:

What is the best (cheap and great interface) domain manager if you have one or two dozen (not one or two and not a hundred or more) domain names to keep going?

Best field guide to insects (North America)?

Best single AA battery flashlight (torch)?

A great how-to site you just discovered?

Also, we're still accepting holiday gift ideas for a Cool Tools guide coming later this week. Leave your input in the comments or e-mail me directly: elon {at} schoenholz dot com.

Campack Towel

The common paper napkin found in every restaurant in the U.S. is a rarity in the rest of the world. When traveling, I've found cafes and cheap restaurants often offer only small squares of tissue that I could dab my lips with, but won't do a thing to keep protect my lap from dropped food. My solution is the Campack towel. It's a small (15x15 inch) very thin microfiber towel with a clip on one corner that keeps it attached to its little pouch even when you are using it. The pouch, in turn, has a small carabiner that clips to a belt loop. (Stuffed in its pouch, it measures about 3x2 ½ inches.) The Campack towel is just large enough that I can use it like a regular cloth napkin, keeping it in my lap and lifting it to wipe my hands and face, without detaching it. It seems very similar to the previously reviewed Aquis Microfiber towel, just smaller, less expensive and with the added small clip on the corner.

Because it's always at hand, I find a million uses for it. I can dry my hands with it in the many public toilets that don't provide paper towels. Once it's saturated, I can wring it out and it's ready to soak up more water. It's very soft, making it more pleasant to use than paper alternatives.

On a recent trip to Japan and Korea, I became so attached to it that I left it on my belt when I came home.

The Campack has a few more thoughtful features: One side of the pouch is made of mesh, allowing the towel to dry when it's not in use. It's bright orange, so you're not likely to leave it behind if you've hung it up to dry in your hotel room. The manufacturer also claims that it has an anti-microbial, anti-fungal layer. I can't say whether this is really necessary, as it takes only a minute to wash it in the sink and it dries quickly, so most of the time it's clean and dry. MSR makes a similar product, but it's slightly more expensive and doesn't come with the carabiner.

-- Tom Sackett

Campack Medium (15.5"x15.5") Towel
$7

Available from REI

PU Gun

If you ever had occasion to use expanding polyurethane foam to mount a window or the like, you may have thought like me "Great stuff, wonder what else I could use this for?" But standard polyurethane foam cans are only good for a short while. Once used, the valve and application tube glues itself shut within a few hours, regardless of how much product was left in the can. Keeping a can around for those odd jobs and bright ideas is just not worth the waste.

Enter foam guns. The point of foam guns is right up front, so to speak. The exit valve is right up at the very tip of the rigid application tube. When you mount a can to the gun, the whole inside of the gun is pressurized with product just like the can. There is nowhere inside where the foam can expand or harden.

That's the theory, at least. In practice it still won't keep indefinitely. On first try mine hardened right trough in two weeks, and I had a nasty job cleaning it out mechanically. Subsequently, I have taken care to store it with the can upside down, and I tested it every few days for a while, and now it seems to keep fine for at least two weeks. Perhaps it just needed to self-seal.

I don't have a particular brand to recommend. I just got the cheapest all-metal model on eBay at the time, which I've seen since both branded and unbranded, and at wildly different prices. My experience seems to indicate, though, that staying away from the plastic models was a good idea, as I had to use considerable force to disassemble the gun for mechanical cleaning.

With these caveats, I'm still pretty happy about this discovery of mine. Only this week I used it to assemble a life-size doll my girlfriend made, and fix it to its plastic pipe skeleton. It really feels like I've got a whole new material in my kit.
Discovering what else it's good for is going to be fun.

-- Gaute Amundsen

Polyurethane Foam Gun
$30?$125

Available from Amazon

Also from eBay