One of the first things I did after I left my job was to get a new email account. Sure I have our home Comcast account, and I have a personal one through Yahoo. But the former is full of sports news, ZDNet, and MSN emails sent to my husband (I use a PowerBook G4, if you don’t know). And the latter has become so full of scam spam (you know, “claim your $3 million, new car, pool table, video iPod” – you name it) that I hated the thought of using it for my “official” business account.
So Lori set me up with an invite to Gmail, which, now that I’m used to it, I like just fine. It’s webmail, so I can access it easily from anywhere. I don’t have to bother with sorting or filing correspondence, since all conversations are threaded and Gmail is very searchable. There’s virtually no spam in my inbox. Even the advertising can be helpful, as it turns out.
I have to admit that at first I didn’t pay attention to the ads being served up to me. I’ve become essentially blind to GoogleAds and I almost NEVER click on them at ANY website. So oblivious am I to this kind of advertising that it took me awhile to realize that the ads in the sidebar of my email had to do with a subject in the message I was looking at. (I know -- duh, c’mon, it’s Google!)
Which brings me to the point of this post. I finally started paying attention to those ads, and now I have Google to thank for pointing me to a website that has managed to turn my head (slightly) from the tech, political, new media, sex and mainstream media sites that fill my newsreader (105 feeds and counting in NetNewswireLite) to a subject that’s also near and dear to my heart (and my expanding waistline) – food!
101 Cookbooks is a beautiful thing. The site itself is clean and white, with gorgeous photography (I’m thinking that foodie/photog Lori would love it just for that feature). I’m just digging into the information there, but it seems full of everything good and upscale and nouveau when it comes to food: trends, products, recipes.
For instance, in a post on the recent Fancy Food Show in San Francisco, I read about new-trend "superfoods" like pomegranate, acai, green tea and herbal infusions. Now I gotta find out more!
This is stuff I absoulutely love to read, look at and learn about, just like with some of my favorite mags, Cooking Light, Gourmet, Food & Wine. Stuff I might not actually make or eat, but stuff I love to know about as part of a lifestyle I like to imagine.
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I've got more commentary on Google at Coit Avenue.
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