It doesn't take photos or videos. Or play music. The "delete" button is powered by the eraser of a #2 pencil. But it's tough, lightweight and cheap. It goes with me everywhere. Recently, I realized how glad I was to have it.

I went off to write at Foster’s Market, a leisurely café popular with Duke students, families and foodies. It has a big back room and a do-what-you-will mentality. I decamped, opened on my browser and was met with an error message.

NO NETWORK CONNECTION

Steve Jobs was speechless. Bill Gates was aghast. Suddenly, my laptop was an unwieldy doo-dad and my connection to a gazillion other voices was silent. (Kind of a relief, actually....)

There’s been a lot of talk recently of integrating the online and offline worlds. Foursquare. Geo targeting. Sixth Sense technology. Augmented reality.

It’s easy to assume the Internet is everywhere, like an invisible aura in our iPhoned and iPadded iWorld. Without it, things just are: a wooden table, a notebook, a pen.

So “No Wi-Fi” was a shock of cold water. It wore off when I remembered my trusty “iPad”– a pad. It’s cheap, sparkly, and pocket-sized.

I pressed the ink down onto the paper. My document was saved from the start. I couldn’t lose power. I was the power. Some of my favorite ideas are scribbled in notebooks like this. At a restaurant. In a doctor’s office. Before a gym class.

My "iPad" can teach my laptop a thing or two about versatility.  And it reminds me to be just as flexible.

What happens if you mix the collection and adoration of images with the concept of crowd sourcing? You'd get dropular.net. There are many sites that are similar, like ffffound.com, but I choose to collect images on this site. Under dropular's concept, you drop images into the site and they will naturally create pools of similar images through tagging. Through this process, you can start to see the development of trends, categorization of design styles, and the comparision of different media. This site is different in that you can bookmark or "drop" images, videos, and links, all in one place. Also, the navigation is intuitive. You can simply use the arrow keys to scroll down or go to the next page, which is awesome for users like me who tend to zoom through images quickly, too impatient to even use the scroll bar.

I love images. Well, media really. Sites like this are like my little box where I keep them and bring them out when I want inspiration. I guess some people collect stamps, coins, or shells... I collect media. It's one of the things I love to do.

Here's my collection: http://dropular.net/user/free_

Like most of us here at McKinney, I love me some NPR. NC Public Radio's office is just across the man-made river that runs through our campus, so it's hard to avoid listening. They recently did a great segment on the making of Miles Davis' classic album, "Kind of Blue." I think KOB was the first jazz album I ever bought (Davis' "Sketches of Spain" being the second), and the songs on there are so famous they need no explanation here. What I found interesting was what the band had to say about the making of the album. There are some really interesting comments on how Davis pushed his musicians to be more creative and break new musical ground. Two points stuck with me from the interviews. First, Miles pushed people out of their comfort zones because he wanted them to abandon anything familiar, easy, or formulaic. He wanted people to be right on the edge, where they were not sure what would come next when they improvised. Second, he spent a lot of time telling people what not to do, but gave very little specific direction on what to do. I'm not sure how much of this would work in an agency environment, but it's fun to think about.

Check out the interviews at:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99805408

Enjoy today's Photo of the Day, a continuation of What's on Your Desk?

Today's desk is brought to you by me! I thought it was only fair to turn

the camera on myself.