I have spent the past half day in amazement and awe following yesterday's crash landing of US Airways flight 1549. As a nervous flyer, I can only imagine the terror of watching one's plane descend toward a body of very cold water. I am relieved and thankful that all survived relatively unharmed, though no doubt shaken from the experience. And I'm thinking about three important lessons I think we can learn from this experience.

Prepare for the Worst more

After the exuberance and celebration that marked the end of Election '08, it's time now to get down to business. The immediate task facing President-Elect Obama is the formation of his cabinet, the key group of experts who will advise and guide the administration. A few have been named already, and even more names are in the rumor mill. President-Elect Obama is no doubt receiving lots of suggestions from his advisers, but we wanted to make sure that he is getting the best, and broadest, advice on prospective cabinet members. more

My front pocket, though, not my back pocket, because that's where I keep my iPhone. My iPhone that's now like my own red phone (or should we say, blue phone), to Obama HQ. With the campaign's very first iPhone application, Obama '08, I've got super-easy access to campaign information at the tap of a finger. more

As you may remember from Gisele's or Tom's posts earlier this year, EchoDitto spent a few days in February in New Orleans. Specifically, we spent one day cleaning out a church destroyed by Katrina. Because of that experience, I am especially saddened to hear that there's another hurricane, similar in size and strength to Katrina, headed that direction again. more

Last week, Google launched the newest tool in its arsenal for web marketers, Google Insights for Search. A take-off on Google Trends, you can now easily compare search traffic across a variety of keywords, categories and regions. more

It's no secret, I think, that I have a particular interest in gender in technology -- I came to EchoDitto from the National Organization for Women, after all. I started my computer career with computer camp during my elementary school summers, where one of the women physicists in the building (thanks, Dr. Minichino) took all the girls to lunch one day each summer to give us a little extra encouragement about sticking with the tech stuff. Lucky for me, the lesson took. more

So our friends at the leading social networks -- MySpace, Facebook, and Google -– are finally getting the idea that we don’t really want to spend all our online lives on their websites. Last week these three companies launched new plans to let us integrate our profiles on their networks with other sites we use. All three initiatives claim to be advancing us closer to the idea of the utopian open social web, where we can connect with all our friends on any network through any website. But how close are we?

Google's initiative here is the most interesting … and the most disappointing. Called Google Friend Connect, this initiative allows any website owner to, as Google's David Glazer says, "sprinkle a little social" on their sites (listen to the audio of the announcement, thanks to ReadWriteTalk). I didn’t realize “social” was a noun, but I digress. Through some applications Google is developing and, eventually, other developers will be contributing, a website owner can paste in a little code on her website and voila! she can now have users post photos, add comments, and other social functions on her website (check out Google's demonstrations to see what I mean). Sounds kind of cool. And it's definitely great if you’ve got a static site that needs some spice, and you don’t know a lick of code. more

In honor of Earth Day today, we at EchoDitto are joining with individuals around the world who are committing to do something to combat climate change. Most of us already walk, bike, or take public transportation to work; we're adamant recyclers; and we use environmentally-friendly cleaning products from Seventh Generation. But today we're especially proud to contribute to the fight against global warming with the relaunch of 1Sky.org.

1Sky was created in 2007 with one primary objective: to harness the power of the millions of Americans who are concerned about climate change in order to pass federal legislation by 2010 that can reverse global warming. Since its founding, 1Sky has built a platform of specific solutions, partnered with organizations and allies around the country, and activated a network of over 50,000 citizens who are actively lobbying for policy change and garnering support for the 1Sky solutions in meetings with their members of Congress. more

There's been a lot of talk lately about the demise of the traditional print newspaper, sparked by Eric Alterman's article in the New Yorker called "Out of Print". It's an interesting discussion that made me examine my own news-procuring habits.

Sorry, print newspapers, but for me you're already dead. I most recently touched newsprint this weekend while I was balling up pages of the Washington Post to help get my campfire started. Before that, I can't even remember. I know that there are many of you out there who can't live without your morning paper (or papers), but that ain't me. more