Space Collectibles May Gain Popularity With Recent Finding

You have a new reason to share your Star Trek and Star Wars memorabilia on iTaggit! Space exploration has gone one step further, turning science fiction into a real possibility. NASA scientists have recently released a statement saying they have discovered a fifth planet orbiting a star outside of our own solar system. The significance of this discovery suggests that there are many solar systems in the universe that are packed with planets just like our own. The new planet is said to have a mass about 45 times larger than that of Earth's and may resemble Saturn, but it is relatively the same distance from its sun star, 55 Cancri, as we are from ours. This is the first time five planets have been found orbiting a solar system outside of our own; previously only four had been spotted. Time to collect those old astronomy charts from the attic or closet and see if yours includes any of these new stars. I know I'm holding on to mine that still has Pluto as a legitimate planet! You never know what it might be worth some day. They say 55 Cancri is 41 light-years away in the constellation Cancer, just in case you were curious about its location.

All sci-fi enthusiasts and collectors will love this next part: Life could conceivably live on the surface of a moon that might be orbiting this newly found planet. So far though, a moon would be too small for scientists to find using their current methods of detection. Intergalactic real estate may not be available yet, but it seems that a vacation home among the stars isn't that far away after all.

For the original article and more information on the findings, click here.

Decorate Your Table With Fall Foliage And Fruit

We here in the iTaggit family are in the beginning stages of preparing for the holiday season. Christmas Wish Lists are being compiled and travel plans are being made. Recipes and holiday collectibles have been shared as well as fun tales of past gatherings. And we all know that decorating one's home can be a time-consuming, and sometimes frustrating task, so I have found a way to create an easy centerpiece for your Thanksgiving table.

Start by thinking about fall's unusual fruits and foliage, and let them inspire you. Search your market or grocery store for gourds, small pumpkins and colorful fruits, like figs, clementines, and star fruit, and gather oak leaves and branches from your yard (or a neighbor's if they don't mind). When arranged on a tiered cake stand, in bowls, or in carved out pumpkins, these harvest-time items make a centerpiece that takes only minutes to create, leaving you plenty of time to concentrate on the meal.

What You'll Need:

• Cake stands (assorted sizes), and/or pumpkins (hollowed out), and/or glass or decorative bowls

• Foliage, such as oak leaves, acorns, and branches

• Gourds, figs, star fruit, and nuts

• Dried cranberries or cherries, clementines and grapes

Here's How:

1. Use just one cake stand or stack three on top of each other to create tiers. You may wish to place a small glass bowl on top of the highest cake stand to complete the tier. In that bowl you can place a pyramid of clementines (or star fruit) to add a splash of vibrant color – making sure not to stack the small citrus so high that they will topple easily.
2. Start placing the leaves and branches on the cake stands. Arrange an assortment of figs, quinces, star fruit, gourds, and nuts on top of the leaves. If you don't have the cake stands, use two or three hollowed out pumpkins (assorted sizes) or two or three decorative bowls placed down the center of the table filled with the same items.

In addition to the centerpiece, don't forget to decorate the room with flowering fall blooms or colorful fall foliage in unexpected places – and add extra squash, pumpkins, and gourds. With the extra fruits and nuts, you can transform your entire table and decor by placing bowls of fresh figs, dried cranberries or cherries, grapes, and nuts around the main centerpiece. Vary the bowls' contents to include as wide a spectrum of colors as possible of both edible and non-edible items (such as acorns). As your Thanksgiving meal draws to an end, you can dismantle your centerpiece and snack on the fruits and nuts. Also, if you chose to purchase manufactured items, this centerpiece will be easy to recreate year after year. For this article and more holiday inspired decorations, click here.

Need help getting through your piles of collectibles? Let iTaggit help! We help manage collectibles for those who need it most. Organize collectibles by creating new collections on iTaggit to group them in. Show them off in our Gallery and send them to your friends to check out or add to. Research collectibles with our Google search tool to learn more about your things. Whatever it is that you seek for your collectibles, iTaggit will help you!

Halloween Traditions From Around The World

As one of the world's oldest holidays, Halloween is still celebrated today in multiple countries around the globe, but it is in North America and Canada that it maintains its highest level of popularity. Every year, 65% of Americans decorate their homes and offices for Halloween...a percentage exceeded only by Christmas. Halloween is the holiday when the most candy is sold and is second only to Christmas in terms of total sales. Take a look at some of these Halloween customs from around the globe:

Austria
In Austria, some people will leave bread, water and a lighted lamp on the table before retiring on Halloween night because it was once believed such items would welcome the dead souls back to earth on a night which for the Austrians was considered to be brimming with strong cosmic energies.

China
In China, the Halloween festival is known as Teng Chieh. Food and water are placed in front of photographs of family members who have departed while bonfires and lanterns are lit in order to light the paths of the spirits as they travel the earth on Halloween night. Worshipers in Buddhist temples fashion "boats of the law" from paper, some of which are very large, which are then burned in the evening hours. The purpose of this custom is twofold: as a remembrance of the dead and in order to free the spirits of the "pretas" in order that they might ascend to heaven. "Pretas" are the spirits of those who died as a result of an accident or drowning and whose bodies were consequently never buried. The presence of "pretas" among the living is thought by the Chinese to be dangerous. Under the guidance of Buddhist temples, societies are formed to carry out ceremonies for the "pretas," which includes the lighting of lanterns. Monks are invited to recite sacred verses and offerings of fruit are presented.

Czechoslovakia
In Czechoslovakia, chairs are placed by the fireside on Halloween night. There is one chair for each living family member and one for each family member's spirit.

England
At one time, English children made "punkies" out of large beetroots, upon which they carved a design of their choice. Then, they would carry their "punkies" through the streets while singing the "Punkie Night Song" as they knocked on doors and asked for money. In some rural areas, turnip lanterns were placed on gateposts to protect homes from the spirits who roamed on Halloween night. Another custom was to toss objects such as stones, vegetables and nuts into a bonfire to frighten away the spirits. These symbolic sacrifices were also employed as fortune-telling tools. If a pebble thrown into the flames at night was no longer visible in the morning, then it was believed that the person who tossed the pebble would not survive another year. If nuts tossed into the blaze by young lovers then exploded, it signified a quarrelsome marriage. For the most part however, the English ceased celebrating Halloween with the spread of Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation. Since followers of the new religion did not believe in Saints, they saw no reason to celebrate the Eve of All Saints' Day. However, in recent years, the American "trick or treating" custom, together with the donning of costumes for going door-to-door, has become a relatively popular pastime among English children at Halloween, although many of the adults (particularly the older generations) have little idea as to why they are being asked for sweets and are usually ill-prepared to accommodate their small and hopeful callers.

Germany
In Germany, the people put away their knives on Halloween night because they do not want to risk harm befalling the returning spirits.

Ireland
In Ireland, believed to be the birthplace of Halloween, the tradition is still celebrated as much as it is in the United States. In rural areas, bonfires are lit as they were in the days of the Celts and children dress up in costumes to spend the evening "trick-or-treating" in their neighborhoods. After the visiting, most people attend parties with neighbors and friends. At these parties, many games are played, including "snap-apple," in which an apple on a string is tied to a door frame or tree, and players attempt to take a bite out of the suspended apple. In addition to bobbing for apples, parents often arrange treasure hunts with sweets or pastries as the "treasure." The Irish also play a card game where cards are laid face-down on a table with sweets or coins beneath them. When a child selects a card, he or she receives whatever prize might be found there. A traditional food is eaten on Halloween called "barnbrack." This is a type of fruitcake which can be baked at home or store-bought. A muslin-wrapped treat is baked inside the cake which, so it is said, can foretell the future of the one who finds it. If the prize is a ring, then that person will soon be wed and a piece of straw means a prosperous year is forthcoming. Children are also known to play tricks upon their neighbors on Halloween night. One of which is known as "knock-a-dolly," where children knock on the doors of their neighbors but then run away before the door is opened.

Mexico & Latin America
Among Spanish-speaking nations, Halloween is known as "El Dia de los Muertos." It is a joyous and happy holiday...a time to remember friends and family who have died. Officially commemorated on November 2 (All Souls' Day), the three-day celebration actually begins on the evening of October 31. Designed to honor the dead who are believed to return to their homes on Halloween, many families construct an altar in their home and decorate it with candy, flowers, photographs, fresh water and samples of the deceased's favorite foods and drinks. Frequently, a basin and towel are left out in order that the spirit can wash prior to indulging in the feast. Candles and incense are burned to help the departed find his or her way home. Relatives also tidy the grave sites of deceased family members, including snipping weeds, making repairs and painting. The grave is then adorned with flowers, wreaths or paper streamers. Often, a live person is placed inside a coffin, which is then paraded through the streets while vendors toss fruit, flowers and candies into the casket. On November 2, relatives gather at the grave site to picnic and reminisce. Some of these gatherings may even include tequila and a mariachi band although American Halloween customs are gradually taking over this celebration. In Mexico during the Autumn, countless numbers of Monarch butterflies return to the shelter of Mexico's Oyamel Fir trees. It was the belief of the Aztecs that these butterflies bore the spirits of dead ancestors.

Have a larger thirst for Halloween knowledge? Click here!


Need help getting through your piles of collectibles? Let iTaggit help! We help manage collections for those who need it most. Organize collections by adding in your item's important information and pictures on iTaggit. Show them off in our Gallery and send them to your friends to check out or add to. Research collections with our Google search tool to learn more about your things. Whatever it is that you seek for your collections, iTaggit will help you!

Eat More Chicken

In this day and age, global warming is steadily becoming a huge issue. The widely accepted No. 1 cause of global warming is the burning of fossil fuels for electric power. Hybrid cars are beginning to pop up everywhere on the streets and in ad campaigns in an attempt to switch fuel sources. Former Vice President Al Gore recently won a Nobel peace prize for his research and documentary on global warming awareness. Images of the polar ice cap melting and the polar bear species dwindling haunt my thoughts. For these reasons, I have begun looking for new ways to save energy and do my part to help, which is why I was so excited to find this little tidbit of knowledge:

According to a recent story on Salon.com, the amount of energy and resources we invest in breeding animals for food, alongside naturally toxic excretions of those animals, is significantly responsible for global-warming. However, poultry are the least polluting.

The story continues with some shocking statistics:

• A November 2006 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report found that livestock accounts for 18 percent of global warming emissions worldwide, more than the entire transportation sector. In the U.S. alone, our livestock account for six percent of our greenhouse gases; comparable to the 19 percent from our cars, light trucks, and airplanes.

• Also according to the FAO, livestock production is a top cause of the world's many environmental problems: deforestation, acid rain, dead zones in the ocean, land degradation, water pollution, species extinction and, most threatening of all, global warming.

• Livestock emit about a third of human-caused methane production and two-thirds of human-caused nitrous oxide. Because of the specific features of their digestion, cattle, bison, sheep and goats burp out a lot of methane that traps 23 times more heat per ton than carbon dioxide. Chickens don't “burp” methane and they produce only one-tenth of the amount of methane cattle waste produces.

• Lastly, the difference between a vegan diet and one that includes cheeseburgers is less than 2 tons of greenhouse gases a year, which is about the equivalent of switching from a Camry to a Prius.

With those statistics in mind, consuming mass quantities of beef is the most harmful, followed by sheep, goats, and pork. My point, ladies and gentlemen, is not to scare you into giving up all forms of meat. As a born and raised Texan, I understand the difficulty in cutting cows out of my diet completely, but doesn't every little bit help? Perhaps, try saving that juicy steak for a special meal, and eat chicken and vegetables more often. It will slow down the process a little more, and we would all be a bit more healthy.


Need help getting through your piles of collectibles? Let iTaggit help! We help manage collectibles for those who need it most. Organize collectibles by creating new collections on iTaggit to group them in. Show them off in our Gallery and send them to your friends to check out or add to. Research collectibles with our Google search tool to learn more about your things. Whatever it is that you seek for your collectibles, iTaggit will help you!

The Joy Of Sox

Well the 2007 World Series was a quick and painless one... if you are a Red Sox fan. To the rest of the country looking for a sweet Cinderella story to top off a season of hard knocks in sports; guess we're just going to have to twiddle our thumbs 'til next year.

The Red Sox swept the Rockies with dominating form. “They beat us with the small ball. They beat us with the long ball,” Colorado's LaTroy Hawkins said. He continued, “They beat us every which way you could imagine, brother. I'm not going to sit here and say what Eric Byrnes said about us, that we outplayed 'em, because it ain't true. They got us. They got us good.”

Until Sunday, the only franchise in baseball's history to sweep two World Series in four seasons was none other than Red Sox arch rival, the New York Yankees. Of course, the Yankees have accomplished this feat a staggering four times, but now Boston has put one hash mark on that chart as well. And they did it in style. The Sox outscored the Angels and the Indians in the first two rounds of the postseason by a combined 99-46 total -- the greatest October run differential in postseason history. They continued with hot bats into the World Series and outhit Colorado .333 to .218, earning them the second highest World Series batting average to date. Not only did they get a hit a third of the times they were at bat, they batted .419 with runners in scoring position, and held the Rockies to only a .167 BA when in the same position.

Boston put up a few more worthy stats of note:

Terry Francona, manager of the Boston Red Sox, is the first manager to start 8-0 in the World Series.

In the last seven games the Red Sox played, they outscored their opponent 59-15. When ESPN writer Jayson Stark compared those stats with the other six teams in history to go on a postseason winning streak of seven games or longer, the closest anyone came to that plus-44 run differential was a plus-30 by the 2006 Tigers, who outscored the Yankees and A's 40-10. With as much hype as the 2004 Boston team created, they were only plus-24 in their 49-25 finish. What about the 1998 Yankees, who were viewed by many as the most dominant team of modern times? They managed a plus-23 while winning their final seven, and this Boston team nearly doubled that.

At this time last year, Red Sox pitcher Jon Lester, now age 23, was undergoing chemotherapy for anaplastic large cell lymphoma. On Sunday, Lester became just the third pitcher in history to win the deciding game of a World Series in his first career postseason start. The other two? Tiny Bonham in 1941 and Whitey Ford in 1950, both Yankees. Boston pitching coach John Farrell put it quite eloquently, “This is something you could make a movie about, when you think about all the challenges he's faced on a personal level and how much he's persevered... Not only is it a punctuation mark on how this year has gone, but it is on so many levels a personal triumph for him.”

Well, that'll wrap up this week's sports report. Now that the 2007 baseball season has closed, its time to turn focus on the downhill stretch of football, as well as turn up the excitement on the beginning of basketball season! But for today, I will leave you with a not so eloquent, but still effective, quote from Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling: “Jon Lester just pitched the clutchiest game I've ever seen pitched in my life.”

You may not have a collection of comic books, baseball cards, or antiques, but you have a home full of valuables that you have spent your life collecting. iTaggit will change the way you collect, organize, and enjoy your things.

New Features On iTaggit

A new release was posted yesterday which has an enhanced category chooser, new thumbnail tool, and collections sorting. Check it out!

A Little Web 2.0 Geek Humor

Colin McDonald has a great post that I felt compelled to pass on to our community. He named the Top 11 Geek T-Shirts of the Web 2.0 age. Check them out for a chuckle and see how Internet savvy you really are:

According to none other than Wired magazine, T-shirts have come into their own as a form of media, one that uniquely documents messages and stories, not to mention emergent technologies and companies changing the way we use the Internet. Here at Switched, we write a lot about these next-gen, "Web 2.0" companies and technologies which include everyone from MySpace and Facebook to Twitter and even Google.

Specifically related to Given that we're partial to t-shirts with nerdy, tech-infused jokes and terminology, we figured it was high time to find the best geek t-shirts Web 2.0 speak (like the "Your Podcast is Lame" t-shirt, flickr user ericskiff, pictured above). So here, dear readers is our humble survey of the wild, cotton-meets-code world of Web 2.0 t-shirts. If anything, it'll give you something cool to talk about during your podcast.

From Facebook and MySpace on down to countless start-ups, social networking sites are Web 2.0 bread and butter. Unfortunately, the facts and pictures on someone's profile don't always match the real, offline version. If you enjoy racking up virtual friends, but worry about the real world rendezvous, you'll be prepared for the worst with this straight-shooting t-shirt.





For all of its entrepreneurial, spare-garage innovation, Web 2.0 has bred some sprawling companies. Google's certainly risen to the top, but a $600 share price has incited a fair amount of jealousy and worry from outsiders as the company continues to buy startups and expand its information empire. Only time will tell what the men of the "Don't Be Evil" mantra hath wrought, but for now you can preserve the
madness across your pecs.





Success has a strange currency on the social news site Digg, where links rated positively by users (given a 'digg,' in other words) can drive Web sites, blog posts, and all kinds of stories to new heights of popularity. Isn't this the kind of validation we yearn for offline? And what will this shirt do to the 'Kiss me I'm Irish' industry?










Michael Scott's classic catch phrase might be a tad different if he had been written as a Web entrepreneur instead of a regional manager at Dunder Mifflin (from 'The Office,' for those of you who don't watch TV). Twitter traffics in brief update messages that its users can send from any Internet-connected device, making it ripe for compulsive friend-monitoring as well as double-entendre hunters. "Come Twitter on my sensitive iPhone touchscreen?" The possibilities are endless.





While the lolcat phenomenon started on Internet message boards, sites such as I Can Has Cheezburger? brought goofy cat pictures and idiosyncratic captions to the Web masses. It might not fit the strictest definition of Web 2.0, but ICHS is a vast social network with some very cool features (it also mints ad money, which always helps in Web 2.0 circles). This shirt allows for easy, dry-erase marker customization
of a classic lolcat caption meme. Prepare to be the life of the
party. Im in ur Switched blogging ur tshirts.








This might be what she Twittered if she thought your bookmarks were del.icio.us. Or if she really wanted to StumbleUpon your toolbar discoveries. Or... never mind. Fact is, tagging links, images, and other pieces of information online are the hot way to organize things in Web 2.0, and this shirt means its wearer is in the know. Just remember to stop staring and make eye contact occasionally.






'Don't drink the Kool-Aid' is a warning adopted by those skeptical of Web 2.0 optimism and wary of a second dotcom bubble. Mule Design's Feed Store describes this shirt as an "image of Tim O'Reilly (acknowledged as the coiner of 'Web 2.0') busting out of his lawyers office." Indeed.










Events like the 'Snakes on a Plane' phenomenon suggest that Samuel L. Jackson is down with Web 2.0, but as 'Pulp Fiction' fans know, there are some words that he'd rather not hear repeated. Despite your awesome Technorati ranking, friends and relatives might feel the same way. Tread carefully.







The nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation has been fighting for digital rights since its founding in 1990. The importance of its work grows with the ever-expanding reach of the Internet, a place where things like free speech, intellectual property, and privacy are still being defined and contested. Wear your support for digital freedom and the EFF on your sleeve with this shirt. We hear that the Internet finds it irresistible.

We couldn't end this roundup without a second shout-out to this gem of ridiculous T-shirt technology that we've already written about in a previous story. No Web.2.0 wardrobe would be complete without a shirt that actually lights up when you're in range of a wireless network. How else is a geek to know whether they're in a good place to live up to the claims of their other emblazoned cotton treasures? This number may be perfect for a layered ensemble – just in time for winter, of course. Bring along a hot thermos of Kool-Aid, and nothing can stand in your way.

For more of Colin's blog and links to the sites where you can purchase these shirts and more, click here.


Need help getting through your piles of collectibles? Let iTaggit help! We help manage collectibles for those who need it most.Organize collectibles by creating new collections on iTaggit to group them in. Show them off in our Gallery and send them to your friends to check out or add to. Research collectibles with our Google search tool to learn more about your things. Whatever it is that you seek for your collectibles, iTaggit will help you!