I'd heard good things about SwagBucks and had been meaning to give it a try for a while now. This morning, SweetiesSwag tweeted about SwagBucks and offered her Blog readers a chance to join from one of links left in the comments. New members are then invited to add their own link to the list of future referrals. I thought that was cool, so I figured today was the day to join!

Found this on Mashable:
40 Great Resources for Making Lists

Blog Action Day

I hadn't formally planned to participate in this year's Blog Action Day, but today's mail delivery brought a serendipitous item combining two of my favorite pastimes - shopping and helping others - that also just happens to fit with this years' Blog Action theme of poverty. This item was a beautiful 75-page catalog filled with some of the most unique gifts and handcrafted items I've ever seen.

The catalog was from SERRV, a nonprofit organization that works for social and economic parity by promoting fair trade practices and empowering low income communities across the globe. SERRV gives artisans and farmers the opportunity to conduct business in a larger market by bringing their unique handcrafted and organic products to consumers around the world.

It was such a pleasure to page through the catalog and read about the villages where these beautiful baskets, pottery pieces, toys, food items, stone and wood sculptures, articles of clothing and other artistic and practical things originated. I was particularly delighted when I came to last page of the catalog and saw a selection of gorgeous candle holders. These will make great gift additions for the people on my list who were already going to be getting my candles!

Like many Americans, I am planning to cut back on excessive holiday shopping this year. The large corporate manufacturers of the same old pieces of assembly line junk do not deserve my hard-earned money. The artists represented by this catalog, however, really do. And they offer much more valuable products in return. I think a few special gifts thoughtfully selected from sources like SERRV will do so much more to promote the true spirit of the season.

Goodbye, DVDspot

A few days ago I visited DVDspot, one of my favorite websites, to add a listing and rating for my recent viewing of the Sex and the City movie. To my dismay, I was greeted with a notice that the site will be closing on October 15th. The site creators want to focus on other projects. I can't blame them at all, they put together this incredible database driven application and then offered it to the online community for free. If their "other projects" have the potential to earn them a little money or will be a more practical use of their personal time, then more power to them. But their innovative site for cataloging a personal DVD collection and tracking movies that are owned, rented and watched will be missed.

Fortunately, they're offering a way to extract stored data in a spreadsheet format so viewing records and personal collection lists will not be completely lost. I've already retrieved my data and now I am looking for a comparable online site that will allow me to continue to track my movie watching and catalog my DVD library.

Here are three sites I've located so far:

Chasing the Frog

I Heart Movies

Movie Collector Plus

I will be taking a closer look at these sites over the next few days and plan to join one soon so I can get my collection back online and continue where I left off tracking my movie viewing for 2008.

If anyone has any opinions on any of these sites, or knows of any options I haven't listed here, please comment and share what you use!