Alexandra Samuel's blog | Social Signal

Last year I marked our anniversary by blogging this list of geek anniversary gifts. As of today, we're at year 9!

Today marks the eighth anniversary of our other founding partnership: our marriage. July 29th, 2000 was the Big Day not only for the two of us, but also for Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston.

We know that popular opinion lays the blame for the Brad-Jen breakup at the feet of a certain Ms. Jolie, but we recognize a completely different kind of relationship pressure. With all the press coverage of their marriage, did you ever see them pictured with matching his 'n hers PowerBooks?

We don't want our own marriage to fall victim to the specter of insufficient technology. And yet the traditional roster of anniversary gifts is still geared towards the analog lifestyle.

To celebrate our half-hex anniversary, we're proud to present a new, geek-friendly set of recommended anniversary gifts. Do note that the recommended 8th anniversary gift is a nice, fresh web link...hint, hint.

Click here to read part 1, an introduction to digital mind mapping.

MindMeister works a lot like MindManager, with the features I've come to see as essential for a good mind-mapping experience:

Most online collaboration tools engage your left brain: that part of you that likes structure and organization, and supports linear, sequential thinking. Think of Basecamp, with its careful system of tasks and milestones. Or Google spreadsheets (I have dozens of them!) organizing everything from budgets to menus in neat, orderly rows and columns. Even wikis seem to work most effectively when they are gardened into a coherent structure, with some kind of intentional hierarchy of information.

You've spent tens of thousands of dollars creating an online community site. Your organization has a big vision for how this new community can engage your customers, members or the public. Your developers, communications team and fundraisers are all bleary-eyed from the effort and dollars it's taken to get you to launch day. Now what?

Today marks the release of Sex and the City: The Movie. With the news that SATCTM tix are selling out, your friends at Social Signal want to save you from the nightmare of a Sex-less weekend. We've got twenty tickets to the 8 pm show on Saturday, May 31st, at the Fifth Avenue Cinema on Burrard Street.

The Elders' Every Human Has Rights campaign has just relaunched its site (on Drupal!) We've been privileged to work with the EHHR team in telling the story of the Universal Declaration of Human Rig

For the past two months, I've been part of the digital strategy team for The Elders, an extraordinary NGO that was launched last year by Richard Branson and Peter Gabriel. The vision is to convene a council of elders for the global village; the founding elders include Desmond Tutu, Aung San Suu Kyi, Mary Robinson and Kofi Annan.

This blog post is part of our series on Social Media for Social Enterprise: How non-profits can earn revenue with Web 2.0.

I know, it sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. (Or a great cartoon! Rob, care to give it a try?)