Even when I write, sketch, or draw in a notebook I never plan on letting someone else see, I have an imagined audience. I feel like someone is looking over my shoulder looking at all my crappy sketches, and stupid thoughts.

Things like this Flickr set make me feel pressure to have gorgeous creative notebooks. I feel like if I don’t, then I’ve somehow failed, or I’m not doing it right.

A while back though, I gave myself permission to use my notebooks for “junk.” Not for finished art. Not to frame. Not to brag about. But to really quickly get ideas out of my head, and thought through in a visual way.

My notebooks aren’t going to be in a museum 500 years from now like DaVinci, and that’s ok. My brain kicks out lots of ideas and 90% of them are bad. I use notebooks to record and sort those ideas, most of which aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.

Giving myself permission to treat a notebook like a tool, not something precious, has been a good thing in my life. Do you have self conscious thoughts like this that keep you from being more productive?

http://the99percent.com/videos/6201/scott-belsky-dont-let-your-genius-go-unnoticed

Imagine every blog article gets a unique hashtag. (kind of like how url shorteners work.) Twitter turns into a very simple way to comment on articles across the whole internet tracked via the hashtags.

You could build a cool site where you could see recently commented on articles. See what’s most popular, and see what users are commenting on what. Kind of like TweetMeme. Kind of like Digg.

Already been done? Other ideas?

Attorneys, doctors and accountants all are required to have continuing education throughout their careers. Web developers? Nope. In fact, our noble profession doesn’t even require a specific degree. You just say you are one, -and you are.

At Paste we all have degrees related to our assorted tasks. But we have been lacking in a formalized way to continue our education throughout our careers. Sure. Most of us are avid readers of blogs, and keep well up on current events in our industry, -but what about the hard stuff? The hard-won little bits that come from the deep reading of the history and tenets of our profession?

We’re starting a new program today. We’re a really small company so it’s not like “programs” are hard to roll out. But in order to formalize it a bit better for posterity, and because some of you might want to do the same. Here it is.

For all Paste employees:

• Purchase any design or programming related book.
• Read it cover to cover.
• Let everyone know about it.
• The cost of the book will be reimbursed.
• In addition you’ll get $50 for being a better employee.
• If you write a blog post review of the book, you’ll get another $50.

q. Will anyone do it?
a. I hope so. And I think so.

q. Will we go broke doing it?
a. I don’t think it’s possible to go broke making your employees better.

q. Will it improve our products and our workflow?
a. I don’t see how it couldn’t…

WIRED Magazine recently published an article in their print edition about daydreaming being a more productive activity than most people think. It got us thinking about what we daydream of, and we can’t help but agree that a little mind-wander here and there isn’t a bad thing. The problem is not having a way of tracking where your mind goes, prohibiting you from turning those thoughts into something useful.

“For years, brain scientists viewed a wandering mind as merely a lapse in cognition. But recent studies have found that we lose concentration shockingly often. Keep Reading

I’ve recently started using the Summarize Service built into OSX a lot. It’s been there for a long time, but it just never occurred to me how useful it could be.

With the new shortcuts preference pane in Snow Leopard, Summarize popped back onto my radar. I re-added it to my preferred services list by checking the box, then I additionally assigned it a keyboard shortcut. Keep Reading

It would be great if someone would make an API for API’s. Like a nerdy version of FriendFeed in reverse… Single, simple way to transport data to a lot of apps at once.

There are lots of sites online to help you come up with names for things. This one is the best: http://www.dotomator.com/

But what about a name generator that automatically polls other web services to help? Just key in a few words, and you could get:

• Synonyms
• Pop Culture terms
• Latin translations
• Foreign Language translations

Combined with the ability to jumble these together to make brand new terms, and search for whether the domain is available would be super cool. Let’s face it, it’s a big world, and new names are getting increasingly hard to come up with.

As always, – send us a case of beer when you get your first VC check…

We generate lots of ideas at Paste. It’s not really feasible for us to work on all of them, as we’re a very small team. We’ve decided to start putting our extra good ideas out here on our blog. If you have use for them, or hopefully can improve on them, – go for it. Send us a case of beer when you get your first VC check…

We imagine wherecanwepark.com as a simple app that ties to google maps. It allows you to flag nearby lots, and spaces so that people can easily see the prime spots nearby. Would be really cool if you could check about parking validation, and meter fees. Would be even cooler if there was a way to show spots via street view.

Local advertising seems like it could be a goldmine. A mobile version, or an iPhone app implementation would a great add.

Ideally you could just visit “http://wherecanwepark.com/Account-name” to pull up the map, and details automatically.

Let us know if anyone tackles this one.