Magic Mail

Keeping in touch with people is more art than science, which is why a new e-mail-based reminder service, MagicMinder.com, caught my fancy.

More than 25 reminder services surface in Google Directory, and they all operate much the same way. Type in the dates of birthdays, anniversaries or other events you want to keep track of, and the service will e-mail you a reminder ahead of time. Most, like MagicMinder, are free.

MagicMinder, however, is more about keeping relationships alive than about sending greeting cards on schedule. It adds a counterintuitive element to the typical reminder service: randomness. If you enter the names of people you want to stay in touch with, MagicMinder will randomly but regularly send you e-mail reminders ("How about touching base with Rachel?").

Marc Fest, founder of the site, said this "out of the blue" element feels more natural than setting a specific contact date. "I never know when MagicMinder will remind me of a particular person," he said. "So when a reminder does arrive, there's a surprise element that makes it more special and serendipitous. It makes me feel more motivated to act on it."

MagicMinder does not completely forgo traditional date-based reminders. A somewhat awkward method for entering specific reminders is available, but even Mr. Fest acknowledges that his project is more a complement to other services than a replacement.

But you may want to think twice about telling people what prompted you to make contact. "It's sort of a moral dilemma," Mr. Fest explained. "If you call someone out of the blue do you tell them it's because you got a MagicMinder, or will that take away the magic?"

rue Stories

One can only envy the historians and sociologists of the future. Thanks to the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/), they will have access to an extraordinary amount of detail about the lives of ordinary people who use the Web to tell their own stories in their own words.

Many Web sites are dedicated to collecting true stories, from the trivial (your first rock concert) to the inspiring (veterans' wartime recollections). Storyblog (fray.com/storyblog) is a group Weblog that links to sites about true stories. "We look for any site that is about individuals using their voice to tell their stories," said Derek M. Powazek, the founder of Fray, the host site for Storyblog. "Some are about one person telling his or her own true story and others are community projects that put out a call" for submissions.

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Turns (myturningpoint.com) and Random Access Memory (randomaccessmemory.org), for example, collect stories about crucial life moments and make them accessible through a searchable database. Other sites have specific themes: the City Stories Project (citystories.com), for example, explores urban urges, grouping the tales by city.

Newly Digital (kalsey.com/2003/05/newly_digital), a project that encourages people to write about their first computer experiences, takes a different tack. Rather than make the stories available at one site, it provides a list of links to reminiscences that appear at individual Weblogs.

"With the popularity of blogs, everyone has their own soapbox, but people also crave community,'' Mr. Powazek said. "There is a power in getting people together who all have a story in common."

Zip It

It's amazing what you can find out about your town - and your neighbors - by typing your ZIP code into a Web site.

Scroll through Community Information by ZIP Code (library.csun.edu/mfinley/zipstats.html) for dozens of sites that break down all kinds of data by location. Demographics, education and health are among the areas covered.

ZIP-code-based sites can provide useful localized information, or fodder for the town busybody. An example of the former is Window to My Environment (www.epa.gov/enviro/wme), a well-designed tool from the Environmental Protection Agency for tracking local environmental conditions. Into the latter category falls Political Money Line's Donor Lookup (click on the appropriate link at http://www.fecinfo.com/). This site reveals which of your neighbors have donated to federal campaign committees since 1980 and how much they gave each time. (Gifts of $200 or less are not recorded.) Juicy stuff.

Town pride also can come into play, and not just because your community may be among the "Wealthy ZIP Codes of the United States" (www.usc.edu/dept/source/zipcode/index.htm). I, for one, am pleased to see that some quality novels are best sellers in my town, according to its Amazon.com "Purchase Circle." To see which books, albums or DVD's are popular in your area, click on Purchase Circles (under Special Features) on the Amazon.com home page and plug in your ZIP code. (Some ZIP codes may not yield results.) Who tops your local chart, Eminem or Norah Jones?

On the Radar

Born and raised in forwarded e-mail, the jaunty gent known as the Incredible Walking Man keeps on going (hoaxbusters.ciac.org/HBChainLetters.shtml#walkingman). WatchBlog (watchblog. com) is seeking to become a hub for 2004 election news and opinion by dividing its home page into three parts: one for Democrats, one for Republicans and one for "third parties.'' The Infrared Zoo gallery (sirtf.caltech.edu/EPO/Zoo/zoo.html) shows animals in a new light.