Devora's Best Discoveries of 2009

Friends are awesome. I'm 99.99999% that that's universal knowledge. I was lucky enough to meet many really, truly amazing people this year who I'm fortunate enough to call my friends. I kept around some of my old ones, too :P I've learned so much from them, as well has had such fun times. This year's been a blast.

I had just been a casual user, but as new, better products rolled out over the years, I've gotten increasingly addicted. Now I'm a full blown addict and need my fix almost every minute of every day. Doesn't help that I have an iPhone and that there's an app for almost everything either. I love Lunching, twittering, Yelping, flickring, Facebook-ing, Last.fm-ing, etc, etc. Yes, I get made fun of for being kind of nerdy, but I have no shame. There's gotta be more hours in a day for me to keep up with my social media life!

If you didn't already know, I work for Lunch, as a community manager, to be exact, but that's besides the point. I've been a member of several other review sites, but have never come across a site quite like Lunch that has such an emphasis on quality content as well as a peaceful, respectable community. This is seriously one of the best and most fulfilling web communities that I've had the pleasure of being a part of. Furthermore, Lunch has totally changed the way that I think because whenever I'm out experiencing things in the world, I tend to think more critically about them now, and craft ways to describe them into a Lunch review in my head. Oh, and it's great practice for my writing, which I love!

With thousands of apps and so many innovative features, it's hard to find anything to complain about this amazing piece of technology. I'm never without my iPhone now and can't imagine living without it. The best part is being able to do everything on the web on the go. So convenient! I love the way it looks, too.
See the full review, "iPhone 3GS: I Don't Ever Wanna Be Without You.".

After a not-very-bright guy ran into my fifth generation Camry, it was time to upgrade to the seventh generation. My car's name is Swoopy. Toyota has made such huge changes in the past few years. I was a little iffy on the exterior design at first, but now its totally grown on me. Even my friends with luxury cars are jealous of Swoopy. Why? Because their cars that they paid an extra $40-$50k don't have nearly as many features of my car. They only paid for the name, plus their maintenance costs are way higher. Oh, did I mention that every time I turn on the car at night, it feels like a night club inside?

I don't have one of these yet, but several of my friends have gotten these after Snow Leopard was released.

...And now I want one!  So pretty to look at and incredibly easy to use.  Would make quite the Apple team with my iPhone!  I love how all the drivers are installed, though I guess that's available in Windows 7, too, but I digress.  I think I'm going to get myself one of these for my birthday!

I was recently introduced to Kombucha and my fridge has been stocked with them since. People keep asking me what my favorite flavors are, but honestly, they all pretty much taste the same to me. And that taste is akin to vinegar water. So why do I drink it? For the simple fact that I dig bubbly flavored beverages, but don't want them to be too sweet. Kombucha by Synergy does the trick, and it's an added bonus that it's raw and claims to have health benefits.

Could Google Voice be anymore awesome? The only complaint that I have is that I didn't get a phone number that spells out something cool. I tried, "kittens", "puppies", "awesome" and a few other choice words, but nothing. I guess the other San Franciscans beat me to the chase for the 415. So I just went with the Asian voice inside my head that told me to pick a phone number with the number eight in it. Now I have a lucky phone number for life. I can block people, listen to my voicemail and transcribe my voicemail all online, among many other nifty features. Talk about working on the cloud!

I'm a sucker for love-related movies and stories, whether it's a good situation or bad. I also love Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon Levitt, so it was a winning combo for me. Another example of how things don't always work out for mysterious, unexplainable reasons, but that when one door closes, another one opens.