Unlike last year, you'll get some fair warning this year: next Monday, September 19th, is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Since last year, the creators have managed to release a second pirate-talk-related book (here's the first). Now all I've gotta do is come up with some crazy way people used to talk, create a holiday, write a book, and I'm in business. Any ideas?

Imagine that you are out on Friday night at your favorite bar in your favorite part of town (that was easy, right?). You know, and I know, that on any given night, several more friends are in similar bars within a few blocks of your favorite bar. But what neither of us really knows is how to get ahold of these friends while they are nearby. We know that somebody must be close because it's Friday night, but we don't know who is out or where they are.

Dodgeball! I sign up, you sign up, and some of our friends sign up (all for free, of course). When I get to the bar on Friday night, I send off a quick text message that says "@Mickey's" and everyone within 10 blocks gets a text message (with my smiling face!) that says I'm at Mickey's. I also get text messages back from anyone close by that has checked in to Dodgeball. Holy smokes – now we can party!

The service is available in 22 cities, and there are lots of cool features (sets of friends, integration with Google Maps!) for those of you who will undoubtedly become power users. The super cool Steven Johnson wrote it up for Discover Magazine this month.

What's interesting about this whole thing is that from a social perspective, it's not really useful until a sizeable chunk of your friends sign up. So far it's just me, Alex and Jenn – and while that's its own kind of party, we're still suffering at the weak end of the network effect. With each additional person that links up to us at Dodgeball, our service becomes much more valuable. So read up, sign up, play around with it, and we'll start bumping into each other a lot more often. I can't wait.

How cool – Threadless is offering a cool lookin' tee to support those affected by Hurrican Katrina. Buy the tee for $10 and they'll send $20 to the relief effort. Beautiful.