Time-suck of the day: meez.com

create your own 3-D avatar at meez.com

we've all gotten sucked in before... how many times have i created my own south park character? created my own cartoon avatar? well, fair warning... meez.com may suck you in and keep you there for a while.

these people have thought of almost every type of fashion, every t-shirt slogan (gay pride, "jesus loves me," "kosher fo'sher," FSM, 1337, space invaders, "flock star," and other various geek chic, etc.), and every tattoo/piercing. yes, if you have a common tattoo (bluebirds, stars, dragons, tribal stuff) you will probably be embarrassed that you're now so "generic." i confess to being a little miffed that my tribal star is almost exactly the one on the site -- although they have it around the belly button instead of on the back. whew!

is it without faults? no. as you can see, i clearly went with the male gender. the female fashion choices just didn't accurately represent my... ummmm... androgynous (read: slacker) style. so, forgive the semi-chiseled face and lack of boobs.

not only is it kind of fun to poke around and put items in your "closet" so you can "wear" them later...i am fascinated by the marketing side of all this. it's clearly directed at the MySpace youth cohort, and they've included "apparel" with the logos of various youth organizations. i'm sporting the 826 Valencia tee, and there are several others -- Summer Search (who ab's old friend Eden works for) and Outward Bound, to name a couple. there's also a money-making side, as expected, since you can purchase apparel to wear. for example, stylish jeans cost 10 "coinz," a san francisco giants ball cap or jersey costs 25 "coinz" (10 cents a coin).

fascinating, really. not sure if they're making any money, but at $5 a pop i bet the kiddies think it's basically free.

i stumbled onto meez via youtube via meebo. a bunch of web2.0 startups got together and made their own homemade superbowl commercials -- the idea being that during the last "bubble" web startups actually had the cash to get a slot during the big game. not so much this time around, but some of the "New Wave Dot-Com Ads" are pretty funny.

Priced out of the big game, internet startups meebo, Meez, Multiply, Plaxo, RockYou.com and Technorati opted this year for a more frugal and fun approach. Having watched our dot-com bubble predecessors spend millions on ads that ran once, we charged up our handheld video cameras and started shooting. As you'll see, the results are zany and full of laughs. If you like what you see, please pass the word.

enjoy... and if you do get sucked in and actually sign up at meez, my username is quepol -- and we'll both get coinz! :)

for more time-suckage, go check out grow cube.