Gadget for the man who has everything…

…but wants to get rid of one of them!

http://www.mangroomer.com/ 

 

Go Right to the Site You want with Firefox

Did you know that Firefox is smarter than IE? Maybe it just makes more assumptions and those assumptions are usually right. If you want to go to a fairly common site, enter just the name of that site like “digg” or “cnn” and hit enter. FireFox will go to digg.com and cnn.com respectively. Does it just add “.com” to the word you enter? Probably not because “ford” takes me to ford.com while both “ford trucks” and ford cars” takes me to fordvehicles.com. “Internal” takes me to irs.gov, while “iteral” takes me to a Google search for the word. Looks like you are better off sticking to most common sites but this can save a few keystrokes.

 

Online Etch a Sketch

Here you go, draw some stairs.

 

Track your favorite arists’ new CD releases with Music-Alerts.com

Have a need or desire to keep up with your favorite artist’s latest releases? Check our this slick service. Music-Alerts.com takes the names of your favorite bands and creates an RSS feed that lets you see when the artists you are interested in release a new CD. Currently you can add artists to your custom feed, but not delete them. No problem, just make a new one. This tracks releases on Amazon.com so if yer’ faves are not on there, you might have a little trouble. I love it because as soon as I see an artist appear on there, I know I can go right to isohunt.com to Amazon and buy it if I like. Enjoy!

 

Yahoo mail notification

(Yahoo! Mail users only.)This is a great extension for FireFox I always install on any computer I have. It is called YMail and is by Terry Yuen. It creates a small icon at the bottom of your browser which shows you if you have a new email.

*You can see how many emails you have, you can set the frequency it checks automatically as well as check on demand.

*The visual notification settings are easily altered, I turn mine off sometimes when I am doing an online demo so viewers aren’t distracted by it.

*You can use it to go straight to your inbox.

Check out the author’s other projects at this site.

 

The little Green Linux that could

Yeah–I know, this not not quite the proper use of Linux but its got a ring to it. As you may have seen, Wal Mart sold right out of them and techno-pundits across the interblog are exclaiming their pleasant surprise.

Anyway, I have been promised to review gOS and I will. I have been playing with it a bit more. I do have to say that while I know it is meant to be sort of locked down for ease of use to the technology challenged, I still am having some trouble adding applications. Time will pass and soon, some of those folks will start to be able to do a few things on there new “picture box”. I wish there was a “beginner”, intermediate” and “advanced” switch. More to come, hopefully with screenshots.

 

Download different software for free everyday

Giveaway of the Day features a free download of software that is normally not freeware. Every 24 hours they feature a new software title and you have 24 hours to download and install that software for free. It is obviously what they are doing here. The software vendors are offering a digital “free sample” of their product to get the word out. Giveaway of the Day is using that to get the traffic and presumably, ad revenue. No problem with that, we get free software!

 

Free Anti-Spyware software from the makers of Zone Alarm

Check Point Software is offering a free download and install of its basic version of ZoneAlarm Anti-Spyware. You may recognize the ZoneAlarm brand from their award winning and industry leading Firewall application. I used to sell security software and I didn’t want to compete against them because they make a good product.

Go to this website to get a download link. You must do so before 5pm PST (8pm EST) on November 14th, although the link you get will be good for a week. This product includes both a spyware “finder” and “remover”, and you get free updates for a year.

This is their entry-level product, if you want more features you need to break out some cash. This can be good even if you already think you are pretty well protected by your own software. Spyware is a sneaky little vixen and no product finds all of it all of the time.

 

Great article on finding help with your troubled electronics

Wow. I have been trying to figure out exactly which part of this article I want to write about. I finally decided it is so good that honestly I think the best thing to do is just post the link for the article and tell you to read it yourself. So here it is:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/technology/personaltech/08basics.html?_r=1&ei=5087&em=&en=b64c75ceb17262d8&ex=1194670800&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

Hopefully, I can post about a few different things in that article in the future in more detail. I have been wanting to replace the battery on an old iPod anyway so maybe I will try that.

 

Comcast is listening.

It is true–well, I am pretty sure it is technically true. I looked at the stats from this blog over the weekend and found a pretty unusual link. I followed it and was taken to this page. To me, it looks like someone is using this service. The URL that came into this blog seems to contain search terms like, “Comcast, Threat, Tracking, bandwidth, bandwith, (sic) bittorrent, bit torrent, downloadcap, trafficshaping.”

Either Comcast or someone who needs to research Comcast has subscribed to a service which aggregates the content of blogs to see what people have written about those search terms I listed above.

My bet it is Comcast themselves, but if so, why are they so interested? Do they just want to have their digital fingers on the pulse of the interblog? Once they find what they are looking for, what do they plan on doing?

Update: I thought this story would have more to it, but so far I have not seen anything else about it.

 

Just a video today

This clip is pretty funny. Hope you enjoy. (Safe for work.)

 

gOS

So I downloaded the ISO for the newest Linux distribution to hit the scene. It is called gOS and Wal-Mart is selling a $200 computer with this instead of Windows which would cost about $100 more. The OS is really a modified version Ubuntu. I only played with it for a little while but it doesn’t seem too bad. It did not immediately recognize my wireless connection and I had trouble finding a wireless utility. I will give a more involved review but I can tell you that it is going to take a change of mindset. This is an OS designed for grandma to have a computer just to get on the internet, email kids and see pictures. It is buttoned down pretty good to prevent things from getting screwed up. Of course the first thing I wanted to do was start hacking around, changing things. I will have to get into character of a computer barely-literate user in order to see what I think. Watch this space!

 

Comcast insider goes too public?

Comcast has been in the news because of allegedly partnering with a company called Sandvine to disrupt Comcast’s customers use of BitTorrent downloads. Comcast has denied this and denied working with Sandvine. An internal Comcast memo has since surfaced that is alleged to show that Comcast does indeed have a contract with Sandvine, but it does not say what the contract requires Sandvine to do.

Someone claiming to be that insider started a blog and promised to continue to expose the seedier side of the cable-internet giant. So he or she said: “… I am just trying to help spread the truth about how screwed up Comcast is and I am sure we all know this.”

The problem is, when that person registered their website, they did not choose to have the registration information private. A simple web search shows the name and address of a person, apparently the person who was writing this “anonymous” blog. Have you ever seen a small news story and wondered if it was the pre-cursor of something bigger?

The site is down at the moment but the URL is below regardless.

http://shortnamenowitsgettinglong.com/

 

Print anything to PDF

One of the best tools I have been using is the “Print to PDF” application, CutePDF Writer. The program allows you to print anything to PDF–websites, documents, images, etc. Maybe that doesn’t sound like a huge deal, but here’s how I use it, see if you have anything in common with any of these:

• Web pages. I use the web for a lot of research and information gathering. Sometimes I want to hold onto the information I see on a web page, but I don’t want to add to a long list of book marks just for one web page. Also, what if the web page is altered or the URL changes? I could print it to hard copy but then I would have to store that somewhere. I could save the whole web page to my hard drive but that can be messy. Instead I print the page to PDF and store that to my hard drive in a nice small package. I have done this with articles like “Confessions of a former Verizon Sales Rep, “How to turn cheap steaks into prime meat” and “Hide your email address from Spam Bots“. Think of it as digitally tearing an article from a magazine.
• At work, I create price quotes and proposals using Excel and Word. I then email these documents to customers. It could be a sticky situation for me if someone altered the price on one of those and then tried to buy from us. Also, some folks use some old security practices and still don’t allow Word documents to be mailed to them. After creating the document, I print it to PDF and not only to I have a much harder to alter document, but it is also smaller in size for emailing.
• Using a computer that doesn’t have a printer but need to print something anyway? Print it to PDF, email it to a computer that has a printer, then print a hard copy when you get to that computer. When I did my taxes at home, I did not have a printer there as well. I could not do the return and print it at work because I could not load the tax software on my work computer. So I printed it to PDF on my home computer, emailed it to myself, then printed it up at work and dropped it in the mail.

Go to CutePDF’s web site and download CutePDF Writer. You actually have to download and install 2 items, the print portion and the PDF converter tool. Once you have downloaded and installed them, open document or a web page and select “File” then “Print”. (You want a command which brings up the print options window, some applications have a button which just sends the document straight to the printer–you probably don’t want that.)

When the print window opens, click the drop down to select which printer you want to print to. Make sure to select “Cute PDF Writer” as the printer you want to print to. (Click the below image for a better look.)

The program will do it stuff and then ask you where you want to save the PDF you just created.

As you can see, I save all mine in a folder appropriately called “Web PDFs”. There you go. You now have a convenient way of saving information, and it is paperless. (Note: Apparently not all “Print to PDF programs are created equal, and some may include malware. This one has won awards and is rated pretty well on CNET.)

 

AOL Radio – It’s actually good!

Lately I have been using AOL Radio at work. I do have a collection of my own MP3s on my work PC and listen to my playlists, but sometime you just want to mix it up. I like AOL Radio a lot. Don’t get me wrong, I am no fan of AOL, “the company” or “the service”, but “AOL – The Radio” is pretty cool. I prefer to use AIM to listen.

You can access their radio stations through AIM (click the headphones icon at the bottom while you are signed in) or by going to their web page.

It is sort of like all those stations you get from the airlines by plugging headphones into the armrest while you are flying, except this selection doesn’t suck. They have a vast variety of categories and sub categories. Like Punk? Try Punk U for new school punk bands or Classic Punk for the older, Sex Pistols-ish type of sound. Related station to that are Emo and Ska. (Although the Ska station only seems to play real old school ska.) There seems to be at least 12 varieties of alternative music, including “All” stations, features nothing but Korn, Dave Matthews or Green Day to name a few. It isn’t just music, either. They do have a small but varied selection of New, Sports and Comedy stations as well. They have a HUGE selection of stations to choose from, over 200:

It is important to note that there are also many XM stations, some free for everyone, some only available to AOL members. Still there are some great selections in there like XM’s Ethel (new alternative) and Willie’s Place, which is classic country. (Yeah, that Willie.)

Although they do allow you to rate songs if you are using their web console, it seems it is more for their own research to decide which songs and artists they should play more or less of. It does not seem to personalize your listening experience. You also cannot skip to the next song. These may seem like criticisms, but it depends on what you want it for. After all, it is named AOL Radio. Sit back and let the music flow in. This kicks my car radio’s ass. Locally, we have about 6 stations that I listen to and 3 of those I only tune to when I just cannot find anything I like on the other 3. I listen to my MP3s or iPod when I want to listen to exactly what I choose. I like the option of just plain ol’ listening to the radio once in a while, and this surely meets my needs when I want a passive, “just throw the music at me” type of experience. For example, I never realized how much I like the Misfits.

In summary, it is just a convenient, albeit somewhat mindless way to get music. If you want a more personalized music experience, try Last.fm or Pandora. Welcome to the new world, your computer is a radio.