1-800-GOOG-411

1-800-GOOG-411 I LOVE this service! It has some kinks, but in a nutshell, it's a free "information" service that works completely via voice recognition. That is, you say your city and state, then the name or category of business you want a number for, and it lists the possibilities. Tell it when you know which one you want, and it connects you. Free. Can't beat that.

ElephantDrive - Simple, secure, and affordable online storage and offsite data backup

Mozy is not free anymore :( So I've been looking high and low for an alternative, and so for, this is all I've come up with. I'll play with it and see if it is something that I can wholeheartedly recommend as a free "for home use" solution. Since it's free for 2GB, and Mozy is now $5/month, I'd say use this for now if you don't have anything else!

ElephantDrive - Simple, secure, and affordable online storage and offsite data backup

See my 1/31/2008 on Mozy, entitled "I am an idiot"!

COMMENTARY: When Parents Become Executioners - Catholic Online

COMMENTARY: When Parents Become Executioners - Catholic Online

This guy does a good job of showing the insanity of the abortion "right".

Terabyte Thumb Drives Made Possible by Nanotech Memory

Terabyte Thumb Drives Made Possible by Nanotech Memory -- I sure hope this actually comes to fruition. I'd like to be able to:
- Replace floppies/CDs/DVDs with super high capacity, solid state cards
- Have a video camera that doesn't use tape, but instead uses the abovementioned cards
- Not have hard drives at all in the PC, but have individual slots for your operating system and data
- That would be enough to keep me happy for a long time, right there

Amazing, hilarious prank

How did they do it? A mirror that has no reflection for the person being pranked. Hint: Keep a very, very close eye on the lady doing her makeup--the shill:

Cool Tool: Chainless Bicycle

I'd love to have one of these--or at least play around with one and see if I want a chainless bicycle .

Watching is gave me a headache! But watch it anyway...

Watching this video just about made me throw up. I can't believe that there are people who actually enjoy riding things like this! Crazy German Carnival Ride

More links to the right

To the right I've added a link to Mozy, which I use on two computers at home and I just LOVE. The things I like about it are:

• It's free
• It backs up whatever files I've marked as needing backed up, while my computer isn't doing anything else--in the background
• It integrates with Windows Explorer, so if you think you lost a file, you can just pick the file that's missing and say "restore"

Disclosure: By following the link, I actually benefit, but that isn't why I'm recommending Mozy. By following the link to set up your free account, you actually get extra free storage space, and so do I. So it's a win-win. If that bugs you (I'm not sure why it would), just go to http://mozy.com, because I'd rather see everyone in the world using this, because I know how painful it is to lose files!

I've also added a link to what I would like to see become my little repository of solutions that I've either run across on the net, or mashed up myself to solve some particular problem. For example, there are lots of free utilities for creating your own PDF files, but I put a link there for the one that I think is the most powerful, free option. I love free things.

It just keeps getting better!

Google is impressive. I was just sitting here thinking, "How can I get this to work, that I can have my Google Reader share items to integrate with this blog?" Well, almost like an answer to a prayer, I'm looking at Blogger and see that you can add a widget to do just that. So, you can look to the right now and see the Google Shares that I have already done.

My Notebook

OK, I'm still playing with a way to easily publish stuff. Here is another way that I've dabbled with on and off for the last year or two. It's Google's "Notebook". It allows you to make multiple notebooks, with the option of making any notebook public. I have one here: My Notebook and another here that is where I'm starting to keep track of little free tools that I've found over the years to do tasks that come up from time to time. Also I'm using this as my repository for fixes to things that break in Windows.

Google Reader -Jeff's shared items

You may have already seen that I've been using Google Reader to keep friends and family in the loop on items I see on the web that I think that they would like. That is available here:

Google Reader -Jeff's shared items

But I have been kind of half keeping my eyes open for a little tool or something that would make it easier for me to reference any website, in a blog style. That way, you can bookmark this blog, or better yet, subscribe to this feed, and I hope that any site that I think is neat will end up here. That way, I won't have to bother with emailing, you won't have to mess with receiving those annoying emails from me, and I will have a better way of going back and finding them.

We'll see how it works...