Notify Me When It's Up

Have you ever visited a web site and found it to be down? Then Ding It's Up is the site for you. It is a very simple easy to use site. You can quickly get the site to email or text you when a particular web site is up or down. Check it out and enjoy!

Looking for Someone?

There are a number of sites on the Internet that let you look for people, but recently I ran across this site - Pipl that has been recently revamped for more in depth info and a better look and feel. Pipl claims that it is a better people search engine because most personal profiles, public records and other people-related documents are stored in databases and not on static web pages. Therefore, most of the higher-quality information about people is simply not visible to a regular search engine. The site claims that their robots are made to interact with searchable databases and extract facts, contact details and other relevant information from personal profiles, member directories, scientific publications, court records and numerous other deep-web sources. Happy cyber stalking!

Shoe Shopping

Shopping on the Internet is big these days, but one of the things that I think is generally harder to shop for online is shoes. However, I recently ran across several good online shoe stores. The first is probably the most popular shoe store on the Internet - Zappos.

Zappos has a great selection and excellent prices. As a matter of fact, they have a 110% price guarantee - if you find them cheaper they will beat the competitor's price by 10%. They also have a well designed web page with excellent search capabilites and the abilty to chat with some one live online to ask questions. I think one of their best features is that shipping is free. This even includes return shipping if you didn't like the shoes or they don't fit.

Another interesting shoe site is Modista. Modista is great for someone who is shopping for shoes, but does not already know exactly what they want. It is kind of like a high-tech version of window shopping. On the site you can browse through thumbnails until you find something you like. You can set filters for price, color, brand or even current discount to refine your search. If you click on something you like, the site will display a grid of similar items. Mouse-over a particular shoe and the brand, price, and retailer information will pop up. Then if you click on the magnifying glass next to the thumbnail it brings up more details - including a link to where you can purchase online.

Politics 2.0

I recently ran across an article in an Airline magazine that talked about various Web 2.0 type web sites that cover political topics. I found some these pretty interesting - especially on the verge of electing a new president. Here some political sites to check out:

One of my favorites was Govit. This site is a non-partisan website that keeps track of pending legislation. The site tells you about pending laws in the house and senate, allows you to vote on them, allows you to join in on conversations about the laws, compare your vote to others, and even voice your opinion to your own elected representatives.

Another interesting site is Opposing Views. This site posts opinions from experts for and against vertain topics. Then it lets readers weigh in and express their own opinions on the subject. The site makes use of John F. Kennedy's quote, "Without debate, without criticism... No republic can survive."

A third site is called Where I Stand. This site is similar to the Opposing Views site, but strives to be more of a social networking site that is built around opions expressed on a wide range of topics from politics to religon. The site says, "whereIstand.com is a social network of opinions in which people can compare where they stand to anybody else on the site -- public figures, organizations, friends, family, and other members -- on a variety of issues and topics. All opinions, or 'stands', are organized and presented in a way that makes them searchable and comparable for anyone interested in gaining perspective on issues that are important to them."

Pumpkin Carving Video

I ran across the site How2Heroes recently. It has a number of instruction videos similar to what you would find on YouTube, but it specializes in how-to videos related to food and entertaining. From the site, "How2Heroes is a how-to online video destination that celebrates people’s passion for food – the flavors, the presentation, the secrets to success, the cultural inspirations, and of course the “heroes” who share their knowledge and experience." One video in particular that I thought was pertinent this week was a great primer video on etching pumpkins. I was also interested in watching the video on eating lobsters becuase my daughters school is doing a live Maine lobster fund raiser. BTW, let me know if you would be interested in purchasing a live lobster flown down from Maine for $15.

Electronic Shoebox

Do you keep your important recipes in a shoebox? Many of us don't even do that. However, it is important to be able to locate receipts especially around tax time. I found this company that is trying to assist in that effort. It is a site that keeps an electronic "shoebox" for your receipts. You can mail them to the company, scan them, take pictures of them from you camera phone, or if you do online purchasing you can have the receipts emailed to them. Then they will electronically store the receipts for you. They have a system that automatically scans the receipts and categorizes them for you. It will use categories such as "Clothes," "Food," or "Retail," based on the merchant or product names. The site does charge a monthly fee depending on the level of service you require, but it is free to try for several months and sure would be handy come tax season.

Help with Works Cited

When writing reports and papers there is a need to properly cite the resources that you used in researching and writing your paper. Properly formatting your citations has become even more difficult in this day and age when so many resources come from places such as the Internet. I have found that there are a number of useful tools on the Internet that help you to properly format your citations. One of the sites that I have used is the Citation Machine. This site supports several of the common formats including MLA and APA. You select the format that you would like to use and the type of reference - i.e. newspaper article, web page, online encyclopedia. Then the web page prompts you for the information you need - i.e. author's last name, title of web page, web link. Then once you submit the information, the Citation Machine spits out a properly formatted reference that you can copy and paste into your paper or report. The site is quick easy and very handy. Enjoy!

Cell Phone Questions

Have you ever had questions about how your cell phone works?

I thought this article from TidBITS was interesting that explains:

1. How your cell phone calls follow you.
2. How cell phones work in cars and planes (including the real reason that airlines don't want you to use your cell phone on a plane).
3. Why text messages work when your phone won't ring.
4. Why you sometimes receive voice mail when your phone didn't even ring.
5. Why the iPhone GPS is faster than the GPS in your car.

Get Free TV Shows from Hulu

Maybe, you already knew about www.hulu.com, but I recently read an article on the site in Wired magazine and realized that I was behind the curve on this site. Of course, I was aware of all of the really great videos on YouTube and I knew that Apple was selling TV Show and Movies online through its ITunes store, but I had not heard of Hulu before.

Apparently, Hulu is one of the fastest growins sites on the net since its launch in March. Nielson ratings show that the site hit 83 million in June, up from 63 million in April.

The site is a joint venture between NBC and Fox and has much of both network's video content. The shows have commercials embedded in them, but they are less frequent and shorter in length then the shows when they were originally aired on TV.

According to Hulu's own site:
- Hulu is focused on quality and convenience and strives to create the best possible online video experience
- Hulu is easy to use and share. Simply go to www.hulu.com, and click on a video to watch right away (there is no additional software required)
- Hulu is free and legal through an advertising supported model.

In addition to the content hosted by Hulu, the search engine also allows you to find and watch videos from many other sites as well.

The company has reportedly already sold out of ad inventory and streams are up 31 percent over the last three months.

I myself tried the site out at lunch time today. I missed half of the season premier of NBC's Life and so I got caught up by watching the episode today. I found the site to be very easy to use and provided a quality video picture. Apparently, the site has the ability for you to embed their videos in your site as well.

Happy watching!

New Google Phone

T-Mobile launched the new G1 phone as a competitor to the Apple iPhone. The G1 runs Google's Android operating system and has launched with a large collection of free open source applications for the phone. For a feature comparison between the iPhone and the G1 check out this link. They are basically comparable in price, so there is a big question as to how the G1 will stack up against the very popular iPhone. For some pictures of the phone you can go to this page.

For an interesting information about some of the applications and features that android will bring check out this page.

CNET also has quite a bit of information about the phone.

Digital TV

Are you ready for the switch to digital TV (DTV). Most people by now realize that the federal government has mandated that all television broadcasts be converted to digital signals instead of analog by February 17, 2009. Among the reasons given are clearer pictures, more programming options, and more frequency available to emergency responders. However, probably the largest reason is that the federal government was then able to sell the frequency spectrum that will be made available due to digital signals requiring less bandwidth then the analog version.

However, I did witness the advantages of DTV this weekend. I was at my sister's house on Saturday for a family birthday party. There were a number of football games and my sister is one of the people around that still use rabbit ears (you don't need a DTV converter box if you have cable or satellite TV). The game that I was most interested in (GT vs. VT) was fairly fuzzy due to poor reception on channel 4. I was talking to my brother-in-law and I realized that he had already purchased two digital converter boxes using the government coupons which are available plus an additional $15. However, my brother-in-law thought that you could not use the converter boxes until next February. I explained to him that was the mandatory date, but all of the local stations are already broadcasting digital signals. In a matter of minutes we had the digital converter box hooked up and we were able to watch a crystal clear TV signal on all channels. As a matter of fact, they had more channels then before thanks to some of the broadcasters which are using multiple channels now (i.e. ETV/PBS is broadcasting 3 different channels all with different programming).

I recently read this review from CNet of the available DTV converter boxes available. They have some definite recommendations, but of the top few that I clicked on, none appeared to be available from online retailers yet.

If Wikipedia Was a Professor

I found this video from Gizmodo entertaining - especially in light of our class discussion about not using Wikipedia as a cited reference for our class papers. It is a pretty effective criticism of Wikipedia. Let me know what you think.

Free Software

I found an interesting article from Lifehacker that discusses free software alternatives to other commercial software. I am always looking for free rather then expensive software options and I found this article to be very informative.

I have used OpenOffice as a free alternative to Microsoft Office and I have been pleasantly surprised at how closely these free apps match the Microsoft versions. It includes free applications that replicate Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. I was also impressed at what a good job OpenOffice does of Opening Microsoft files. Sometimes there are some formatting issues, but for the most part they open flawlessly for me.

I have also used AVG as a free anti-virus program for family and friends. No computer should be without a good anti-virus program and I have found that AVG works quite well and seems to get anti-virus updates just as often as Norton/Symantec that I use at work.

Thirdly, I would like to endorse Mozy as a back-up solution for your computer. So many of us do not ever take the time to back-up important files on our computer. This is getting more and more important as so many of us keep important financial documents and digital pictures on our computer. A friend of mine was recently devastated when she lost a year's worth of digital pictures of her family. One of the nice features of Mozy is that it is easy to use and automatic. Another important feature is the fact that the files are stored remotely at their data center facility. The nice thing about that is that you do not have to worry about theft, fires, and hurricanes (important where I live) destroying both your computer and your back-up. The free version gives you several Gigs of storage and a paid home version for more storage is priced very reasonably.

I hope you enjoy the article and enjoy using some of these programs. If you have any questions or suggestions of other free apps feel free to add your comments to this post.

New Web Browser from Google

I don't know if you have heard the news or not, but Google just release a beta copy of a new web browser that they developed. The new web browser is named Chrome. It does not appear that the new browser will have any major new features that the current top browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari) do not have. As a matter of fact, some of the same developers that contribute to Firefox work for Google and have been involved in development of Google's browser. However, it does appear that Google is trying to cut Microsoft out of another area of software. Google is saying that the new browser is "streamlined and simple," and that it will be much better at running web based applications.

The browser was first officially announced on Google's own blog which is hosted on blogspot as well.

Since Google has been going beyond their original search engine dominance to expand into other areas such as web based applications, they have been encroaching on Microsoft's turf more and more.

If you are an early technology adopter and want to check out Google's latest web browser, the beta version of the software can now be downloaded here. The software is of course open-source and free.

Cool Text

For my first post I thought I would share you a website that I stumbled across when I was planning to create this blog. The web site is called Cool Text. The site is an automatic logo and graphics generator. It allows you to select from a wide variety of logo styles or button styles. You can then customize the text, font, size, and colors to meet your needs.

The styles and fonts are limited, but the site is very easy and quick to use. After you make your selections the site generally produces your custom logo very quickly. (A couple of times I had to wait in a queue to have mine generated, but even then it was not a long wait.) I used this site to create the "Tech News You Can Use" logo above with a chrome style.

The best thing about this site? It is free!

Welcome to My New Blog

I would like to personally welcome you to my new blog, "Tech News You Can Use." This blog is devoted to providing news, tips, links, and information about new technology and websites that I find interesting. Hopefully, you will find them interesting too.

I plan to post on a variety of technology areas including technology that you can use at home, at work, to entertain, or to make your life easier. I am interested in programs that are useful on Windows and Macintosh machines, technology that helps the environment, and gadgets that are just plain cool.