Ron "Ronnie" K.'s Profile

Buying a car can no doubt be a stressful experience. There are just plenty of things to worry about, from whether or not you’ve picked the right car, what the reviews are saying, if it’s going to be reliable, and if you’re paying too much, (avoid a good deal of hassle, and walk-in asking for the "new" or "used-car" manager. This person can squabble price directly with you, rather than having the sales person run back & forth with middle-man. And, if you want to be assured of a courtesy car...with 24 hours advance service call, ask for that with pen-in-hand, JUST BEFORE you sign the contract. Get it in writing as well!)ond what your trade-in is worth.

Buying a new car can be a bit overwhelming sometimes, but it doesn’t have to be. With the Web, it’s easy to simplify everything to avoid some of the hassle and frustration altogether.

CarZen.com

First, perhaps the most important thing to do is to research a new car and figure out what kind of car is right for you. With so many makes and models out there to choose from, how do you make that process easier? That’s where CarZen comes into play.

The site allows you to quickly select a vehicle that fits your specific needs. All it takes is just a few simple steps. First, just pick any of the body styles you are interesting in along with your price range.

A list of possible cars for you is shown below and from there, you can go on and select your personal preferences, including your specific needs, wants, and style, to narrow down the list further. Once completed, just review your results to check out the cars that are perfect for you.

Displayed for every match in your results is the percent match based on your needs, along with basic information about the car, including MSRP, invoice, and MPG. Below that, you can review the report card of how the vehicle was scored followed by a helpful overview of the model, basic stats, styles, and features.

Great place to begin when you really arent certain what "style" car you have in mind.
Ron

I think this is a classy idea. Whether marking a passing, birth, getting married, falling in love, opening doors on a new business, swearing off cigarettes...anything-at-all. If you have any "blogger" in your blood, are a dyed-in-wool-romantic, or simply feel motivated to mark an occasion...I think you'll like this:

YourTribute is a web-based tool, that lets you set up a personal website (a Tribute) to plan, share and remember a significant event or special someone. A Tribute can be created in minutes, but remains online for life to provide an everlasting record of the special occasion.

Why Your Tribute?

It is easy and elegant. Create a personalized Tribute for your event in minutes. Your Tribute includes many of the features of popular online invitation, photo sharing, blogging, and social networking websites, in an easy-to-use intuitive interface.

Check the site out. I'll be surprised if you don't find something worth carving into the "foreverness" of the Internet.

Thanks. As always, if you found this review interesting or helpful, please recognize this review, in some category, in my ratings!
Ever-On...
Ron

I've only begun tracking my homes energy consumption. I find it's an interesting & literal way of getting a feel for where money is wasted. Saving energy not solely for cost sake, but without sound cliche, start being kinder to mother Earth.

What follows is the website's verbatim commentary on hos it works.I think it's worth looking into:

_"Do you remember RecycleBank, the Philadelphia-based company that rewarded customers for recycling? I thought that was a great idea, and I’ve got a similar response to Earth Aid’s new rewards program for energy savings. Rolled out earlier this month in Washington, DC, Earth Aid offers a program to track your energy use and savings, and then to “pay” you for those savings through reward points that can be redeemed at partner companies.

In its press release for the launch of the rewards program, the company claims that its program “…creates a virtuous circle of local businesses providing incentives for households to save energy, and households re-circulating their savings on their utility bills into local businesses – benefiting both the local environment and the local economy.” All of this is on top of money actually saved by consumers cutting their energy use…

I’ve been using the program for several months now, and its been a great way to track energy use: each month, I get a statement showing me how my energy use compares to that same month the previous year (and, yep, we’re saving so far!). So far, the rewards program is only available in DC, but as the whole program is based on the concept of “rewards for savings,” I’d expect to see reward partners established in other cities soon.
How Does Earth Aid “Pay” Consumers to Save on Electricity (and other utilities)?

As I noted in my earlier post for SUNfiltered, Earth Aid bundles the energy savings from participants and sells them on the carbon market. When I talked to CEO Ben Bixby about the concept back in April, he noted that the company’s rewards will likely only be a part of the payback consumers receive from cutting energy usage: in addition to lower utility bills, consumers who make energy efficiency upgrades to their home may also be eligible for tax incentives. The Earth Aid system itself ups the ante a bit, but may be more important in the long term for providing an initial incentive for individuals and families to start exploring reduced energy use… and the many benefits it creates for both the planet and the pocketbook.

So, what do you think? A good way to get people focusing on their home energy use, and how to reduce it? I know I’ve been stoked to see our savings…".

Hope this makes sense for you!
If you like this, report it on SiteJabber give the review a reward as a GreatFind! smile...
Ron

This seems simply smart. When shopping for a particular item, see what BestCovery suggests as best of lot. When shopping online, there is an opportunity to cross-reference pricing/quality (equals "VALUE" incidentally) one can just wear-out before being certain he/she has done all the homework possible. This website gets you started...if not facilitating your purchase decision. It uses TWO savvy criteria to "decide" best choice.

Simply start searching for the product by entering a few keywords in the search box or browse using the categories. For each category, BestCovery will show you the best available product in the market.

Products are ranked using two different methodologies I mentioned above: Firstly, products are extensively reviewed and ranked by experts belonging to the industry who know the products inside and out. They pick the best product, write their thoughts on it and give it the “Best” stamp.

However, in many other cases where expert ratings are not available or not suitable, BestCovery uses an intelligent crowd-sourcing technology that takes user reviews and ratings from a number of consumer sites like Amazon, and ranks products based on that. In either case, you are able to see which product beats others when it comes to a specific purpose.

The categories and sub-categories are pretty detailed. For example, if you are looking for a GPS, BestCovery tells you what the best GPS is overall, the best GPS with real-time traffic and even the best GPS for golf. You can also view other products, read their reviews and buy any product mentioned on BestCovery through a number of suggested vendors.

Features:

* Identify the best products for each category.
* Search, browse by category or see recent bests.
* Read about the experts who rank products and see their profile.
* Read hundreds of user reviews for any product.
* Buy the product you like using provided vendor links.
* Compare prices between different products.
* No registration required.

This can be a very handy consumer tool when trying to narrow a purchase decision. It seems like an excellent starting point!

Hope this help a bit,
Ron.

I reviewed "followUpThen.com" here a while ago. I was very impressed with the design simplicity, and speed of setting e-mail-based reminders.

The creator of another program, "FollowUp.cc" brought his product to my attention, and it's better yet. This is the way EVERYONE should be setting reminders and reminding others. I asked Chris the designer of FollowUp.cc to explain the basics of creating reminders. Here is his response to me verbatim:

_Ron, my apologies for the radio silence. I was actually in and out of the hospital the past 2 weeks, but all is fine now and thankfully nothing to worry about. So, let's get some info flowing finally :)

_"Here's the comparison you asked for:

- FollowUp.cc supports a time component on day of the week and date based reminders, such as: wednesday-3pm@followup.cc and aug15-9am@followup.cc. In addition, we also support minutes and military time! So, you could also write wednesday-1500@followup.cc or wednesday-3.30pm@followup.cc (notice the period to separate minutes).

That's probably the biggest addition and difference between our syntax and theirs.

- FollowUp.cc also has a lot more utility. Here's the list off the top of my head:

1. You can register and adjust settings (such as Timezone and if you want to store your message bodies etc).

2. There's a calendar view of your reminders, letting you see past ones, future ones, and then even Edit or Delete them.

3. You can have multiple email addresses under the same account which most people do since most people have multiple email addresses

4. There is an RSS and iCal feed of your reminders so you can import them into your calendaring system such as Google Calendar, iCal or Outlook etc.

5. Snooze Links: This is probably the most convenient and best feature people like. The snooze links enable One Click snoozing of reminders which then lets you archive the email and get it out of your in-box.

6. There are a bunch of intelligent logic pieces under the hood such as when a "public reminder is set", meaning in the To or CC field, it will not continue to set a new reminder for each Reply to All by recipients of the email.

7. If you set a reminder on an thread to someone and then set another one, it will update the existing one (assuming the reminder is different). This way you don't multiple reminders set for the same thread (this only works in Gmail or other threaded systems like the new Hotmail).

And there's technically more, but i assume that's good enough for now :) Let me know what you think.
Thanks,
Chris".

Highly recommend (to those who needs/enjoys a calendar/reminder system that's absolutely brilliant) a visit to "FollowUp.cc", without the quotes of course.

I don't know how I'd stay on top of things without followup.cc.

Ron.

Everyone is interested in saving money. For more reasons than I care to think about, many do little or nothing to pare-down what consumer services cost. For those invested (no pun) in saving as much as possible, refusing to be ripped-off, here's cool site that can potentially help.

_BillShrink has always incorporated wireless service into its features since – let’s be honest – wireless bills one of the worst offenders for paying too much without realizing it. Lots of people currently getting screwed over o wireless plans Pricing plans fluctuate so much between different plans and services, and a lot of the time you’re confused as to what you are actually paying for. It is especially tough when you consider that a lot of plans lock you into a 2 year deal.

compare wireless phone services
On BillShrink, just select the Wireless service tab, fill out your information (current carrier, current cost), and hit Go>>. BillShrink will then ask you for your usage information, which – in most cases – you can sign into your service provider and grant BillShrink access to the statistics.

After BillShrink has all the necessary information, you can begin viewing potential savings. You can enter your email address so the service remembers your settings, also.

_Credit Cards: compare bank services:
For credit cards its the same thing. Just select the information pertaining to your credit usage and hit Go>>. Then you will have to fill out a little more information to narrow down what you’re looking to accomplish with the service. Whether you’re looking to get a new credit card or are attempting to get your very first one, BillShrink can accommodate you.

_Savings & CDs
BillShrink can also find you the best rates on Savings and CDs. After you fill out how much you could afford to save each month, BillShrink will search through hundreds of savings accounts, finding and matching you with the ones that best fit your saving profile. It also computes the amount you will earn in interest per year, minus fees.

_Gas Stations
Finding the cheapest gas stations is something everyone should be able to take advantage of immediately. Enter in your most frequent destinations (i.e. home, work) and make/model of your car and BillShrink will find and display all of the cheapest gas stations in your area using Google maps.

_Television Service:
The television service feature on BillShrink is listed as beta, but there’s really nothing beta about it. To compare cable and satellite bills, enter in your address, current provider, and how much you currently pay to see how much you could be saving with an alternate service. BillShrink makes sure to only list the services available in your area, which I thought was pretty cool.

_Conclusion
If you use BillShrink properly, you can potentially reduce your bills and save yourself a lot of money. It’s a pretty straight forward service and is generally very easy to use and navigate. BillShrink is definitely one of the sites I will be incorporating into my money-saving arsenal (along with Mint).

Everyone complains...now do something to stop the constant drip of wasted money.

There’s always a few people who take a bit longer than they should getting back to you when you send out an email. For those people, FollowUpThen.com is the perfect solution that saves you time and effort. There is no signup required, but the first time you use their service, you will be asked to verify your email address.

After that, each time you send out an email that might need a gentle reminder, all if you have to do is add a FollowUpThen email address in the CC field.

The email address format depends on how long you want to wait before sending that second follow-up email. You can specify the length of time to wait using 1hour@followupthen.com or 2days@followupthen.com, and so forth, or you can specify the exact date using jul5@followupthen.com or 2010-07-05@followupthen.com. Just be sure to use the following format when using an exact calendar date: YYYY-MM-DD@followupthen.com.

If you put the follow-up under BCC, ONLY THE SENDER will get the message. And finally, if you put the follow-up in the To: field, the reminder will come to you in the time frame you specified.

Fantastic way to keep track of appointments and anything else you need to be reminded of. This one is hot. Love it.
Hope it simplifies your life calendar.
Ron.

POINT YOUR BROWSER HERE: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6984/

Ever had one of those "oh f*#k" moments when the web-form content you've been writing so carefully, crafting the words, and was sounding so right, just disappears? Then, within seconds it dawns on you there IS NO WAY to get it back - and you'll have to start all-over-again...if you haven't become too depressed to continue.

If you've gone cold as some errant mistake (Firefox crashes, or you hit "cancel" rather than "submit" - OUCH!), then you need Lazarus. If not, install it anyway, before disaster strikes!

Lazarus securely saves forms as you type, allowing you to safely recover your lost work after server timeouts, network issues, browser crashes, power failures, and all the other things that can go wrong while you're entering forms, editing content, writing web-mail, etc, etc, etc...

Lazarus works on ordinary web forms, WYSIWYG editors, and even AJAXified comment boxes, and will save you from pretty much any given server, browser, or connection problems that might otherwise cause you to lose your work, or that really pithy blog comment you struggled on for over an hour.

Lazarus now comes with 2048-bit RSA and 256-bit AES hybrid encryption, so your form history is more private and secure than ever! Lazarus also includes search functionality so you can recover text even if you can no longer find the original form you entered it into.

Never lose anything you type into a web form again! Lazarus securely auto-saves all forms as you type, so after a crash, server timeout, or whatever, you can go back to the form, right click, "recover form", and breathe a sigh of relief.

I think this Add-On is a real life-saver!
Ron.

Crowdrise: Social Networking Site For Fund Raising & Advocacy

Somewhere in us all exists a desire to push advocacy and help those in need. Crowdrise was created to help people wanting to help other people. It is a "charity- social-networking" website that lets users send donations online for various fund-raising activities and advocacy...or create his/her own advocacy program.

Once you sign up for a Crowdwise account, you can either start a fund-raising campaign, volunteer for a project, or get sponsors for your volunteer projects. You can choose whether you just want to donate money or be part of the volunteering team. You can also set up as many fund raising campaigns and volunteer projects that you want.

There is, however, a transaction fee once you donate to the project or charity you set up. Crowdrise deducts 5% on donations made through their site and a $1 transaction fee for donations under $25 or a $2.50 transaction fee for donations $25 and above. That rather sucks, but the web-site is a business and charges a fee to organize.

Crowdrise not only aims to help volunteers and fundraisers but is also a fun way for people who share the same passion of helping people in need to bond, interact, share stories, share visions, and be friends with.

Features:

* Easy search engine for the charities or foundations you may want to be part of.
* Users can win amazing prizes as long as they incur many points.
* Donations are secured since the Crowdrise uses Amazon Payments.
* Easy user-interface; adding friends, uploading photos and videos are easy.
* Transaction fee applies.
* Share your project.
* Team fund-raising esprit de-corps!

Good luck,

Ron.

Point Browser To: http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/warbyparkercom-try-on-glasses-digitally/

Trying on glasses can be a pain. Not every frame and shape works on every face, so the process consists mostly of guessing and testing. How your face is shaped can determine a lot of this, so buying glasses online is a bad idea.

Or is it? If you’d rather get an idea of the sorts of frames that work with your face without spending time in a store, check out Warby Parker’s online showroom. Here you can not only browse an online store full of different sorts of glasses, but also upload a picture of yourself to try on glasses digitally.

The idea simply is that you’ll like what you see and purchase glasses from Warby Parker, but you’re by no means obligated to. If you just want to see if certain shapes look good on your face you’re welcome to; there’s no registration process for doing so.

There are only 46 glasses to choose from at this time, but it’s still a great way to get a feel for the sorts of glasses that could work for you.

Have fun with it.
Ron

http://u.nu/92esc
OR Point Your Browser HERE: http://lifehacker.com/5578353/how-to-hire-a-contractor-without-getting-hosed?skyline=true&s=i

We love a good DIY project, but in every DIYers life, you still—every now and then—need to call a professional. Get the work done without getting hosed with tips for hiring out your projects.

Any experienced homeowner can regale you with stories of hiring contractors. The stories almost always seem to fall into two neat categories "Look at what a great job they did!" and "Let me tell you about the time the guy put the back hoe through my garage...." We've experienced both ourselves, so here's our handy guide to hiring help around the house so that all your stories can begin like "You need a new roof? Let me tell you about this fantastic roofer I hired!"

Lifehacker.com (an organization and newsletter that I've relied on for years, has always been blunt honest, always about freeware whenever possible, and can be your back-up when your PC goes awry and you need SAFE advice) has thousands (?) of fascinating reviews and articles that have never let me down. I think you'll enjoy this one and find it extremely useful.

POINT YOUR BROWSER TO: www.tubesort.com

Do you listen to music using YouTube? Have a hard time creating a playlist? Then Tubesort will make it easier for you. Tubesort is a YouTube-based app that lets you create and organize personal-choice music and compile a library from YouTube videos. With an iTunes-like interface, you can play your favorite music in continuous, shuffle or repeat mode.

Semantic search is concerned with the exact meaning of a search term, its definition and the search context. Search engines based on semantic search algorithms are thus better at eliminating irrelevant results.

Try "Complete Planet" for some tougher searches. See if you don't find your results less confused, more specific.

You really have to have your "kid-within" available for the web site. Google Fight was available as a Google widget, some time ago. It's basically two fields in which you can type...ANYTHING, person, place, or object. You then click "Fight" and Google will tell you what won.

The results are based on Google repetition and other sophisticated algorithms. But who care? Google Fight is now it's own web site. You can search the results as an adjunct to the essential FIGHT.

Examples of fights: panasonic vs sony
books vs television
males vs females
bottled water vs american cars

Searches can be virtually anything. When bored...it's another option. Then there are the specific fights: BP Oil vs Earth.

Happy Fighting!
Ron

If you shop on Amazon, it's very handy to know when prices of items you've been watching have dropped! Chintzee is an Amazon-based web tool that lets you keep an eye on Amazon price reductions by sending you an alert every time prices drop.

You only need to go to the homepage to try it out. The website shows the top items that have had a price drop on a daily basis. You can also start a specific search by entering product keywords, ASIN, or the Amazon URL.

To monitor the price of a specific product, click the “Watch” button, fill in the necessary details and choose to be alerted either by email or Twitter. You can also view the products’ price history illustrated in a graph.

Chintzee helps you save money and time by avoiding the hassle of constantly checking up on item prices. This is especially useful when time-short and shopping to compare prices is more time than you've got.

Features:

* Helps you monitor Amazon price changes.
* Lets you receive alerts when prices go down.
* Allows you to see product price history.
* Alerts through e-mail and Twitter.
* Search for your item using keywords, ASIN, or by URL.
* Watch items.

Similar Tools: Vizzl, Amazon Discount Finder and Amazanian: Better Amazon Search.

Check out Chintzee @ www.chintzee.com
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We’ve all been there. You’re interested in a website or a download, but the site wants your email address before letting you near the goods. You want access, but you’re not quite sure you want it enough to hand over the information.

The site asks you to supply an email address, and follow up with confirmation, and perhaps a login and password. It’s hard to avoid the process or any of the steps, but the part that really annoys me is the need to supply my email address to yet another unknown party.

But what if you could instead supply a temporary email address that was forwarded to your own? And then define either a maximum number of emails to forward, or a maximum period of time for which that would happen? This would stop you from receiving spam email to your regular email account. That’s what "tempalias" will do - and do it very nicely.

A word of caution though. Remember that the whole reason you would go through this is that you don’t want to supply your email address to someone you might not trust. You need to be comfortable tempalias is a safe place to hand over that address. I’m relaxed about it, but you should always make your own decisions on security, and not just take my word. tempalias has more so say about the subject.

Remember also that if it turns out that you want to have an ongoing relationship with the website then you will need to return and sign up with your real email address. tempalias has commitment issues, and won’t phone you back the next day, or at least not the next month.

"If something of yours is damaged, repairing it yourself is the best way to learn more about the damage and to prevent it from happening in the future. But on the flip side, repairing something by yourself is not advisable might inflict even more damage. A great repair-it-yourself website is iFixit".

*If the link above does not get you to the upload page, point your browser here:
http://www.pictriev.com/facedb/fs2.php?

This is way cool.
Browse and upload a photo (yourself or whomever) and Pictriev will search images on the Internet for closest match. So who do you resemble out there, Pictriev will tell you.
It will also provide a percentage of gender match. In other words what percent of the "face" you've uploaded is clearly male or female. If the gender is questionable, you'll get a "%" value male/female.

Lastly, based on comparable data from the Internet, Pictriev will tell you how old you look. An actual number suggesting relative age resemblance.

To say the very least, this is fun. I killed a half-hour throwing my photo and family and friends, and found it fascinating! Imagine some of the practical applications for finding similar faces on the Internet.
Enjoy,
Ron

Very cool site that offers video clips (short videos as music videos inclusive) from Youtube, Hulu, and a variety of sources all over the Internet.

"ClipBlast! is the Internet's fastest growing Web-Wide Video Index, Search and Navigation Platform.

"Our patent-pending technologies have been designed to organize and simplify the "Video Web"; the fastest growing video distribution platform in history. ClipBlast! technology helps Viewers search, navigate, watch and personalize their experience with the Video Web, and helps Video Content Providers, Advertisers and Marketers monetize their investments."

Should definitely check this out and have it bookmarked when you want to kill some time, or have specific bit of video you need in a hurry.
Ron

This sounds almost too good to be true. I've used it once, and it does exactly what it says. This is definitely something you should look into.

"How LucyPhone Works

"Lucy will call you first then "patch" you through to the company.

"Use the company's phone menu just as you normally would. Get put on hold? Press ** (asterisk twice) and your phone will be disconnected but Lucy will stay on the line."

"Once a live agent is on the line, Lucy will call you back immediately and connect you both. Get put on hold again, just press ** again!"

I'd love to hear feedback on this one.

Best,
Ron

I've used this often. It's great!

"So you’ve got a file, and you want to get it to your friend quickly. Only one problem: he’s on the other side of the world. At this point, you could email the file (assuming the file isn’t too big for your email service to handle.) Or you could set up an FTP server to share the document.

"Or alternatively you could head over to iSendr, and in a few quick clicks give your friend a direct link for downloading the file directly from your computer. iSender is a web-based program that creates a link for you to send files directly to another computer without uploading it to a third party server.

"Using the service is dead simple: you simply head over the website, click “share file” and point the website toward the file you wish to share. You’ll be given a link to share the file with, which you will share with your friend (you can optionally password protect the file if you’re worried about security). They paste the link into a web browser and presto: they have your file.

Send files directly to another computer
This is a really nice tool if you’re looking to do a quick file transfer without installing any software. Best of all, your transfer is completely secure: the iSender team cannot see what files you’re sharing, as the file is never actually on their servers. This tool is quick, easy and safe; there’s no reason not to give it a shot.

Features

* Web-based tool for quick file transfers.
* Point the site toward any file and you’ll be given a link for sharing it.
* Link allows someone to download the file directly from your computer.
* Similar tools: FilesOverMiles, PipeBytes and JetBytes.

Ron.

Everybody loves a good deal. When shopping at websites like Amazon, you simply expect competitive prices, but how do you know if you’re scoring an item for a bargain price or actually overpaying?

Enter the world of Amazon price watching and tracking. The prices of a lot of the products available at Amazon do tend to fluctuate over time. They’ll go up and down constantly, and that’s where these websites can come in handy to keep tabs on all the price changes.

Never overpay again! Shop smarter and save some dough on the way by knowing exactly when it’s the right time to buy and when you should probably wait.

Ron.

Nothing earth shaking here, but clever recipe-oriented web-based search that comes up with some great meal ideas based on what you have handy.

"Deciding what food to prepare is not easy even when you already have ingredients on hand. Fortunately, FoodPair is a nice food meta-search engine that helps you find the right recipe with the ingredients that you have now".
Ron.

For this article - point your browser to:
*http://www.androidcentral.com/keeping-your-charge-how-improve-battery-life-your-android-phone* (without asterisks of course). Clicking above won't get you there.

For those who have an Android based phone, keeping your battery through the day can be tricky.

Android Cenrtral has provide the most comprehensive, easy-to-understand article on getting that job done.

If this applies, check it out. Has done great job extending my Droid's battery life per diem.
Ron.

Hi people. I love gadgets, but this dynamic has value when sending truly 'sensitive' information.
From The Site - How It Works:

"Once you submit the form you will be provided a "key" that you will have to give to whomever you are sending the message to.

How you deliver the 'key' to them is 100% up to you and we have no involvement with it - nor do we want to! What we will do is send an email to the person with a link to a very specific website where they will need to visit and insert the "key" you deliver to them. This means you can provide them with the key verbally, text message, or in any manner you choose. (The point is pushed in that anyone else who has the 'key'...can read that sensitive info as well. Make sense?)

As soon as the person you are sending the message to reads the message we will purge the message from our database to ensure it can never be read again.

Optionally you can choose to have the message purge itself if it remains unread for a specified amount of time. You can also choose to be notified via email when/if the message is read/purged.

Received A Message?
If you have received a OneTimeMessage from somebody via email you must use the URL within the email you were sent.

Just How Secure Is It?
Here at OneTimeMessage.Com we go to great lengths to ensure that ALL of your information and your messages are secure by using multi-tiered encryption processes which include cryptographic symmetric block ciphers such as blowfish, hash functions such as whirlpool, atmospheric noise random integers, RSA keys (1024-bit) along with a few other methods thrown in to really make it secure! Additionally once a message has been read and destroyed, or it has expired, we purge the highly encrypted message data along with the corresponding salt and passphrase".

Hopefully a little more control in a world trying to steal ours.
Ron

Viewzi, which uses Flash, is the most customizable and multi-faceted visual search engine. For any search term, it offers up to 19 different ways to view the search results, and you can make any one of them your default. The types of views cover everything under the sun – web screenshots, simple text, photos, music, news, celebrity gossip, recipes, weather, etc.

Videos are grabbed from Joost, YouTube, and Viddler, but cannot be played back within the results page. However, the best view is the photo tag view, in which you can explore Flickr photos of related tags just by clicking on them. You can drag the tags around whichever way you want, and the interface is quite remarkable.

Need a photo, Viewzi is the one.
Ron

CAUTION ADULT:

All work and no play, hm?

This is too cool, and I imagine quite a treat for the troops.
Being in the middle of war, fighting so far from home, ANYTHING that could make a soldier smile for a couple of minutes is just fine with me.

You MUST be 18...yada, yada, yada, all explained on the site. Bit it's quite serious and explains how simply it's done.

Gals, guys...do YOUR part to put a smile on a lonely face!
Then, let's bring 'em home!

Prospector is based in the Czech Republic, but the list of free stuff that you can find here knows no borders. FreeStuff finds stuff for the home, free computer software, free educational supplies and tons more.

In all fairness, the site is more of a directory of content, but with over 3300 categorized and reviewed links to freebies – it’s a body of information that deserves greater recognition.

Try it out...
Ron

Tweetfeel monitors positive and negative feelings in twitter conversations about stuff like movies, musicians, TV shows and popular brands. We display these feelings in a clear and simple way for you.

It compares your search result against a number of indicators to determine whether someone is generally positive or negative towards your term. TweetFeel then applies some "insanely complex algorithms" to make sure your results fairly display the true feelings.

Very cool: As a search takes place, individual tweets appear in the "positive", "negative", or ambivalent categories. It validates itself.

Have fun...? (I suffered a 30 minute addiction to TweetFeel)
Ron

I don't love (web sites) easily . But I have to tell you this tickles me (I'm pretty ticklish). I think it's the concept and the potential, rather than "buying" into the literal results.

Simply, "What-The-Internet-Thinks" is a search engine based on "sentiment", being able to recognize subtleties such as sarcasm. I've hunted around and no one knows how this thing truly works, just that it's popular.

WhatDoesTheInternetThink.net is like one of those flash Gallup polls that tap into public opinion. The web tool searches the internet for the global opinion on what the world thinks. It takes your search term and returns results as Positive, Negative or Indifferent. The tool searches the web using Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Twitter - or all combined.

What criteria the engine bases its results on is, as mentioned, unclear, so take the results with a pinch of salt.

I can see results being used to attempt marketing trends/evaluations, perceived 'good' & 'bad'. So I'm not sure what else to tell you other than have fun with it, and if you're doing some research be sure to footnote this review.
Ron

Back when Songbird – a music player based on Mozilla’s code – initially launched, I was immediately intrigued by the idea. A completely customizable music player. The audio equivalent of Firefox.

Sadly, the critiques were largely true. Songbird was riddled with bugs and sure didn’t mind crashing once in a while.

Since then, Songbird has come a long way. Further than most iTunes fans care to admit. Not only is the little birdie far more stable – about as stable as an application gets – the Songbird addons have greatly matured as well.

The Songbird addons discussed below are serious. They can add a lot of extra value to your Songbird experience. With a bit of luck, it might just be enough to convert you to a new music player.

mashTape:
Before the internet, being interested in something was a rather disappointing experience. Now, with the Google-Wikipedia combo, you can get extra information on pretty much everything.

MashTape takes this quest for knowledge – also dubbed, ‘being interested’ – to your music player and fills in the impersonal blanks between that bulk of artist names.

songbird addons:
In a number of tabs, appearing at the bottom of your screen mashTape grabs additional data on the ‘now playing’ song. In Artist Info, you can read more about the group, with snippets pulled from Last.fm, MusicBrainz, Freebase, or Wikipedia.

Additionally, the News tab gives you an RSS-like experience, with the latest news items from a number of sources, including Google News, Hype Machine, and MTV Music News.

Finally you have the Photos and Videos tabs. These will show pictures and videos from the current artist, from YouTube, Flickr and SmugMug.

LyricMaster:
LyricMaster isn’t a Songbird addon you’ll use every single day (or actually, you might), but it can prove invaluable at happy or heavily populated moments. Although a lot of music players allow you to add lyrics to a song, Songbird’s LyricMaster pulls them in automatically and displays them in the sidebar.

songbird addons
The sidebar will automatically adjust itself to your theme (as seen above), and can be collapsed when you don’t need it. For the diehards, or those regularly offline, LyricMaster also allows you to save the lyrics of a particular, or even all songs, to your hard disk.

Last.fm
Last.fm, in case you’ve been away, is a music website that can learn your tastes. From there on, you can either play music that’s recommended to you, or that’s similar to an artist, album, or tag of your choice. It’s not as accurate as just using your own music, but it makes for some great new music recommendations. And there’s seamless integration with Songbird.

songbird extensions:
The experience with Songbird’s Last.fm add-on is twofold. In terms of scrobbling, the plug-in keeps track of what you’re listening to, and stays in constant communication with Last.fm’s servers. Even tracks listened while offline will be submitted later on.

As you can see above, Last.fm’s radio stations seamlessly play in Songbird. Even the album art keeps up. But probably best of all, you can rate, hate, or tag songs that are playing. And not just the radio stations, but your library music as well.

7digital:
A lot of people use iTunes because of the music store integration. Songbird now features 7digital integration. 7digital is one of the most popular online music stores. Their prices are considerably lower, and on par with the iTunes music store. Perhaps best of all, you don’t need a credit card to access it.

songbird extensions:
The 7digital Songbird add-on allows you to log into the 7digital store from your music player. From there on, you can purchase or download previously purchased songs to your computer. Song downloads are immediately added to your music Library. If you’ve been using Songbird long enough, the 7digital add-on also features music recommendations, by scrobbling your music Last.fm-style.
Ron

QUESTION!
Chris O. asked a good question regarding Songbird:
"But how does it sound?"

My Response:
"Hi Chris.
I think Songbird is going to sound as good as your hardware allows. I heard no difference using Songbird, and I have a very strong sound system. Your speakers, and the sound from your phone are the real limitations in terms of what you can "hear". The the addons Mozilla now offers and will certainly tom come, seem to make Songbird far more customizable than say iTunes, even Win amp.

If you're satisfied with what you have now, you certainly won't be disappointed with the expansive manner Songbird can be configured.
Ron"

Evri has an information rich landing page, with top news stories from around the web, which you can scroll through using the navigation at the top of the page.

Search results can be filtered into Articles, Quotes, Images and Tweets, and can also be shared on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. You can either share the entire page of results, or one specific item from the list. Very cool!

Signing up for an account gives you the added benefit of following specific information streams on certain results. However, not all search results can be followed. So while searching for “Barack Obama” can result in a stream that can be followed, searching for “Obama” alone does not give users the same option.

Additional information about each search term will also be displayed on the page, but again, this is limited to certain results. Using the example of Barack Obama, additional information includes links to other world leaders, an excerpt from Wikipedia, and product results from Amazon.

If you don’t want to sign up for a new account, you can connect your Google, Twitter, Yahoo, Facebook, Windows Live or Blogger accounts in order to sign in.

Like DuckDuckGo, Evri has its own disambiguation results, in a sidebar, giving you the chance to choose a more specific and relevant term.

Evri has a toolbar which supports Firefox and Internet Explorer, allowing you to easily search for and share content. They also provide users with a slick, free iPhone app [iTunes link] which is divided into 3 main tabs – Recent popular news, a search tab, and collected items. Searching for any given term will result in the option to view recent news, images, a profile page, and related items.

Browse it and see what you think!
Ron.

Hardly. And Bing works with very respectable algorithms.

But DuckDuckGo is a feature-rich semantic search engine, that gives you countless reasons to leave Google behind. Searches are divided into a classic search, information search, shopping and their own spin-off from Google, “I’m feeling ducky.” ::cough::

If you search for a term that has more than one meaning, it will give you the chance to choose what you were originally looking for, with its disambiguation results. For example, searching for the term Apple will give you a long list of the possible meanings – including the fruit, the computer company, the bank and many others.

Happy Ducking?
Ron.

HERE IS THE URL YOU PASTE INTO YOUR BROWSER. SiteJabber can't catch the right suffix to web site: http://web.extension.illinois.edu/stain/

Well here's rather pedestrian site. No bells, whistles, or stuff you'll want to rush in a large mailing. But I thought of times I encountered stains and had to Google reliable removal tips.

So here's to the noble art of the mundane, the necessary taking-care-of-business bottom line chores. Cool in a domestic sort of way?

Simply type in a stain, and you're provided with the finest solution the web can manage.

Out damn spot!

I can't describe this one.
Just go there and play. Watch the controld at bottom for fine tuning (zoom, etc).

CLICKING web site won''t help. PASTE this into browser:
http://www.bravadousa.com/cbgb/pano/pano.html. The page is HTML.
Ron

Hm. This is one of those web sites you needn't give any thought, that takes you where it will (depending upon your mouse click. I love it. Just enough seemingly pointless "investigating" to "kill time with". Different - not for all, but some creative souls out there will decide it's a "find".

Have fun?
Ron

This isn't for everyone - what is . The essence of this site is your willingness to open a thought, question, or comment to its population and wait for response (you're notified my e-mail when someone addresses your input).

I found people her on the decent & helpful side. The usual jerks have settled in as well - but seeming in the minority. You can get to know people, and begin to find those willing to share (trust & honesty?) their more "subtexual" content. For me, that's where it gets interesting. In broader terms, you'll be surprised at the number of people who will try to help with questions, find things, give advice (smile - careful), and be pretty decent overall.

It's a community to kill time with as well, I suppose. From the web site:

#1
What is AnybodyOutThere.com?

AnybodyOutThere is a communication junction that offers an instant and relevant response to your thoughts and questions by connecting you with the right people.

#2
How do I get started?

Post a thought, topic or question of up to 110 characters, that best describes what's on your mind then click the post button.
When you find someone on the list that you'd like to talk with, click the "Let's Talk" button next to the user's nickname. A chat request will then be sent to the user. And if s/he accepts, chat window will open. Let the conversation begin.

#3
How do I know when I have a chat request?

When a user sends you a chat request, you will see a notification on the upper right side of the screen. You have the option to accept or decline it.
If a user is bothering you, you can click the "Ignore future requests" button on the chat request and block future requests from the user.

#4
I couldn't find anyone to speak with on a specific issue

We do our best to analyze your post and find the most relevant people for you to talk with; however, our system is still in beta stages. You can try and talk with people about other issues though; try it! It can be fun.

#5
How do I change the subject I would like to talk about?

You can always change your post (the sentence describing what you want to talk about) in the text box located on the top bar (see picture below).

The Free Software Directory is a project of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and UNESCO. It is a categorized index of free software that runs on free operating systems (GNU and Linux). FSD advocates the use of free software and through its activities seeks to counter restrictive policies such as Digital Restrictions Management (DRM).

There is no free lunch; so goes the popular saying. The abundant availability of free and open source software thankfully belies the fact. Just imagine a world where open source did not exist. It would have been such a narrow existence.

"_Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. Think of "free" as in "free speech," not as in "free beer." Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.

The Free Software Directory is a project of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). We catalog useful free software that runs under free operating systems — particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants".

Enough said. Save your money and Enjoy
Ron.

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION:

If you want to setup your computer system again you need to have the licenses and serial numbers at hand for all the software programs that you have purchased and registered. This does include the Windows product key but also other serial numbers for applications like Nero, Office, VMWare and pretty much every other application.

Instead of searching for the keys in your emails, manuals and recipes you could use another approach. License Crawler is a sweet little application that scans the Windows Registry for Windows product keys and other serial numbers and licenses.

The License Crawler can discover application product keys and other serial numbers or licenses very quickly and supports all versions of Windows operating system from Windows 95 to Windows Vista.

It is a portable application that can be run from any location and would be a perfect fit for an USB stick. Asking clients to find serial and license keys is often very frustrating. Instead, tech support can simply run License Crawler without having to interact with the client at all.