Personal Technology Tips in Plain English
Archive for December, 2007
New Year’s Resolutions: Remind Yourself About Them In A Month or Two
Dec 31st
Are you ready for a brand new year?
Have you set some resolutions that are practical? ambitious? realistic? simple? productive?
How long is your list of new year’s resolutions anyway? Are you going to be able to remember them all? What if I can call you in a month or two or even next December to remind you about what you’ve committed yourself to right now? Read the rest of this entry »
Webkinz.com Site Down For Christmas And New Year’s
Dec 28th
One of the current crazes for kids is WEBKINZ.
If you have a child 5-10 or know one, then you’ve probably have already heard of name already. Cute little stuffed animals that come in new different varieties constantly come with a tag and unique code.
With that code, you can log onto www.webkinz.com and “adopt” it within Webkinz World. Kids then can build rooms, decorate them, and place their pet in the virtual home. They can feed the pet, talk to the pet, make it do things and monitor it’s health, happiness, tiredness, etc. You can even make them exercise on treadmills.
One twist is that your child can then go out and earn “KinzCash” by playing different games. The more W Bucks you have the more you can buy for your pet. You can get fancy wall paper, clothes, toys, luxury foods, buy an extension room or two to give your pet more space, etc.
Surely enough, tons of kids got Webkinz pets for Christmas this year. But guess what? Your anxiously excited child will hop onto the internet, type in www.webkinz.com only to be greeted by Read the rest of this entry »
Tracking Santa NORAD style
Dec 25th
My daughter was curious about how Santa actually flies from the North Pole to over the whole world in order to deliver presents to all the children.
She asked me if he sleeps on Christmas Eve and if reindeer actually fly. How does he go to all the places?
So I simply showed her Santa’s tracks, thanks to satellite technology, Google and NORAD (yes, NORAD – as in North American Aerospace Defense Command). NORAD has set-up tracking systems to pinpoint exactly where Santa is at any given moment and through Google Earth, you can now see his flight path as he hops from city to city across the globe – no joke:
You can watch the details on Google Earth or watch Santa caught of video as he rides his sleigh through various parts of the world: www.noradsanta.org
Merry Christmas!
4 Gigs for Emailing..for Christmas
Dec 25th
Christmas is all about expecting the unexpected.
Hope, Peace, Love and Joy. And the beauty of gifts.
Merry Christmas everyone!
This season is one where people discover the essence of gift exchange. Giving and receiving.
Google seems to be in the holiday spirit and has been in the giving mood with it’s Gmail service. . . Read the rest of this entry »
Google Maps is a Drag!
Dec 20th
Everyone loves mapping directions on the Internet.
It’s so common nowadays that people don’t even ask for directions anymore. They just map it.
One fact of life is that online mapping sites have had its limitations, while others have been continually evolving. Some sites like Yahoo!Maps came out with the ability to map directions with multiple stops along the route, even optimizing directions if you have several locations to hit before the end of your trip.
Neato. But GoogleMaps, the originator of the draggable map, has added a super cool feature that makes dragging fun, but more important — completely practical for real life. . . Read the rest of this entry »
It’s all about YOU: How To Download YOUtube Videos
Dec 15th
In our culture today, It’s all about YOU. . .
YOUtube that is.
2007 was the year of online video and YouTube was at the forefront of it all. Google made a smart move to gobble up YouTube when it could.
Now there’s so much video content being produced and uploaded and the masses are taking to having their own YouTube procrastination breaks all throughout the day.
As if it’s so critical to have access to YouTube, even iPhone launch marketing collateral made a point of the fact that you can access YouTube videos on the iPhone. Yahee or Yahoo! J
Anyway, when you find that gem on YouTube, sometimes you wish you could just *keep it* or rather download it to save, forward or just watch over and over again offline to waste even more of your life. How do you do that?
Well, there’s a great site called KissYouTube that lets you do this. You simply visit www.kissyoutube.com and enter the URL of the YouTube video clip you’d like to save, and it will automatically allow you to download the video clip in a format that you can save and watch on your own computer without a flash-based browser.
OPTION #2: The Internet never offers just one choice. Here’s another option to download online videos into various formats for your PC, iPod, mobile phone, DivX, etc. www.vixy.net offers you several options with a drop down menu to select which format you’d like when you grab that video.
Or if you find that hilarious or inspiring music video, but want to download the audio track for your listening enjoyment in the car or on your mp3 player, there’s an option to download the audio into mp3 format only as well.
Pay Per View Movies for $0.99 on Tivo
Dec 10th
We only watch TV after our kids go to bed, and still there’s not enough good content to keep us busy for those few hours before we hit the sack ourselves.
Amazon’s Unbox Video Download Service that goes directly into our Tivo box over the internet has been a great new service to explore. And with movies only $0.99 and some TV shows that are free at times, this is a great way to find quality content that we can watch almost instantly after selecting the video. Read the rest of this entry »
I love tech, gadgets and the web. Hope you pick-up a useful tip or two here today that helps you use technology to your advantage! Better yet, why not share your own expertise in a comment on a post today to help the other readers that land here for answers!