BUS 250 Down went the house of cards...

I really try to keep up with my blog and post on a daily basis but there are those days where you can't even fathom sitting down for 5 minutes. Friday was one of those days. It all started around 9 AM.
The night before I completed a cable pull in anticipation of our new network-able office photocopier. Before doing the cable pull I eyeballed how much cable I would need. Yes, eyeballed is a proper verb. I'll admit, it was a bit lazy, I should have measured, but I used to "eyeball" all the time when I worked for MFX Internet and I was always pretty close to the mark but when I was off, I was almost always OVER, which was no big deal since I could just chop off the extra and then terminate it. Well, this time I was short, by about four feet. The solution, a coupler and an extra few feet of cable. This means a trip to Staples.
Friday morning, I wait around for Staples to open up at 9 AM. For me, 9 AM is late..so I kind of just lounge around..eat an extra pop tart..you know..hang out.
9 AM I get to Staples, grab my coupler and my cable..head to the counter. I pull the school department's Staples credit card out of my wallet and hand it to the cashier. The proper protocol with this credit account requires the cashier to call in the order with a PO number. So, as I wait for her to complete this, I talk to the store manager. After a couple of minutes..she hands me the card back and tells me they wouldn't let the transaction go through. Uh..what? I've purchased hundreds of dollars of merchandise from that store with that very card..all I want now is $20 worth of stuff..and you're telling me no. Of course, the administrative secretary is on vacation..but I make the call anyway. As I look at my phone I notice I have a call from the school with a voice mail..and some email. The voice mail is my superintendent explaining some problems with his mail that he's having..to him his email is broken..to me...sounds like an network issue. I call him back and tell him I'll look at it when I get in. Next, I check my email...there's a message from the HS secretary telling me that the ES secretary can't log into the network. Now I start to worry. On the way to work I'm trying to think of what could be causing the entire ES to lose its network connection. I come into the building..hear another tale of how someone has no network access...and I head straight to the switch cabinet with my laptop.

Above is the photo I took of my switch cabinet a while back. It's a horrid mess and I've never really had the opportunity to clean it up. So, yes, I had to troubleshoot a network connection in THAT cat 5 spaghetti. Eventually I got annoyed...it was really hard track down the problem. Sometimes in life, especially if you're a technician..it's easier to just tear everything down..and rebuild it from scratch. This way you can test things as you go along and figure out where the problem is (at first I was suspecting a loopback issue somewhere on the network..or maybe a NIC that was chattering..something of that nature). So I broke it down. I took every cable out, made note of where everything was, took out all the switches and started from scratch. By the time I was done, the only thing left in that cabinet was the fiber transciever(where the connection comes from) and the UPS. I inserted a brand new 16 port switch to do my testing on and plugged in 3 computers that I could monitor the ping reports on. I plugged my macbook in and started watching the connection closely. After about 15 minutes I noticed that the connection started going wonky again..so one by one I started removing the computers I was monitoring. Eventually I was down to having only the cable from the transciever and my Mac plugged into the switch. I skipped the switch altogether and plugged the transciever directly into my Mac..and voila..doing the same thing. I move the CAT 5 cable to get it out of my way..whoops...look..the connection came back. Yep..bad cable. I replaced it and the connection was fine all weekend. I of course, had to rebuild my cabinet..but I didn't mind. It looks a lot better now. I will get a picture of it up soon. Isn't it amazing how something as simple as ethernet cable can completely ruin your day?

EDIT: Here is the after photo:

Bus 250 I can't believe people are still surprised...

So, as I mentioned earlier, I'm doing a little side project for a former teacher. His computer got hit by a pretty nasty root-kit and I told him that his only good option would be to reformat. Upon hearing that his wife asked what it would take to get them a new computer. They asked me if I would work up a quote and put a new one together for them. Sure, no problem. So I sat down at my computer, opened up all of my favorite purchasing sites and started perusing the goodies to see what I could come up with. Got some pretty decent deals. A "barebones" system with a quad core phenom processor, motherboard, 4 gb ram, case and power supply for $500. Add to that the 1 tb SATA drive that was $90 and some other odds and ends..it all totalled out to a pretty decent price, even with a 20 inch lcd monitor. I decided to have these shipped to my office instead of home because the teacher lives in Easton and I have more space to work in my office than I would in my house. Today, some of the items began to arrive. The principal first questioned why I was getting all of this stuff when my budget was frozen. I explained. Then she began questioning my prices. How was I getting things for so cheap!? People...stop thinking that retail prices are the end-all and be-all of what you're going to pay for a computer. More often than not you can get a better system, which is customized, for a lower cost than you could from HP or Dell. You just have to know where to look. Places like Newegg.com and TigerDirect.com or zipzoomfly.com and even amazon.com have excellent deals on different items everyday. You just have to look around. Start shopping online folks, it maximizes your choices and minimizes your spending.

(Image Courtesy : www.newegg.com)

BUS 250 "I haven't been slacking.."

I would like to start off by stating that I have not been slacking when it comes to writing my blog entries. I have been...preoccupied. Plus there has been a lack of material to write about due to this preoccupation. I have been working on many little projects here and there as things have seemed to calm down in the area of tech support at work. I have built a new image for the HS library iBooks and have almost finished reimaging those. I have taken up a job researching and building a new computer system for a former teacher. I have also been working with the leasing company to get some new copiers put into our buildings. Add that to my everyday work load, life, the universe and everything..and spare time just drifts away. Add to that the sickness that I have been fighting for the past 4 days and I think I have a valid excuse. So stop judging me!
Okay, now..down to business. Since I really have nothing super exciting going on at this moment in time, I guess I can talk about what's on the docket for the upcoming weeks and months. At some point this week I have to do a cable pull in the High school so we can network the new photocopier. I personally don't think it's necessary to network our photocopier and I can forsee many issues with this. BUT they're paying me $150 to do it, they seem pretty adament about getting it done and you know..I can always pull it off the network later on :)

I actually took a 2 hour break while typing this entry because of an super excellent discovery! Macheist is putting on a charity sale! Macheist 3 bundle is on sale now and for the next 13 days only. You can get the following applications for a mere $39! 25% of this goes to charity and it CAN go to a charity of your choosing!

iSale (Retail:$39.95) - Online auctioning doesn't have to be a chore, make it fun with iSale!

Picturesque (Retail:$34.95) - Stop opening clunky photo software just to touch up your pictures.

SousChef (Retail:$30.00) - Turn your Mac into an awesome kitchen companion.

World of Goo (Retail:$20.00)- One of the best games of 2008. Imaginative puzzle game.

Phoneview (Retail:$19.95)- Gives you more control over your iPhone and iPod touch.

LittleSnapper (Retail:$39.00) - an excellent screen and web-snap application for Mac OS X Leopard

Acorn (Retail:$49.95) - A photo editor built for the rest of us.

Kinemac (Retail:$299.00)- Real time, professional 3D animator.

WireTap Studio(Retail:$69.00) - Awesome audio recorder, editor, organizer.

BoinxTV (Retail:$199.00)- A TV studio..right on your Mac!

The Hit List (Retail:$69.95) - Simple to use yet powerful task manager for you and your life.

Expresso (Retail:$80.00)- Get your geek on with this complete set of developer tools for the mac.

(Total Retail Cost for all Apps : $950.75)

Plus if you are one of the first 25,000 buyers you get

Big Bang Board Games (Retail:$24.95) - Seven classic board games with a 3D twist.

So that's $975.70 worth of software for $39.00.

Why not go for it? Even if you aren't going to use the software anytime soon, you can find someone who will..and you can donate to a charity of your choice. You can't go wrong!

I've already purchased my bundle, the deal was just way too good to pass up.

Also, if you invite other people to participate, you get two other applications as well. Ill leave those as a surprise for you. BUT if you read this and decide to buy the apps..don't forget to tell them who told you about it!

I'm going to go play World of Goo now.

(Image Courtesy: www.culturefeast.com)

BUS 250 Poo on Ebay

So you all know that I purchased a Blackberry Storm not too long ago. You should know, I posted an entire blog about it! Anyway, upon buying my Blackberry I soon decided that it was pointless to continue to have my iPod touch as it would only be collecting dust. So, I decided to sell it on Ebay..regardless of every voice inside me(yes there are many) screaming not to..I did. I posted my iPod on Ebay at a starting price of $199.99. Which I thought was a decent price since I was selling a lot of accessories with it. About 5 hours before the end of the bidding (the item was listed for 5 days), someone had bid $450 on my auction. MOST people would be like "woohoo look at all my money!" but not me, I'm not that trusting. I did some research and found out that this bidder had been called out multiple times for scamming people..and on top of it all, they were from the UK which I WAS NOT shipping to. So I cancelled the bid and the item ended up not selling. Great..5 days wasted and not a damn thing sold. I WAS just going to sell it to someone I knew since I was aggravated at this point but Ebay sent me an email stating that they would let me relist my item at NO CHARGE. I figured..well..might as well, it's free. So this time I list it for 3 days with a starting bid of $174.99. The auction sold and it was to a person in America who had no negative feedback..nothing about scams anyway. Hurray! Then I get an email from this person telling me that in order for me to get my money, I have to ship the item first. Now...I know some people are gullible...but how many are THAT gullible? I told the person that nothing was being shipped until my money had cleared through Paypal. Since the buyer paid by "eCheck" it took 6 days for the money to clear. That brings us up to (5+3+6=) 11 days since my original posting of my iPod. By now the money has cleared through Paypal. I go into Paypal to see about transferring it to my checking account. Wait...what do I see here? I see my money's status as being "On Hold". What the hell does THAT mean? I read the details and apparently Paypal likes to hold the money of "risky" sellers until the item has been verified delivered or positive feedback is left on Ebay. So..that would bring me to 32 days...just to get my money out of my iPod and that is ONLY if everything goes smoothly. They gave some BS about releasing the funds earlier if the tracking number is put into their system, but from all the comments I read from other users, that rarely happened. By this point I was fed up and I refunded the customer's money and apologized for the inconvenience. I told them if they wanted to give me negative feedback that I didn't care, because I was probably never going to use the service again. On top of all of that garbage, I got an email today from Ebay that politely let me know that I owe them 10 dollars for listing fees on my sold item. I was furious. Paypal is a subsidiary of Ebay, did no one from Paypal alert Ebay that I refunded the buyer's money? No, you know what..forget that, YOU TOLD ME THE LISTING WOULD BE FREE YOU JERKOFFS!!@ I sent them a nice little message letting them know that I was very disappointed with them. Sure, Ebay is great when you are looking to buy something...there is plenty of buying protection in place. When it comes to being a seller though, those protections make it unbearable. I read a comment about one poor fellow who sold something quite large and had to pay out around $300 in shipping. After he shipped the item, Paypal STILL held onto his money and he was out that $300 dollars in the meantime. Even more unfortunate for him, he was hit by a hurricane and had no money to prepare with. Way to go Ebay. Buy and sell on Amazon..it's quicker..there are fewer hoops to jump through..and people seem to be more trustworthy.

(Image Courtesy : www.xomba.com)

BUS 250 Sync your watches..you're on Apple time now sucka!

Ran into an interesting little bug today. We have some G4 iBooks in a cart in our library for the high school students to sign out and use. Thanks to the MLTI "geniuses" who obviously had no clue what I was talking about when I said I needed the image for the HS MLTI I iBooks..I inadvertently put the HS Staff Macbook image on these iBooks. Well..the HS Macbook image is designed to run optimally on Intel Macbooks with 1 gig of ram and a nice speed processor. The OS was Leopard. In a hurry to finish, and without paying attention (mostly because I trusted that Apple gave me the right image) I reimaged all of those laptops and just tossed them in the cart only to find out later what was actually on them..and they ran...but they ran terribly. The poor kids didn't even want to use them and would rather use the computer lab machines. So, I made it my mission to rebuild an image from scratch for them. I finally finished my image which was built on an older version of Mac OS X Tiger. Which is what the iBooks were originally intended to run. Today, after imaging about 6 machines, I noticed that the time was off on them by about 4 hours. I thought this was strange because they were supposed sync with the Apple time server on the internet. After confirming that they did, in fact, sync with the net the obvious next place to look was in the time zone section. Here I found that the computer had managed to glitch out, set itself to GMT and it was stuck there with no other options. After a couple hours of tinkering I discovered that the time settings were stored in a file called localtime. I tried messing with it to get it to give my my time zone options back but it wouldn't work. Eventually, I just pulled an old switcheroo on it. Using terminal and a sudo command I renamed the file to localtime.old and forced the computer to create a new localtime file. Voila..all my options were back. I'm not really sure what caused the glitch..maybe it has something to do with some files from Leopard remaining on the machine during the cloning process? Shouldn't be the case..the disk is supposed to be wiped before it's cloned. I booted up the image I've been using to clone and the time is fine..so the glitch is occurring during the image process. I will have to look at it more tomorrow. In other news..Apple previewed it's 3.0 version of the iPhone OS today. No surprise that it comes with copy/paste functionality and the capability of tethering ..but the kicker was the bluetooth addition. That's right folks..this new OS version can magically turn on the bluetooth radio that has been lying dormant in your phones and iPods all this time. Isn't it awesome to pay for something and still be unable to use it ...at least until Apple says it's okay. It's like sticking a biscuit on a dogs nose and telling it to stay ..then when you snap your fingers ..the dog gobbles up whatever Apple has to say..because it's been waiting so long to get it. I'm just as guilty as the rest of you..but I'm starting to get annoyed by it.
Oh..and if you only have an iPod..be prepared to shell out an extra $10 for the new OS version.

BUS 250 Flashcards and Fisticuffs

The entire educational technology community was in an excited uproar today over the news that grades 7-12 will be getting new macbooks through the MLTI initiative this coming fall. I say will, it is completely optional and it looks as though the cost of the computers will be coming out of the school's EPS money..but in my opinion..and the opinion of many others, it will be worth it. Now it's my job to convince my administrators and the school board of my opinion. Should be fun. In other news, I sat in on another edtechtalk.com seedlings session today and they were interviewing Andrew Sutherland, the creator of quizlet.com. I had never heard of it until today but it is an excellent site. It allows you to not only create flashcards and quiz yourself with them, but it also saves them and makes them publicly searchable. I'm bringing quizlet to the staff tomorrow..we'll see where they go with it. It has been a long day and I can tell I'm getting sick, going to cut this one short. I'm out.
(Image Courtesy of www.computer-choppers.com)

BUS 250 The web boasts many great free applications, now it contains your OS too?

Today was a busy day, but as with any other day, I manage to get my twitter bits posted as I try to keep up with work and stuff people are posting. Just before I went to leave work I noticed that @mrichme posted a tweet about something called g.ho.st. He simply asked if anyone else used it and what they thought, mentioned that it was an online VM type thing. Free..online..those words always peak my interest so I had to check it out. You simply type g.ho.st in your browser(because now we're not required to put the http header in ...the web is smart enough to figure that part out) and away you go. You're taken to a nicely built landing page that tells you a bit about the application and shows you where to sign up. Away I went. The only little hiccup I came across was during the signup process..firefox's addblock pro addon doesn't like this application so I had to disable it. After the signup and signed in and was amazed by what I saw. There in my browser was a fully functional web based operating system. The GUI was very similar to what you'd see on any other OS which made it easy to navigate. From the start you get 5 gb of free online storage which is stored on Amazon's S3 storage network and backed up automatically..also you get 3 gb of email storage. To me..that equals 8 gb of sweet internet storage space. On top of that, for every person you invite..you get an extra gigabyte of storage space. So for all of you who read this..my username is tim.levesque. Go ahead and type that in when you set it up. The g.ho.st team put a lot of thought into making this function like a real OS. It has built in productivity apps, it has a last.fm radio player, games..mail client..basically anything you can think of. It even has its own built in browser. I know, a browser in a browser sounds kind of ..excessive, but when you think about it, it's really not. You use the browser in the online OS and store all of your bookmarks on it and guess what..yep..wherever you have internet access you can sign on to your g.ho.st OS and have access to everything..including those bookmarks. It's an awesome concept and I'm sure I'll find some great uses for it. If not anything else...it's another free 5 gigs of online storage right?
Remember
g.ho.st
my username is tim.levesque
Enjoy!
(Image Courtesy: g.ho.st)

BUS 250 Great..more work to do

Just finished watching the Maine State Governor's state of the State address. There were rumors flying around all day about different things that he may or may not talk about in his speech. One of the big rumors was the injection of MLTI laptops for grades 7-12 in Maine schools. Well, I'm pleased to say that the rumor was true and all HS students will be receiving Apple computers to call their very own. Now, on to the reality..how the HELL am I going to handle this by myself. As it is now I have a hard time getting the laptops that we have done, and now we're going to tack on another 90 or so. I'm not just talking about preparation, you know..like configuring the stock state image and getting it installed on every machine..but also all of the maintenance and care that has to be done year round. I'm planning to graduate from college this semester so that'll free up some time but man..there are a lot of other things that come into play here. My network is currently only a class C network..that means 254 clients. I'm running low on IP addresses as it is. This means I'm going to have to have my network upgraded..and anything with static IPs will have to be reconfigured. This includes servers..airports..wireless routers..routers..switches...ugh the list goes on and on. I usually like to be prompt and get things to the students right when they enter school..this year..they may not see anything until October. As excited as I am for the kids..and to have the technology..I'm not excited about the death sentence that the governor just laid down on me. urgh
(Image Courtesy: studywiz.mlti.org)

Her name is Helen A.S. Popkin and she calls us twitterers narcissistic?

Even if I DID have two middle names..or a middle name and two last names...or whatever it takes in order to warrant two initials between my first and last name..I wouldn't be narcissistic enough to include them in my periodicals..

So I was annoyed by the article this woman wrote..had to do a write up on it for a class, decided to put it on my blog..to share my anger with the world. Because..you know.. I love myself.


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In this article, MSNBC writer Helen A.S. Popkin decides to share with the world her dislike of the application Twitter. Now, I understand that everyone should be able to step up onto the soapbox and say their piece about whatever they like but, the least the naysayers can do before they start their denouncement of something, is to at least educate themselves of the pros and cons beforehand. What kind of a name is Helen A.S. Popkin anyway? That’s right Helen, I hate your name and I don’t care where you inherited it from! Anyway, dear Helen decides to go off on a tirade about her dislike for the web application Twitter, stating all her thick-witted reasons, letting us all know that she is in no way interested in anyone else’s lives and she goes on to inform us that Twitter is a huge waste of time. She calls Twitter a narcissist magnet and likens it to “texting while driving”. Well Helen, I liken you to that guy I met at Verizon Wireless today who didn’t comprehend why he couldn’t get his 4 free phones without signing up for a plan. Yeah, he didn’t have all the information necessary to make any kind of educated judgement and neither do you.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a huge fan of Twitter. This is not because I’m a narcissist, nor do I feel that texting while driving is a past-time that anyone should pursue. Twitter, like any other social medium on the internet, is only going to be as good as you make it. The greatest thing about Twitter is you only receive updates from people that you follow. That’s right Helen, all those narcissistic people that you are discussing, those would be the people YOU chose to follow. Twitter is so much more than a “drive by comment”.

I started using Twitter early on this year just to see what all the fuss was about. One day I was participating in a live podcast recording called “EdTechTalk” where technology directors throughout the state come together and talk about different issues and subjects, usually regarding technology, that people coming across in education today. Near the end of the show everyone started handing out their Twitter usernames to keep in touch with one another. I didn’t have one, so I made one really quickly and exchanged it with a few people. From there my followings/followers grew and soon enough I was connected with quite a few professionals in my field from all across the country who I could bat around ideas and problems with. Since then I’ve used Twitter as a tool. On more than one occasion someone has come across an excellent new piece of software or a useful new web app and shared it on Twitter for everyone to see. Things like Dropbox, Virtualbox, Windows 7 beta test downloads..and even an excellent seed program that Acer started up that allowed schools to try out their netbooks and new desktops. The best part about Twitter is it works on YOUR time. Unlike instant messaging, you don’t need to be present for the messages to come through. People blog throughout the day and then when you have time you can read what has been posted. It is also more convenient than email because you don’t need to address your blogs to everyone, the people who follow you will read them at their leisure. Twitter, and other applications like it, are excellent collaboration tools and should be taken more seriously. There are many excellent way to put the application to use, some of which I’m sure haven’t even been thought of yet.

So, in conclusion, to say that Twitter is “juvenile” or that it is simply a place for people to feed their narcissistic needs is just uncultivated ignorance. Just because the writer of the article has yet to find an excusable (at least in their mind) use of the application, that doesn’t mean that they have the right to tear down everyone who does. And yeah, I saw the blurb at the end of the article saying that “it has its place” but you can tell what general ambiance the writer was shooting for here. I guess the simplest response to this would be, who cares if people write about themselves on Twitter, you’re not forced to follow them are you?

(Image Courtesy : www.aoddesign.com)

BUS 250 "I'd like a slice of crackberry pie please.."

I begin my story with a trip to my parent's house. I had a few hours to kill so I decided to go visit my mom, sister and niece at my mom's house in Washburn. As I was walking through the living room I glanced something out of the corner of my eye. It looked like a Verizon logo..but...Verizon hasn't performed the switch-over yet..had they?
Not only was I excited about the Verizon logo on the box but I was completely overjoyed when I saw the label on the box that read "Blackberry Storm". When I say overjoyed, I am not exaggerating in the least bit. I literally pipped a squeak of happiness and said "ooooooo" out loud. Upon questioning my sister's boyfriend(And I did..I questioned him like a lawyer who hasn't won a case in years) I found out that Verizon is currently performing switches for customers who buy new phones and request it. I remembered seeing the "Buy one get one free" deal on the Blackberry Storm..so I had to check it out. After playing with my sister's boyfriend's phone for a while, I was hooked. Also, while playing with it, I noticed something else...it had a signal! I've NEVER been able to get a signal in Washburn. I instantly called Alyssa to tell her what I had discovered. She wasn't as excited as I was, of course she had yet to play with the phone itself. So, being the good tech nerd I am, I decided to do some digging, read some reviews and go over every single detail of the phone. Slowly but surely, I became more and more impressed with it and in the process managed to convince Alyssa that it would be a good move to buy these now since they are normally $599.99 retail and with the BOGO deal you can get two for $150. We ended up getting two, and the monthly cost (with the unlimited data plan) is only slightly higher than what we were paying for both of our crappy cell phones. So let me get down to the details of this thing and explain why I just had to have it..
Its official title is the BlackBerry Storm 9350 but I like to call it the crackberry. Mostly because I've yet to put the thing down since I purchased it. Both Alyssa and I have an iPod touch..we bought these in lieu of the iPhones we are unable to get in this area. Let me put it this way, we love our crackberries so much..we've barely touched our iPods since we bought them. The first noticable thing about the Storm is that it is the first touch screen BlackBerry on the market. Its screen is comparable to the size of the iPhone and the iPod but it also has a couple extras. The resolution is higher AND it uses a "SurePress" technology that allows you to actually "Click" the screen so you have that tactile and auditory confirmation that whatever you are touching is actually being selected. This is much better than the iPhone/iPod..I never really knew what was being selected ..until I saw that I had mistyped it in the email that I had already sent. So ..just by clicking the screen once..I knew I was in love.
The next great feature was the ability to highlight and copy/paste. OH MY GOD! Copy and paste? Who'd have thought that you could do that on a touch device? Certainly not Apple. They apparently didn't think it was pertinent to include the most basic of features on their iPhone. This was really the thing that sold me. The Storm also gives you control of other things as well...like your file system. I believe that if you own a device you should be able to control what you do with it, where things go and what they do. Apple's devices lock down the entire file system, you have no control over anything but the order of the icons on your screen. The Storm allows you to create folders, move files around, copy, paste and pretty much gives you full control over everything. On top of all this it gives you great email and messaging capability, voice dialing that integrates seamlessly with your contacts. You don't even have to train it. You get a full fledged GPS service..internet browsing..and many other things..for less than the cost of an iPod. The best part is, you get to use Verizon's high speed EV-DO 3G network which gives you internet speeds comparable to basic home broadband..and you have it anywhere you get a signal. All of this combined with the little things like the 3.2 MP camera with a flash..the amazing battery life(I had 12 + hours on it just messing around..and it was still about 1/3 full when I put it on the charger) and the easy to use calendar..the only thing it's missing is Apple's flashiness and need to control everything you do..as well as make you pay for it. I'm currently selling my iPod on Ebay if anyone is interested. Crackberry Storm..ILU.

Oh..and if you decide to buy one, DO NOT shell out for the VZ navigator or text messaging. They want 9.99 a month for either of them and you can just go home and download Google Latitude for free to get the GPS service. Same service..better maps. Actually, the service from Google is better because you can share locations with friends and family. Also..when you buy a BlackBerry you get a free BlackBerry account that you can use with BlackBerry messanger. That coupled with Windows Messanger, AIM, Yahoo Messanger and Google Chat..you can pretty much talk to anyone for free over the broadband connection..why pay for SMS and Texting?


(Image Courtesy : www.techfresh.net)

BUS 250 "I know what you did last browsing session"

Yesterday I was introduced to a new firefox addon called Webmynd. Thanks to @rmbyrne on Twitter for this one. Webmynd is an excellent tool that records every website your visit and saves a virtual copy of it to your hard drive. The greatest part is it doesn't just save an image or the URL of the site but it actually saves an HTML copy of the actual working page. This way you can go back in and review the website with full browsing capabilities later. You have the ability to turn recording on and off at any time by using the control located in the lower right hand corner of your browser window and there are different recording options to choose from. All of this is great because you don't have to spend all that time tagging and bookmarking sites that you want to revisit later on. Webmynds records them in the background and allows you to do a quick search later to find it again. Also, as an added bonus..it allows you to completely personalize the entire right hand side of your google searches with wikipedia, flickr..or whatever websites you choose. The basic firefox addon is free of charge. This allows you to keep a week's worth of history. 6 months worth of history is $10 and a year's worth is $20. The reason for the charge is because they actually index all of your history on one of their servers online. This increases costs for them but reduces the load on your own personal computer.
I suggest checking it out.
In other news, I messed my leg up last night and bought a new Blackberry Storm..more on that stuff later.

(Image Courtesy: http://abductit.com/)