Websites

Ones I made or Like

  • November 24, 2008

    Cheap Christmas Shopping

    money

    So it’s probably the case that you’re feeling the pinch in these less-than-desirable economic times (to put it lightly). CNN is reporting a lot of families will have trouble putting gifts under the tree this year, as it the case with my family. However, if you’re like me you’ve got some money saved up for this holiday season. Here are some ways to spend that money more effectively; below is a list of sites where you can generally find things cheaper than normal.

    • woot.com: woot has one deal per day, everyday. There are also some days where they have a “Woot-off”- several (dozens of) items over a couple days. Something to watch closely if you’re not sure what to get something. They also have tee-shirts at shirt.woot and wine stuff at wine.woot.
    • Overstock: Overstock has a wide range of things that you can find refurbished, which will save a little on the price.
    • AmazonMp3: Cheap digital music.They have daily deals and the Five for $5 Fridays. Plus they are all DRM free, so it doesn’t matter what kind of computer or mp3 player they have. An AmazonMp3 gift card would be perfect for the music lover you know. (and Amazon.com in general isn’t too bad either!)
    • Deal Finders: There are several sites that will help you find deals/coupons/cheap stuff online. BeatThat! is just one of many sites showcased in LifeHacker’s Deals Section.

    I use woot and AmazonMp3 (and Amazon in general) regularly. What sites do you use to save money? Any musts that I missed here?

  • September 20, 2008

    Apps You Should Follow on Twitter

    Over the last few months I’ve been using Twitter a lot more to get updates from people and fill others in on stuff I’m working on. The best possible thing I think Twitter did was open up the API for others to integrate it. Here are a few things that have made my life easier because they use Twitter.

    • woot: woot.com is a website that offers you a deal a day. By following it on Twitter I don’t have to worry about checking the site daily- I’ll get the update as soon as the post it. Since following woot, I got an 8GB USB Drive for $20 (!) and a pretty sweet pen set for $5.
    • amazonmp3: A few weeks ago, I wrote about how great Amazon Mp3 is. By following it on Twitter, you can get their Daily Deals, which can save you a ton of money on great music. I’ve gotten Patton Oswalt, Dragonforce, and Rod Stewart for $2.99, just to name a few.
    • cnnbrk: Follow cnnbrk, get breaking news to your phone. I find their updates just right, where Fox News’s twitter service updates way too much.
    • rtm: My favorite tasks application Remember The Milk has Twitter integration that allows you to tweet tasks to RTM and get reminder tweets.
    • twanslate: twanslate allows you to send a language and a phrase you want translated into that language. How cool is that?

    Twitter has literally hundreds of other websites integrating it, other apps to use it, and plenty of hacks if you’re creative. It helps you stay updated and stay productive- wherever you are. So what do you use Twitter for?

  • September 2, 2008

    Google Chrome

    I wasn’t going to formulate any real thoughts on this. I am solely a Mac user so I have to wait a little longer to use Google Chrome, but after reading this helpful comic and giving it some thought, I can make some speculations as to what Google Chrome means for Google, and browsing in general.

    First, Chrome is a lot like an operating system in a lot of ways. Multi-threads, each tab has its own process, a javascript virtual machine with better garbage collection (among other things), and its own task manager. Over the years there has been a lot of speculation of a Google OS and this I think, brings us one step closer to that. I can easily see it having better integration for Google Products and for core Google users, that would be clutch.

    Also, it has better Gears integration. Now this one is a more whimsical thought, however with the advent of Gears and being able to browse offline, there might be some intention to allow for offline browsing of any site you’ve visited. This would be especially useful for those of use who rely on web apps on a regular basis and may be stuck without an internet connection.

    I only know this for certain- everything Google does is a measure and calculated act. Especially considering their great relationship with Mozilla, there is a lot of motive behind Google Chrome and I think we will begin to see what it is in the coming months.

  • August 8, 2008

    Why Amazon Mp3 Will Get People to Pay for Music Again

    Amazon Mp3

    I’m a little bit surprised I haven’t written about Amazon Mp3 before as I use it quite frequently. My main grip about services like iTunes, the Zune Marketplace, Napster, Ruckus, and nearly every other digital music outlet is that their songs are protected by some form of Digital Rights Management (DRM). You can only transfer them x number of times. You need a username and password to listen to them, or in the case of Ruckus, download for free (as a college student), but only listen to them on your computer. Yes, there was EMusic, but last time I checked their collect was not as diverse as I would have liked. But Amazon Mp3 changes all of that.

    Amazon Mp3 offers a full line of music, underground and mainstream, completely DRM-free. It doesn’t expire, there isn’t a set number of transfers, play it on any Mp3 player as much as you’d like. This is the way digital music should be. If I have a CD, I can rip that onto my computer and do with it what I want. Why shouldn’t digital music be the same. But beyond that, their deals are amazing.

    Amazon Mp3 offers two types of deals I use regularly (and use twitter to follow): Daily deals, where for a day they will sell a digital CD significantly cheaper (like $2 or 3) and Friday 5, where from Friday until Monday, they pick 5 albums to sell for $5 a pop. Plus, setup couldn’t be easier. Install their downloader, which links to your favorite music player, and when you download mp3s, they automatically get added to your music collection.

    I really feel Amazon got digital music right. Freedom, easy of use, and low cost is everything I was looking for. If any online service will get me to stop buying CDs, it’s this one.

  • August 6, 2008

    Announcing You Wouldn’t Get It

    Awesome T-Shirts

    It was in October of last year that I went to a couple of my friends and mentioned to them that I wanted to start a t-shirt company. I felt I had a couple of good ideas and enough business know-how to do it. They were the creative ones that could be the personality of the company.

    Then nothing happened for a while. We kept track of ideas, but nothing more than that. Finally in February, we put out our first product for Scranton’s widely celebrated Parade Day. We did pretty well, especially considering the competition. But then we all got busy and put pursuing anything further off. Until now.

    We decided to finally launch a site with some flagship designs, which you can find here. The site has been what I’m calling ‘soft launched,’ which I guess you can equate to a beta. But everything, as far as I know, is working. You can order shirts! Now it’s time to promote and generate enough cash to pursue some other designs we’ve come up with.

    If you’d like to help out, you can find all kinds of stuff on our Promote page. And as always, any feedback is welcomed. Since this is probably the most involved site I’ve done, I’ll be doing a write up of the design/programming in a later post. For now, let’s cross our fingers and hope for the best!

    On a final note, we also want our company to be the middleman between people who want shirts and people who print shirts. So if you want to have shirts done, please fill out this form. We will do the artwork, and take care of ordering. We can also work something out for distributing if you’d like. Just let us know!

    Update:

    Special thanks to Bring Back the Stache! and Consumer Whore for the links. Much Appreciated.

  • August 1, 2008

    Announcing 101 Things

    101-Things

    About a week and a half ago I decided I wanted to start a new blog with something fun to post daily. I got the idea from Sean Blanda, who started the website Consumer Whore, a blog with something new to buy every day. 101 Things is simply a website that posts some activity to do every day- whether you are looking to pick up a hobby or are just plain bored. There are also featured posts that will change weekly and take a little longer to do.

    Hopefully this takes off- I think it could be a fun website where people can try new things and share their experiences. This week (and next week’s) featured post is about how to start a blog. Today’s daily is “Solve the Rubik’s Cube.” Check it out- and if you have any suggestions, you can make them here.

  • October 23, 2007

    A List Apart Web Design Survey

    ALA 2007 Survey

    Last week, popular web development website A List Apart (ALA) released the results of it’s 2007 Web Design Survey. I’ve spent the last few days reading over the 82 page document and found a good amount of the results interesting.

    • Over 80% of the respondents were White Males
    • 48% came from the USA
    • When asked if they were excited by their field, 43.6% said Fequently, 35% said Very Frequently, meaning 78.6% like what they do most of the time.
    • About 20% want to start their own business as their next move.
    • Of that 20%, 89.9% were men.
    • 47.9% are in the salary range of $20,000 – $80,000, where 52.3% have been in the industry 5 years or less.
    • 1/2 of the people in my age group (21-24) make less than $20,000. Something to consider is most people who graduate college are 21 or 22.
    • ALA found that Job Satisfaction increases with age. I think this is because when starting out, (for me anyway), you’re not doing the cool and exciting stuff you’d like to. My internships consisted mostly of fixing HTML, and not any real development.
    • Of those who saw an age bias, Under 21 and 21-24 combined made up for 70.2% of the respondents.
    • 22% of female respondents saw gender bias, where only 1.5% of male respondents did. (NOTE- that is 22% of the females, which made up ~16% and 1.5% of the males, which made up ~84%).

    What was most surprising to me was how big the gap between male and female respondents is. I knew the computing field is male dominated, but I didn’t think it was that one sided. This survey also gave me a pretty good idea of what I can expect as a salary once I get out of Grad School. You can download and review the results here, and if you are a web professional, I strongly recommend it. It’s extremely informative.

  • October 14, 2007

    Scientists

    Over at Wired Blog, they are having a little running poll on the most influential, most unappreciated and best fictional scientists of all time. I’ve decided to weigh in with my picks:

    Best Fictional: Q
    This was a pretty tough decision as a nerd. There are scores of fictional scientists that are awesome (take for example, Doc Brown from Back to the Future). But I had to go with Q, the brain behind James Bond’s amazing gadgets and fun toys. It would be totally awesome if Q made stuff for me. I mean, who doesn’t want a class four grenade disguised as a ballpoint pen?
    Most Unappreciated: Philo T. Farnsworth
    Inventor of the first picture tube with his designs he created at just 13 years old, Farnsworth made monumental contributions to the media industry. However, due to corporate overshadowing by RCA, he never got recognition for his work until after his death in 1971.
    Most Influential: Issac Newton
    I was going to go with Einstein, however, Newton founded that thing called Calculus. Without out, We’d really have no basis for any modern physics and all of the work Einstein did.

    So what do you think? Who are your best fictional, most unappreciated and most influential scientists?

  • August 16, 2007

    Plaxo

    Plaxo

    Just recently I started using Plaxo, an online calendar and contacts manager. When Plaxo first started, it was a contacts manager that bought out the online calendar I was using at the time, HipCal. I never really got into Plaxo, especially once I got my Treo, but revisiting it, I’ve got to say it’s quite powerful and has a great interface.

    It handles everything Outlook can handle in a web-based format. A really nice feature of Plaxo is that it automatically updates your address book with any changes other friends on Plaxo make. It also give you access to the RSS feeds they choose to share with Plaxo Pulse. The calendar is very slick, displaying the next two days in agenda form and then the next 3 weeks in calendar form. It also displays the local weather and any ‘countdowns’ you add, such as days until your birthday. My favorite part, however, is the powerful syncing options Plaxo offers.

    Online calendars have always been a project of mine. GCal has been my web-based one of choice for a while because it’s easy to access when I use GMail. But since getting Yahoo! Go on my Blackberry, I’ve tried going back to Yahoo! Calendar because it autosyncs with Outlook. But this means at any given time, GCal, Outlook/Yahoo and my Blackberry could have different calendars. With Plaxo’s Sync Dashboard, I can set up my Plaxo calendar to sync with GCal and all of Plaxo (calendar, contacts, tasks, notes) to sync with Outlook. Then I sync my Blackberry with my computer. Yahoo is automatically updated, though Plaxo offers Calendar and contacts sync for that too, as well as MSN, Outlook Express, Mac OSX, AOL/AIM and LinkedIn. It also offers a mobile web interface so I can access it via my blackberry. The only thing that would make this better is over the air (wireless) sync with my Blackberry, which I believe they are working on.

    All in all, Plaxo is a very nice web app that I am glad I discovered before the start of the school year. With it’s awesome accessibility and sync options, it will definitely keep me more organized.