Flock -- "The Browser For The Modern Web"

My brother was visiting recently and mentioned the Flock browser. I had installed it a long time ago but wasn't using it. When I first installed Flock, the only thing I remember that was different about it was that it had support for Flickr built into it. You could open a film strip across the top of the browser window that would display thumbnails of your contacts' recent photos etc. Kinda neat but I'd rather use the contacts window at the Flickr web site.

I installed the latest release of Flock to see how it had changed and was pleasantly surprised -- they've added a lot of features. You can configure a lot of your accounts for social networking sites like Facebook, Flickr and Twitter and display updates in a sidebar. You can configure your primary web-based email through Flock and it will alert you to new email, and Flock also has a built-in feed reader so you can subscribe to news feeds and display them in a sidebar.



I almost forgot Flock's blogging support. You can post to blogs from Flock's blog editor. Without logging into your blog. It seems like a quick way to post something from the browser.

So far it seems like Web pages might load a little slower then they do in Firefox, IE, or Google's new Chrome browser, but my primary computer is a little low on RAM. I want to either add some RAM to that computer or use another one that has a little more memory. I'll update this post when I've tried the browser a little longer and let you know what I find out about the speed, but if you're like me and you like to try out all of the new social networking sites, you should give Flock a try.

Later,
-R

Blogged with the Flock Browser

I'm a ChaCha Guide Now

I found this cool service called ChaCha. You can call ChaCha at 1-800-224-2242 and ask any question, anything at all, like directions, or movie times, or where babies come from, and a ChaCha guide like me will search for the answer and a good Web link to send to you in a text message. You can also send your question in a text message to 242242 (ChaCha), or type your message into ChaCha's Web site.

ChaCha guides earn $.20 cents for each question they answer and they have to do it in 10 minutes -- preferably in less than 3 minutes -- so you get your answer quickly.

Most guides average between $4 and $10 an hour.

UPDATE: Since I originally posted this, ChaCha has changed the pay rate to only $.10 per post unless you answer a certain number of questions within a certain time-frame. That really makes it not worth it to me. I got a job a couple months ago as a contract tech writer and I make more in an hour than I could make in a week as a ChaCha guide. I suppose it would still be worth it for students and stay-at-home mom's, but I think ChaCha will lose some professional people.

Let me know if you're interested in becoming a guide, though. If you tell them I sent you (I'll give my email address to you but I'd rather not post it here), I'd get 10% for everything you earn.

Have a great 4th, and happy ChaChaing!

-Rick

Blurb: Book Making Software

I just found a Web site called Blurb where you can download some book making software (I suppose you would call that desktop publishing software). You can use the software to make any kind of book you'ld like to make. They have templates you can use for layouts etc.

You can submit your book to Blurb and have as many books made as you want starting at something like $12.95 a book.

It looks like it would be particularly good for publishing photographs and they are having a contest right now and giving away $25,000 for the best photo book submitted by July 14th.

Later,
Rick

I Got Published in the Schmap Niagara Falls Tour Guide

I've been meaning to post this link for a long time. This picture I took of The Maid of the Mist at Niagara Falls and posted at Flickr was chosen for inclusion in the Schmap Niagara Falls online tour guide.

It's not a big deal, but it's kinda nice to be recognized for something.

-R

Al Franken For US Senate

http://www.alfranken.com/content/splash_video

U-Haul Sucks

Well, you can add my name to the list of people who've been reamed by U-Haul's nefarious refueling fee scheme. Because I returned the truck with 1/4 of a tank of gas instead of 3/8 of a tank, they charged me an extra $55 for the couple gallons of gas plus a refueling fee. I did a search on the Internet and discovered that I'm not the only one who thinks that's a bit unfair.

I'll post updates when I find more info.

From now on I'll make sure I rent from Budget instead of U-Haul. They've always been better anyway.

Later,
Rick

GOOG-411

This looks really cool! http://www.google.com/goog411/

Google has a free service that lets you call a toll-free number (1-800-GOOG-411), give the automated service your location, and a business or category to search for, and it will connect you to the business. Sounds good to me.

Get Satisfaction

I just ran across a Web site that's a cross between a social community site and a customer service site. I don't think I've seen a site exactly like this before and I wish I had thought of it. There are lots of sites where you can ask questions or interact with a community, of course, but I think this is the first one I've seen that's supposed to be specifically for customer service.

Here's the link: http://getsatisfaction.com/

Let me know what you think, and I hope you get some satisfaction. :-)

Later,
Rick

Keep on Bloggin'

I need to get in the habit of posting to this blog and there are a few things I can think of right now to blog about but I don't really have the time to do it right now.

I thought I would at least post a list of topics that I plan to blog about as soon as I get a chance to:

• Lilac festival in Rochester NY (this happens every spring and is really nice if you like flowering stuff).
• Moving in with my girlfriend.
• Getting into stock trading by reading Toni Turner's book A Beginner's Guide to Day Trading (I got an account at ScotTrade.)
• Having on of my pictures that I've uploaded to Flickr picked to be in an online travel guide called Schmap. I don't know if my photos made the final cut but it's kinda exciting just to have one of my pictures selected.
• A cruise my girlfriend and I went on to the western Carribean last year.
• A trip we went on to Costa Rica a couple years ago (she likes to go on trips and not your run-of-the-mill cheap vacations either, so I'm sure I'll have lots of those to report on).
• Tubing at Sugar Mountain ski resort.
  

That's some of the stuff I'm planning to blog about, as soon as I get a chance to. I'll try not to be too boring.

Let me know if you're particularly interested in any of these things and I'll give you more info right away.

Later,
Richard

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

I just thought I'd wish everyone a Happy Valentine's Day!!!

The servers at Hallmark.com were having a bad day today. I've never seen them so messed up. I had a hard time sending eCards but I didn't have anything better to do except work and I was persistent, so I managed to send out a few.

Later,
Rick

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Groundhog Day

I mentioned Groundhog Day to some guys at work the other day and they didn't seem to know what I was talking about. I was really surprised because I thought everyone knew what Groundhog Day was. One of the guys is from The Sudan, so it's understandable that he wouldn't know about it. I doubt they have Groundhog Day in Sudan -- maybe Camel Day, but not Groundhog Day.

Another guy is from West, by God, Virginia. He said they *hunt* groundhogs there. By the way, I noticed that the republicans in W Va voted for Huckabee in their primary the other day, bless their hearts.

Here are some links to info about Groundhog Day, in case you're from The Sudan or West Virginia, or just haven't heard about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day
http://www.groundhog.org/

There was a movie called Groundhog Day too.

Later,
Rick

Who Knew Productivity Could Be Fun?

While I was Christmas shopping last holiday season, I ran across some little notebooks at a Border's store that caught my attention. They're called Moleskines. Most of them are just notebooks or sketchbooks of different sizes -- some have blank pages, some have ruled pages and some have square-ruled pages like graph paper. There are also Moleskine city guides for some major cities around the world, that contain maps and info about the city etc. The Border's store had a whole rack just for the Moleskine notebooks and I was intrigued by them. I walked away from the rack once but went back to it and picked up a notebook and examined it like the Monkeys in 2001: A Space Odyssey examining the monolith.

After I left the store, I searched the Internet for Moleskine and found links that led me to a whole world of productivity and self-improvement that I never knew existed before. First I found a link to a blog called 43 Folders that has info about productivity and mentions a book by David Allen called Getting Things Done (GTD). I didn't realize that there was so much info out there about getting things done.

43 Folders isn't updated frequently, although much more than this blog will be, I'm sure. The blog is also geared towards Mac users and even though I've used Macs, I don't currently own one so I don't find this blog as useful as another one I discovered on my journey into productivity called Lifehacker.

Lifehacker claims to contain, "tips and downloads for getting things done." Lifehacker seems to be updated frequently and contains tips on a wide variety of subjects and links to downloads for both Macs and PCs.

One of the best sites I've found in the realm of productivity is http://www.rememberthemilk.com. At Remember The Milk you can create to-do lists or really any kind of list. It will integrate with a few different calendars, I think, like Google Calendar. I've found that it's a great way to keep track of your monthly bills.

Although I'll probably spend a lot of time making lists and checking them twice, I think all of this info I've found might actually help me be more productive and not less. Speaking of which, I guess I should do some work now.

Later,
Rick

Hello Blogger World!

I haven't felt like working lately and I can use a break anyway, so I've been spending a lot of time surfing the Web and trying to find better things to do than work.

I saw a link to Blogger just now and thought I'd create a blog to post random stuff to. I have Movable Type installed on a computer at home and I've used that for blogging in the past but one of my computers is down so I think that blog's out of commission for now. This blog will probably have more features and look better anyway.

I'll end this post before it gets too boring. I'll make a couple more quick posts before I try to make myself do some work.

Later,
Rick