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Newsletter – 02-25-07
Now that we are in the middle of winter and we are indoor a lot more we see things that need to be done. So how do we get it all clean?
Welcome to HowToCleanAnything.com. The idea for the site started with a group of cleaning professionals getting together to exchange tips and techniques. The idea developed in what you see today. There are more than 1300 free cleaning tips on this site, and growing every day.
http://www.howtocleananything.com/index.asp
The rest of this is dedicated to our college friends.
I wished I had a resource like this when I was getting ready for college.
FastWeb, the Internet’s leading scholarship search service, helps students make the decisions that shape their lives: choosing a college, paying for college, and finding jobs and internships. And it’s all free.
Benefits of FastWeb
• Largest source of local, national and college-specific scholarships
• Personalized scholarship matching
• Search and compare colleges that are right for you
• Find colleges with scholarship money for you
• Tools and tips to help you pay for college
• Jobs and internships for students
http://fastweb.com/
OK, so you got the college scholarship but you still need some more money. Check this out.
FedMoney.org is the most comprehensive FREE full-text online resource on all U.S. government grants and student financial aid programs. Here you will find detailed and up-to-date information about (1) who can apply, (2) how to apply, (3) full contact info, and much more… for over 130 government grants and loans (scholarships, fellowships, traineeships) related to education!
http://www.fedmoney.org
OK, so now we have our scholarship and we got our fed money but gas is still high so where do we find the cheapest? GasBuddy.com can help you find cheap gas prices in your city. It is a network of more than 179+ gas price information web sites that helps you find low gasoline prices. All web sites are operated by GasBuddy and has the most comprehensive listings of gas prices anywhere.
http://gasbuddy.com/
To continue with our college venture, we need to find stuff to make the grade. This site will help with that task.The Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress has eight alcoves. This ninth “virtual alcove” is a collection of websites selected and annotated by Humanities and Social Sciences Division subject specialists. All of these websites have components that are free and available to the public; some might require user registration, or may have links to fee-based services.
http://www.loc.gov/rr/main/alcove9/
To maintain that good GPA you will need some good reference help.
The 2,100 entries in this eminently researched collection form the constellation of collected wisdom in American political debate. In fulfilling decades of requests from Members of Congress for citation of quotations, the Library of Congress compiled the most frequently asked questions of the legislature for the edification of every citizen.
http://www.bartleby.com/73/
Project Gutenberg is the oldest producer of free ebooks on the Internet. Our collection was produced by thousands of volunteers.
Ok, so now you know where to get the reference books you need so get with the program make the grade.
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
“As a face is reflected in water, so the heart reflects the real person.”
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Netvibes vs Yourminis vs Pageflakes
I have a Netvibes account which I have been using for a while (see previous post) and now I just signed up for Yourminis and Pageflakes. All three of these sites want to be your home page or your personal digital newspaper. I am going to work with all three of them for a few weeks to try to find out the pros and cons of each service.
The key here is which service will survive the shakeout. How much money, talent, management, and programmers are behind each service? There is room for maybe all three. Right now Yahoo, Google, Excite, MSN, AOL, are all surviving so all three of these may survive.
Next is to see how much press at the major sites each one of these services will receive. The aforementioned above won’t mention these as they will take users away from there sites, with the exception of Yahoo and Google.
Stay tuned for a complete report in the future.
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Newsletter – 02-19-07
I seem to be spending more time lately trying to figure out what I want to put on my new Blog. I managed to put a few new items there this week.
Ok, so you have decided to do some investing on your own. Where do you start? One of the most trusted names in investing is Morningstar. They are now offering a free investing classroom. Investing Classroom is better than you remember school ever being. You learn at your own pace. You take short quizzes that reinforce your learning and you accumulate credits toward earning 60 days of free Premium Morningstar.com.
http://www.morningstar.com/Cover/Classroom.html
If you use Microsoft Office or just Microsoft Word you need to check out Microsoft’s free add-ons for Word and Office. They offer a lot of free tools, templates, and gadgets. Your only cost is the time to download them and install them. Many useful items wait you at the following Microsoft Office web site. The following link is to the template area, but hang around and check our the other stuff at this site.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/CT101527321033.aspx
If you are like me you get a ton of unwanted email, snail mail, phone calls, especially at the wrong time of day. I have cut my unwanted mail, email, and phone calls down to a very minimum by registering my desire not to receive any of this junk. The following web sites both government and non government sponsored will help you eliminate this unwanted junk. I have used all the sites listed below and they do what they say and are safe.
Phone solicitations: https://www.donotcall.gov/default.aspx
Junk snail mail: http://www.dmaconsumers.org/offmailinglist.html
Credit Card offers: https://www.optoutprescreen.com/?rf=t
Junk email: http://www.doubleclick.com/us/about_doubleclick/privacy/
Lexus-Nexus marketing database: http://www.lexisnexis.com/terms/privacy/data/remove.asp
One more thing, if the companies don’t respond to electronic requests, send a written request from forms at this web site:
http://opt-out.cdt.org/
While we on the subject of things that just “frost my butt” (I leaned that saying from my pop) how many times do you get those stupid recording that tell you to press 1 and then press 3 and then press 4. You really need to talk to someone that is why you called. OK, this web site has a list of most of the major companies and how to bypass the stupid automated attendant.
http://gethuman.com/us/
Does you computer worktable or desk look like a electricians nightmare? Mine always does. I am always looking for a good way to remove all the cords, wires, cables, etc. that constantly get in your way. This link will point you to what one person did to organize this computer work table. The after picture really looks nice.
http://lifehacker.com/software/workspaces/hack-attack-the-cordless-workspace-sort-of-179911.php
That should be enough stuff to keep you busy the rest of this week.
“As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another”
Posted by seniorgeek | 5 Comments
Example 2 – Making Yahoo Pipes work for you
Ok, I said I would have example 2 in a couple of days. So follow along with example 2.
Since I am always looking for the best tech deal, I created the following pipe. It checks 8 sites for the best price on the item you select. Open the following pipe in the edit mode and follow along.
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/xnT4eke52xGJsMmKIBeTaQ/
This first thing we need is the ‘text input’ module so we can select what we are looking for.
Next we need to know what sites we are going to seach. For this we use the ‘fetch’ module to input the URL of each site.
You can select as many sites as you want but I have found out that is you put more than 6 sites in a ‘fetch’ module it really slows down the search. Use multiple ‘fetch’ modules if you need more that 6 sites.
Next we need to filter out duplicate results from each site so we use the ‘filter’ module.
Now we link the output from the fetch module to the filter module to get rid of all the duplicates.
We also need to link the output of the ‘test input’ module to the filter module at the ‘text’ input of the description and title because this is the item name we are searching.
Now there is one special item I should mention here. I have created another pipe called ‘embedded’ which I add to this pipe because it already has some predefined searches built. You can examine that pipe later if you want. I just wanted to mention it here.
Once we have the outputs of the the ‘filter’ and ‘embedded search’ tied together with the ‘union’ module we can sort the output as we desire. I have sorted this by date in ascending order because I want to know what is the most recent tech deal out there.
The following is the complete pipe for your review. Feel free to post comments or ask questions.
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Making Yahoo Pipes work for you
I have been working with Yahoo Pipes some more to get my sorting criteria more defined. Usually two things happen, 1 you get too many results or 2, you get too little or not enough of what you expected. It is time to thing like the search engines or define your searches using pipes to get the results.
Pipes has this nice feature called debugger that is in the bottom right of your pipes screen. It lets you select different modules in your pipe to see what the output is at that module. Start at the first module and see your output. Here you should lots of results. Keep adding modules and defining ‘joins’ and ‘uniques’ until you get the expected output.
Don’t stop, keep experimenting.
Keep checking the debugger at each module as you work through designing and refining your pipe.
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Make your own custom RSS feed using Yahoo Pipes
Earlier I wrote a bit about Yahoo Pipes. OK, so they are a real cool tech thing but what can I do with them that is useful?
The following is 2 examples of what you can do or accomplish with Yahoo Pipes. I use both of these to help search the ‘net and keep up with ‘techie happenings’. I am sure you will be able to find many more uses.
OK, on with example one.
In this example I will use a Yahoo Pipe that I created to search blogs of the Adobe Flex developers to see the programing examples and tip they have posted for us new to Flex programming.
The pipe I use is – http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/YDmnWU242xGw2aZcE5PZnA/
When you run this pipe at the end of the results is a link to create a RSS news feed from the pipe. Click the ‘subscribe to’ down arrow and select netvibes. What you do not have a Netvibes account? (See my post ‘Netvibes – Your Personal Newspaper’ to read about getting your own personal newspaper.)
Once you have the RSS feed in Netvibes, every time you click the refresh button on the feed, Netvibes runs your Pipe to update the results. Your personal newspaper is then current to that minute.
So much cool stuff and so little time.
Example 2 to follow in a couple of days or maybe tomorrow.
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Netvibes – Your Personal Newspaper
I have a Netvibes account and it helps me get all my daily news, tech tips, and just about everything I need to look at each day in one easy to read Web page. Basically this is my daily newspaper. It is always up to date with the news I am interested in reading.
I have financial news, sports news, tech news, calendar, weather, and links to my Gmail account.
You can organize you news articles any way you want on the page, add pages which show up as tabs. Plus they have many more items you can add. Too many for me to list here. This is now my home page in my browser. One more thing it is free as in no cost to you but your time to configure it how you want. Plan one spending some time getting it tweaked to your perfection.
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Cool things done with light
Adam Frank is a creator of light based objects. His gadgets or items or what ever you might call them show light is some very interesting ways. I was amazed veiwing his web site. His objects refect light, absorb light, project light, and do really cool stuf with light. You may put any one of his projects on my Christmas wish list.
I can’t describe the visual effect so just vist his site and see for yourself.
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Interesting Video blog/pod?
I just found a new site called VodPod. It looks like it want to be a video sharing site with a blog format. Depending on the quality and quantity of videos they acquire, it may turn out to be the next Youtube. There have been some popular bloggers taking notice, so in a few weeks it should make the rounds and be highly publicized.
Check it out at http://vodpod.com
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Newsletter – 02-11-07
Since the election buss is already starting, here is a link to check.
“Welcome to AllThingsPolitical.com. Our aim is to offer a more efficient gateway to leading political and governmental online resources. Our directories encompass many categories, ranging from the practical – with over 6,700 public school websites, 5,600 municipal government websites, and 2,100 county government websites – to the partisan – with over 1,100 Democratic and Republican county party sites.”
http://www.allthingspolitical.com/
You will also need to check out this site to see if the elected officials are keeping their promise.
“Every vote in the U.S. Congress since 1991 has been gathered at this site by the Washington Post. Check out the outcomes of the latest bills, see how senators and House members vote, and sign up for RSS notification on individual members of Congress.”
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/
There is a song by the group Chicago asking “does anybody really know what time it is?”
“Real-time Java-based online clocks giving the official time for all U.S. time zones. A service of the National Technical Information Service and the U.S. Naval Observatory.”
http://www.time.gov/
Teachers check this out…..
“From the Information Institute of Syracuse, the people who created AskERIC, the Gateway to Educational Materials, and the Virtual Reference Desk, the Educator’s Reference Desk brings you the resources you have come to depend on. 2,000+ lesson plans, 3,000+ links to online education information, and 200+ question archive responses.”
http://www.eduref.org/
“This site is all about paper money. Most people associate money with earning and spending. Very few consider money as an art object or a collectable item. Only in the last several years has paper money collecting as a hobby become more popular. Modern banknotes are very attractive and colorful, especially in uncirculated conditions favored by collectors.”
http://www.tomchao.com/
This should com in handy if you have a senior this year or any college bound student.
“FedMoney.org is the most comprehensive FREE full-text online resource on all U.S. government grants and student financial aid programs. Here you will find detailed and up-to-date information about (1) who can apply, (2) how to apply, (3) full contact info, and much more… for over 130 government grants and loans (scholarships, fellowships, traineeships) related to education.”
http://www.fedmoney.org/
The above sites are from refdesk.com
“The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it.”
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Shelby to build a Cycle
I just read this press release on gizmag. Shelby has build some great cars. It will be interesting how well the cycle will be received. To me, Shelby will always be synonymous with cool cars. Even though I am an avid motorcyclist, I just can’t get into a Shelby bike.
“February 8, 2007 Carroll Shelby International and Rucker Performance unveiled a limited production Shelby motorcycle at the Cincinnati V-Twin Expo last week. The high performance motorcycle was developed in partnership between the two companies and will be built by Rucker Performance. Sticking to his tried and true formula of brute horsepower in a lightweight frame, the powerhouse is a new S&S X-Wedge 128 c.i.d. engine with closed loop VFI fuel injection that churns out a healthy 150 bhp. Each Shelby motorcycle can be custom painted according to the owner’s personal tastes and includes a special edition logo. In addition, a complete line of Shelby merchandise including apparel, accessories and limited edition collector’s items will be available. Initial production of the Shelby will be a very limited edition run of 25 motorcycles that will be available for purchase by the third quarter of this year. Production of a second round of bikes will begin in the fall of 2007.”
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Welcome to More Interesting Info
I didn’t believe I would do one of these things but here I am putting text on this web page called a blog. Since this is my first post well maybe it is my second post since I put a post on the ‘about this blog’ section to tell everyone what I plan to write or scribble about.
Anyway, welcome and read the about page in the pages section on the right so I don’t have to type the same stuff here.
Posted by seniorgeek | 3 Comments
Yahoo Pipes
Yahoo has this new section called “pipes”. (http://pipes.yahoo.com) Basically it let you combine the results of many RSS news feeds into one feed based upon the criteria you select. You can input any site and use the modules to custom design the wasy you want the results displayed.
I made a number of ‘pipes’ and they seem to work quite well, especially since this is a beta. There are some issues with some of the modules. Most are easy to understand
and implement but there are a few that just don’t work like you expect. ‘URL Builder’ is one of them. I could not get it to work right unless I used one of the examples already posted.
The following links are to a couple of my ‘pipes’ that may be useful to you or at least you can use them to build more advanced pipes.
This ‘pipe’ lets you check for any deal at the major tech deal sites.
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/xnT4eke52xGJsMmKIBeTaQ/
This is the best one. It lets you select 2 locations and then pick a common item that is a certain distance that is close to both locations. Hmm.. I didn’t explain that very well.
OK, here is an example. Lets say you are at location 1 and your friend is at location 2 and you want to meet some place in between to have pizza. Just enter the 2 locations and then enter what you are looking for as in this case pizza, and it will give you the closest Pizza place to both your locations.
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/7l0PlWS52xG3flybZYQMOQ
