Hello, hello, and welcome to me nerd-ing off. If techy stuff turns you on, get ready to be seriously aroused.
There's a ton of really useful stuff out there. I'm writing this post very selfishly because some of the coolest programs aren't useful unless your friends also use them. There's some others I want to touch briefly on too, but let's start with things I want YOU to start using.
Group Software
Called RTM for short, this is an online to-do list. Stay with me for a sec, I know what you're thinking: "oh a to-do list, gosh Terry, could you be any more boring?"
- You can create to-dos with Web 2.0 ease.
- You can configure it to send you email, instant message, or text message alerts!
- You can pin a map location to your task through its integrated google maps
- Edit and view your to-do list through its iPhone and iPod Touch support!
- Integrate it with Twitter or Google Calendar (or iCalendar, but ewww iCalendar)
- And here's the kicker: Assign tasks to your friends and contacts This is why it'd be cool if you started using it too, and c'mon, you know that's awesome.
This.... is a very cool program. Don't take my word for it, go try it yourself. It's all free, and you won't even need to wait for email confirmation or any of that.
Get with the inventor and king of microblogging. Each entry is 140 characters or less, limiting people to short and witty details of their lives. You can log on and view the twitters of your friends while adding some of your own, or you can twitter right from your cell phone! Not you, Joey, because you can't send text messages, but everyone else can. There's RSS feeds if you're into that kind of stuff.
There's not much more I can explain, but I suggest you go to
www.twitter.com and click on the red "Watch a Video!" button.
3)
Jooce. "Your desktop away from your desktop"
Jooce is a program that allows you to place and share files online. There's much more to it than just that, though!
Click here to read more of my silly, excited, software writing.
This one is a little bit iffy. If your computer is lacking in the memory department, avoid this (but even 1GB is fine if you don't multi-task). You see, jooce.com thinks that it's going to be "your desktop away from your desktop." They allow you to upload all of your files, be it documents, music, or video, onto their server. Free and unlimited. Their website is baller to the max, with full and beautiful effects. Unfortunately, our ISP upload speeds tend to suck, so this might not be a very good way to go about things.
Let me tell you what I think Jooce IS good for, though. You see, Jooce not only lets you drop your files there to access from anywhere that has internet access, it also has a Joocetop, which is a shared desktop that you can designate files for. Anyone who knows your screen-name can access your public Joocetop and instantly watch your videos or listen to your music from Jooce.com
I see this as an excellent way for people to keep in touch with each other's interests...favorite music...etc. It will only work with a group of people who know each other and aren't too lazy. Would work for me because when I get excited about a new song, I go all obsessive-like and try to show everyone.
ChaCha actually isn't a website (*gasp) or software (double *gasp!). Actually, it's a question answering service. Try it: text any question from your cellphone to 242242 (chacha) or call 1-800-2-chacha and ask your question. Usually, answers come back within 2 or 3 minutes! Ask anything: restaurant suggestion, directions, movies, ANYTHING. Do you know why? Because there's a REAL HUMAN BEING answering the questions!
Click here to read more!
Here's why I know. I am actually a ChaCha guide. Yup, that's right. Just became one a few days ago. Here's how it works: you send a text or call in with a question. A voice transcriber (for calls) will type up your question. An expeditor categorizes it and fixes spelling errors and removes fluff. Then a guide (like me!) gets one of your questions. We look it up using ChaCha's approved links or through ChaCha's search engine (basically google). We are required to list a source website along with our answer (130 characters or less to fit in your mobile phone's text message). You get our answer plus a link to the website where we found the answer... right to your mobile phone. Usually 2 or 3 minutes. If you are a jackass and ask "why do nipples harden when it's cold," it may take longer to answer.
Being a guide is really interesting. We get all sorts of weird questions. And even stranger is when the person doesn't even ask a question but just wants to chat. Then you have the silly people who text questions like "will you suck my dick?" The worst are the questions that are plain hard. "What kind of rocks are best for relative dating?" Well shit, I dunno, maybe you should do your geology homework by yourself! But no, I gave him some answer I found. Something about ingenous or coarse sediment and inclusion rocks. I forget, guides usually copy/paste off the source website.
Anyway, use ChaCha! It's free for you (except that your phone company will still charge you for that text. Go get a text plan already!) and 10 cents earning for me! haha...yeah....it's
p.s. The ChaCha job is kinda cool. It's something to do when I'm bored. Totally flexible hours. 10 cents per question, or 20 if I meet a weekly quota. I'm helping people and learning random facts too. I think it's pretty cool overall and I can quit anytime. If I just want a break, I only have to answer 1 question every 30 days. If you want to apply to be a ChaCha guide, list ME ttao804@gmail.com as your referrer! You'll still earn full wages, but I'll get a bonus of 10% of what you earn! We can split it when you eventually earn enough bonus for a meal =)
5) Then there's the "of course" ones: Skype, Google Calendar, ooVoo (skype with audio and/or video conferencing), googleTalk. I don't even need to tell you guys about those, you already know that they're awesome. Unless you don't, in which case an update is soon to come!
6)
Reddit.com -Suggested by HotLikeAToaster
Reddit.com is a great way of keeping up with what's new on the Internet and in the world. There's news stories, editorials, funny pictures and comics, and of course discussions about new and awesome websites/programs!
Other Baller Programs
Mint is a free and easy way to track your finances. According to their website, it's been approved by mcafee and verisign for military grade security. Newspapers like the WSL are raving about it. I, myself, think it's pretty cool.
Alright, you know the drill by now,
Click here to read more!
Mint will hook up with your online banking system, be it Chase or US Bank, and download a list of your transactions. Most of it, Mint will figure out on its own. To keep track of some of your weirder purchases or cash, you can manually input some stuff.
Mint will create impressive looking pie-charts and graphs. It will also automatically calculate a monthly budget for you based on the history of your monthly spending. It'll send you alerts if a purchase was too large, or if you are exceeding your budget (all alerts customizable). Mint will even look for ways to save you money and list them for you. It's chock-full of features, and the best feature is that it's Free!
This one is VITAL. CCleaner, which stands for Crap Cleaner, is a program that will remove junk from your windows machine. Don't you know? Windows (especially Vista) accumulates junk over time...almost like the operating system is decaying. To keep your computer healthy, you need to clean out the junk.
The first time I used CCleaner, it deleted more than 8 GIGS of crap! That's right, 8 GIGS back to me! Since then, I run it periodically to recover 1 or 2 GB each time. That screenshot is me running CCleaner today to get a screenshot of it in action. But I had used it yesterday too. That means that my machine picked up 65 MBs of garbage in one day.
With an accumulation rate like that, how can you afford not to download this FREE utility?
Foxit Reader is great. You know that huge mammoth-snail program you use called Adobe Reader to open up PDF files? Yeah, fuck that.
Click here for your epiphany.
Foxit reader is a super quick program. For me, it usually opens in 1 second or less. Compare that with the long-ass wait for adobe reader to even just show you its icon splash screen, much less actually taking you to the document. Foxit reader is incredibly small, a 2.55 MB download, and only uses 10 MB of your system memory with a file open. Baller.
Foxit Reader is packed with features too. It's got tabs, which is great. There's the standard stuff like hand tool, select tool, find, etc. but then there's also their editing tools!
I know what you're thinking? "Edit a PDF?!?" Yeah, that's right. Although a small text ad will show up if you're using the free version, you can type or draw on the PDF. It is very useful for filling out forms and stuff. Try it out for yourself!
Bottom line is, even if you never use the features, it's a super-fast alternative to Adobe Reader.
Whew, that's it for now, guys. I'm actually missing a lot of really cool programs and websites. Spoffee, Jing, Pageonce, Woot, Reddit, launchy, Revo Uninstaller, Audacity, Google Chrome, Fit Brains, Display Fusion...you can look those up. Or if you enjoyed reading this, I wouldn't mind finishing up some time. Alright, have fun kiddos.
-T.Tao
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1 comments:
Wow, Toaster, I didn't even notice that you edited the post! Thanks for adding reddit; I missed that one while thinking up my list
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