Father’s Day Gift Ideas from Amazon

Need an idea for a gift for your father? Father’s Day is coming up fast. Only a week away on Sunday, June 15. Amazon.com has created a page with some gift ideas. Click the banner ad below.

GoDaddy and Comcast Having Troubles

I was going to post that many Comcast customers couldn’t access any GoDaddy-hosted sites, among other sites as well. Unfortunately I couldn’t access my site to post. And now I can. Still need to find news on what the issue was. I was able to get confirmation of the problem from this DSL Reports forum post.

Resources: DSL Reports forum

Solar Light Suggestions Needed

I have been wanting to get some solar-powered lights for a while now. The ones I find online have reviews that range from them being cheap-looking, to poor quality, to poor receivers of solar power, to just plain bad. Does anyone have any experience with solar lights? Anyone who can lend a recommendation or suggestion.

To get the conversation started, I was looking at these Westinghouse stainless steel lights on Amazon (link).

Facebook Boombox App Taken Down by Developer

It appears that the Boombox application on Facebook has been removed by its developer. This was an application that let you select songs to display on your Facebook profile. They played in a small Flash area, loading mp3s found on the internet. I’m guessing it was a legal issue. I did noticed two days ago that the Flash part wasn’t loading and the application wasn’t working right.

This facebook listing for The Boombox app’s owner Adam Mosseri (link) now returns no results, showing that the person deleted their Facebook account. Very fishy.

I am now looking for a new application to load on my profile that does the same thing. Unfortunately I do not remember which songs I had listed.

Here are a few alternatives:

• iLike
• Audio
• And a lot more in the Facebook Music application directory.

Sources: Blog confirmation I used to make sure I wasn’t just going crazy, Boombox review

PrivatePhone Ending, Here Are Some Alternatives

PrivatePhone was/is a service from NetZero that provided you with a local telephone number that sent calls directly to a voicemail system that you could then listen to online or over the phone. They are now discontinuing the service as of February 19th 2008, and so since I used them I had to look around for some alternatives. They are offering to transfer your PrivatePhone number to another company, but the prices weren’t attractive to me.

So far I have come up with two. eVoice and Grand Central. Grand Central was bought by Google not too long ago, and I am currently using it. You need to signup for an account through their site because it is still in beta. I signed up to reserve a number and was notified almost immediately that they were offering me an account, so the wait time doesn’t seem to be too long (or wasn’t for me yesterday).

Grand Central gives you a local phone number that you can have ring any number of phone numbers. You are able to choose what town the number originates from (state, town) and then select one number from a list of a few they have available in that location. I chose a number that coincided with my PO Box. You can then have the number ring you at your leisure. The Grand Central website is very easy to use and makes it easy to figure out how to do what you want to do. Caller ID can either show the caller’s phone number or the Grand Central number. I chose the latter because then I know when a call is coming from the Grand Central service and I can choose to ignore it and let it go to voicemail. I don’t know how the service is but it’s from Google and so far it’s free.

Another company I found is eVoice but I haven’t used them and I wasn’t able to find any reviews on them. But it is from the same company who operates eFax, so how bad can it be?

If you have tried any of these services please comment with your impressions so that others may learn. Also, feel free to suggest alternatives for us all to try and document.

Report Malicious Sites to Google with this Bookmarklet

I recently read a PC World article about a Google page that has a form where you can report a malicious website (a site with bad content like viruses and the like). It’s a new feature that Google unveiled (announcement). I found that Google will validate a url passed to it and insert it into the form. I thought this would be much better if you could click a bookmark in your browser and automatically pass the url of the current website to the Google form. So I created a bookmarklet (bookmark with javascript) and here it is.

Drag the bookmarklet link to the bookmark area of your browser. And when you click it a new window will be opened showing the Google form with the URL of the bad site filled in for you.

Bookmarklet: Report Malicious Site

Spread the word so everyone can help get rid of bad sites. Enjoy, from Jason of JasonBlogs.com.

Amazon Unveils eBook Reader: Kindle

Amazon has been working on an eBook reader for the past 3 years and they just unveiled it. The Kindle can be bought for $400 from Amazon.com and it uses e-ink technology with a host of other great features. It was developed by Amazon, along with the accompanying Kindle Store where you can buy books, magazine subscriptions, newspaper subscriptions, and blog subscriptions that get sent to your Kindle over Sprint’s EVDO network. It doesn’t cost anything extra to access Sprint’s network, which is a big plus that helps offset the price of the reader. What follows are some of the details of the reader and store, along with my thoughts.

• Electronic-paper display provides a sharp, high-resolution screen that looks and reads like real paper.
• Simple to use: no computer, no cables, no syncing.
• Lighter and thinner than a typical paperback; weighs only 10.3 ounces.
• Holds over 200 titles. SD card support for more storage capacity.
• Audio: 3.5mm stereo audio jack, rear-mounted mono speaker
• Content Formats Supported: Kindle (AZW), TXT, Audible (formats 2, 3 and 4), MP3, natively; HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, MOBI, PRC through conversion
• Wireless connectivity enables you to shop the Kindle Store directly from your Kindle
• Buy a book and it is auto-delivered wirelessly in less than one minute. More than 88,000 books available, including 100 of 112 current New York Times Best Sellers.
• New York Times Best Sellers and all New Releases $9.99, unless marked otherwise. Other books are less.
• Long battery life. Leave wireless on and recharge approximately every other day. Turn wireless off and read for a week or more before recharging. Fully recharges in 2 hours.
• Unlike WiFi, Kindle utilizes the same high-speed data network (EVDO) as advanced cell phones—so you never have to locate a hotspot. No monthly fee for access to network.
• Includes free access to Wikipedia.org and a built-in Oxford English Dictionary.
• Email your Word documents and pictures (.JPG, .GIF, .BMP, .PNG) to Kindle for easy on-the-go viewing. They convert it into the right format and can send it to your Kindle for $0.10 or send it to you for free and you can transfer it to the Kindle with the usb connection

You can transfer MP3s or audio books to the Kindle. And you can listen to the MP3s separately or as background music while you read if that’s something you like to do. You can bookmark pages, or annotate them using the QWERTY keyboard. And there is a built in digital cursor that scrolls along the side of the page allowing you to select page lines. It is controlled by a scrollwheel. There are big buttons on the Kindle that let you go to the next page or back a page. It is all very intuitive according to published reviews.

A great feature is the switch on the back to turn the wireless single off. Great for planes and other places you can’t use a cellphone or wireless device.

Video: Neil Gaiman discusses the Amazon Kindle.

From reviews by people that actually used the Kindle it seems to work well. The e-ink is easy on the eyes, and the reader was designed with usability in mind. It’s ergonomically designed to feel like a book. It’s the same size as a paperback book and it ways a little bit less at 10.3 ounces. Amazon thought of everything. I’m almost tempted to buy one to check it out. I want one. But I might wait for some more hands-on reviews, and until more of the books I want are available from the Kindle store.

Buy it or find more info: Kindle: Amazon’s New Wireless Reading Device

Hands on Reviews and Interviews around the Internet
Newsweek: great interview with Jeff Bezos and background on Kindle and the book market.
ZDNet Hands on with the Kindle: This ugly duckling has potential
Engadget hands on, and some extra details
Gizmodo

Buy it or find more info: Kindle: Amazon’s New Wireless Reading Device

Threadless Holiday Sale is Here

Threadless is having another $10 t-shirt sale, just in time for the holidays. They will be releasing shirts representing their past (classic old designs), present (reprinted favorites), and future (new designs). Each Monday for the next 3 weeks they will be releasing a new batch of these new shirts. This week there are 18 of them, and some of them look great (this one, this one, this one, and this one).

So head on over with this link so I can get some free shirts off the backs of my visitors.

Threadless $10 Holiday Sale

Amazon’s Black Friday Deals

On Black Friday (Nov 23) Amazon.com will have a bunch of great deals to help you get holiday shopping done for less. This year they’ve created a Black Friday page for holiday shoppers at www.amazon.com/blackfriday.

Amazon.com will be offering hourly deals from 6am to 6pm PST (9am to 9pm EST) along with thousands of products on sale for a limited time. Also, customers will get gift wrapping for $.99 per item. I have put Amazon’s special deal widget here so on Black Friday it will pull in the latest deals. Or you can go directly to their Black Friday Deals page here.

Amazon’s Black Friday Deals

Amazon Customers Vote is Back

Amazon Customers Vote is back for 2007. Each round of Customers Vote lets you vote for the deal you’d most like to have. Voting begins on Thursday, November 15th and continues through Monday, November 26th. There will be six rounds of voting this year with three products in each round. Beginning Thursday, November 22nd, each day the new winning product will be announced, and randomly selected customers will have the opportunity to purchase the item for which they voted at a great discount. Products this year will include:

1,000 Nintendo Wii Game Systems (see prices on Customers Vote page)
500 Panasonic 7.5MP Digital SLR Cameras, $499 (*normally $1,149.95)
1,000 Razor E100 Electric Scooters for $29 (*normally $89.99)
500 TiVo HD Digital Video Recorders, $89 (*normally $253.48)
500 Magellan Maestro 3140 Portable Auto GPS Systems, $99 (*normally $247.00)
200 Samsung 46” 1080p LCD HDTVs, $719 (*normally $1,899.98)

So what are you waiting for? Go vote and then check the Amazon site each day from Nov. 22 until the last day to see if you can buy the item you wanted at the discounted price. The top voted item each day is offered at the price they show, but if you voted on an item that didn’t win you can still get offered it at a lower price.

You can only get offered the item you voted for, so choose wisely.

Amazon Customers Vote 2007