From iPhones to Ebay, Amazon to Netflix, Heart Hi-Tech presents the latest technology and gadget news and reviews with a focus on the non-tech savvy crowd.
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Scenario: You want to be able to access your digital files wherever you are Solution: Drop.io lets you create unlimited online "dropboxes" for free
Due to a little incident yesterday morning that resembled a tragic out-take from Dancing On Ice I'm currently nursing a fractured arm. So today I'll simply let the video do the talking to outline this very cool service called Drop.io.....
Scenario: You have a habit of falling asleep on the bus/train and missing your stop Solution:iNap is a new iPhone application that uses GPS to wake you up when you get close to home
American Capitalism is hard work. Large 500ml bottles of Heineken are fairly cheap. Trains and buses can be strangely soothing in a hypnotic type of way.
Take these three facts together and you'll understand why commuters on public transportation more often than not enjoy a quick nap on their way home from work. The problem arises when that nap becomes a deep sleep - at which point a weary traveler faces a real risk of missing his or her stop.
iNap is one of those brilliantly simple ideas that you'd wish YOU'D had while mowing the lawn or washing the dishes. It's an application for the iPhone that taps-in to the location-based/GPS capabilities of the device. Simply tell iNAP where your destination is (e.g. Princeton Train Station, New Jersey) and tell it how close to your destination you want to be woken up (e.g. 1 mile) and it sounds an alarm at the appropriate point in your journey.
This is one of the most useful location-based applications I've seen for a while and it now means that I can sit and dribble on the train to my heart's content knowing that iNap will blast the sound of a fire alarm in my ear when i get close to home.
Check out my video review above for a more detailed walk-through.
Scenario: You want to email a large file but there's a limit on the size of your attachments Solution:YouSendIt lets you email files up to 100mb for free
I've grown to develop a good degree of sympathy for people who work on IT help-desks. Having to deal with endless streams of impatient, incompetent middle managers every day, five days a week must be somewhat soul-destroying
But one of the help-desk mandated rules that I always struggled with was the email attachment size limit. You probably suffer the same problem at home with your personal email account whereby you can't send an email with an attachment over and above a certain size.
The whole thing just seems grossly unfair and ofter makes emailing images, video clips and audio files impossible.
Then along came YouSendIt sauntering into town like a bandwidth sugar daddy. This free service lets you send files up to 100mb to any email address - the trick being that you don't send the physical file but instead send a LINK to the file that lives on the YouSendIt servers.
This is a great tool for business or personal use and if you work in an industry where files are often being bounced back and forth but your IT department are like digital pit-bulls, this could be a lifesaver.
Check out the video review above for a walk-through of some of the features
Scenario: You want to do a Google search but you're nowhere near a computer Solution: Simply text your search query to 466453 ('GOOGLE') and they'll text some results back to your phone
If asked to create a list of things I couldn't live without, Google would feature slightly ahead of pork-based snacks and only a fraction behind Italian red wine. That's how important it is.
From finding directions to looking-up restaurants in town - Google has become the default go-to destination for the majority of my online questions.
Although it's been around for a while now, a little know feature offered by Google is the ability to enjoy the same powerful set of search features via SMS text messages on mobile phones.
While there's nothing more I hate than conversations written in "text speak" (e.g. Y R U there? R u up 4 it?) it's fair to say that SMS messages have grown in popularity immensely over the last few years and have now fully entered the mainstream. And after re-reading this paragraph I just realized how old and miserable I sound!
With Google SMS you simply text in your search query to 466453 and Google will send you a text message back to your phone with some results. Text in "Pizza restaurant, NYC" and Google will text you a list of pizza restaurants with address and telephone numbers in New York. Text "flight VS 2" and it will tell you if flight number VS 2 is on time and if not, what sort of delay you're facing. You can get movie times, sports results, weather forecasts and much more - all by simply sending a text message.
Check out the video above for a run-through of some of the features.
Scenario: You have an insatiable aching to discover new Websites that are relevant to you Solution:StumbleUpon finds new sites based on your interests
Do you find that you have an insatiable ache to find something new and exciting in your Web surfing life? A longing, all-consuming thirst that a simple Google search just can't quench?
Well help might be at hand with StumbleUpon, an online service that helps you discover Websites based on your specific interests.
The concept behind StumbleUpon is pretty simple. You download a free toolbar that sits at the top of your browser and after creating account, you define what subjects you're interested in (e.g. books, television, Japanese animated cartoons, albino owls, bed sores....you get the idea).
Once StumbleUpon knows the kind of things you like, you simply click the "Stumble" button on the toolbar and it will send you to a Website, or picture, or video clip based on your defined interests. You can vote on whether you like StumbleUpon's recommendation or not, and it learns from this information to refine the sites it suggests.
It's a really great way of finding new Web content based around your interests and it also features a strong social component whereby you can add friends and share Stumbles with your network.
Check out the video above for a review of some of the features of StumbleUpon.
Scenario: You store a lot of valuable files (pictures, movies, music) on your computer Solution: Create a secure, remote back-up of all your data with Mozy
It was the end of summer in 2008 when the penny dropped that a good portion of my life hinged on a piece of magnetic material that spins around erratically every few minutes.
At first I heard a strange whirring sound - like a Boeing 747 taking-off - coming from my Mac during a game of Guitar Hero. Then applications started to take an incredibly long-time to load. Then....well then I realized that my hard drive was failing and horror struck.
The simple fact was that I'd put a lot of faith in that tiny, spinning magnet. My entire music library was on there. Family photographs. Movies I'd purchased. Even tax returns and contacts. If the hard drive failed, my heart would have quickly followed.
The simple answer would have been to back-up everything onto a external hard drive that plugs into your computer, and that's still something I'd highly recommend. But that method isn't totally foolproof either. What if your house burns down, or there's a flood, or somebody breaks-in to your house/apartment and steals your laptop AND your hard drive. Well then you're as screwed as if you didn't back-up at all.
Over the last 12 months I've been using a service called Mozy which allows you to back-up your files in a remote location. Fork out $4.95 per month and Mozy gives you unlimited online storage space, so you can back-up your entire 50,000 song MP3 collection or just a couple of Word docs - the choice is yours.
In order to use Mozy you download a tiny application to your computer. This application scans your hard-drive and then silently backs-up your data in the background while you're surfing the Web and pissing away the hours on Facebook. If disaster strikes and you need to restore a file, you can log-in to your account on any computer and see all your backed-up files. Simply click the ones you want to restore and voila - your data is back.
When you use Mozy for the first time - and if you want to back-up your entire hard drive - it will take some time.....in some cases 2-3 days (no joke). But once the first effort is complete, Mozy only backs-up incremental changes and thus is much quicker.
Check out the video above for a walk through of some of Mozy's core features.
Scenario: I hear a lot about RSS but have no idea what it actually is Solution: Keep reading......
RSS feeds have been around for a while but have failed to ignite in popularity among the majority of casual Web users.
The simple fact is that RSS Feeds are incredibly useful but they suffer from a terrible image problem which is that many people don't know how to use them.
In essence, RSS feeds act in a very similar way to email. With email you have a Mail application (Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo) and that application alerts you whenever you have new email in your inbox. You then simply open and read all your new email at your leisure.
RSS follows a very similar concept but instead of new email, you're receiving new content alerts from your favorite Web sites. This is incredibly useful because it means you can quickly and easily stay abreast of new content on all your favorite sites without actually having to visit those sites to find the new stuff.
Not surprisingly, RSS works very well for sites that update their content frequently - i.e. news sites.
RSS is one of those concepts that can be difficult to grasp at first, but eventually the "A-ha" moment strikes and you'll wonder how you ever lived without them.
Scenario: You have hundreds of bookmarks but can only access them from one computer Solution: Access all your bookmarks from anywhere with Deli.icio.us
We'd all be pretty much lost on the Web without bookmarks. I access 30-50 different sites on a regular basis and it's impossible to simply remember the urls of all my favorites. In addition, many sites don't exactly have web addresses that are easy to re-call......especially the Swedish and Dutch ones ;)
Social bookmarking attempts to solve this problem by allowing users to access their bookmarks from any computer at any time. Social bookmarking isn't new but has hit the mainstream over the last 18 months with services such as Del.ico.us (the subject of this post), DIGG, Reddit and Stumbleupon making the headlines.
The concept is quite simple. Users create an account with Del.icio.us and as they're browsing the Web they can add bookmarks to their account in the same way that you add bookmarks to your browser. All the bookmarks you add are stored centrally on the Del.icio.us servers, so you can log-in at any time from any computer and gain access to your bookmarks. Very convenient if you travel a lot, or use multiple computers in the course of your day.
But what about the social aspect? Well when you log-in to your account you can add friends (just like Facebook) and share all your bookmarks with your friends - so it's easy to check out some of the favorite sites that people in your social circle have been browsing. You can also see which bookmarks are the most popular amongst the entire community of Del.icio.us users - so think of it almost as a user generated top-ten list of web sites that's constantly changing.
Check out the video above for a walk-through of some of the features of Del.icio.us - and happy bookmarking!
Scenario: You're looking for some free movies and TV shows to watch online Solution:Hulu.com offers ad-supported, premium content
It seem as if everybody wants something for nothing these days. Take a few examples:
a) The banks want to borrow taxpayers' money just so they can continue to screw us b) Some employers want you to work more and more hours for the same pay check c) Politicians want you to vote for them and give you absolutely nothing in return
The same is true with content - people love to consume it, but they hate paying for it.
The folks at Hulu.com have found a happy medium to this problem in relation to online video. Hulu is a joint venture between Fox and NBC and it offers a selection of full-length TV episodes and movies for viewers to watch for free. Their library isn't huge, but there's enough compelling content on offer to keep you busy on a rainy Sunday afternoon (think 30 Rock, The Office, 24.....even old '80s "classics" like Airwolf).
So what's the catch? Well while the content is free to watch, Hulu makes you sit through commercial breaks while watching. So if you plan to watch Men In Black, then be prepared for several 20 seconds ads from Target or a random shampoo manufacturer.
For me that's a small price to pay to be able to watch premium video content and it's pretty much a win-win situation - we get to watch quality and more importantly legal video content, and the broadcasters are able to effectively monetize it without charging the consumer.
As I pointed out yesterday in my post on Netflix, the whole distribution model around video content is changing and evolving at breakneck speed and this is going to be an interesting one to watch this year. With services like Netflix, Hulu and the range of set-top boxes available that let users download movies and TV shows directly (think Apple TV, Roku, VuDu - more on those in a later post) - more and more people will potentially start to question why they're paying their cable operator over 100 bucks a month for 200 channels, of which they only watch about 20. Interesting times ahead and we'll be watching this one closely at Heart Hi-Tech.
Scenario: You like video-on-demand, but not when it costs 5 bucks per movie Solution:Netflix "Watch Now" feature lets you watch their library of 12,000 movies instantly for a monthly fee
Humans can be very spontaneous, impulsive creatures which is precisely why QVC and Internet porn are multi-billion dollar businesses.
Take movies for example. On many a night I've felt the urge to watch a film or TV show and right now I can do that via my cable company's Movies on Demand service. But they're (in my case Verizon) charging me between 3-5 bucks per movie for the privilege and over the course of a month that can soon add up.
Then along came Netflix who - at least partially - solved the problem. For those of you not familiar with Netflix (they've been around for over five years now) you pay a monthly subscription fee and in return Netflix sends you DVDs in the mail. Each DVD is in a pre-paid envelope and when you've finished watching you simply put it in the postbox, and once Netflix receives it they send you the next DVD on you queue - which you create at their website Netflix.com.
The subscription options range from $8.99 per month which allows you to rent an unlimited number of DVDs per month, but only have one DVD in your possession at any one time to $16.99 per month which allows you to have 3 DVDs out at any one time. There are more plans but these are two of the most popular.
While this service is great, you still have to actually wait for the movies to arrive in the mail and thus the impulsive element of wanting to watch a movie is not catered for.
That all changed last year when Netflix released a "Watch Now" service which lets you - for no extra charge to your subscription plan - watch movies and TV shows directly on your laptop. You simply log-in to your account, browse their "Watch Now" library, and then sit back and watch your movie.
This is a very cool service and perhaps the best part is that you can watch an unlimited number of movies/TV shows for no-extra charge. So if you wanted to sit through all 3 seasons of The Office in one day, go for your life. The quality of the movies/TV shows is generally good - although it should be noted NOT HD - but I've found in many cases it's almost as good as watching a DVD on your laptop.
Now to the drawbacks, and there are a couple. Firstly, Netflix carries a library of 100,000 DVDs but only about 12,000 are available on Watch Now. This number is growing every day, but some of the latest movie releases are not available - so don't expect to instantly be accessing all the new DVD releases on your laptop. But nevertheless 12,000 is still quite impressive and I've found that for watching Television shows or movie classics, it's really hard to beat.
I strongly believe that DVDs are going down the same path as CDs - within 10 years they'll be non-existent and everything will be delivered via the Web. Netflix has taken a first, important step on this journey and I think over the next 12-24 months we'll be seeing more and more interesting developments in the Web-based video on demand services (such as set-top boxes that connect directly to your TV, which is a subject for a future posting!).
Scenario: "Ring Ring" just won't cut it anymore for your cellphone Solution: Turn your favorite tunes into ringtones for your iPhone using Garage Band
From expressing your inner-self to pissing off an entire train-full of people, custom cellphone ringtones can fulfill a wide range of roles.
One such role has always been to make the cell phone carriers and ringtone companies an awful lot of money. Selling somebody a 20 second snippet of a song they already own for 2 bucks a pop just so they can put it on their phone was an ingenious business model, but now there's a way around it.
The example I'm showing today is specifically for the iPhone owners and Mac users. It's possible to do this for other devices but this particular solution is quick, graceful and a shining lesson in how to make something that's genuinely intuitive and useful.
Within five minutes you can take any of your music mp3s, import them into a program called Garage Band (which comes free with most Macs), edit a snippet of the song for your ringtone and then upload it to your phone. Check out the video above for a full walk through.
Scenario: You have lots of images to edit, but don't want to buy any photo editing software Solution:Photoshop Express is a free, Web-based image editing tool
People are taking more pictures than ever before thanks to the explosion of digital cameras and camera phones. The result of all these extra images is the accompanying need to make endless edits - a quick crop here or a little red-eye removal there.
This used to mean having to fork out big bucks for a piece of software like Adobe Photoshop (very expensive and far too advanced unless you're a graphic designer) or simply making do with the fact that Uncle Dave's eyes will always just look redder than Satan's.
But as we outlined yesterday with Google Docs, more and more traditional pieces of software are moving online and becoming Web-based services. This is also true in the world of image editing and our friends at Adobe offer a free image editing product called Photoshop Express.
Let's be clear - Express is never going to replace its big brother Photoshop but then again that's not its intention. Instead, it offers a set of basic but robust image editing tools (cropping, re-touch, color correction, etc) that will be more than adequate to satisfy the average home computer user. Best part is that it's free and ultimately that's something - especially in the current economic climate - that can only be a good thing.
Probably the most commonly used set of applications at work or at home is the MS Office suite - consisting of Word, Excel and Powerpoint.
Of course you have to pay a tidy sum in order to use these apps, which is why Bill Gates is a multi-billionaire and why the rest of us are at home living on cereal and worrying that an over-zealous 23-year-old banker might have gambled away our 401k.
While Bill and Co. continued to milk their lovely little Office application for all it was worth, along came Google with both middle fingers raised and decided to offer essentially the same set of programs - for free.
Just to rub salt into the wound the Google version - Google Docs - is Web based which means not only does Google store all your documents for you, but you can also access them from any computer connected to the Internet. But those young upstarts at Google weren't finished yet - not only did they make sure that you could open and save documents in all the popular MS Office formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt) but they also built a very cool sharing feature which lets groups of people collaborate on and edit the same document at the same time.
So at this point you might be asking the question "Why would I need to pay Microsoft hundreds of dollars to use MS Office when Google essentially offers most of the same features for free."
Scenario: Managing your music, photographs, movies and Internet videos is a pain Solution: Use Boxee to consume all your media in a single, slick application
Computers and the Internet have revolutionized the way we consume media. Take an average laptop and you can watch full-length movies, listen to music, view and share photographs and search for video clips on YouTube.
While this is great, managing all this media can be a real pain. For most people their music lives in one place, their pictures in another and their video clips maybe online on a website.
That's where Boxee comes in by providing an incredibly slick and intuitive way to access all your digital content from within one interface. From playing music and movies on your hard drive to accessing video clips from CNN or You Tube, Boxee lets you seamlessly consume all your favorite media. It even connects directly to Netflix, so if you're a subscriber you can watch full-length movies directly in Boxee.
There's also a pretty major social aspect to Boxee too. You can add and connect with friends (just like in Facebook) and then share recommendations with your friends, as well as letting them see your recently watched movies or recently listened to songs. All very cool.
Boxee is currently in Alpha - which means that while it's available to download there still might be some minor bugs to iron out. I've been using it for over a week and apart from the occasional crash it's been very stable - but after using other desktop media applications in the past I have to say that I think Boxee is potentially onto something very, very good here.
Scenario: All your friends use different online chat services (AIM, Yahoo, MSN etc) Solution:Meebo lets your manage all your online buddies in a single place - for free!
Millions of people use online chat services to stay in touch with friends and more and more businesses are realizing the value of Instant Messaging as a way of communicating with colleagues.
But the biggest drawback with online chat is there are so many services out there. AIM, MSN, Yahoo, GTalk, Jabber, MySpace.....the list goes on and on. So if you have online buddies that use all these services you need to sign-in to multiple accounts and in some cases install multiple applications.
Meebo solves these problems in one simple stroke by allowing you to add all your friends using different chat services to one, single buddy list within Meebo. That means you can chat to Uncle Alvin on GTalk and your boss on AIM all within Meebo without having to sign-in to each service.
It's also a Web-based service, which means you can use Meebo from any computer with an internet connection and web browser - which is very, very convenient.
Check out the video above for a run-through of some of Meebo's features.
In the first installment of our Weekend Quick Hits segment, we show you how to turn your iPhone into a musical instrument with an application called Ocarina. Perfect for any budding snake charmers out there, or just a great way to confuse people when sitting in a stall of a public bathroom.
Scenario: When you listen to the radio you only hear one song in every ten that you actually like Solution:Pandora creates personalized radio stations based on your favorite songs
Everyone suffers from irrational fears of some kind. Maybe it's heights, or water, or enclosed spaces - I even knew somebody who was scared of rabbits. But for me, perhaps one of my biggest fears is being stuck on a bus for 4 hours with nothing but CD 101.9 Smooth Jazz to keep me company. Truth be told, the sound of The Commodores or whoever else sneaks onto their playlists would make me want to lay under the bus in the middle of I-78.
But that's the problem with radio. You listen to a playlist created by somebody else and you have no idea what may or may not be piped through the speakers.
Which brings us nicely onto Pandora a site that has been around a while now, but still features on my "Web essentials" list. Pandora is a Web radio service that creates personalized radio stations around your favorite artists and songs. So if you happen to be a big fan of Michael Bolton, Pandora will play a steady stream of songs that are very similar to the leather-faced loose-cannon which is great for you and horrendous for anybody sitting within 10 yards of you.
Pandora also offers a mobile version which functions in exactly the same way and there's also a whole host of social networking features to let you share your music and stations with friends and to connect with others.
Check out the video above for a walk-through of some of Pandora's basic features.
Scenario: Managing multiple bank accounts, credit cards, and investment accounts is a pain Solution: Track all your accounts from one place with Mint.com
Back in the good old days we'd shove all our money under the mattress and buy everything we owned with cash. Then the banks got wise to our deviously sensible budget strategy and decided to seduce us with low-interest loans and credit cards that would reward us with a free toasted sandwich maker for every $100,000 we spent on plastic.
This shift in landscape had two major impacts. Firstly, years of reckless lending left the world economy on the brink of collapse and the prospect of a second Great Depression in 2009. But secondly - and more importantly for me - If I carry 12 credits it generally means I have to log-in to 12 different web sites so that I can be told 12 separate times that I'm 50k in debt and don't have a pot to piss in.
That's why I've been bouncing up and down like a young spring lamb ever since Mint.com came on the scene. This web-based money management tool allows you to log-in with a single user-name and password and see all your bank accounts, credit cards, loans, and investments in a single location. You can get a complete snapshot of your financial situation, which depending on your personal circumstances could be a good or bad thing.
Each time you log-in to Mint it connects to all your accounts and downloads your latest, real-time transactions - so you'll always be up to date. In addition you can receive alerts by email or SMS text message if any of your accounts display activity, and you can even define specific budgets and have Mint automatically alert you when you've gone over your set limit.
Finally, Mint looks at all your credit cards and loans and suggests savings you can make by switching to a lower interest option. This is a great feature that will be useful for people who are prone to credit card hop to secure the 0 per cent introductory rates.
This is one of the best and most useful sites I've used for a long time and there's even an iPhone application which allows you to log-in from your phone and see your financial activity.
Check out the video walk-through above to learn about some of the great features that Mint.com offers.
Scenario: Your phone bills are WAY too expensive Solution: Cut-out the telecom companies and place calls via the Web
As somebody who has a bad habit of bestowing nicknames on everyone he meets, I try and restrain myself to only indulging in creative christening when there's a grain of truth in the actual name. Take "The Hurricane" and "Tropical Storm" for example - two friends of mine who earned their tags by the relentless way they'd burn through my girlfriend's cell phone minutes every month.
A quick conversation would turn into a two hour marathon, and suddenly we'd be looking at a 3 figure cell phone bill for the month. Who knew a discussion about the intricacies of the Gossip Girl plot could be so expensive?
We used to only carry cell-phones for emergencies or "critical" calls, but now we use them all the time for everything - and it soon adds up. But we don't have to be held hostage by the AT&Ts of this world.
Skype is a service that allows anybody to make phone calls using their Internet connection to anywhere in the world for free (or for very cheap). Calls to other Skype users cost nothing, whereas calls to regular landlines or cell phones are very, very inexpensive. Skype's been around for a while but it's one of those applications that I think is really undervalued. The call quality is great, the service is very reliable and more importantly for around 10 bucks a month you can spend hundreds of hours on the phone with anyone, anywhere and at any time. There are no extra fees, no extra taxes and no strings - it really is that simple.
As you can probably tell I'm a huge fan of this service and I use it regularly to make all my international and long-distance calls. While I love my iPhone, I use it primarily for connecting online and try and make as many calls as possible through Skype.
Check out the video above for a quick run-through of some of Skype's features - and if you haven't tried it yet it's well worth a look.
Scenario: You want an easier way to manage your Facebook friends Solution: Flock - The Social Browser
No matter how screwed the economy might be, there's one sure-fire truth that never ceases to amaze me - humans are incredible at finding new ways to avoid work.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s there was the "cigarette break" which guaranteed workers at least 30 minutes of extra down time a day. In the UK (my country of origin) there was the "tea break", during which tea was rarely consumed and instead people would simply vanish for an undefined period of time.
Now with the invention of e-commerce and more recently Facebook, technological innovation has given people one of the greatest time wasting vehicles in the history of the world. The economy may be in crisis, but you can bet your ass that millions of people are still wasting at least two hours a day jabbering away to their friends or updating their Facebook status.
But as our obsession with Facebook grows and as our number of friends increases, managing our account can be a bind. But not to worry my fellow time wasters, because the Web browser Flock offers a series of unique and time saving ways to manage your online social life.
Check out the video above to find out how Flock puts the fun back into Facebook!
I'll be posting a part two to this Flock tutorial in the coming days that will showcase how it integrates other services such as Twitter, Flickr and YouTube.
Scenario: You can't fit all your music/photos onto your phone. Solution: Simplify Media, www.simplifymedia.com
While the iPhone is enough to make any self-respecting gadget freak moisten with excitement, one of the limitations is the amount of storage space on the device.
The iPhone comes in two sizes - 8GB and 16Gb - with the latter holding around 4,000 songs. That's ample for many people, but if like me you have an endless supply of horrendously bad soft-rock tunes you could find yourself in a situation where you can't fit all your music onto your phone.
And what about your friends' music? Sure, some of them are probably mildly retarded and have shockingly bad taste, but wouldn't it be nice if you could at least check out and share some of the music they're listening to?
Well your pop-picking prayers may be answered - at least partially - with Simplify Media - a new application that lets you access all your music at home - and your friends' music - remotely on your iPhone. Check out the video above for a run through.....
Scenario: Receiving a crap load of retail catalogs. Solution: Catalog Choice, Catalogchoice.org
I don't know about you, but I get tons and tons of unwanted catalogs on a weekly basis.
I'm pretty sure it's because of my magazine subscriptions, but I get the most irrelevant mail order catalogs in the world. I've been meaning to call every single one to ask to be removed from the list - but of course I haven't gotten around to it yet.
Look what I found (via Real Simple)...
Catalogchoice.org helps you unsubscribe in seconds. You basically enter in your details, choose from a list of magazines and voila - they'll contact the culprits for you. Unfortunately it will take some time (10 weeks) to see the results, but hey I'll give it a shot. And the best part? If you continue receiving a catalog, even after you've declined - you can go back to the site and report the infraction and they'll follow up with the merchant.
Just to rub salt into the wound the Google version - Google Docs - is Web based which means not only does Google store all your documents for you, but you can also access them from any computer connected to the Internet. But those young upstarts at Google weren't finished yet - not only did they make sure that you could open and save documents in all the popular MS Office formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt) but they also built a very cool sharing feature which lets groups of people collaborate on and edit the same document at the same time.
Pandora also offers a mobile version which functions in exactly the same way and there's also a whole host of social networking features to let you share your music and stations with friends and to connect with others.
This is one of the best and most useful sites I've used for a long time and there's even an iPhone application which allows you to log-in from your phone and see your financial activity.
But as our obsession with Facebook grows and as our number of friends increases, managing our account can be a bind. But not to worry my fellow time wasters, because the Web browser Flock offers a series of unique and time saving ways to manage your online social life.
And what about your friends' music? Sure, some of them are probably mildly retarded and have shockingly bad taste, but wouldn't it be nice if you could at least check out and share some of the music they're listening to?
