Computer and Web Articles

I don’t remember how I came across Energy Fiend, but I do remember immediately thinking, “Boy do I know a few people who would LOVE this site.”

The caffeine and sugar-obsessed will find Energy Fiend filled with helpful and interesting information. Calculate your daily caffeine intake. Compare the amounts of sugar contained in your three favorite desserts. Read the latest in caffeine news (did you know that Jolt Cola now has almost twice as much caffeine as before?! Holy cow.) Scroll through the foods, drinks and gums in the “300 Ways to Get Caffeinated” list.”

Stay awake and have fun. Visit www.energyfiend.com to learn more.

Ahhh! I’ve been waiting for a tool like this to come along — and it’s finally here. You’ll likely share my excitement if you, too, have ever bookmarked a webpage only to return to it and have no clue as to why you bookmarked the page in the first place.

MyStickies (www.mystickies.com) allows you to “place little yellow squares of digital paper anywhere and everywhere you feel like in the whole wide web.” In other words, you actually get to put your very own post-it notes on web pages you visit.

When you return to those pages in the future, those post-its will be sitting right where you left them, reminding you of important things you’d noted — like exactly which text on the page was important to you and why, who you’d wanted to share the page with, or which vacation had looked the most appealing to you.

I’ve never used TelePixie (www.telepixie.com) before, but I’ve placed it on my mental list of “remember-just-in-case-I-need-it-someday” websites.

Though TelePixie offers a variety of phone-related services, it was the free wake-up call service caught my eye; it’s pretty much a given that at some point I’ll find myself without an alarm clock of any sort just when I need it most.

And yes indeed, Telepixie is totally free.

www.SimplyAudiobooks.com allows you to download and listen to audio books to your computer, burn them to CDs, sync them to your iPod, listen to them on your smart phone, or rent audio book CDs.

Just like Netflix, this site offers a rental club that lets you receive a specific number of audio books at a time (depending on which plan you choose) with free shipping both ways and no late fees or due dates. The site also offers a Download Club where you can pay a monthly fee and download a specific number of audio books each month.

A download help center and excellent customer support ensure that any problems you run into with your audio books are resolved quickly and painlessly.

Unfortunately, due to licensing agreements, their audio books can’t be downloaded to directly to Apple Computers or iPods — but cheer up Mac users; you still participate in the rental program.

I’m going to take a wild guess and say that, at one point or another, you’ve experienced this issue: e-mails coming in from friends, family and business associates are treated as junk mail.

If you’re using Outlook 2007, all you need to do to ensure that this doesn’t happen in the future is to add the e-mail addresses of trusted senders to your Safe Senders List. E-mails from senders on this list will never be treated as spam.

Oh! And here’s a great Outlook 2007 Safe Senders List trick: Click on Actions, choose Junk E-mail, choose Junk E-mail Options, then choose the Safe Senders tab. Look down toward the bottom. See the option that reads “Automatically add people I e-mail to the Safe Senders List”? Check it!

Now you can rest assured that all the friends, family and business contacts you e-mail will never have the e-mails they send to you treated as spam.

1) Leafletter (http://www.leafletter.com): According to the developers of Leafletter, their website is “the revolutionary way” for people to create portable, interactive mini-sites using nothing other than a good ol’ web browser. (That would mean Internet Explorer or Firefox or AOL for those of you who aren’t quite sure as to what a web browser is.)

2) FuelEconomy.gov (www.fueleconomy.gov): Find information on gas prices, gas mileage tips and air pollution ratings. Read about the new fuel economy ratings, alternative fuel vehicles, hybrid vehicles, and energy efficiency. Learn why fuel economy is important and how to find your car’s energy impact score. Compare vehicles side-by-side and conduct searches by car class when you’re looking to purchase a new car. Go!

3) Caring Consumer (http://www.caringconsumer.com): This site acts as a helpful guide for consumers interested in purchasing cruelty-free products in order to keep thousands of animals from being poisoned, blinded, tortured and killed each year. Caring consumer explains how to support cruelty-free companies and charities, provides information on choosing cruelty-free investments, and offers articles and resources focused on cruelty-free consumer products.

It’s quite easy to get stuck in the routine of visiting the same six or seven (or 40) websites every day. But the web offers so much more; it’s such a shame to have an internet connection and not make good use of it!

Whatever your goals in life — whether personal, financial, physical or work-related — the web can help you along your path. Every day, intelligent people dish out expertise for free, so make sure to take advantage of others’ generosity, loquacity and wisdom!

Here are a few examples of blogs offering regularly-updated, interesting, helpful information:

• If you’re looking to strengthen your financial savvy, consider keeping up on the www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com blog.
• If you’re finally planning to organize and de-clutter your work or home environment, try following the blog at www.unclutterer.com.
• Looking for tips on how to keep stress at bay every day? Try thewww.zenhabits.com blog.
• Wish you could improve the quality of your company’s marketing? Seth Godin’s blog (http://sethgodin.typepad.com) is heavily-bookmarked by people just like yourself.
• If you’re planning on remodeling but feel indecisive as to the direction you’d like to pursue, make sure to check the http://www.desiretoinspire.com on a regular basis; at some point you’re bound to come across photos that strike your fancy.

And so on. The opportunities are endless. Go make the most of them.

If you’ve upgraded to Internet Explorer 7 and have found that the changes in your browser (button positioning, etc.) to be frustrating or time-wasting (or both), have a look at the this article by Sandy Berger.

Sandy shares a number of great tips and tricks on making the new version of Internet Explorer work for you, instead of having to work in order to use Internet Explorer. Here’s the link: http://tinyurl.com/2jclza

Site #1: Though the site may be a bit too purple for your liking and though some of the content may be a bit outdated, the ideas page at KindActs (which lists over 120 different ways to be kind) is definitely worthy of a bookmark. Take a look here: http://tinyurl.com/244u55.

Site #2: Surprise.com was recommended to me by a friend when she learned of my concern regarding not being able to find a nice gift for a certain relative of mine who has everything she needs (and more). It’s a good resource to check out and offers plenty of gift suggestions for most major occasions. www.surprise.com

Site #3: As more businesses feel the need to have even a basic website these days, many business owners find themselves required to write the content that ends up being displayed on those websites.

Writing website content sounds like a straightforward task, but there’s definitely more to it than meets the eye; if a business owner is hoping to have an effective website, for example, he can’t simply dump the text from his business brochure onto the homepage of his new site.

If you’d like to educate yourself a bit on what makes successful copy on the web, try this link for the absolute basics: http://tinyurl.com/yszkzt, and this link if you’re looking for something a touch more advanced or if you’re ready to have your copy actually do a small bit of legwork for you: http://tinyurl.com/8ldkm.