Abe Books

My friend Alan told me about Abe Books a couple of years ago. I was looking for a book that was out of print. Occasionally, this book would come up on eBay, but then I would lose the bid.

Searching for this same book on Abe Books gave me 3 different choices. I was able to compare quality, pricing, and so-on. It worked very well.

So, if you want to buy or sell a book that might be old, rare, out of print, or even new, you should do a search over at Abe Books.

The Oscars

OK, this post doesn't necessarily fit in with the other web site/software posts that I've done so far. But, it's Oscar night, and we all like movies.

I'm not going to review a bunch of movies for you in this blog. Please visit my friend Jennifer's blog for something like that, at JenFlick.com.

Here is the list of movies that I've seen, that are up for an Oscar (no particular order):

Finding Neverland
The Aviator
Million Dollar Baby
Ray
Sideways
Collateral
The Incredibles
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
The Passion of the Christ
The Story of the Weeping Camel
Gopher Broke
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
I, Robot

Like I said, I'm not going to review each of them. But I liked all of these, and I recommend them all.

Google Language Tools

Occasionally, I get an e-mail message from someone in another language, or I stumble onto a web site that I can't read, because of the language. When this happens, I turn to Google Language Tools.

The Google Language Tools web page attempts to automatically translate between several European languages, with recent asian languages that are currently in Beta. You can easily translate a phrase or series of sentences, or you can translate an entire web site.

So, the next time you don't understand something you read, try Google Language Tools. It's not perfect, but it's free and it's pretty darn close...

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia. The Wiki part of the name comes from a term used for a web sites where the users of the web page can add content to that web site. Therefore, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, where the entire user base of the internet can add content.

This is one of those great web sites, an accomplishment that is created out of the collected whole. Recently, Google has offered to host this site on their servers for free -- no strings attached (meaning, no ads). One more reason why I like Google...

Wikipedia has a lot of advantages over a traditional encyclopedia, in that it is much more current. You are likely to find information there about words that are jargon in nature. Actually, the word encyclopedia may be putting you off, thinking of that row of books on the book shelf that nobody uses.

Wikipedia is a really fun web site, full of all kinds of useful tidbits of information. Go take a look. If you really like it, give them a donation. It’s a free site, but servers still cost money.

SmartSync Pro

These days, hard disks are cheap. So I came upon this little Windows utility that makes backing up my important data easy and automatic. It's called SmartSync Pro.

In my situation, I simply purchased an external hard disk that connects to my Windows laptop via Firewire (or i.Link, in Sony-talk). This software should work with any Zip, Jaz, or external hard disk that you want, hooked up any way that you want. I think it even works with network drives and so-on as well.

The concept is pretty simple, it just copies the files from My Documents or any other folder locations that you designate to this other drive. And it does this when Windows is booting up, or shutting down, or other designated times like each day, or once per hour, etc. It compares the files, to see if they have changed, and if they have, it copies them on over.

This is one of those programs that I really like, because I don't really have to interface with it. After configuration, it just runs. It does it's job, over and over again.

Nobody really wants to back up a hard drive, so get a piece of software that does it for you, automatically.

Skype

Do you like to call friends and family, who live a long way away? Maybe these friends and family members have broadband internet access? And you have broadband too? Then you should definitely take a look at Skype.

Skype uses something called VOIP, which stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol. Basically, it's a way to transmit your voice over the internet. There are quite a few examples of VOIP showing up these days, but Skype is something special.

You see, if you have the Skype software, and your friend(s) have it also, then you can call and talk to each other -- for FREE. Yes, that's right. Sort of like e-mail or chat, you can actually have a regular telephone conversation for FREE.

The software is pretty cool, and is available in Windows, Mac, Linux, and even Pocket PC. In addition to voice, you can also instant message or send files back and forth pretty easily. It can break up or crackle occasionally, but it's not any worse than a mobile phone. I find it a little disconcerting to talk to my computer screen though, sort of like doing a hands-free with a regular phone. So, if I were going to use it very often, I would probably buy a phone handset to plug into my computer.

So, if you have broadband, and your friends and family have broadband, get Skype and then tell all of them about it!

Gizmodo

Thinking about buying a new gadget? Maybe a new cell phone, PDA, or MP3 player? Then you might want to check out Gizmodo.com.

Gizmodo is "The Gadgets Web Log". For me, it was very helpful in trying to decide which cell phone to purchase, based on my needs and wishes. Of course, I'm still not sure if I made the right choice, but the web log did help me weed out certain devices. This web log has a lot of pictures, and some occasional cursing, but it's definitely a fun read, and a good place to research things. Sometimes, the gadgets are available in Japan only or something, but it's still good to read about these things.

Caution: This web site can be addicting, if you love gadgets...

A9.com

Amazon.com started a division a few years ago, and developed something called A9.com. It's sort of a search tool, but it actually uses Google for it's web and image searching.

For me, A9.com is great for keeping my bookmarks and history in one place, even though I might be using different computers. By using A9.com on a regular basis, I can switch from my home computer, work computer, or even a public computer at an internet cafe -- and have full access to my bookmarks and search history.

The Amazon.com part of it is the quick ability to search through books and movies. So, if you tend to search for items like this anyway, you can search the web, images, books, etc. all at once, showing multiple search hits from each source.

I like A9.com quite a lot, and they have a really nice toolbar for Firefox, if you use that browser. Occasionally, I get an error message on a search, something about "page can not be shown" or something. This surprises me, in that it seems to be a lack of power on the server side of thing, something I assume Amazon.com knows quite a bit about. In other words, it seems like they don't have quite enough server power, although it may have something to do with their Google interface, I don't know.

The down side to A9.com is that you need to log into Amazon.com, and now the biggest online retailer will also have your bookmarks and search history. I don't worry about this too much, as Amazon.com already knows a lot about the books, music, and movies that I like to buy. I just have to trust that they never do anything "evil" with that data.

Give A9.com a try, to see for yourself. I think this kind of functionality will eventually be in Google and other search sites, so it's good to look at what Amazon.com is doing. And, it's even nicer with the Firefox toolbar.

Google Maps

The folks over at Google Labs keep cranking out new things, and one of the latest is Google Maps. I tend to use a Mac for browsing the internet, and I tend to use the Safari browser. So, the first thing that disappointed me about Google Maps was the lack of Safari support. This happened with gMail when it first came out also, so I'm not exactly sure why Safari is so different. Anyway, Google Maps currently works in IE 5.5+, Firefox 0.8+, Netscape 7.1+, and Mozilla 1.4+. Safari support is being worked on. Maybe Steve Jobs needs to give Google a call about this...

It's a good thing that I have Firefox on my Mac, in addition to Safari. (IE on the Mac is no longer an active Microsoft project)

Google Maps has a very good visual feel to it. It's snappy, responsive, and seems to be quite a bit better than Mapquest, both visually and architecturally. However, I've found a couple of problems very quickly.

I grew up in a very small town of 400 people, called Hubbardston, so I always figure that it's a good map test. When I buy a road atlas, I look to make sure that Hubbardston is on the map. If not, I don't buy it. Google Maps shows the streets, and one cemetery, but not the river that runs through town. It shows other nearby bodies of water, but not Fish Creek. There are actually 3 cemeteries, rather than one. Who cares, right? I mean, we're driving cars here, and we're probably not trying to find a cemetery as part of our destination. When I searched for Hubbardston businesses, Google Maps came up with a very nice list, complete with phone numbers and little bubble arrows. The arrows were off at times. Many of the business addresses came from Hubbardston.org, which happens to be a web site that I manage. So, that seems to work pretty good.

Another test was driving directions to Houghton, Michigan. I went to college at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, and I drove up there last weekend for Winter Carnival. I know the fastest way to get there, yet the directions given to me by Google Maps would have added at least one hour to the 8-9 hour journey. The directions chose freeways over divided highways, ignoring the more direct route.

My conclusion? Google Maps is in beta, and holds real promise at being the best mapping interface on the internet. But, where other Google products are also in beta, I think that Google Maps is really in beta. I wouldn't trust it -- yet. But, I think it's worth looking at, in addition to Mapquest or Yahoo Maps for verification.

Apple iTunes

I've noticed, while talking to friends lately, that there is an assumption that iTunes is only used with an iPod.

This is not true.

If you don't have an iPod yet, you should get iTunes anyway. iTunes comes with a Mac, but you can download it for Windows too. Why would you do that?

Because, eventually you're going to get an iPod. And the first thing you're going to want to do, is load up all of your existing CDs on it. But, this can be a long process. It might take days or weeks to load in every CD. But it's all done with iTunes.

Using iTunes, on a computer that is connected to the internet, you can rip the CD music to MP3 files and iTunes will then grab the song titles, album title, genre, etc. from the internet. You can build playlists and listen to music on your computer, right from iTunes. You can make your own CD from iTunes as well.

But, one of the coolest things that I do, in my home, is use iTunes with the Airport Express. You'll need Wi-Fi on your computer, but then you can play the music through the Wi-Fi to the Airport Express. And you can hook in your favorite stereo system to the Airport Express. So now you can play a huge playlist, or shuffle through your music, or whatever you want. And play it through your stereo system, rather than your little computer speakers.

iTunes is free. Loading music takes some time. But, when it's done, you can look into an Airport Express or an iPod, and get some immediate gratification.

Picasa 2

Google bought this company Picasa a while ago, and I didn't really understand why. How does it fit in with online search? I didn't really get it.

But now, they have version 2 of the Picasa software available, and it's free. Picasa is a program to help you organize your photos. Or maybe images is a more correct term. I've used iPhoto on the iMac for doing this kind of thing, but I think that Picasa is the right product for the Windows user. Adobe has a product called Photoshop Album, for Windows, but it's about fifty bucks.

Click on the link above to find out everything Picasa can do. If you're not managing your photos with some kind of software, and you have Windows, I think it's worth a download to take a look at it.

Oh yeah, back to how it fits in with search. Picasa will search your local hard drives for all images, and then you can easily scan through your images to be able to find them. So, it's the search thing, for images on your hard disk.

And it's by Google, one of my favorite companies...

Firefox Browser

Please click on the link to find out what Firefox does, how to download it, etc.

I'm here to tell you that you should download it. We've been using it for quite a while, and now that it is at version 1.0, and not in beta, I'm telling everyone else to try it out as well.

My company provides desktop security software, so we are always talking with customers about how to improve the security to their computer.

Firefox is one way to do this, for anyone who browses the internet.

You will like it.

Welcome to ePortal!

Welcome to my brand new blog! I'm the President/Founder of a little software company called Visual Automation. We have a company blog over there at http://www.visualautomation.com/weblog/

This blog will be more general. I might talk about Visual Automation stuff, but I'll also talk about other things as well.

What kinds of things? I'm kind of curious about that as well...