Here’s a Web site you’ll thank me for. Radio Handi. It’s a free service that allows up to 20 people to talk together free, using landline or Internet telephones. You get a six digit code and a local phone number. Friends cand family numbers call that number, punch in the code and are connected. They call it “The Party Line for the Planet.”
Now you can get your own administrative assistant - virtually. She’s called EVA - for Electronic Virtual Assistant - and it’s an online service that claims to blend digital recordkeeping with the intuition and know-how of a live person to run your life. With a starting price of $69 per month, users can have a US-based assistant available to them around the clock to help with personalized data storage and retrieval, sending e-mail on their behalf, scheduling meetings and reminders, filling out sales reports and keeping real-time to-do lists - all completed while away from an office or computer.
Call it the MySpace for sports nuts. A new Web site called PicksPal.com is a virtual gathering place for sports fans to prove who really knows their sports. Among other things, it runs a national contest for sports fans to compete in a weekly game, earning points by picking real events based on real odds. The site describes itself as “a competitive outlet for fans who want real bragging rights over their friends.”
My NBC-TV "High Tech Talk" report this week looks at the gasbuddy.com Website, which tells us how to find the service stations with the cheapest gas almost anywhere in the country.
Had it with those $3-a-gallon gas prices? My NBC-TV High Tech Talk segment this week looks at a Web site that will tell you everything you wanted to know about hybrids and even how much you can save in fuel costs over your present ride.
I decided to try out the new movie downloading service that lets you buy current releases. It can be a rather time consuming process. Click the arrow in the box below to see the video…
Web sites that try to suck you into making them your home page have been around for years and I’ve never found one compelling enough to cause me to even consider their offer. Except for a new one I found over the weekend. It has no ads, offers total customization and, for now, anyway, has caused me to hit the tools/options settings in my browser and make it my start page. Try it. You may, too. Link: Protopage offers RSS news feeds, sticky notes and bookmarks It works with both Macs and Windows browers.
Flash… starting around 2 pm ET Christmas Eve, Google earth will track Santa’s journey.
As the folks at the North American Air Defense Command have been doing since 1958 (before the Internet, even), all systems are now go to detect the entry of Santa and his sleigh into U.S. air space Saturday night on his annual Christmas Eve journey. If you haven’t taken your kids to the Santa Tracker site, do so this year. NORAD Tracks Santa 2005.
Meanwhile, for some other fun Christmas stuff you can do with your computer, check out my weekly NBC-TV High Tech Talk segment this week. It’s about sharing Christmas photos, downloading holiday screensavers and finding kid-friendly online Christmas fun.
Think of them as e-mail time capsules. There’s now a bunch of Web Sites That Let Users Send E-Mail to Future. Some like FutureMe.org will go out in a couple of years, reminding recipients what their aspirations were today and how their life was going in 2005. Others like myLastEmail.com or LastWishes.com promise to send messages to loved ones after you die. How the services will be able to send to the then-current e-mail addresses of the future isnt quite clear. But it’s a neat idea, I guess.
One of the reasona Firefox is such a popular Web browser is because it allows you to add all sorts of extra capabilities through mini programs called extensions. The folks at Techtree have put together a handy guide. Extending Firefox.
A Web site called HomePages takes high-resolution aerial photography and applies it to finding homes and businesses. Check our your neighborood by entering your address. If Google’s Earthmap impresses you, wait till you see this. The site is aimed at home buyers but, right now at least, it’s open for a sneak peak. They’ll be announcing this site at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month but you can check it out now.