SmartMouse

Wow!... haven't posted anything in a while. I've been busy building my new company, SmartMouse (smart-mouse.com). We specialize in in-home computer and technology training. Eventually I'd like to grow the company into a "one-stop technology support solution" for individuals and businesses. Not sure what that will consist of yet, but we're working on it.

Google adds Orlando to Street View

Google Street View is a feature of Google Maps that allows you to actually navigate the map from a driver's point of view. It's been generating a little controversy, but is nonetheless quite cool!

Unfortunately, only larger cities (New York City, San Francisco, etc.) utilize the Street View feature, so you may not be able to use it in your particular location.

Anyway, I'm excited because my current place of residence, Orlando, FL, has been added! Check it out here.

Community website for working mothers

Here's a pretty cool community website dedicated to working mothers. It's called "Work It, Mom!"

"Our mission is to connect and empower professional moms to thrive in every aspect of their careers, family, and personal lives."

The website sports some nice features: Community forums, member-contributed articles, questions & answers, groups, interviews, news, and blogs.

The community is pretty small right now, but Work It, Mom! has great potential with its arsenal of useful features and great site design.

<3 you mom!

Pownce

DownloadSquad wrote a great review yesterday of Pownce, Kevin Rose's (digg.com co-founder) newest web startup. It's basically a social community website that also allows you to send large files (up to 10mb, 100mb if you pay for a $20/year "Pro" account) to another Pownce user.

This website isn't anything groundbreaking, but I think it has some potential. Love the site design! It's extremely fast, with a slick interface powered by lots of Ajax. Another thing that makes Pownce stand out from the rest is that it allows you to download a lightweight program to post messages, so you don't have to go to Pownce.com.

My username is twalden if you'd like to chat! :P

Podcasts

Apple iTunes makes finding podcasts pretty darn easy, but if iTunes isn't an option for you, check out the following websites (the ones in bold are my favorites):

podcastpickle.com
libsyn.com
podshow.com
odeo.com
podcastalley.com
podcastingnews.com
podcast.net
podcasts.yahoo.com
indiepodder.org
podcastbunker.com

Apple's new website / Leopard's new features

Apple's newest operating system is called OS X "Leopard" and will be released in October. Their website design was updated today for Apple's World Wide Developers Conference - Check it out.

Check out the cool new features in Leopard!

Search multiple search engines

I read an article today about a website called Sputtr.

You can use it to search multiple search engines/websites from one location.

Here are some of the sites you can search: Google, Youtube, MySpace, Yahoo, eBay, MSN, Ask, Delicious, Digg, Technorati, Reddit, Stumbleupon, iFilm, Dailymotion, Metacafe, Flickr, deviantART, Last.fm, Cnet, Slashdot, Twitter, Amazon, Wikipedia, Dictionary, IMDb

I personally use Firefox's multiple engine search box, but this is cool if you don't have that option.

iStalkr

iStalkr is a "social feed aggregator" that tracks all the RSS/Atom feeds from a person's "social" services like Del.icio.us, Last.fm, and Flickr.

Here's an example of one in action.

Kinda scary eh? I guess that's why they call it iStalkr :)

Customizable start pages

Customized start pages are sweet!

They allow you to combine all the things you do on the internet (email, news, podcasts, weather, etc. etc. etc.) together into one page. You can then set this as your home page so it displays automatically every time you open your web browser.

Here's a list of the most popular customizable start page sites:

iGoogle
Netvibes
Protopage
Pageflakes

We all know everything Google creates is, for the most part, good quality stuff. iGoogle continues the trend. Quick and well integrated into the "google interface" with a large variety of "gadget" widgets to play with. But there are widgets I find highly useful that are not available in iGoogle, so I don't use this one.

Out of this list I've been using Netvibes the most because it's extremely customizable, more than others, and offers a ton of "module" widgets. The only problem I've found is that it can feel a little "bloated" and kind of slow at times. I hate waiting for things so I might ditch these guys.

Protopage seems pretty cool but it lacks many features found in other home page sites. The interface is very simple and easy to use, but.. a little TOO simple maybe? And I don't like the process you must go through to add a page.

I'm keeping a close eye on Pageflakes. It looks very promising with a nice solid interface and fast loading times. So because I'm impressed with this site I'm going to criticize the heck out of it :P

Some problems/issues I see:

1. To delete or change the settings of a page I have to click the "share" button next to the page's title. It then gives me options pertaining to that page. Get rid of the "share" button and turn it in to a little options icon of some sort. It's not JUST a share button!

2. Pageflakes calls their widgets "flakes". To add a flake click the "add flake" button at the top of the site. The flakes gallery expands down horizontally - SWEET! Very fast and easy to use. What I don't like is all the space being taken up at the bottom of the page by their navigational links. Condense all that stuff into a smaller section or something.. takes up WAY too much precious vertical space.

3. Oh and I'm personally not a fan of colorful interfaces. I use the slate gray theme on Mac OSX so I like to have my web applications match. Can you guys offer us more color (or lack thereof) theme options for the the header bar? Gray, black, off white, etc.

Ok enough of that. Pageflakes is a great website that makes me seriously want to leave my modules for some tasty flakes! I need to explore Pageflakes more but they seem to be offering some cool and useful widgets that are extremely well designed.

This wasn't really an article to find the best customizable start page, but here's my opinion:

If you're a Google fanboy and use their other services it would seem logical to use iGoogle. It's integrated perfectly, just don't expect to find EVERYTHING you're looking for widget-wise.

Netvibes is the grandfather of this list, so they have had time to perfect and refine what they offer. At times I just think they offer a little too much. Definitely looking for someone else to use.

Protopage looks promising but they have a lot of work to do. Don't use them.. yet.

If I had to pick one that I thought could replace my dependency on Netvibes, I'd go with Pageflakes. They have the right idea when it comes to interface design and features (with the exceptions mentioned above, fix them!).

Keep up the good work everybody.

Beer and cats

I like beer and I like cats.

Do you?

Check out Chug'd! It's a community website for social beer drinkers who enjoy discussing beer. My personal favorite is Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

Sign up your feline at Catster! It's a MySpace for cats. My sphynx cat Stetson is a member (outdated photos of him, sorry!).

Online Bibliography Maker

Check out this website. It's called "bibMe" and it's an online bibliography maker. You should recommend this site to students who come to your library to work on research papers. I've personally used this to create the "work cited" sections on my papers. You can even specify a format! (MLA, APA, etc.)

www.bibme.org

Social Bookmarking - Top 20

I love saving my favorite website links on the internet as opposed to my "favorites" in my browser because I can access them from anywhere in the world, plus they are available for anyone else to view (with my permission of course). This website lists the top 20 "social bookmarking" websites ranked by popularity:

www.ebizmba.com/articles/socialbookmarking-websites.html

I personally use del.icio.us to organize my bookmarks.