Friday, May 4, 2007

Microsoft and Yahoo to unite?

This is the most interesting news I've heard in awhile regarding two heavies with merger talks in the works. On CNN.com, the headline reads "MSN-Yahoo: Watch out Google." While I adore Google and love what the company has done to the internet, I miss seeing true competition and all the good ideas and progress that come from it. Even if the merger does happen, MSN-Yahoo still has to do a lot of work to catch up, but this piece of news has everyone buzzing with excitement and Yahoo's stock through the roof.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Like da fonts?

If you are a font fanatic like me, you will love this site : Dafont.com. My dream come true - tons of free, no strings-attached fonts that you can easily download with a couple clicks - no account or personal info needed. There are so many user-submitted fonts here which are all organized under categories such as old school, gothic, medieval and retro. Type you favorite word or idea into the search engine and I bet you'll be surprised that there is a font for it :)

Monday, April 9, 2007

Easy auctions

I've been looking for an easy way to list eBay auctions for a long time and have tried many different freeware/shareware programs, but never found one that I really liked. While I might be the last one to figure this out, I finally found Auctiva. There's no downloading required with this one because it's all online in one easy, user-friendly Web site.

Auctiva lets you create listings for free and even posts them to eBay for you. The site offers tons of cool templates to make the listing look more professional and eye-catching and offers tons of customizable options that can be saved to a user profile so you can apply them easily to any of your auction listings. I still haven't found a catch to it being free, however maybe if you dive deeper into the features and want additional usability and even more options, there might be fees involved. For now, it is definitely the solution I have been looking for and has already helped me sell several items within the past week.

Monday, April 2, 2007

Band in a box

I knew the day would come when the console gaming world would combine Guitar Hero and Karaoke Revolution to make the ultimate singing/performing gaming experience. I just read an article on Gamespot that reveals a partnership between Electronic Arts and Harmonix for a PS3/XBox 360 game called Rock Band that will allow users to essentially live out their big rockstar wannabe dreams.

"It's essentially taking the core play premise of Guitar Hero but just expanding it hugely along every axis. We're building it out into a complete band experience, with guitar and bass and drums and singing, including very deep and expansive online game play. Huge recording artists are going to be in the game, including original multitrack master recordings in a lot of cases, which has been amazing." How wicked is this going to be?!

Monday, March 26, 2007

Shoes glorious shoes

I am sure many of you have heard of THE place to order shoes on the net, but if not, here is a tip for you - go to Zappos. Any shoe in any style, size or brand you will most definitely find here. Overnight shipping is almost always free - which is totally awesome. But the best thing about Zappos.com is their customer service (sounding like a commercial here I know). But I have to say I was very impressed with how they handled a recent complaint of ours. I ordered my fiance a pair of shoes and within a week, the seams opened and they were falling apart. I told him to call Zappos so they could send him a new pair. Not only did they overnight him a new pair, but they also gave him a slight refund because the price of these shoes had dropped by a few bucks. While Zappos prices aren't as much of a steal as they used to be, they are a wonderful online retailer to do business with.

Monday, March 19, 2007

A movie lover's friend

I love going to the movie theater - nothing beats a bag of yummy, buttery popcorn, a large diet coke and a great flick. However, these days I am a little more reluctant to go see a movie based on its trailer or what the local newspaper said. There is one source on the internet that I completely trust to give me the real scoop when it comes to motion pictures, Rotten Tomatoes. The site rates each film from 1-100, with a score of 50+ being "fresh" and a score of less than 50 being "rotten." The site compiles reviews from all over the country and averages them into this overall score. I enjoy reading snippets of the reviews and have found that the site is dead on accurate. If a movie I've been wanting to see scores a 34, but I just had to see it anyways - I always regret not listening to the Tomato.

Monday, March 5, 2007

Kayak.com

As an addendum to my last post about mobissimo.com, another fantastic site that scours tons of travel sites for best airfares is Kayak.com. You might have better luck with this one because it uses a different search algorithm to get its results.

I just booked my two-week honeymoon trip to Rome, Italy for get this, $600 roundtrip per person leaving out of NYC. That's pretty much unheard of for summer travel to Italy :)

Monday, February 26, 2007

The ultimate airfare search engine

If you are like me, when you are getting ready to book a flight online, you just don't pick your favorite airline and book the tickets - you comparison shop. Well this process is not only incredibly tedious, but completely ineffective. I say this now because I have finally found a great web site and resource for searching for the lowest airfare - domestic or international.

Mobissimo.com scours 173 sites directly for the dates and specifications you are looking for in a flight. They look at all the major airlines, travel agent sites, you name it. If you only want a non-stop flight, you can specify that, you can look for just a one-way fare or trips with multiple stops. This site really is ingenious and works. What's funny now is that airlines now usually offer their lowest rates directly on their web site, taking out middle men like Orbitz.com and Travelocity.com.

Besides an airfare search, you can also do the same for hotels and rental cars. I suggest you add this one to your bookmarks because it will win you over the first time it helps you save $100+ on tickets :)

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Linking in




Finally, a MySpace for professionals. LinkedIn is a great networking tool for all of us getting ready to finally leave school and make a real paycheck. I first heard about this site during a marketing seminar I recently attended and it appears this site draws many professionals from the communications and public relations industries.

LinkedIn is much more discriminating than MySpace in that you won't find any 12 year-old Justin Timberlake fans or annoying spammers here. In order to link to another colleague, you not only have to get their permission, but also have to input their email address even before the invitation is sent to them. I found this a tad frustrating at first since I don't keep everyone's emails at hand, but now that I think about it - think it's a nice safeguard and effective way to keep the site legit and truly professional.

The real benefit is that once you start linking to others, you increase your network- reminiscent of the whole six degrees of Kevin Bacon. It's a very interesting concept, and free for the basic, no frills membership. I think it's pretty cool to see which people your people know through their people :)

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Free Music For All (at least those with a .edu email)

Sure iTunes is great, but why not get music for free legally? I have found the digital music jackpot in a site called Ruckus. All of you reading this should be eligible to start downloading now because you meet the single requirement, having a valid .edu email address.

With access to over 2.1 million songs (and we are talking from the newest to rare, rare finds) and blazing download speeds, Ruckus is a gem. Of course, there are a couple caveats. One is that you have to download the Ruckus player to your computer. There are some banner ads on the bottom, but nothing too intrusive. Mac compatibility is an issue as well, you would need to be able to run Windows Boot Camp on your Mac to get around this. And the last disclaimer, all of the songs are under DRM (digital rights management). This means that you can't do much with the songs except listen to them on your computer via the Ruckus player or Windows Media Player.

Despite these hangups, this service is excellent, speedy and reliable. I have found some songs I've been looking for forever, so I thought some of you might like to give it a try.

Sunday, February 4, 2007

To Do's

I wanted to share a very cool site I found this weekend as I was struggling to keep my "To Do's" in order for my upcoming wedding in May. Ta-da Lists is a free service that keeps track of any and all of your to do lists on one of their servers. All you have to do is take a minute to make an account and then you can start creating a list in no time.


What's even cooler is that you can share the list with anyone you want and give them access to edit it. This was perfect for me because I could share my wedding to do's with my fiance and Mom to let them know what I needed help with. Anyways - it's a great little site and best of all, free.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Vista-ctomy



A new Apple commercial commemorating the release of Windows Vista today - I couldn't resist putting it up after my last post :)

Monday, January 29, 2007

And the crashing begins!


Tomorrow is a big day for Bill Gates and everyone at Microsoft. The new Windows operating system, Vista, officially launches after five years of production. I was able to mess around with a beta of Vista and was indeed wowed by the new, sharp graphical interface and simplified menus and navigation. However, whether it was common beta issues or not, I've never experienced more crashing and blue screens in my life.

I've heard that in order to really run Vista smoothly without too much chug-a-lugging, you should optimally have a dual core system with 2GB of RAM and a sweet graphics card. I have a feeling that a lot of consumers will take the plunge and be disappointed when their 2 year-old system (already way obsolete - how depressing!) can't perform.

After all the negativity though, I have my copy on order from Dell (I was eligible for a free upgrade for buying a new laptop a few months ago). I'm looking forward to installing it once some of the kinks are out - which should be next year or so? :)

Vista all about the 'Wow'

Friday, January 19, 2007

iPhone gripes



I've noticed on a couple respected tech blogs recently that some reviewers have been underwhelmed by Apple's new iPhone (to be released in June 2007). While no one can deny how gorgeous and yummy it looks, it seems to lack some serious features that you would imagine a $599 phone would have. No keyboard? No Exchange/Office support? No expandable memory? No removable battery?

"And the reality slowly sets in about what the iPhone is and is not. Noted analyst and Engadget pal Michael Gartenberg stated that the iPhone is first party software ONLY -- i.e. not a smartphone by conventional terms, being that a smartphone is a platform device that allows software to be installed."

While I see how the iPhone may be a step in the right direction for cell phone design and innovation, the price and necessary 2-year agreement with Cingular (the only provider as of now) doesn't intice me one bit. I'll be interested to see when the price falls and other manufacturers start selling imitations.

It's also a hard to use cell phone
The iPhone is not a smartphone

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

The Beginning of DigiSee?

I always find myself asking my friends, "Did you see this on the Web?" So, in the spirit of my Digital Online Learning class, I created the DigiSee? blog.

I'm interested in new technologies and digital shortcuts that make life a little easier. Every week, you can expect to see interesting and informative bits from around the Web.