Home Improvement Tool and Toy Reviews

I would buy one of these especially since gas is only $2.30 here in Austin.

Technorati: Volkswagen, Miles Per Gallon, Cars

Having just moved to the Austin area about 6 months ago I really had no idea how many major companies there were in this area. I mean you have all the major players that computer/internet related including IBM, Intel, Apple, AMD, and Coremetrics .

Anyway the company that I am with right now just moved buildings because of our growth and I know that they went through a bear of a time to try to find office space.

They should have talked with Don Cox. Steve has his pulse on the Austin Office Space scene and probably would have found something for us a whole lot sooner.

Oh well, at the rate that our company is growing we probably will be calling Don soon enough.

Technorati: Austin Office Space, Austin TX, Don Cox

I have been doing a little work on the side lately and did not have a way to get invoices out to customers in an easy and professional looking way.

Enter Blinksale.

I came across them a few months back on TechCrunch. Basically they are a web-based Quickbooks type of site that allows you to send out invoices to your customers via e-mail. They have a free account that allows you to do 3 invoices a month.

I am happy to say that I had to purchase there services because I needed to exceed that 3 invoice limit.

Another thing that is cool about them is the fact that if you have PayPal you can have people pay you via PayPal via you Blinksale invoice automatically. I just had one customer do that today.

It looks like I won’t be digging through bank statements this year year to do my taxes thanks to Blinksale .

Technorati: Blinksale, Quickbooks, Freelancing

My wife and I made one of the best investments that we ever have before - a portable DVD player. Right now it gets strapped to the back the headrest  of the middle seat of the van for my 2 oldest ones to watch.

As cool as it is it is going to be short lived within the next 9 months as my little boy turns 1 year old and will want to watch too.  Therefore I am going to need a new roof mounted screen so all of them can see it. On top of that I will need to get a new stereo system because I am sure that the factor one is not going to work very well.

To get an idea of what I am up against I have been looking at in car audio systems that will not break the bank. Dixons has a wide variety of products that is right up my ally whether it is a new deck or the whole DVD system with the screen. It is nice to see that their prices are reasonable so it won’t break my bank.

Technorati: In Car Audio Systems, Car Audio, In Car Entertainment

It has been a few days since I posted on this guy that is chanting “Death of Adsense“.

No really it is just a guy that has this site with a free E-book that tells you his experience with Adsense verses affiliate programs. His experience is the same as mine - affiliates rock while Adsense is well… dead in comparison.

One last thing. He is proving his point by letting you have a free affiliate where he pays $0.50 to you for everyone that downloads his free e-book from his site. I honestly have made more from his affiliate in the few days since my post then I did in Adsense on 5 blogs.

I am a believer.

Check him out here - The Death of Adsense.

Technorati: The Death of Adsense, Adsense, affiliate, Monetize, Blog, Blogging

A friend at work asked me a few weeks ago if I knew of a good company to use for backups for his home PC. I really had not looked into but after a little research I found that Xdrive was still in business and that they where giving away 5GB for free for backup.

Well as cool as that is it suffers from the same problem that causes most people not to backup there data at home - it is manual. You have to sit there and copy your files to Xdrive.

Well today I saw this piece at TechCrunch about a company named Carbonite has a little different twist. What you do with them is download a piece of software that you then tell it what you want to backup. Then the software uploads 2GB a day until the backup is complete. Then it continues to upload on a daily basis without you having to do anything.

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I came across this site that has a very large selection of Samsung mobile phones and was reminded of how much I miss the Samsung phone I had with Sprint.

That was the best phone that I ever had as it lasted for over 1 1/2 years before I got a new one. It is amazing that it lasted that long as it kept slipping out of the clip and hitting the floor until I got a sleeve for it.

Anyway thelink.com has an awsome selection of phones including a phone that is very similar to the one from The Matrix. Oh how I long for the day that my contract is over with Cingular.

Technorati: Samsung Mobile Phones, Cellular Phones, Sprint, Cingular

If you have been to the Round Rock Outlet Mall recently you may have noticed some construction on a building to the south eastern side of the mall.

At further inspection it looks as though it is a brand new movie theater that is being built that will have stadium seating like the Tinseltown theater done in Pflugerville. This would be a nice alternative to driving down to Pflugerville or the standard seating of the Round Rock 8 theater.

The funny thing though is that it does not have a sign in front of it and I could not find anything on the internet announcing it so my claim is purely speculation. I am hard pressed to assume that it could be anything else though with the way that it is constructed. 

Technorati: Round Rock TX, Round Rock Outlet Mall, Round Rock Movie Theater

What she forwarded is a link for a micro site for State Farm Insurance, which is my insurance and rocks (I am rockin’ out tonight). The site is called nowwhat.com and is a cool flash site that asks questions like “Now what” after an air conditioner falls through the back window of your car.It is obviously a ploy to get the younger crowd into thinking about using State Farm for insurance - which is cool. I thing companies need to start looking to the younger crowd because 1.) they are up and coming, and 2.) old(er) people can be too set in their ways and not want to change (sounds like I have old people issue huh? so what ).

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I know that there has been a lot of hoopla about Voice over IP in the last few months concerning the ability to dial 911 but I think it is unfounded. The problems have been fixed so there is no reason not to switch to VoIP.

Personally I think VoIP is great and have it through 4 different companies in the last year. 2 of the companies were at my house and 2 were at 2 different jobs that I had.

In both home and work the setup was a whole lot easier then brand new phone service. They gave you ability to check your voicemail through you computer. Also, the quality of the calls is excellent especially at my current job.

Finally the thing that I like the most is that currently with my home service I have free long distance throughout the whole US. That is pretty sweet especially since my wife and I still have a lot of family in California. I could only imagine what my phone bill would be like!

Anyway, VoIP rocks and is here to stay.

Technorati: VoIP, Phones, Long Distance, Technology