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I’ve been using Evernote for a while now, so much so that I’m surprised I haven’t written about it yet. The beauty of Evernote is that it can help you remember anything. You can type a text note, clip a web page, snap a photo or grab a screenshot. It’s all searchable too!! Premium users get priority image recognition, though. I’ve been using Evernote recently to keep track of different jewelers my girlfriend and I have visited and engagement rings we’ve looked at. I took photos of the business cards of the associates who assisted us. On the back of the cards are the specifications about the ring(s) my girlfriend liked. I can go back and search for keywords in the specs and view the entire card. I don’t have to keep track of the original card. As long as I have an Internet connection, I can also view the notes on my iPhone. If I mark a note as a favorite, I can view it even if I don’t have Internet access.
Premium accounts can upload 500MB/month (free users only get 40MB/month) and notes up to 50MB in size (free users can only upload notes <25MB). One nice feature about Evernote is it can be configured to monitor selected folders for importing files. I have mine set to monitor my Dropbox folder on my home PC. I wish Evernote offered a referral system, similar to Dropbox, and would grant additional upload capacity (10MB?) per month for each referral.

Technorati Tags: dropbox, evernote

For a while now, I’ve been using ReQall to remember tasks that needed to get done. I tried using Remember The Milk but didn’t like that the iPhone app wasn’t free (you had to sign up for a Pro account). Now, RTM has decided to offer the iPhone app for use with free accounts but limited the functionality. The limits imposed on the free accounts are very similar to what you get for free from ReQall.
One thing I do like about ReQall (should I ever upgrade to Pro) is the integration with Evernote. I can add items to ReQall either by voice or text. I can follow my ReQall calendar in Google Calendar using the iCal URL. I can add items using the official Firefox plugin; RTM doesn’t have an official plugin.
One of the features I like about RTM is that I can tell it that an item repeats however often, in plain text, and it’ll recognize the time frame; ReQall only gives you a dropdown menu to choose from. RTM has a tighter integration with Google Calendar but I like being able to turn the calendar on/off when a day/week gets too crowded with appointments/tasks. RTM allows you to tag an item with a location, regardless of the account type; this feature is only available to ReQall Pro users. The free version of RTM only syncs once a day, whereas ReQall Standard syncs constantly.
They both offer something that the other only includes in the pay version, so I’m going to keep using both until I can decide on one over the other. If I ever do pay for one, right now I would pay for ReQall Pro.

Technorati Tags: dropbox, evernote, remember the milk, reqall

Whenever I wanted to remotely connect to my home computer, I had to make sure the correct ports were forwarded in my router and the PC was statically assigned an IP address. I just learned about a program called TeamViewer through one of the guys I work with. It works very much like GoToMyPC or LogMeIn, yet it’s free for non-commercial use. Some of the capabilities of TeamViewer are:

• Remote Access/Remote Office
• Remote Support
• Meetings/Presentation

Like LogMeIn and GoToMyPC, TeamViewer allows web-based access to a computer without needing to run software on the remote machine. It also allows for file transfer between the remote computer and the computer you’re using. It can be executed without being installed. If it is installed, the remote computer can be configured to be accessed unattended. I’m going to see if I can execute it from my thumbdrive to access my home PC instead of using the web-based access.

Technorati Tags: gotomypc, logmein, rdp, teamviewer, vnc

Shortly after my last post, about moving to the cloud, I found Google Sync. With it, I’m able to sync GMail, Google Contacts and any editable Google Calendars to my iPhone. Because of all of this, I don’t plan on renewing my MobileMe account in a few months. I signed up for MobileMe because I liked the idea of instantly updating my Outlook contacts/appointments when I add/change a contact/appointment on my iPhone and vice versa. Ever since I got my Windows 7 PC, MobileMe hasn’t been syncing as well as it did on my Windows XP machine, especially with the calendars.

In an effort to consolidate as much information as I can, I’ve decided to move everything over to Google. I’ve been using GMail ever since you needed an invite to open an account. Because of the experience I’ve had using GMail, I’ve decided to do more “stuff” in the “cloud”. All of my contacts have been imported into Google Contacts. All appointments and dates are now kept on Google Calendar, even though I have a few issues/complaints. Even though Google creates a separate calendar for my contacts’ birthdays and anniversariesevents, there is no way to view this calendar on my iPhone. I can only view my default calendar. Even though the calendar is named “Contacts’ Birthdays and Anniversaries”“Contacts’ Birthdays and Events”, it only displays birthdays.
I’ve even begun storing some spreadsheets on Google Docs. As I get more accustomed to it, I’ll store non-sensitive documents there also.
I’ve stored some photos on Picasa but still prefer Flickr instead. If Google allowed me to use some of the 7GB of storage they currently give me with GMail to store photos instead of allocating a separate 1GB for photos. For $25/yr, I get unlimited uploads and storage on Flickr. For $20/yr, I only get 80GB of storage on Picasa and I’m not even sure if I can upload videos to Picasa or if they only allow photos.
Once I get all this figured out, I plan on using Mozilla Thunderbird and Lightning to synchronize my email, appointments, etc to/from my home PC.

After I was able to finally sell an old engagement ring I had, from a previous relationship, on Craigslist, I decided to put more stuff I haven’t used in a long time on Craigslist. If I can’t get rid of them in a reasonable amount of time, I’ll probably try and locate stores that would purchase the stuff, instead of having a yard sale. The hardest thing for me to sell (and not because of any sentimental value) will most likely be my baseball card collection. I’ve got about 200 cards if you don’t count the complete sets I used to get for Christmas. Unfortunately, the baseball card market isn’t what it was 20+ years ago, thanks to my parents’ generation. When our parents were kids, they would destroy the cards without thinking twice, or their parents threw them out thinking they were worthless. The prices of the cards issued back then is considerable. My generation suffered because our parents wouldn’t let us make the same mistake. They realized that they were playing with a small fortune back then. This backfired on us because not enough cards got destroyed for the prices to skyrocket like they did for cards from 50+ years ago.
I would’ve gone with Ebay but didn’t want to have to pay a commission and didn’t feel like taking a lot of photos of my stuff.
The stuff I’m selling consists of:

• Baseball Cards
• Basketball Cards
• Football Cards
• Garbage Pail Kids Cards
• Compact Disc Collection
• DVD Movie Collection(?)
• Used Books (mostly belonged to my mother)

I haven’t fully made up my mind if I want to sell my DVD collection. I hardly watch any of the movies and they’re taking up space, but at least they’re accessible if I feel like watching something and there’s nothing good on TV.

There are a few other things I’ll probably just throw out instead of trying to sell, like my 1:24 scale slot Funny car (I used to do this back when I was in high school and haven’t done it since).

Technorati Tags: craigslist

I’ve decided that I want to take a deeper look into my finances. I’ve been using Mint.com to track all of my accounts and spending habits but now I want to do that using the financial software I use, GnuCash. Before today, I treated my credit card bills as one transaction on the same day I paid it, so I don’t have a sense of exactly where my money is going, without looking at Mint.com. Starting today, I will begin to enter every transaction I make using my credit card. I wish I had been doing this earlier, but like they say “better late than never”. This isn’t the first time I had been doing something for a while, decided to change something and wished I had been doing it all along.

Total was my last day at DeVry University. After almost five years of going to school part-time (not counting the two years I spent at Penn State), I finally have my Bachelor’s Degree. I received my Associate’s Degree in October of 2008, so everything I’ve been taken since then has been general education classes required for my Bachelor’s. I’m glad to be done but not looking forward to the loan payments I’ll have to start making in a few months. Today also would’ve been my mother’s 65th birthday. I wish she could’ve been alive to see me finally graduate.

Technorati Tags: bachelor's degree, DeVry, graduation

Tonight, I turned my old MythTV box into a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device. Originally, I was going to go and buy a Linksys NAS200 but then figured there had to be a way I could reuse the MythTV box. I stopped using the MythTV box when Cablevision started removing more and more channels that didn’t require a set-top box. I would prefer to have something with a hardware RAID built-in (either RAID1 or RAID5/6), but for now I’m just testing it out. I googled for ‘free NAS’ and found I had three options: FreeNAS, OpenFiler, and Ubuntu Server Edition.
I chose FreeNAS because it was a smaller download, and seemed to be the NAS software of choice. It supports a software RAID (0, 1, or 5), which is OK but I’d rather have a hardware RAID, so I’d have to install a RAID card into the computer if I wanted to use a free software option. I like that it can monitor the hard drives and email me if it detects an issue. It’s based on a different operating system that I’m not too familiar with but it is close enough to Linux that I don’t have too much to learn.
If I wind up running into any issues, I’ll probably skip OpenFiler and just install Ubuntu Server Edition.

It’s been a number of years since I’ve actually made a New Year’s resolution. I decided this year I would make a few. My New Year’s resolutions for 2010:

1. Graduate DeVry with my Bachelor’s Degree
2. Get the race car up and running
3. Save up enough money so I can get my own apartment
4. Play golf at least once a month this summer
5. Lose at least 10 lbs

Technorati Tags: New Year's, resolutions