Josh Young

Just reading through one of my favorite blogs, Lifehacker, this morning, and I came across the beautiful gem known as Songerize.

Really want to listen to a song right now? Just go to Songerize, type it in, and it will play. That easy. If it doesn’t find your song, try another (FYI, it’s found every song I’ve tried so far).

This is ridiculously cool, especially if you’re in the mood to listen to a great song but don’t have it handy. Plus, it’s dead simple.

Give it a try. Let me know what you think.

Songerize

HT: Lifehacker

Awesome new feature for Google Docs.

Now you set up a form that users can fill out that will populate a spreadsheet in Google Docs. Instead of sharing a spreadsheet, you can just set up the form and people can enter information that way.

Looks pretty cool. I’m already thinking of a few possibilities that this could be used for.

Do you have any ideas?

Official Google Docs Blog - Stop sharing spreadsheets, start collecting information

I’m trying to make more time for quick posts in 2008, so this will be my first.

As one of my Christmas gifts, Marie got me just what any true nerd would want: the highest-quality acid-free paper you can find marked off in square grids, bound by fine leather with a braided place holder, inner pocket and an elastic strap to keep it closed, and of course, small enough to carry with you at all times.

I’m speaking of course of the legendary Pocket Squared Moleskine notebook (pronounced mol-a-skeen’-a).

I’ve shown my new tool to a few close friends, and they all kind of look at my blankly like I’m some sort of weirdo (although I’m not disputing that). I guess Moleskines just aren’t as prevalent as they should be.

So anyway, I take my new friend everywhere with me now. He’s teamed up with the Fisher Brushed Chrome Bullet Space Pen that Marie got me last year for Christmas to make the ultimate note-taking duo. I’m a huge fan of checklists and notes, and now I don’t have to carry index cards around with me anymore. I’m loving it!

Since you may or may not be interested in my geeky little “toy,” I’ll save the rest. However, you can read more about these awesome little books at the link below. But beware. You’ll become obsessed. I can already think of two other ones that I’d love to have.

Moleskine History

The best deal I could find on my notebook (currently out of stock)

The second-best deal I could find on my notebook

My favorite shortcut application, Launchy, just released version 2.0. It’s got a few nice updates, and a slick new default skin.

If you’ve never heard of Launchy or used it, give it a try. It will save you a buttload of time.

Launchy

Well, I have officially entered the Facebook realm. Up until this point, I had kind of ignored it, but I thought maybe it was time I check it out. Interesting social network. A lot easier to find people that you would “want” to find. I’ve got a link to my profile in the sidebar here if you’re interested.

I guess maybe I’ll start paying attention to all of the Facebook blog postings I read about now relating to the church.

Yes, another Google post. I know, I know…I have other stuff to post, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Soon.

I was doing some Google Reader-ing, and I came to a post by my favorite productivity blog, Lifehacker, where I learned that Google has officially added presentations to their docs suite.

I took it for a quick spin, and it’s not too bad. You can even have people join you online for the presentation. And it has chat built in to the side panel for just that.

Looks like an excellent way to collaborate on presentations or show some slides to an online audience (public or private).

Give it a try, and let everybody know what you think in the comments.

EDIT: Check out this great video that summarizes the benefits of using online document management services like Google Docs.

Google Docs (now with presentations)

Lifehacker - Launch: Google Docs Adds Presentations

Official Google Blog Announcement

Well, after many years of talking about it, I finally have all of my data on a regular backup schedule. I have two internal and one external hard drives on my desktop, and an internal hard drive in my laptop - all of which have important data (i.e., I’d be sunk if I lost most of it).

To backup all of my data, I decided to use one 500 GB Western Digital MyBook to hold it all (I already use another MyBook for some of my data storage and really love it).

To schedule and perform the backups, I downloaded SyncBack Freeware. I was originally turned on to SyncBack by a Lifehacker post about it. They were right. It really is that simple, it’s fast, and it does a great job. And the best part is that it’s totally free!

I would walk you through the steps I took to do it, but honestly, the Lifehacker post really does a great job of explaining everything, so I’ll just let it speak for itself.

In the not-to-distant future, I also plan to set up a secure FTP backup of some of the more important files.

My question for you is: Are you backing up your data? If so, how?

Geek to Live: Automatically back up your hard drive via Lifehacker

Google Docs & Spreadsheets just got a new look and some new features.

Now you can organize your documents in folders, and when searching for a document, it dynamically suggests a query from your document collection.

Plus, as they put it on the Official Google Docs & Spreadsheets Blog, another new feature is simply “Looking Pretty.” And I agree. It does look better.

Read more about it on the Official Google Docs & Spreadsheets Blog, or take Google Docs & Spreadsheets for a spin yourself. All you need is a Google account, and if you don’t have one yet, then get on the ball!

A couple of weeks ago, I got an e-mail and a call from a reporter with the Wall Street Journal. She was doing a story on the social/Web2.0 aspect of personal finance sites, and one of those sites was Wesabe.com. I’ve written about Wesabe a couple of times on here, so she wanted to see how it had helped me.

After a couple of phone interviews and a few e-mails, the article was published last week. Pretty cool to be involved in something like that out of nowhere. All because of a few things I share here and there on my blog.

You can give the article a read here: Managing Your Money in Public View via the Wall Street Journal Online.

Here’s what Marc Hedlund over at Wesabe had to say about it.

Some other sites with the article:

• AOL Money and Finance
• The Charlotte Observer
• Savannah Now

Shock of all shocks.

Google has bought yet another awesome service that I already use.

If you haven’t used Feedburner before, I encourage you to check it out. It makes things very simple, like podcasting and letting your users subscribe via e-mail instead of RSS, plus they keep things nice and tidy for you.

Google buys Feedburner [via Official Google Blog]