Amazon has launched their new MP3 Downloads store where you can download 256 kbps DRM-free MP3′s for as low as $0.89 per song or $7.99 per album.
This is awesome news.
However, the selection is a bit limited (at the moment). For example, I did a search for “Leeland,” and it didn’t produce any results in the MP3 Downloads store. But they do have Crowder, Tomlin, Bethany Dillon, and lots of others.
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.
Hallelujah! Google finally added a search function to Google Reader! RSS junkies rejoice!
There are even options to search all items, starred items, shared items, or items in a specific folder/tag or from a specific blog that you’re subscribed to.
This is a huge benefit if you’re ever searching for something that you know you’ve read before.
Kudos for Google to finally giving us what we’ve been asking for!
It’s a great setup. There’s access to all of the interactive video lessons, money tools, an online community, and even the ability to download the full lessons via mp3s so that you can listen to them whenever you want.
If you are a Dave Ramsey fan, and you haven’t gone through FPU yet, this looks like a great option (especially if there are no FPU classes in your area). The information alone is worth the price. It’s only $99 for the full 13 lesson course.
Go try out the free session and see how you like it. It’s a great interface and some great material.
After frustrating me for some time with complex API’s and whatnot, Google has finally added the ability to easily embed Google Maps.
All you have to do now is find the map view you want to see, click Link to this page, and you can use the direct link for e-mail or IM or use the html embed code in your web page or blog post. You can even customize the map you want to embed by clicking on Customize and preview embedded map and choosing a few options. It literally couldn’t be any easier.
Here’s an example that took me around 10 seconds to do:
Googles Maps has made some great updates lately. Two that are extremely useful are the ability to drag your route to modify it and the ability to add a location to your directions if you don’t know the address but do know where it’s located on the map.
To show you these new features, Google has put together this short video. Enjoy!
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?
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.
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.
