Archives
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Gadget bargains
Another thing that's changed dramatically for me over the last year is the way that I shop for gadgets. There are some absolutely incredible deals out there, especially if you're willing to deal with mail-in rebates. There are numerous web sites out there dedicated to keeping you up to date on the latest deals. My favorites sites at the moment are Techbargains (which also provides an RSS feed) and BensBargains. Recent snags included a 4 megapixel Olympus digital camera with an Epson 820 photo printer for $318 total (!!!) and a Netgear wireless router for my girlfriend for $20. Hell, I haven't actually paid for blank CD-Rs in months (thanks to free-after-rebate) deals.
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CodeProject RSS feed
Ask and ye shall receive. Not willing to wait around for CodeProject to get their collective butts in gear, Wes Haggard took matters into his own hands and created his own RSS feed for the site. Super-sweet.
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A chink in the side-by-side armor
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];813350
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RSS - the good...
I'm amazed at how, in the space of a few short months, RSS and aggregators have fundamentally changed how I collect and read information. It's not very often that I can that say that about a technology. Although I've been aware of blogs and RSS for a while, it was really NewsGator that pulled it all together for me. Aggregators that brought all of the info to me were cool. An aggregator that brought all of the information to me into the one application that I spend virtually all of my time running is what brought it home. Usually the use of marketing-speak like "synergy" makes me dry heave, but NewsGator is a great example of that concept. It builds on the infrastructure that Outlook provides and extends it in a totally natural way. I have access to my mailbox through IMAP, so I can check the latest and greatest news from just about anywhere (what would I do without Mail2Web) without worrying about duplicating my feeds all over the place. As far as I'm concerned, it's the closest thing to the "Information At Your Fingertips" mantra (remember Big Bill's grand vision) since the Palm came on the scene.
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I'm back (hopefully)
Wow, it's been a while since I've blogged. Perhaps I lost my taste for vitriolic griping. Or maybe I just didn't have time for it. Either way, I'm going to make an effort to heed our esteemed host's advice and do more than just rant. Doesn't mean I won't throw in a good diatribe from time to time, of course, but I'll try to do more than just that. After all, nobody likes a whiner.