Tuesday, July 26, 2005

SanDisk Ultra II SD Plus USB/SD Card

When I upgraded digital cameras, the new one (Casio EXILIM Z40) used an SD (Secure Digital) card. This threw a real monkey wrench into my collection of CF (Compact Flash) cards, especially since my trusty ThinkPad X20 had a built-in CF reader! So I had to go out and buy a couple of USB SD adapters, one for the house and one to carry in my camera bag or pocket just in case.

I had read about this gadget a while back but hadn't found a good picture of it.


What this is is an SD card with a built-in USB adapter. You just fold back the bottom half of the SD card and stick it in your USB port. It even comes with a key ring so you can use it instead of a memory stick.

Here's where you can read all about it. Looks like they're about $125 on PriceGrabber.

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Bloglines

It's taken me longer than most perhaps to understand RSS. The last thing I needed was another client. And I already subscribed to several digest mailing lists so what did I need RSS for?

Well, now I'm a believer. No, I didn't add another client. Remember that I'm using Maxthon. No, I'm not using Maxthon's built-in RSS client. Somewhere along the line, I came across bloglines.com. This is a web-based RSS reader so there's no client to install.

It works pretty much like a "fat" RSS reader client (although admittedly I don't have much experience with them). Once you login, you can search for RSS feeds or enter a specific URL that references an RSS feed. (Maxthon notifies you when you surf to a page that has an RSS feed.)

You can even group RSS feeds into folders. When any one of these feeds has new material, you can click on the folder and it will consolidate all the results into one view. For example, I have a "Racing" folder that contains 3 RSS feeds about open-wheeled racing.

Here's a screen shot:


Here's why it is BETTER than an RSS client to me. Since it is server-based, you can access it from multiple PCs and it keeps up with what you've seen regardless of where you viewed it. So I can read it from work and pick up right where I left off when I get home.

Another benefit of being server-based is that Bloglines.com creates blogroll for you. You can see mine here.

There're lots of other little features here and there so wander around some.

Oh, what about those mailing list digests? Ya know, they all have RSS feeds! And those sites that I followed looking for cheap technology, they have RSS feeds too. Bloglines has let me streamline my surfing to just those sources that have news.

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Third-Level Domain Names

I missed my opportunity to register benmoore.org back when domain name registration was expensive (we had Network Solutions' monopoly to thank for that). Now that they are cheap (easily less than $10 per year), everybody ought to have their own.

Anyway, back to the story. When the .biz top-level domain (TLD) became available, I registered benmoore.biz. I've never really put up a web site by that name but rather used it to create a set of third-level domains (or hostnames). I use these as "shortcuts" either for my own use or to share with others. I use Active-Domain's free capabilities to do this.

Here's a list of my current third-level domain names and what they point to.

www.benmoore.biz - Points to my personal page on desotonet.com
allphotos.benmoore.biz - Points to my photos on photoaccess.com
bellsouth.benmoore.biz - Points to my personal page on bellsouth.net (that's an old picture!)
blog.benmoore.biz - Points to this my blog on blogspot.com
blogroll.benmoore.biz - Points to my blogroll on bloglines.com
favorites.benmoore.biz - Points to my favorites as maintained by FavoriteSync
lawnmower.benmoore.biz - Points to a Flash game about the movie "Drowning Mona"
photos.benmoore.biz - Points to my photos on desotonet.com (created with Picasa)
radar.benmoore.biz - Points to the live weather RADAR from Channel 3 in Memphis
speedcheck.benmoore.biz - Points to optonline.net's speed testing site
speedometer.benmoore.biz - Points to mcafee.com's speed testing site
toolz.benmoore.biz - Points to my system administrator tools on desotonet.com

Enjoy!