When Nintendo first came out with the Game Boy years ago…I had one. It had the black and white screen (more like green, and dark green) and I played it for HOURS. Game Boys have changed a lot since then…color screens, the layout of the handheld, and the games are a lot more advanced. My kids have Nintendo Game Boys and the Nintendo DS, and they’re always searching for new games, and hoping that I’ll foot the bill. I get a little sick of paying $20 for a game to have my 7 year old decide within a week that it’s too hard. It’s difficult to make a choice about a game based on the box.

That’s where DSBrowse can be helpful for moms like me who don’t want to waste money on games the kids won’t like. This Nintendo DS review site is brand new. You can search by category - action, adventure, “edutainment”, fun, platform, racing, simulation, sports, and strategy - or, click on any one of the games featured on the main page. I spotted a review on Lego Star Wars 2 - my son loves that game! We have a version for the PC, one for the Playstation. I’m glad we didn’t get the Nintendo version, because the review stated he had problems with his. It seems Nintendo was a little rushed in the Nintendo DS release version. I love knowing I avoided a potential problem!

If you haven’t stopped by the Geeky Speaky forums yet, come on over and check them out. Since we opened last week, we’ve gained 40 registered members, and over 709 posts have been made. I’d say we’re on our way to being an active board! We’ve got discussions going on affiliate marketing, wordpress, and paid blogging, as well as a lot of other hot topics.

Moving is a royal pain in the patoot. Since getting married in 1996, I’ve moved 5 times in 11 years. Wow! The biggest issue for me personally, when moving, is packing up my computer stuff and office. I have everything just so, and I have to break it down, pack it, and then put it back together in a new spot. In our last move, I was so desperate to get back online that I set my laptop and phone and modem up on a card table in the den, and sat on a step stool. Now that’s an internet addiction!

If you’re considering a move soon, it’s always good to learn moving tips and get advice on planning your big day. I’ve helped friends and family to move and it’s amazing what people will leave to do until the last minute possible. This moving company blog has plenty of advice to offer - over 25 moving guides on their site in fact! (They have a blog - how cool is that! I love when regular companies have a blog…it makes them seem so much more user friendly.) This blog entry points out that a lot of people choose to make their moves in the summer. That’s what we did, and it makes sense if you have kids in school. We wanted our kids to finish our their school year before we moved. Everyone else had the same plan, because we had a heck of a time finding a moving truck to rent!

I found a neat little tool today, to be used when bookmarking a website isn’t enough. MyStickies allows you to place a stickie (I’m assuming they can’t call it a post-it note, since that’s a trademarked product) on any site. I bookmark a lot of sites that I want to look at when I have more time, but sometimes, I don’t remember why I bookmarked the site when I return. With MyStickies, you can put a little note in there, such as “read forums on Adsense” or “blog entry about affiliate marketing” and you’ll remember exactly what you wanted to do at that site!

I mentioned yesterday that my mom is getting a new computer soon…we ordered her Dell this week. I had to order a $40 Belkin transfer cable along with it. I don’t know if that’s the easiest, or best way to transfer her data from her old machine to her new machine, but it’s worth a shot. Of course, had I know about IDrive-E Online Backup I could have saved my mom $40. IDrive provides secure online backups, for up to 2GBs of data…for free. Need more space? You can get an unlimited account for $4.95 a month. Considering my mom doesn’t have that much to backup - pictures, a few word docs - the free account would be perfect for her.

Once you download IDrive you can immediately start using it to schedule files and folders for backup. You can drag and drop anything you want to save a copy of, and the interface is very similar to what most Windows users deal with daily. If you’d like to see more, check out the IDrive demo to find out how it can work for you!

I’ve got a situation that I’m sure my cable company won’t help me with - so I’m turning to all of you for help. I’ve got a cable outlet in my den at home, which currently has my modem plugged into it. It didn’t occur to me when we were building this house to add an extra cable outlet in case I wanted to put a TV in here. And wouldn’t you know it? I have an extra TV I want to put in here! I had the cable company out a while back for another issue, and I asked the tech about it…and he mentioned something about getting a “splitter” for it, but that the cable company didn’t allow it, so I could do it, but he couldn’t help me.

Anyone know if what he said is correct? Will it allow me to run the modem and the TV off one cable outlet?

…somebody’s watching me!

Remember that song? Chances are, if you’re in a public place, someone IS watching you…on a security camera. They’re being used all over nowadays, from the grocery store to the bank to the fast food drive through. But what about home use? You can hook up an alarm, lock your doors, and make sure the windows are closed - is using Security Cameras taking things too far? I don’t think so at all. If it makes you feel secure and safe, by all means, go for it. For instance, my state has a large population of elderly people, and they often fall victim to scams. A lot of people will come to the door and come in, offering to demonstrate a vacuum, or check a chimney for repairs, and while they’re inside, they steal whatever they can. How would your 90 year old grandmother describe someone like that if she were the victim? Could she accurately describe the man or woman who robbed her? A home security camera would not only identify the thief, but if it’s noticed in advance, it may act as a deterrent. If you’re reasonably electronics savvy, you can have a security camera system up and running at your home (or Grandma’s) in a few hours. Get started with your system by reading home security camera reviews, which will allow you to pick the right system for your needs, the size of your house, and your technical know how.

I read online recently that the Alexa toolbar has had a decline in users. Is it any wonder? Most people are too search engine savvy to trust Alexa’s results. I’ve posted in the past about the things you can do to increase your Alexa rankings. Additionally, I’ve been told by IE users that after installing the Alexa toolbar, their systems went kablooey. A system that can be gamed to skew results isn’t going to attract most people interested in SEO, because they know it’s not a good ranking system to use.

Ever think of running a business from your home…parking cars?

Go anywhere near Raymond James Stadium on a day when the Tampa Bay Bucs are playing. You’ll find enterprising homeowners selling their yards for $20 a car. Some homeowners have the parking plan down to a science, and they can get as many as 50 cars in their front yard on game day. That’s $1000 a season! Quite the cottage industry…and it’s not just happening in Tampa, Florida. Property owners everywhere are realizing that they can provide what they have - space - and help a motorist out when space is limited. There’s even a site that’s been launched to allow you to rent a parking space in London. If you have an empty garage or driveway, you can rent it out and earn money without doing a thing. Sporting events are just one use - what about people living near a train station? Let someone going on vacation leave their car at your house. A nurse who works at the hospital may want to use the space in front of your house. Everyone can benefit from this, whether you’re a home or property owner looking to make a few extra dollars, or someone who travels to a congested area and needs a safe and easy place to park!

You need a license to drive a car. To go fishing. To buy a gun. I’m starting to think some sort of license should be required before people can access the internet. Have you ever wanted to just tell someone, “Look…you’re just way to dumb to be online.”

Seriously.

I like to take my iPod to work with me when I have to go into my office. Since I don’t need to be on the phone or deal with people one on one in the office, it allows me to be entertained while I work on my projects. Today, I turned my iPod on shuffle so that I could scroll some of the 2,000 clips on there. I’ve been listening to it for 5 hours on and off now, and my first comedy clip of the day came on. I’ve got a couple different comedians on here - Dane Cook…Steven Wright…of course, the clip that came on was from a Chris Rock HBO special. I was fine til he started talking about rap songs, and made on up…then I lost it. I actually laughed out loud, and now I’ve got coworkers coming to my desk asking to hear the clip! How do I explain that the mild mannered, quiet girl geek who keeps to herself is laughing out loud (literally) at Chris Rock being nasty? My cover would be blown!

Dude. My mom is getting a Dell! My mom needed a new PC, and she’s stuck on Dell, so that’s what we ordered for her this week. I am a little jealous of the system I put together for her - it’s WAY too much machine for someone who just does eBay and email, but that’s what she wanted. I just wish I had a 160GB hard drive, like the machine she’s getting. And a nice, flat panel 19 inch monitor! I did my homework and searched the internet for Dell coupons before she made her purchase - that’s when I came across CheapStingyBargains.com and their hand-picked Dell coupons! The site is so easy to use - I just went to the dell coupons section and I could see the deal, the date it ended, the coupon code, or promo code to use, and the terms for the deal. Easy, peasy. And their deals don’t just cover Dell laptops and Dell desktops either - you can find dell coupons to buy a camera too!

I checked out the page at their site for the computer my mom picked out, which is the Dell Dimension e521 - not only does this site give you coupon codes, but they tell you how to save even more money by paying with your Dell preferred account or PayPal!

If you’re connecting to the internet via cable, DSL, or an equally fast high-speed connection, but things aren’t AS fast as they could be, or should be, here’s a little free utility to test your internet connection speed. You’ll be able to see the download and upload speed, and examples of how fast you could download files of different sizes at that speed.

My Speed Test Results:

Download: 920,616 bps
Upload: 445,848 bps
QOS: 37%
RTT: 54 ms
MaxPause: 1293 ms

At that speed, I can download a 1MB file in 9 seconds. Don’t know what QOS, RTT and MaxPause mean? Use the speed test terms dictionary found here.

We’ve had cell phones for a couple of years now, and we’re on our 3rd cell phone service provider. Previously, we had T-Mobile - we liked them a lot, but once we moved to the middle of nowhere, we couldn’t even get reception in our own home. I actually had to go outside and try to act as a human cell phone tower to make a call. Yes, the neighbors stared. We noticed when our friends with Cingular visited, they ALWAYS got great service, so as soon as we could get out of our contract, we did. (For the record - if you move and you can’t get service anymore, you can usually get released from your contract without paying fees.)

We’re very happy with Cingular, and in fact, my mom (who lives next door) will be switching any day now. Cingular recently merged with AT&T (or did AT&T buy Cingular) and I’m not sure if that will affect the service any in the future, but for now, it’s all good. I do have plans to upgrade my phone soon, and I of course, don’t want to PAY for a phone that I can get for free. Cingular has a couple of different free phone options, like the BlackBerry Pearl. I haven’t purchased anything from Wirefly yet, but they always seem to have the best selection of free phones! If I could use that BlackBerry to get email on the go - wow - there would be NO stopping me!

If you’re working in an IT department, there are certain phrases you hate to hear. For instance, “I think I have a virus, and I’m pretty sure I just sent it to the entire company.” (Funny story - at my old job, my boss DID get a virus on her PC, and she DID send it to quite a few people in the company without realizing it. The virus sent an email to the recipients that looked like it was from her, but it said something about wanting to see the recipient naked. It was hilarious when the president of the company got one!) Oh - another one? “The data centre is down.” Oh, good times insue! Especially for the person who is in charge of all the computers and servers housed in the data center. You want to avoid downtime like this as much as possible, so Cisco is a great choice, because they’ve got the infrastructure and tools to avoid attacks and downtime, as well as the capability to grow with your business and network. Lower costs + support services = big savings and less stress for your business.

I’m not exactly the most organized person in the world. My computer files are organized. My pictures on my computer are organized. My blogs are organized. Real life? Not so much. I have wires and papers and junk on my desk at all times. I love this “how to declutter your desk” article I found, complete with pictures on how to do everything shown. The MDF pegboard idea is just fantastic, and easy enough for anyone to put together in a day. I’d love to be able to mount my modem and router (currently one on the desk, and one on the floor) like he did!

Our new TV for the bedroom arrived yesterday by UPS, but we were on our way out the door so I didn’t get to hook it up today. Jim set it up last night but left the connecting and wiring to me. Now, it’s not a big fancy plasma TV, but it is a high-def flat screen model, and 32 inches too. It looks fantastic in our bedroom. Quite a big difference from the 20 inch hand me down from my mom we were using! The new TV has the capability to do the whole digital surround sound thing too, but since we don’t have a home theater set up in our bedroom, we don’t plan on using that part. Oh, that reminds me - when I watched “Cars” last week with the kids in the family room, I really enjoyed the surround sound. I guess it’s the first Disney movie I’ve watched since we moved in, and they did a great job with the extra for people with surround sound set ups.

In other electronic and geek news…I’m still contemplating what to do about playing my iPod in the car. I really don’t want to go through the hassle of putting in a new stereo to use the iPod in there, but it may be my only option. Guess I should check out car stereo reviews just in case? That site also has reviews on the
Sharp Copier….hmm…isn’t that what we have at work? That thing is always giving me fits.

My friend Julie and I were talking about Google Sitemaps this week on the new GeekySpeaky forums. She was amazed that I was able to get my blogs indexed, and that they all are PR4, without ever making a Google sitemap for my blogs. What can I say? Dumb luck strikes again. Once Julie posted this neat plugin for generating Google sitemaps on Wordpress blogs, I was hooked. I immediately installed it and set it up on ALL of my blogs. It was incredibly easy to use and I hope that it will help to give me a boost with Google. I’d like to see the PR increase on one of my blogs, if not more, in the next Google pagerank update.

As I type this blog entry, I’m seated in my den, at a large wall unit type desk, with bookshelves surrounding me. It’s my comfort zone. When my husband and I were deciding on a floor plan and a builder, having an offer for me was at the top of our list. I work a lot from home and I need my own space to do so. After we moved in, we upgraded my desk so that I could have a real work station. This area is almost as important to me as the computer I’m typing this on. I need to be comfortable when I work, and the setup I have, and my comfy chair, allow me to sit here for hours on end doing what I need to do. When you shop for furniture for your home office - consider your needs. Are you going to be meeting with clients or customers in your house? If so, you’ll probably want an executive style desk. Do you have looks of books and toys scattered about, like I do? Storage is a must in that case. This online furniture store not only has a great selection of home office furniture, but if you’re not sure exactly what you want, you can get personalized service from a sales rep. And they don’t just have home office furniture either - you’ll find enough furniture to fill a house, all at great prices. Make your work space or home office work for you!

I’m sure most of us have seen internet drama at one time or another - bloggers talking smack about other bloggers, or posting their pictures and name calling, or vague stories about unnamed people - all designed to create hurt feelings for the people being attached. These bad bloggers, as I like to call them, remind me of 7th graders. Some people do take it a bit further, like the death threat recently posted on a Blogger blog by the name of Cyfswatch. The blog recently posted a death threat against a New Zealand policitian. Even after Google shut down the blog, the site cache was still available in their search engine. (I just checked, and it no longer shows any posts on the blog’s cache)

The blog was run by critics of the New Zealand Child Youth & Family service, and since being shut down on Google, they’ve set up shop on a free wordpress.com blog, located here. (Word of advice guys - if you’re going to do things like post death threats, that’s probably against TOS for ANY free blogging site. You should consider ponying up $5 a month for your own domain and hosting.)

Do I advocate what they did? Not at all. But what really irks me in all of this is that Google NEVER steps in to do anything when the little guy is being harassed online. It’s only when the government of New Zealand is feeling threatened that they saw fit to put an end to it. Average people being harassed or slandered by your garden variety whackjob don’t stand a chance of being helped by Google.

Google spokeswoman Victoria Grand that they stepped in because the site continued to violate site rules.

“In our terms of service we reserve the right to shut down blogs that have repeat violations, and here we had a repeat violation issue,” Grand said.

“We really try to remove as little content as possible. We don’t want to be a mediator of content and we believe blogs are a platform for free expression and we do everything we can to work with bloggers to keep the content up,” she said.

Google, if you do it for one, you need to do it for all. You can’t pick and choose.