Recently in Useful Stuff Category

I ran across this great site the other day that can actually save you some money if you are speeding. It's best to go the speed limits in all situations, however for those that go over, this can come in handy.

People share the locations where they see cops or speed cameras watching people. Most police usually have certain locations that they will sit in, so it's easy to report them to the service. Simply call on your phone or send a text message to the service and it will log it.

The best part is that you can download Points of Interest (POI) files in csv format to import to your GPS unit. Some brands of GPS can even warn you with a pop up when you are coming close to a POI. This can be handy to stop you before you get to the trap.

Best of all, the service is free. The POI Factory charges for their database of red light cameras and speed traps. So load up your GPS!

Trapster

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The guys over at Microsoft Office Labs have some pretty cool things in development.

I'm liking the pptPlex project which allows you to make a powerpoint presentation out of one slide, which you can zoom into different pieces of for each subsequent slide. It makes things more intuitive and almost like a storyboard.

Speed Launch is a pretty cool tool that allows you to quickly access frequently used resources by creating shortcuts.

I still prefer Launchy, because it automatically indexes everything, so you simply start typing what you are looking for rather than having to remember windows+c shortcuts.

Keep an eye on these guys, some more cool things are bound to develop.

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Yahoo's new location sharing service dubbed Fire Eagle, stores your geographic location so that other websites can access and share that info. You can choose how much info you want to share and who to share it with.

This comes in handy so you can add your location to your blog entries, find interesting things around you, access personalized news relevant to your location, geotag your photos, and much more. Check out everything that you can do.

Fire Eagle just came out of beta so you'll start to see more services and websites start to use the platform and API.

Fire Eagle [yahoo]

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Hulu is a web-based video player that allows you to watch episodes of your favorite shows. They've got most episodes of Monk, Family Guy, Heroes, and many more. It even has full length movies as well. Stop by and watch the HD gallery too.

Most TV networks are streaming their shows over the net, but the quality is not that great. This seems to take it up a notch.

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This neat little service allows you to send an SMS message to any phone at any time in the future. It's a great way to remind you to do things or send messages to anyone else for that matter.

oh, don't forget

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• SMS and Email Scheduling With the Sendible API

I've used this program quite a bit when I was responding to customer service inquiries and writing the same thing over and over again. It's easy because you can customize it to your liking. I had it setup so that I pressed a letter, then tab, and it will write out a sentence for you.

Very useful, it will work anywhere that you can input text.

Texter via Lifehacker

With everyone being gas-conscious these days, Fuelly allows you to track your gas spending and fuel economy online.

Every time you fill up, just record your mileage, how gallons you put in, and the cost per gallon. When you get home you can enter the info on Fuelly's website and you'll start to see some trending after a while.

It's even easier if you have a mobile phone with web access, so that you can enter everything at the pump. Adjust your driving habits to see the effects over time.

Fuelly

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Remeber that program Gmail Drive that lets you use your Gmail account as an online drive? Dropbox is similar, except they provide you with 2GB of online space which you can share with your friends.

Share a folder with your buddies, and just drop the files in. It looks like a normal folder in your documents and is easy to access. Great for sharing things.

DropBox

Those sneaky phone companies always charge you out the wazoo whenever you go over your minutes. WatchMyCell is a service that will notify you when you're close to going over. That way you can avoid those expensive overages.

WatchMyCell.com