Thank you Tivo for allowing me to pay a service fee so that you can sell all that cool data you collect while I watch tv.

Thank you Tivo for showing more and more advertisements on just about every screen.

It should either be show me ads and give me the service for free, or let me pay the service fee and show me no ads. Not both.

Damn you Tivo for working so well. Seriously. Congratulations on being the best DVR platform going. I used the DVR from my cable company (Insight Communications) and it was absolute junk. Varying between slow response and no response when using the remote it has long since been returned. I can’t wait for a worthy competitor to pop up and push things forward like the iPhone did with the cell phone market.

Just got around to installing the latest and greatest from WordPress.org. WordPress 2.5 is pretty nice looking. I reccomend installing it if you haven’t already. The change to the dashboard and the admin interface is worth it even if you don’t like any of the other changes.

In my previous cell phone post I listed some of the details of my current cell phone situation. This time I would like to go over what I’m looking for this time around. I think another bulleted list is in order.

What I’m looking for

• I would like to keep my current plan. As I said before, I get 600/5000 per month now for $39.99. Cingular’s current $39.99 plan only offers 450/5000.
• Although we currently have identical phones, this time I’m looking for something a little more “advanced”.
• A decent camera for those spur of the moment type pictures.
• Possibly video recording functionality.
• I’m not a bit texter so a full qwerty really isn’t necessary I don’t think.
• The ability to play MP3′s in some form or fashion would be nice.
• Some phones have an FM radio tuner. How well do those work?
• Bluetooth capable.
• Speakerphone.

Those are some of the high points on the list as far as the features I’m looking for. Now I want to cover the sites that I use when I’m researching my cell phone purchases. First up is Phone Scoop. This is a really good site for reading user submitted reviews of almost every phone on the market and even some that aren’t yet. You can search by carrier, manufacturer, or even using a feature checklist. In addition to the reviews there are forums available to discuss the phones as well. Highly recommended site.

Next is HowardForums.com. This is an absolutely huge site. It is a forum that has category listings for every carrier, manufacturer, and pretty much every individual cell phone. It’s not as easy to find individual reviews for specific phones here but you can read all the discussions, or even submit your own question if you’re having a problem.

Two other sites I want to quickly mention are CNET.com and Amazon.com. CNET has been around forever and they post one or two minute videos with a quick description of a lot of the current cell phones on the market. This is a good way to see what the phone looks like in someones hand without having to go to your local store. (I know what you are thinking, and no there isn’t a referral in that Amazon link.) I only mention it because of the user submitted reviews. Go check those out as well before buying that new toy. These are some of the tools I will be using before making my purchase. Hope you get some use out of those. If you have some other sites you like to use submit them in the comments.

In an effort to populate my “What I Use” category and also show some of the products, software, and tools that I, a moderately knowledgeable internet citizen, use on a daily basis I now present; the Firefox Extensions that I use. Yes, I am fully aware that no one cares about “another Firefox extension top 10 list”, and that these are posted on Digg once every 4.7 minutes. I still look at most of them, you never know when that cool extension will pop up that you haven’t heard about. That’s where this list is different. It isn’t a top list, it is just all the extensions that I use. I didn’t even count them. Surely you can use at least one of these.

• Adblock Plus 0.7.5.1
• All-in-One Gestures 0.18.0
• BugMeNot 1.3
• ColorZilla 1.0
• Firebug 1.05
• Forecastfox 0.9.5.2
• Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer 1.0.1
• Google Toolbar for Firefox 3.0.20070217W
• Image Zoom 0.3
• InfoLister 0.9f
• Paste and Go 2 0.8
• Pearl Crescent Page Saver Basic 1.5

That was the quick list for your viewing pleasure. If you would like to read why I use each extension, read on. Otherwise, see you tomorrow.

Adblock Plus – Like I said once before I don’t leave my firewall without it. Although recently I have been leaving it disabled more and more because I have been observing the AdSense ad placement around the web and I got tired of white listing sites.

All-In-One Gestures – I got used to using this type of feature waaaay back when I was using MyIE2 (now Maxthon) and have been using them ever since.

BugMeNot – Good for bypassing login pages of newspapers.

ColorZilla – Pretty much only for those interested in web design or color schemes. Allows you to see the color code of any color on a web page.

FireBug – This is one awesome tool for designing web pages. Makes it super simple to test out changes in your CSS live without the save/refresh hassle. Feature request: Please add the ability to save the altered CSS code to a file.

Forecastfox – Weather in the status bar.

Foxmarks – If you use Firefox on multiple computers and have a large collection of bookmarks this is the best way to manage them. I used to use Bookmarks Synchronizer but it hasn’t been maintained since around Firefox 1.0.

Google Toolbar – I only use it to display the PageRank option.

Image Zoom – For zooming images of course.

InfoLister – A great way to keep track of the extensions you have have installed. I used it to create the list above.

Paste and Go 2 – A replacement to the original Paste and Go. This probably saves me about 0.3 seconds each time I past a link. I got started with this extension back before Firefox had a “go” button. As a matter of fact there was actually a “Go Button” extension I used for a while.

Pearl Crescent – Great for taking full length screen captures. I always think one of these would look really cool as a printed banner on a wall. Click here for an example. Warning, the image is quite large.

site update: 1 visitor in last 24.

Yup, it’s that time again. I love it and I hate it. I love the fact that I will be getting a new “gadget” to play with, but I hate the fact that I have to do the research to make sure I find a phone that I like. No, I won’t be waiting for the vaunted iPhone. I just can’t justify the four or five-hundred dollar price tag. Ohh, but I would reaaaally like to get one.

My wife thinks I’m obsessive about researching things like this before I buy them and makes fun of me all the time for it. She would just go into the store and pick out the under $50 phone she likes the best and get it. That’s the thing, she doesn’t get why people would pay more than $50 for a cell phone. I on the other hand would pay a little more, say up to $100. At that price I hope to get a phone that isn’t about to be discontinued by the carrier or maybe a phone that is at the bottom end of the nicer phones. Since I’m just getting started I’ll document the process on this site.

Here’s what we currently have.

• Our carrier is Cingular (“Now the new AT&T”)
• We are on a family plan with two lines
• Our plan gets 600 anytime and 5000 night and weekend minutes
• Both phones are Motorola V551‘s
• Our contract is currently expired
• Our bill was in the mid-$50 range until we recently added 7pm-7am nights and weekends

That’s good for now. Next time I’ll get into what features I’m looking for in a phone and some of the sites I use to research before buying.

site update: One visitor in the last 24 hours.

Since I’ve been spending more of my time reading forums, I thought it would be a good time for me to point out a couple of the best places to discuss and learn about Google AdSense. To add a little suspense (dunh, dunh, dunh), I’ll go in reverse order of my favorites from 3 to 1.

(Disclaimer. This is just my opinion, I’m sure others have different preferences.)

Here we go.

#3 Google Community AdWords & AdSense forum

I have just recently ran across this forum so I don’t know much about it yet. It runs on phpBB and has an attractive theme and logo. The discussions appear to be a little lean with most threads having between one and four replies. I will have to stop by this site occasionally to keep my eye on it.

#2 Webmaster World Google AdSense forum

This may be the most popular site as far as Google search results go, but it’s not my favorite. It runs on Webmaster Worlds own homebrew BestBBS. I find the discussions to be more matter-of-fact and not as friendly as my #1 pick. I think the theme/color scheme do more harm than good for this site. The whole look of the site is a little on the boring side and just doesn’t feel compelling. That make any sense? Just doesn’t make you want to contribute I guess is what I’m trying to say.

#1 Digital Point Google AdSense forum

This one is my current favorite if you couldn’t tell by me bestowing my #1 ranking upon it. The main reason why is because of the excellent discussions. Most everyone is friendly and helpful when someone asks a question. Try as I might, I can’t help myself from looking at the latest “I had my first $100 month” thread.

The site runs the very popular vBulletin and has nice green theme. As far as traffic, this board has extremely lively discussions with most treads having several responses. There is some more separation between topics since there is a separate forum for Guidelines / Compliance, Placement / Review / Examples, Reporting & Stats, and Payments. This separation helps keep the forum on topic.

Oh, Digital Point also has ad revenue sharing. This allows you to post your AdSense publisher id and the site will show an ad that is linked to your AdSense account in the upper right hand corner. This supposedly DOES NOT violate the AdSense terms of service. I look forward to participating in this when my blog leaves stealth mode.

I’ve seen other people do this before but I’ve been wanting to put this list up on a site for a while now. I can remember many times that I’ve had tried searching Google to find a tool to, for example, edit mp3 files. Actually go ahead, search for “mp3 editor” in Google. It’s a mess right? Who the hell knows if any of those programs are any good or not. I’m sure a lot of them are legit, but most of the links will take you to crippled shareware that just won’t get the job done.

This stuff should be simple. This is one instance where Google really does come up short. I remember back several years ago (pre- digg, pre- fark, pre- web 2.0) when I would check download.com every day.  The top 10 most downloaded and later top 50 was where a lot of people (me included) found some of the coolest new stuff on the internet. After the original napster went away I remember seeing Gnutella on the list for the first time. That picture isn’t an advertisement, it’s actually the Download.com logo from around 1997. Cool Stuff. Maybe in some way this list can be a more editorialized, waaaaay more simplified list of the tools around today.

I make no guarantees about this being the “best” software, it’s simply what I use. I will probably change some of the items from time to time as they come and go from my regular usage. I think for right now I will just list the name and a link to where you can find the software. Later on I may include an explanation as to why I use it. So where to start? In no particular order for now. Just as I think of them.

On the Desktop
Web browser: Firefox
Email Client: Thunderbird
PDF Viewer: Foxit Reader
Media Player: iTunes | Windows Media Player 11
Audio / MP3 Editor: Audacity
Photo Editing: Adobe Photoshop
Photo Organization: Windows Explorer | Picasa2
FTP Client: Filezilla
SSH Client: Putty
Text Editor: Notepad++

Online Apps and Services
eMail: Gmail
Backup: Mozy
Feed Reader: Google Reader