As you can see over in the sidebar I have added a new category called “Free ’til I’m Cool”. That just means that the links displayed underneath weren’t paid for or even reciprocated. If at some point I ever started receiving regular visitors that is a position on the page I would consider selling as ad space. They aren’t Text Link Ads obviously and it would make absolutely no sense to even do that since there isn’t any traffic.

Now that I have confirmed that I would be receiving relevant ads with AdSense I have removed all instances of it for the time being. In its place are links to three sites I have mentioned before. Self Made Minds, Green Llama, and Tyler Cruz. I hope SMM and Green Llama don’t mind but I have cropped or adjusted their logos ever so slightly as to make them fit my sidebar. Guys if you are still reading the feed for this site feel free to stop by and check them out. If you have a problem with it I will delete the picture no problem.

site update: Negatory on the visitors.

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.

I thought that it would be a good time to check up on how well the site is being indexed by the various search engines. The last time I checked the status in Google for the word “techky”, it was buried on the 7th page. Now, when you do the exact same search this site is the #1 result. That is quite a move but in all actuality it really doesn’t matter YET because Techky has no name recognition and not may people are going to be searching for that term. Note to self: write a post on the importance of using a unique or “catchy” name.

On Yahoo! something even better happened. Techky.com now occupies the first two results for the term “techky”.

And then we come to MSN. Sigh. Techky.com is nowhere to be found. Nope. Zip, zilch, zero results for techky. Even though we all know that Google is the dominant force in the search world, this problem with MSN must be fixed. Why? Because MSN is the default home page for everyone that runs Microsoft Windows. Let’s say Windows has around a 90% market share of all computers. What percentage of people do you think change that default home page? It is widely speculated that as few as 10% of computer users know how or actually ever do change their home page. That is a lot of traffic to not even compete for. I will investigate.

Visitor update: Looks like we had only two unique visits in the last day.

Well, well, well, it appears one of my tactics has worked. Al from Self Made Minds must have seen my clicks in his incoming links stats and decided to stop by to check the place out. While he was here he left a comment. Much appreciated. Hell, “get at least 1 comment” probably wouldn’t have shown up in my “goals” posts for another couple of iterations.

Since I posted the New Goals article, there have been a total of 4 unique visitors/ip’s (not including my own of course) that have visited the site. Not too shabby. Slowly picking up steam?

I have also posted my first comment since ending my self-enforced publicity blackout. It was in response to Al’s recent post over on SMM. It hasn’t shown up yet though, so either they are moderating comments or I have failed to properly use the ‘internets’. I’ll check on it tomorrow to see which is the case.

With the first goal out of the way, it’s time to set some new ones. Here’s a recap of what I have accomplished.
Old Goals:

• Make a minimum of 1 post per day - CHECK
• Receive at least 1 visitor via search result - CHECK

New Goals:

• Continue to make a minimum of 1 post per day
• Write “topical” posts with searchable keywords or phrases (Don’t worry, this does not mean MFA articles. It will be something I’m interested in.)
• Write comments and participate in the threads on Digital Point’s AdSense forums. Eventually working my way towards the minimum 50 posts needed to participate in revenue sharing.
• Write comments on other blogs that I visit such as:
  • Green Llama
  • Self Made Minds
  • Tyler Cruz

• Receive at least 10 visitors (not page views) in a day.

That looks like a good list of goals to work on. Remember. Baby steps.

Dear Apple,

Please stop placing icons on my machine when I install the new version of iTunes. I used to wonder why you couldn’t come up with a sleek updater similar to the one that Firefox uses. Don’t misunderstand, I have broadband, so the speed isn’t a problem. It just seems like a lot of money spent on bandwidth on your part. Why are all of your updates 25+ MB even for a simple .1 update? Wait, you do have an updater now? Sweet, let me try that out. Ahh. You STILL download the entire package don’t you. Sigh.

That’s not why I’m writing you this time though. This letter is because of something else that you continue to do do. Override my preferences. Or not ask my preference would be a better way to put it. Every time I install the new update for iTunes or QuickTime you place a QuickTime icon on my desktop, in quick launch, and worst of all in the system tray. Unlike the other locations you can’t just right click and delete or drag to the system tray icon to the trash. You have to open up the preferences and tell it to remove the icon from the tray. Every time you reinstall. Please stop that. No one likes this. It’s actually a little Bonzi Buddyish.

Thanks.

I have finally received the first (non-accidental) visitor. The first goal of this site has been achieved. When I started out I wanted to set a simple goal of being discovered using only a search engine. The actual very first visitor appeared to be either a mis-type or someone trolling for a domain name.

This time someone did a search on google for “nissan xterra 30,000 mile service“. If you search Google for that phrase, my post “Cheap Nissan Xterra In-Cabin Microfilter” is the 8th result returned. The visitor came from somewhere on the University of Michigan’s campus and they were using IE7 if you’re curious.

Now that the first visitor is out of the way it’s time to find some more readers and set my next goal. Find all about how I’m going to do that tomorrow.

No visitors. Got that out of the way. The irony of telling someone who is not there that they haven’t been here is not lost on me. Consider it a diary at this point.

I’m probably going to spend my day working around the house and watching the do over (not Dover) NASCAR race that got rained out last night. That’s right I just admitted that I watch NASCAR. Admitting that to some people will automatically dock 15 points off of your IQ. Isn’t true though. You can watch the races and still be a normal human being.

Consider this to be my very own NASCAR version of Snopes.

True or False: NASCAR fans were the kids that rode the short bus with the tinted windows and seat belts to school.

FALSE

Note to self: Must start my NASCAR Wives and Girlfriends site.