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I saw a photo contest at one of our local Tampa news websites to win a Mother’s Day Getaway at the Omni Orlando Resort at Championsgate. I could use a weekend with my daughter in Orlando. Plus, we could bring along a couple of other people and have a relaxing Florida jaunt.

All I had to do was upload a photo to the public Mother’s Day gallery, but I have to tell you that the directions did not say that specifically. I had to figure it out through trial and error. I just knew I had to have an account and I had to upload a photo. That’s pretty much all the article explained.

I would almost rather go back and reconcile the records for all of my savings accounts since I was 15 than go through that loop of technical oddness again anytime soon. I’m pretty sure I uploaded the same photo to more galleries than any one person would be allowed to do.

But, I really do want a shot at that Getaway. Yes, I live in Florida and I theoretically get to enjoy a vacation-like setting 365 days a year (and 366 this year), but home is home and it’s just healthy to get away from time to time.

Anyway, I’m pretty tech savvy. I pick up on things quickly and seem to retain knowledge. This tripped me up, though, and made me feel like I was 88 and just exploring that witchcraft called the internet for the first time. *sigh*

I’m in the market for a new laptop.

I have my old Dell laptop, and although the thing works well for the most part, the connector in the back where you plug in the power cord has a short and I cannot get the computer to charge enough to even fully start it up anymore. It’s irritating, because if I can get past the startup process, the only way to keep the computer charged is to have my finger in the back, pushing up the power cord connect at just the right angle. Eventually, my finger cramps and starts to burn from the heat of the connection. It’s not a good situation.

My warranty is up and I’m unsure if I want to send it off to Dell and be at their mercy. I have taken to a couple of local places that purport to repair computers, but they have been staffed by lazy wanna-be geeks who don’t feel comfortable with the issue. They just want to upgrade my system software or help me look for viruses. I can do that myself, thank you very much.

So, I thought since the thing is about 5 years old anyway I might just buy a new notebook computer. I know you can get basic models for pretty cheap now and I really just need it for e-mail, the internet, and Microsoft Office programs. I do all of my design on my desktop computer and really just like having a laptop for travel or meetings.

What you think, readers? Should I try a couple more computer repair places first or just bite the proverbial bullet and start fresh?

Last weekend I was at my friend’s house. It was her birthday and she had declined going to dinner or accepting a gift. All she wanted was for me to sit with her and sort through boxes and boxes of papers and accumulated miscellany she needed to go through; yet had been unable to motivate herself to actually do.

So, that is how I spent my Saturday night. It wasn’t a bust, though. My daughter adores her girls and the oldest gave Gigi a “makeover”. I got to spend a lot of time just relaxing and chatting with my friend – and sorting of course. Also, I ended up with a pile of free meal coupons she could not use. Her kids get them from time to time at school, but since she had 4 kids, one coupon for a restaurant doesn’t do her any good.

She also gave me a pair of heat detectors she used to have in her house in Illinois. She does not need them in her current house and said she was going to try and sell them on eBay, but is just too busy to actually get it accomplished. She gave them to me and told me to sell them and keep what I get, but I’m having the same issue with time. I don’t have enough of it.

Lucky for me, there is an iSold It store right up the road in Palm Harbor. They handle eBay sales for you. All you do is stop by to drop off your items and give them the basic details. They manage the auction, ship the item, and give you the money. I’ll probably try to stop by with the heat detectors this weekend.

I’m pretty fortunate to live in a great location for things like shopping. When I was on a quest to find a new scanner a few weeks ago, I was able to hit like 5 electronics stores without going 5 miles from my house. Sadly, I did not find what I was looking for at the time. I have noticed that stores are stocking a lot less in the way of electronics these days. In fact, it seems like the bare minimum. If you want to find a better selection, you have to go to their companion website.

That’s fine with me. I like shopping online and I adore the fact that I can often find free shipping, lower prices, and coupon codes. Some sites even forego taxes.

When I went into Circuit City, for example, they had a number of all-in-one printer/scanner/fax machines available. Stand-alone scanners were a whole other story. They only had three models and they were all priced higher than the combo machines. It was insane. On their website, though, they have over 30 models. So, I got all set to use some Circuit City coupons I found online to buy one. Upon closer inspection, though, I noticed that manufacturers just aren’t making low-priced scanner fore the most part. You wither get a less advanced scanner attached to an all-in-one printer, or you pay out the nose for a high tech stand-alone scanner.

My theory is that the only people buying stand alone scanners anymore are professionals who are scanning in important documents or photos for photo restoration or to be able to work form old negatives. That is exactly why I want a stand alone scanner, but sadly my budget is not such that I can pay $500+ right now. I could sweat that a few years back you could get a high-quality scanner for less. I suppose it is all about demand and what the manufacturers are able to charge for the perception of quality.

So, now that my old professional scanner bit the dust, I am using the scanner on an all-in-one for the time being. The results are less than impressive. I’ll be keeping my eye out for local businesses selling off office equipment. That might be my best bet.

I’ve been having a terrible problem being on time lately. My cell phone and the cable DVR box both display the time, but they are rarely correct. Even when they are a few minutes, things can get backed up around this house.

The clock in the kitchen is gorgeous, but it is prone to lose time as the battery drains. The old mantle clock I inherited from my great-grandparents keeps great time, but it is not in a central location and I often forge to look at it when I am running ragged in the mornings, trying to get my daughter out of the house on time.

My mom mentioned to me that I need to get an atomic clock. Can you believe that when she first mentioned that to me, I had no idea you could actually buy atomic clocks for your home?> I have no idea what was keeping me from coming out of the ice age on that little bit of knowledge. My sister was there that day and I remember her say, “Oh, they’re cool! That clock we have on the wall in the family room is an atomic clock.”

Was I the only one out of the loop?

Anyway, if you don’t know what an atomic clock is, it is

And, you don’t; have to buy a bulky wall clock to get the technology. Casio watches make a line called Waveceptor. When I found these watches, I got pretty excited. Why? Because I am going into teaching and in the classroom, time is everything — down to the second. You have to know when subjects are starting and ending. You have to be different places in the school at odd times. You have to time students for reading, testing, and fitness.

I found this cute women’s Wavecepter. The technology involved means that the time is automatically set every day from time calibration radio signals. Despite its high tech inner workings, I like the classic “hands” style (or analog, for those of you who prefer proper terminology) of the timepiece.

Most of us are already familiar with the national Do Not Call registry. You can sign your phone numbers up for inclusion on a list that bars solicitors from calling your home.

Now consumer groups are asking the Federal Trade Commission to create a “do not track list”. The list would be an attempt to advertisers from collecting information about you. They have also asked the FCC to ban the collection of health and other sensitive information by companies who do business online; that is, unless you expressly consent.
Of course, advertisers are against the creation of a do not track list. They would rather self regulate. We all know how well self regulating does in the business place – she said snidely.
Other advocacy groups are also trying to urge the legislation of information collected about individuals who are under the age of 18.

I’m all for a Do Not Track list. Consumers should have the absolute right to stop the collection of information from their computer, while still retaining the right to use the internet.

There was a time that Google’s Page Rank system was innovative and exciting. Their proprietary algorithm assigned a rank between 1 and 10 to all WebPages, therefore giving said pages a rank of “value” to the company’s search engine.

Over time, people began to look at Google’s Page Rank as the simplest way to determine advertising value on a site. Although Page Rank never really took into consideration things like actual traffic, most people in the SEO community felt that PR was good enough when it came to justifying how they priced their ad space.

In the past year or so, Google’s Page Rank system has become a messy tangle of arbitrary exclusion, overvaluation, and undervaluation. No longer can you look at the PR for a website and accurately ascertain its inherent value.

The collective force of the internet has become untrusting of PR and has been looking in earnest for a successor. For some, systems like Alexa are a good indicator, because they determine a traffic pattern. But, Alexa only counts the traffic of users who have installed toolbar software. Then there is Technarati, but its system is also only based on incoming links.

Welcome IZEARanks to the world stage.

IZEARanks measures both your site’s traffic and incoming live links (note that I said LIVE links). In fact, the ranking system is totally transparent and it is no secret that the numbers are calculated using the following data: 70% daily unique visitors, 20% daily active inbound links, and 10% daily page views. Right now blogs are the only sites the ranking system measures, but right now blogs are what a majority of the advertisers out there are looking for when it comes to finding wise ways to spend their advertising dollars.

IZEARanks collects the data it uses directly from the website. They do not use third-party measuring sources. There is no room for opinion, perception, or penalty in the IZEARanks system. It is all about daily, dynamic numbers. In fact, a site’s RealRank (RR) can change from day to day, because the rankings are constantly being updated.

Here is a simple graph charting this site’s performance for the past week. Of course, I have access to more detailed numbers, but this is a quick, visual way to see how my blog is doing in terms of traffic and linking.

Personally, I am excited about the potential behind using a RealRank. I want to be able to show my site’s advertisers exactly what kind of traffic they are getting for their advertising dollars. I want them to be able to see trends over a week, or month, or even year. I want the kind of dynamic calculations IZEARanks can offer. The internet changes from day to day. I am not content to use a ranking system, like Google’s RP, that only updates four times a year and often arbitrarily manually overrides scores. I want real numbers for the real internet.

I’m not a massive video game addict, but I do enjoy some downtime with a good web based game or two. I have played Adventure Quest (and Dragon Fable) for years and recently I have been enjoying Ikarium. Generally, my game must-haves include that a game be free, web based, and a lot of fun. Additionally, I think it is a definite plus if I can interact with other players online. I need to blow off steam after my daughter goes to bed and a little gaming seems to do the trick.

I love it when I get keyed into a new game, or at least a game that is new to me. Nitto 1320 Legends - Free Live Online Drag Racing Game has caught my interest. Let’s see: free, online, and multiplayer – that’s just the kind of thing I like to see. You do need to download a free program to play, but that is certainly a small concession.

You can man a car from manufacturers like Scion, Honda, Ford or Mitsubishi, working to upgrade and customize your vehicle (Call me traditional, but I have my eye on the Mustang GT). Then, you can race other players individually or find a drag racing team and race that way. Win and you can get your hands on virtual money or possibly even your opponent’s car. That sure brings back the days that kids used to race for titles, huh?

In game social networking includes a custom Nitto Instant Messenger where users can contact their friends within the game. Form teams and represent with fellow racers! Because this is a multiplayer game with over 250,000 users, Nitto 1320 Legends ends up being more than just a video game. It is a fully functioning social networking site. You can instant message other players, team up to increase street credit and driver ranking, and rack up the points faster than ever.

Guess what I’ll be playing tonight when the kid finally drifts off to sleep?

I worked in the plastics industry for years. I was the director of the art department for a plastic bag manufacturer. Since I worked directly with customers who often knew nothing about flexographic printing and the properties of plastic packaging, I needed to know as much about the product as possible so I could be a point of knowledge and help the customers choose the best type of bag for their needs.

I remember the first time I went to the factory to the plastic being extruded. Most of the bags we made were High Density Polyethylene (HDPE), though sometimes a customer wanted bags with a clearer look, in which case we would use LLDPE (Linear Low Density Polyethylene). It was fascinating. The HDPE Granules were made from recycled plastic. They went into the machinery and what came out was this billowing tube of plastic sheeting. In turn, that was made into our very specialized style of plastic bags.

Anyway, working in the plastics industry really gave me an appreciation for the product. So much of what we use on a daily basis is made out of plastic, most often HDPE. Although some people want to make you think that only paper is recyclable, plastic is actually highly recyclable and knowing that it can be used over and over and over again gives me a very good feeling.

I think I have talked before about how I love watching the local news with the volume off and the closed caption turned on. It is fascinating to read how wildly inaccurate some of the captioning is at times. The local news is mostly depressing and focused on crime and government corruption. When I reading the captions, though, everything is suddenly a laugh riot.

I’m sure if I were actually hearing impaired I would be able to read lips and combine that with the captions to get the full story. Well, let’s hope that is the case. Otherwise, there are a lot of people here in the Tampa Bay area getting a wacky version of the news on a daily basis.

Even though I had to leave my 55” HDTV behind after my divorce, it all worked out in the end. That TV stopped working a couple of months ago anyway and my ex was forced to replace it. It made me all the more glad that I got the dining room set instead of the TV.

And, my brother-in-law just bought a new system and on Easter Sunday he brought over his old HDTV and hooked it up here at my house, complete with HDMI switches so that all of the peripherals output at their optimum. Of course, the “new” TV out in my family room is not as large as the one I had back when I was married, but it’s bigger and better than the little 19” I had from back when I was single.

Looks like I won in the end.

I took a look at Google’s Street View program way back when it first came out. I was kind of impressed, but wondered how I would feel if my apartment window was in one of the images, complete with a look at my bedroom. Or, what about the shots of the men coming out of strip clubs? Not too cool, really.

Anyway, Tampa finally made the cut and you can see ground-view, 360-degree images of hundreds of square miles of Bay area roads are in the system now. I took a look and although major roads in outlying areas are covered, things like my street are not included. I was actually pretty happy about that. Nonetheless, if someone coming to visit me wanted to see the roads right up to one of the intersections near my neighborhood, they could.

When it comes to photo editing, I have always loved Photoshop. It’s been painful in the past when someone has asked me to recommend a photo editing software and I say Photoshop, but then have to throw in that it is super expensive and has a steep learning curve.

So, it is exciting to see that as of today Adobe Systems Inc. is offering their basic Photoshop Express for free. It is web-based, so there is nothing to download and you can access your account from any computer in the world.

Adobe says that the Photoshop Express software is designed with the layman in mind. Gone is that steep learning curve and now nearly anyone can master photo editing quickly. Of course, if you find that you like Express and want to go with something a little more advances, Adobe’s Photoshop Elements is still only about $99.

I personally still prefer the full, professional version, but even I never use all of the features it is equipped with. Most people are going to find that Express does the trick for them. Express allows you to store up to 2 GB of photos online, crop them, rotate, edit for quality. You can automatically correct color and lighting, retouch photos, fix red-eye, sharpen, add effects, and more. It has all of the features the basic user would ever need.

Just make sure you have Adobe Flash 9 installed, and you are good to go.

Everyone I know has a digital photo frame. However, I still do not have one. Well, I did have one, but someone my ex husband walked away with it in the divorce. He did not take much, but if it was electronic you can bet he wanted it.

I’ve given digital photo frames as gifts on many occasions. I think people are endlessly fascinated by a picture frame you can use to display upwards of hundreds of pictures and never take up much room in the house. I even gave my grandmother one she can carry in her purse. She is not computer minded, but the idea of being able to pull out her little picture keeper and show her friends as many pictures of her great-grandchildren as she likes tickled her pink.

If you are unsure as to what exactly to look for when buying your first digital frame, Digital Frames Direct has a great buying guide that discusses size, screen quality, data cards, an overview of LCD technology, and more. Since digital frames are becoming increasingly popular as corporate gifts, you have to know how to get the best buy for your money. Read up on some reviews and you will have a better idea of what you are looking for before you buy.

Years ago, I had a GPS system in my Pathfinder. That vehicle was only leased, though, and when we bought the van we did not get a GPS system in it. I cannot tell you how much I missed that GPS! I had become far more dependant on it that I knew. It was especially helpful when I had doctors’ appointments or interviews at locations where I had not been previously.

So, I eventually bought a handheld GPS for myself and I can take it in whichever car I drive, or when I am riding with someone else. We used it last month when we went to Disney for the Pirate and Princess Party.

The only problem I have with my TomTom is that the little suction cup mount that came with it does not work at all. I usually end up with the GPS in my lap or in the seat next to me. When I have tried to place it on the window or dash, it just pops off unexpectedly and startles me while I am driving. Not cool.

I’m pretty delighted to see this product called GPS Pal. It’s a cup holder mount for a handheld GPS. This is a much safer option for me than trying to mess with the suction cups or hold the GPS in my lap. I cannot tell you how many times the TomTom has slipped out my lap while I am driving. The GPS Pal is under $20 and in my opinion, it is a much needed invention.