Your registration is only good for 5 years, so if you registered as soon as it started, you will have to re-register soon to keep those pesky telemarketers from calling you.

 I didn’t realize it when I first signed up, or maybe I did realize it, and just don’t remember now, either way, you should go to the National Do not Call Registry, and register again.

Registration is easy, just click on the register button, enter your phone numbers, and click on “Register” again. One email for each number you registered will be sent to your email address (eventually, mine took a little while), and after clicking the confirmation, you will be good to go, at least for another 5 years.

The first year of operation for the do not call list was 2003, so you do have some time left, but hey, why not get started now. If you re-register now, you’ll be good to go until 2012.

You can read this Newsweek article to get more information.

Posted in Government, Telemarketers, WebServices, WebSites No Comments »

I posted recently about TeXtra, but there is a second video podcast that I have been watching lately to get my tech news fix, Webb Alert.

Like Textra, Webb Alert is generally under 8 minutes long, and has a surprising number of stories about what is happening in the world of Technology.

The host of Webb Alert is Morgan Webb, who I first saw on The Screen Savers on Tech TV, and on Extended Play. I had heard that after G4 bought Tech TV, that she remained on that network. I don’t know this for myself, because I haven’t watched G4 since they killed all of the Tech TV shows.

One aspect of Web Alert that I liked is that she shows commercials for blogs that she likes, without payment from those blogs. What a great deal.

Check Webb Alert out, I bet that you’ll like it.

Posted in Podcasts, Recommendations, Tech-News 1 Comment »

Is it me, or has Pownce been unavailable pretty frequently lately?

Pownce still requires an invite in order to join, so I assume that it’s still considered “in beta”. Even if it isn’t I don’t get angry about temporary outages for 3 reasons.

1. The service is free (at least for me, I haven’t gone “Pro”).

2. IT is my profession. So I understand, bad things happen, even to good servers.

3. If it starts to get annoying, I’ll just use something else.

All in all, I can’t complain, Pownce is pretty neat, and I like the service. Besides the outages, the only issue I’ve had is that I don’t always get notified when people reply to a note that I have replied to.

If you are on Pownce, feel free to add me, this is my public profile.

If you aren’t on Pownce, and would like to be, leave a comment, and I’ll email you an invite, I still have a few left.

Posted in Pownce, WebSites No Comments »

I pretty much stopped using my browser’s bookmarks a long time ago. Coincidently, this was right after I discovered Del.icio.us, I was having a little trouble keeping them in sync, and the fact that I could keep them somewhere on a web service was the tipping point.

The only disadvantage is that you can’t access them without the Internet. But really, if I don’t have Internet access anyway, what do I need the bookmarks for?

I just found this Firefox Add-on which lets you use those same bookmarks in your browser.

Note: This Add-on will disable the Del.icio.us buttons add-on, if you have it installed already. Don’t fear though, the buttons are also included in this add-on, their functionality has just changed.

After you download and install the add on, a setup wizard magically appears. (Clicking on any picture will open the original size image in a new window).

After Clicking Next, you are shown your logged in username, if you are logged in, and prompted to either log in as a different user or create an account.

The third screen gives you the option of importing your current Firefox bookmarks. I didn’t actually have any that I wanted, but I chose to import them just for the benefit of anyone reading this.

Once you click next, you have the choice of using the easy import, or the custom import. The custom import allows you to import all of your existing bookmarks into del.icio.us, and give them all the tag of “imported”. Using the custom import, you can also have the add on search your existing bookmarks, and only import those which are not already in del.icio.us.

After installation, you will notice the addition of the Del.icio.us toolbar:

As I mentioned in the beginning of the article, the del.icio.us buttons have been replaced with buttons that, although appear the same, have different functionality.

This button brings up the bookmark sidebar, which has now been hijacked by the add-on.

Although the “Tag” button still performs the same task, the dialog window that appears is exactly that, a dialog window instead of a pop up.

Now, I have posted enough screen grabs for 1 post, so I’ll just say that there is a lot of functionality in the del.icio.us sidebar, and it is much easier to find bookmarks than using the del.icio.us site.

References:

Del.icio.us bookmarks FireFox Add-on

What others have wrote:

Bookmarks are for Sissies – Incoherent Mumbling

Posted in Add-Ons, Browsers, FireFox 2 Comments »

I recently started watching a couple of video podcasts, and I think that the key, at least for me, is that I want a short format show.

If you want to catch up on your tech news, I would have to suggest TeXtra. The Podcast is part of the podshow network, and hosted by Natali Del Conte. I’m not particularly good with names, so the name didn’t really ring any bells with me, but if you read her podshow page, she has actually written for a number of well known web sites and / or publications.

As I mention in the title of this post, every episode I have watched to date has been right around 8 minutes long. This is a really great length for media on the computer.

I haven’t watched the last several episodes of Internet Millionaire because it’s just too darn long. At least it’s too long to watch on my computer. I would watch it if I had an easy way to get it on my television. I sure hope that the slingbox is going to be as good as it sounds, and I hope it comes out soon.

Back to the topic on hand, check out Textra, good news, short duration, and entertaining. I also have to thank them, because this is where I heard about TorchWood.

Turns out that I picked a bad time to post about this, since the host of the show is going on vacation for 2 weeks. You can still watch the most recent shows though.

Posted in Podcasts, Recommendations, Tech-News 3 Comments »