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 »

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 »

The Stikkit web service has been around for quite awhile, and although I had used it when I first signed up, for some reason I stopped. Simply stated, Stikkit lets you create events, reminders, contacts and notes.

That last statement is sure to have you asking one of two questions.

“So what. Aren’t there about a million web sites and programs that you can use to do that?”

Or

“What makes Stikkit different?”

The answers are:

I don’t know, I haven’t counted them. I bet there are a lot though.

and

Stikkit is different because of the way that you enter this information.

You see, Stikkit uses some intelligence to interpret the emails that are sent to it. When you sign up for stikkit, you’re given an email address that you can send email to. The content of your email is used to create “stikkits” that represent your information, using various keywords.

Some of the Basics

Here is an example. If I sent this email to stikkit:

“Call Joe next Wednesday about his WebSite”

Then Stikkit would create an appointment next Wednesday, whatever the date may be.

Stikkit gets even better as you start learning the language that it uses, which is pretty straight forward. I could have sent this email:

(Subject:) Joe Joeseph

(Message Body)

Joe Joseph

Home Phone: 123-456-7891

- Call Joe next Wednesday about his web site

@WebGigs

Now Stikkit would create a contact (called a Peep) named Joe Joesph. It would list his home phone number as 123-456-7891. A to do item would be created, and they would all be tagged “WebGigs”.

I just started using Stikkit again recently because I wanted an easy way to keep my contacts up to date, and a easy way to remind myself about things that I have to do. I use Google calendar too, but it is just so much easier to add a Stikkit.

Email Addresses All over the place

Each Stikkit that you create is given its own email address. So you can reply to the email, and make changes.

This is also nice because if you share a Stikkit with someone, they can make comments and changes to the item without having a Stikkit account.

Added Bonus: Works with your favorite Calendaring App too.

If you create a Stikkit for an event, when you are emailed about it, the event is attached in ICS format, which Google Calendar, and most other Calendar applications, recognize. So you can quickly add the appointment to your calendar application.

One of my favorite words: Free

The founders of Stikkit are making this service free, and they intend to always have a free version of the service. The web site is nice and clean, ad free, and pretty easy to navigate.

Links:

Stikkit Web Site

Posted in free stuff, Organization, Productivity, Web Tools, WebSites 2 Comments »

Do you ever get nervous about using images on your blog or web site? I don’t think anyone is going to mind if I take a screen grab of their logo, but I really want to make sure that if I use a photograph, especially if I’m going to chop it up or do something else a little crazy to it, that I’m not doing anything wrong. I sure wouldn’t want someone taking my work against my wishes.

So one day, I was looking for free images that I could use, and I ran across Freerange Stock. This site is really too good to be true. They have some extremely good photos, and you can use them for just about anything you want to.

Many stock photo sites will let you use their images, as long as it isn’t for “commercial” use. I was always hesitant to use them on my blog, since I’m serving ads which bring in dozens of pennies.

To set your mind at ease, this is from Freerangs Stock’s FAQ:

    Can I use these images in my commercial projects?
    Yes! Our images may be used in commercial projects like websites, advertising, books, videos, and other commercial presentations. If you would like to give credit to the site and/or photographer, that would be great. If you don’t have a way to include the credit, that does NOT prohibit you from using the images. You may not, however, repackage, redistribute, or claim ownership of the images. Do not use the photos in products that rely on the photograph as the main selling point.

You really aren’t risking anything using the photos. You do have to register with them to create an account, but I haven’t received any email from them, and I have had the account for quite awhile.

I haven’t always been good about linking to the photographer, but you may have noticed that I started including a link to the image and to the photographer at the bottom of my articles, even though this isn’t a requirement.

I definitely recommend this site.

References:

Free Range Stock

Posted in Blogging, free stuff, images, Recommendations, WebSites 4 Comments »

So you finally took the plunge and got an account with a hosting provider. But you aren’t big enough yet to afford a dedicated server, or co-location, so you’re using shared hosting.

Did you ever wonder who else is on the same server?

Well “My IP Neighbors” lets you find out. Just enter in your web site’s IP address, or web site URL, and it will list off the other sites on your server, in a convenient viewing window.

When I did it, I found out there are 101 web sites, including my own, on my server. I can’t complain since Blue host has been really dependable, and I can’t beat the price or what is included with the package.

Posted in Blogging, Hosting, Web Tools, WebSites 3 Comments »