MarketMe 2.0

Find out how walking-friendly your neighborhood is at Walk Score, a website that applies your address to its mapping technology and the amenities nearest your home.

WalkScore says:

We help homebuyers, renters, and real estate agents find houses and apartments in great neighborhoods. Walk Score shows you a map of what’s nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property. Buying a house in a walkable neighborhood is good for your health and good for the environment.

The site admits to some issues with the scoring system, such as an inability to measure street design, safety or how well local transit works. Walk Score basically charts out the nearest coffeehouses, restaurants, libraries, etc. you might want to walk to.

Within blocks of my neighborhood, there is a great view of Puget Sound, two grocery stores, a wine bar, a coffee shop, a big city park, library, and a popular neighborhood bar. Not to mention tree-lined streets inhabited with beautiful homes to look at while you walk.

My neighborhood score was 92 out of 100.

The popularity of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook has created a demand for Photoshop experts because people want to look perfect and glamorous in their profile photographs on social websites.

For this reason, Snappy Snaps, a photo company in UK, has launched a special “photo airbrushing service” that turns any normal photograph into a flawless image.

You get lean thighs, wrinkle free face, no dark circles under the eyes, white straight teeth and an overall slim look without dieting or a visit to the beauty parlor - it’s all done using good old Photoshop.

No wonder, this Snappy Snaps image transformation service is massively popular especially among the professional MySpace and Facebook crowd.

Including a picture is the best way to increase responses to your profile but what type of photograph should you upload on your profile - the Yahoo! Dating portal has some solid advice that definitely goes against the airbrushing rule:

• Don’t forget to flaunt your smile.
• Choose a photo of just one person – you!
• A clear, well-lit picture will make you more appealing.
• Show off how you look on an average day.

Adapted from Digital Inspiration

Take two Harvard grads with a combined five summers of intern experience and give them a computer. Add a dose of schmoozing skills, some business smarts and heaping amounts of wit.

Before you know it, you have Intern Memo, the website and thrice-weekly e-newsletter created this summer by brothers Will and Theodore Bressman of New York. They have made it their mission to help the nation’s interns get ahead in their fields of choice, establish valuable connections and even have some fun.

Intern Memo also focuses on social activities in New York City, where the site is based. As landing an internship increasingly becomes the doorway to the world of work, Intern Memo is tapping into a nationwide need to share experiences. The Bressmans hope to expand to other cities.

“In the last 10 years, internships have become a prerequisite for entry-level jobs,” says Jamie Fedorko, author of The Intern Files: How to Get, Keep and Make the Most of Your Internship. “You can’t get one without” an internship.

Will, 25, and Theodore, 23, co-founded the site (internmemo.com), which sent its first e-newsletter on May 28. Their sister, Ellie, 19, markets by word of mouth and on a Facebook group. The e-newsletter now boasts more than 3,000 subscribers.

“There isn’t really a resource out there for people who want to be spoken to, not down to,” says Will, who, after interning at sports and media corporations, wanted to help others trying to break into careers.

“Interning is a really funny experience,” adds Theodore, who has interned at financial companies. “It can be fun, and it can be bad. But if you have the right perspective, it’s awesome.”

On Mondays, subscribers receive a general behavioral tip, such as developing a good rapport with a boss. Wednesday’s “Internal Monologue” features diary-like entries from Intern Samantha and Intern Simon, two real-life interns using pseudonyms to write candidly about office escapades. Fridays offer a “wild card,” in which Theodore, in charge of editorial content, compiles a list of mostly free weekend events and often includes transcripts of interviews with professional bigwigs from varied industries.

“If there’s one thing we can offer, it’s … a balance between utility and levity,” says Will, who oversees Web development and potential partnerships. He works full time at a video website, while Theodore freelances for online publications. Ellie has three years left at Harvard.

Fedorko, who interned in college and is now a freelance writer, also stressed balance, urging greenhorns to find the middle road between being the “ingratiating brown-nosing intern” and “the intern who thinks they know it all.”

Blair Clark, a senior at Penn State University, recalls her first internship last summer, at a New York art gallery.

“When I started, it was overwhelming … I had to learn everything right when I got there,” from how to use the office fax machine to adapting to the fast-paced work environment, says Clark, 21. “Anything would have helped” to make the transition a bit smoother.

Next summer, the Intern Memo team hopes to expand to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

For now, the best advice these interns emeriti can give their fan base is to relax.

“Most of the time, you’re not entrusted with something that’s life or death,” Theodore says.

 This article was written by Michael Horowitz, an independent computer consultant and member of CNet.com’s blog team. Below are his opinions of Mozy, not mine. I just wanted to share what other people are saying about this service. Thanks!

–Jacob M.

—

For a company in the boring business of online file storage, Mozy gets more than its share of press coverage, and from what I’ve seen, it’s all been positive. Mozy attracted attention back in December 2006 when they started offering unlimited file storage for $5 per month or $55 per year (rounded off).

The first Mozy review I ran across was by Walter Mossberg in The Wall Street Journal (”These Services Make Backing Up Your Files Safe and Inexpensive“, December 14, 2006). He liked Mozy, so I spent some time reviewing them for a class I teach on backing up your computer. My opinion differed from Mr. Mossberg’s, not for the first time.

Then in January 2007, David Pogue, writing in The New York Times, also liked the service (”Fewer Excuses For Not Doing A PC Backup“, January 4, 2007). I blew that off too. But a couple weeks ago the tech Web site Ars Technica published a review of online storage providers by Joel Hruska that recommended Mozy as the best of the bunch (”Online backup solutions: a review“, July 16, 2007). For me, that was the final straw. Time to speak up.

The good reviews

In his review Walter Mossberg compared Mozy to Carbonite, another online storage company. He found Mozy “easy to set up and easy to use” and seemed impressed that using the Web-based interface he could restore files on a Macintosh computer. Security is an obvious concern with off-site storage and addressing it he said, “Both companies encrypt the backed-up files and say they don’t view them.” Finally, he notes that “you can back up multiple computers–but you have to pay extra for each additional machine.”Pogue also found Mozy more flexible than Carbonite, citing as an example the fact that backups can either be continuous or run at specified times and dates. He pointed out that Mozy can back up only changed portions of files, and he liked that you can review 30 days of backups (more on this below). His only criticism was minor, he felt that Mozy might not be the best choice for beginners as some of its options are “novice-hostile.”

Writing for Ars Technica, Joe Hruska reviewed Xdrive, Backup/PC, Mozy and Carbonite and concluded: “Of the services we tested here, Mozy Online struck the best balance between functionality and flexibility and is our overall top pick for an online backup service.”

My opinions

To start with, I don’t like any backup service whose software has to run constantly in the background. The more software running on a computer the greater the chance of something going wrong. I prefer a backup scheme where the backups happen on a schedule and/or on demand. Thus, 99 percent of the time there is no backup software running. I don’t like my computer doing stuff without me knowing about it.And, if I had to go with background software that never shuts down, my preference would be for a mature product. Something that’s at version 11 and has been around for years. Mozy is a relatively new company; it was founded in 2005. In December of 2006 when Mr. Mossberg wrote his review, the Mozy application software only ran under Windows XP. Now it also supports Windows 2000 and Vista and they have Mac software in beta testing. This is all too new for me to trust it with something as important as file backups.

Mr. Mossberg’s description of the Web-based interface failed to point out that it can’t be used for making backups, only for restoring files. As he said, Mozy charges extra for each additional computer that you back up from. The online backup service that I use, which I’m not going to mention both because it’s not perfect and this blog is not an ad, allows me to back up files from an unlimited number of computers using their Web interface. This should be a prerequisite for any online storage service you may be considering.

Big sin

Mozy’s biggest sin wasn’t mentioned in any of the reviews. (Doesn’t anyone read the fine print?)An obvious reason for making backups is to be protected from accidentally deleting files. If your fingers slip while typing, you can wipe out dozens of files and not realize it. Or someone else using your computer might delete them. Or there may be a glitch in the file system and Windows loses track of some files.

If you delete a file by accident and don’t notice it, Mozy will delete the backups of the file too. I kid you not.

This is a quote from Mozy.com (as of July 29, 2007): “If you delete the working copy on your machine and then run a backup, Mozy will assume that you no longer need a backup copy, since you got rid of the working copy, and will mark the file to be removed from our system in 30 days…After 30 days, you cannot get these files back.”

Pogue made a bad thing seem like a good thing when he wrote: “You can view 30 days’ worth of backups, too–a feature that prevents you from deleting a file from your PC accidentally and then finding its deletion mirrored in your latest backup.” Mr. Pogue is assuming both that you know a file was deleted by accident and that you try to recover it within 30 days. But if you are not aware that a file is missing until 31 days after it disappeared, it’s gone. With my online backup company I could accidentally delete a file, not know about it for years and still be able to recover the last backed-up copy.

Perhaps you know someone who has had to reinstall Windows? Or had their laptop computer stolen? With Mozy there is a chance it may treat missing files as being deleted on purpose, and delete the backups in 30 days. I have no idea how likely this is, but if something can go wrong, it will. And again, there’s that issue of relatively new version 1 software to consider.

Why does Mozy do something that seems so wrong? I think I know.

In their free service Mozy offers 2GB of storage space to anyone who feels like asking for it. The less space someone uses, the better it is for them. In their paid service, Mozy offers unlimited storage for $55 per year. Here, too, the less space a customer uses the better it is for Mozy. In this context, it makes sense for them to delete as many files as possible. It’s a natural outgrowth of their business model.

In contrast, Mozy’s competitors charge more as their customers use more storage space. It’s reasonable to assume that these companies make more money the more data they are storing. Thus, they are not motivated to delete files. In my opinion, you’re better off using a company with this business model.

Mozy customers are, in effect, trying to get something for nothing with unlimited storage for only $55 per year. It’s too good to be true.

I’m far from done. More tomorrow…

Michael Horowitz is an independent computer consultant and the author of several classes on Defensive Computing. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network.

Do you have the urge to tell your friends how much you like them or maybe dislike them? Now you can share your feelings about them on community Web site FriendChart, which debuted this week in beta. The site slogan is “Your friends at glance”.

Interested? I wouldn’t do it. It’s OK to put yourself out there–that’s a personal choice. But to expose your friends and rate them, that’s drawing a line, at least for me. I haven’t even thought about my friends in terms of scores.

In an example of one rating, FriendChart founder Patrick Jackson gives a 4,5 score out of 15 for a person he met a few times. “Met XXX at a swimmers party–I think it was a birthday. Didn’t know him too well then, but had fun hanging out. There were cards and beer pong involved. Fun!”

Not only can you rate and write about your friends, your profile also provides charts on how much time you actually spend with them, for example. So if one of your friends feels left out, he or she can compare the time you spend with them compared to others.

Jackson’s description of a friend chart is that “it’s natural for friends to come and go in our lives. A friend chart is a way to capture the natural beauty of this ebb and flow,” he said in a statement.

The HTML coding is available to add charts to other Web communities such as MySpace.com, and is constantly updated with the new information you publish of your friends on FriendChart.

The official release of the site is scheduled for January 2008.

Posted by Miriam Olsson

Mozy.com is taking online, automated backups, to a new level.

I have been using their service for sometime now and have every confidence that they are secure with my files.

Check them out - no obligations!

Mozy.com

Personally, I would be annoyed by this. However, I can see it’s usefulness in certain instances.

For those of you with task lists, there comes a time when your eyes simply scan over the reoccurring items. Whether it is a reminder to eat more fruit, a reminder to call your mother each week, pay bills, whatever.

Well, you can call this a free nag service. You setup the nag and HassleMe will email you with the reminder for a certain task. If you need a change of pace from your to do list or Outlook task list, maybe give this one a shot.

Here’s what HassleMe says about their service:

Not eating enough fruit? Forgot to feed the fish again? Need a little help keeping your New Year’s resolutions? Tell us what to hassle you about, and we’ll nag you via email at semi-unpredictable intervals.

Check them out: HassleMe

I surely could have used this site when we planned the seating assignments for our wedding. Between feuding family members and keeping families with kids all together, is was enough to drive us batty. Then you have Aunt Betty that no one wants to sit with…

As it was, we drew a bunch of circles in PowerPoint and tried using text boxes with names to keep everything straight. Clearly, that was not time efficient nor fun.

Free for those planning events with less than 50 people, Simply Seating takes those problems away. You simply input a little data and you are off and running. It even lets you add guest information such as dietary requirements. There is nothing to install on your computer and it was a cinch to learn.

From their website:

We believe in simplicity. We’ve made it simple to sign up, to create an event, and to place people in seats. By taking some of the hottest new web technologies and creating an intuitive and flexible interface, the process of creating a seating chart has never been easier. We’ve eliminated the “bloat” of desktop applications and pared down the options to get you to the end result fast.

SimpleSeating.com

Frank Warren doesn’t want to talk about himself.He’ll admit that he started PostSecret.com, his Web site of postcard-submitted, artistic, sometimes enigmatic personal admittances, after he went through a period of personal travails. But he dismisses any further probing.

He’ll soft-pedal concrete details about his life — his regular job as the owner of a document delivery company, his family (a wife and a 12-year-old daughter), his background — if he mentions them at all.

“I try to take myself out of PostSecret as much as possible,” he says. “The power comes through the voices on the postcards.” (Watch Warren describe the scope of that power )

One has to take Warren, 42, at his word. With his short hair, glasses and earnest demeanor, he looks, perhaps, like a Midwestern clergyman and speaks in the calm cadences of a therapist. But in a world (and cyberworld) full of deadpan mockery and façade building, is his weekly postcard posting at www.postsecret.com a joke?

No, he says. In fact, that’s the last thing on his mind. He’s turned down appearances on talk shows because he’s been concerned hosts would highlight the sillier cards, or make fun of the more somber ones. He considers the endeavor, which began in late 2004 as something of a public art project, a sacred trust, and he’s careful not to violate that covenant. (Gallery: Some of the secrets of PostSecret)

“[The project] allows people to remove their social masks,” says Warren, sitting in a break room at CNN Center. “I want to respect that. … I’ve tried to earn this trust strangers have placed in me.”

What if you could find out if a prospective roommate is messy or doesn’t pay the rent? Now you can, thanks to a new web site created by a University of Washington grad student.

Visit: RateYourRoommate.com