Light Speed Panel

If you have been reading this blog for any amount of time now you should know that I really like free stuff. Who doesn't, right? Well, I've found a new way to get free stuff, Light Speed Panel. With LSP you can take consumer surveys and earn free stuff. Most of the surveys only require 15-25 minutes of your time and you can ear from 75-150 points per survey, some surveys that are longer could even earn you up to 500 points for only 30 minutes of your time.
You may be wondering how much these points are worth, right? Well, 550 points will get you a $5 Amazon.com giftcard and 575 points will get you $5 straight into your Paypal account. There are some other really great offers for participating in surveys. Also for every survey you take you are entered into a monthly drawing for $5,000.
I even took a survey the other day that offered $50 if I was willing to participate even further. They are going to send me a special palm pilot to keep track of all tv snacks I eat for 2 weeks. To me that is definitely worth $50. I really like this site and think you should definitely check it out.

Google Tools

Ok, I discovered this a while ago but haven't used it much or discovered how powerful it is until recently. Google has a list of products that are very useful. Some of those that I have been experimenting with are Gmail, Google Docs, Reader, and Calendar.
Gmail is a very popular web based e-mail system. It is pretty comparable to other web based e-mail systems out there (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc). I haven't used Gmail extensively but it works. I don't know why it's still in beta, but it will probably be in beta forever. Don't let that stop you from using it, as far as I can tell it's fully feature complete.
Google Docs is really the tool that I think is so cool. With Docs you can upload an array of files or create your own files right on the web. With Docs you can store Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations. You can upload files of type DOC, RTF, ODT, SXW, TXT, PPT, PPS, CSV, XLS, ODS, PDF, and more. After you upload the files you can view and edit them online. You can also create Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations online. After you create or edit your uploaded files you can download them in any of the different formats that apply. You no longer need Microsoft Word to create a word document and send to your professor. You can create a document online and download it as a .DOC file and send it to your teacher. You could also upload an Open Office document and download it as a Microsoft Office document or vice-versa with any of the types.
Reader is an RSS reader just like the one integrated into your web browser or e-mail program. An RSS reader is something that is really lacking from Google's Chrome browser but they do have a web service for it. Google reader is a straight forward RSS reader. When you pull it up it will show all of the posts agregated and sorted by date. All of the different feeds are listed down the left side and clicking on one will show the posts for that feed sorted by date.
Calendar works similarly to the calendar that is built into Microsoft Outlook. You can add events, set reminders, and repeat events in a multitude of ways. The whole experience is very intuitive. You can embed the calendar in your website or export it to iCal, XML, or HTML formats. You can also add multiple calendars and share calendars with friends.
There are many more tools on Google's product site. All of these tools are great and useful. One thing that I would like to see would be these services integrated into Google's Browser. How great would it be if I could actually read my RSS feeds when I'm offline which I currently can't do with Chrome. Also it would be awesome to open and edit documents while offline because Chrome cached them. I would also like to be able to check my calendar without logging in to Google to do so. I'm just saying that would be a super nice feature. The really great thing about all these services is that you can use them from any computer when you log into Google.