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.

Amazon Video on Demand

I've recently fell in love with The Office, not the one I work at, but the one on NBC every Thursday night at 9:00 PM E. Since I'm just now tuning in I wanted to catch up with some previous episodes. Buying the DVDs is costly, Season 1 costs $22.99 on Amazon.com, and only six episodes aired that season. I found a way around this, however.

Pepsi Points was my answer. I've never been a big Pepsi fan, I would choose Coke if given the option, but I never really cared which carbonated beverage was washing down my lunch. That was not until I saw the Amazon.com logo plastered on the Pepsi bottle (The amazon logo has since been removed) which piqued my interested. I decided to start buying Pepsi products from the vending machine at work and see what I could actually get with Pepsi Points (I had been collecting Coke caps, but the promotions were either a) lame, b) too expensive (read: I couldn't drink that much coke in my life) or c) drawings which I knew I could never win). I soon discovered that with 5 Pepsi Points (1 point per cap) I could download most any MP3 on the Amazon.com MP3 store (totally DRM Free by the way), or with 12 points I could download an episode of a TV show. Since then I have been continuously collecting Pepsi Caps (even to the extent of picking them up when in public) so that I could earn more music and TV shows.

The experience of the Amazon Video on Demand store (previously the Amazon Unbox store) is pretty seamless. It's not the best ever but it is better than most for what it does. First you have to download the software from Amazon.com. Then you go to Amazon's Video on Demand store and select the video(s) you want to download, choose your method of payment and to which PC you want to download them to. You can also choose to watch the videos online without downloading the software if you wish. Once the videos download to your computer you can watch them whenever you want on your computer or use a Windows Media Extender like the Xbox360 to view the videos. The videos do carry a heavy DRM lock unlike the Amazon MP3 experience. Some of the frustrating things for me about the expirience is that you can't just transfer the videos to another computer; you have to download them again (there is an option to import videos into your library, but you have to be connected to the internet because of the DRM restrictions). Another problem is that I can't watch the videos on my iPod Touch. There is a mobile transfer option and I thought that I could watch them on my Samsung a727 phone which wouldn't be optimal, but it would be an alternative. However, the videos wouldn't play on my phone for some unknown reason. Amazon does offer help on the mobile option and provides a list of Microsoft certified Play for Sure devices if you happen to have one of those.

All in all this service is great as I can watch my videos in a good resolution on my TV through the Xbox360 media extender, but I would like to be able to watch these on my iPod. I don't see that happening in the near future, though, because I can see how that would be a conflicting interest for Apple as they already offer these videos in their store.

iPod Touch/iPhone Apps

Well, I got my iPod Touch Wednesday as an early Christmas present and after extensively playing with it I would like to give you my top 5 Free Applications (Hey, i'm cheap okay).

1) Mighty Docs - With Mighty Docs you can view your documents and spreadsheets from Google Docs. The great feature about Mighty Docs is that it caches the documents and spreadsheets when you open then. That way when you don't have an internet connection you can still view your documents. I love this application, it works great and is pretty fast too. Some updates I'd like to see in the future would be ability to edit documents and spreadsheets (create them also) and save changes to server when you are connected. I'd also like to see presentation functionality which I believe is being developed now. You definitely need this app if you use Google Docs.

2) Remote - I believe this application was developed my Apple. The application is simple, connect your iPod Touch/iPhone and computer to a local network and turn on iTunes on the computer. The first time that you use the app for your library it will give you a four number passcode to enter on the computer to verify the connection. From then on it remembers the library and works like a charm. All of your playlists are shown in the application or you can browse your media by artist, album, etc. This app works great if you use a media server or a home theater PC. I really like this application.

3) Facebook - This application is nice and polished. Basically, if you like using Facebook then this app will be natural for you. If you use Facebook then there is no reason for you not to get this app.

4) Movies - Movies is a great application. The front screen brings up movies that are released that week, and then other movies still hot in the box office and then lesser known movies still playing in theaters. You can search for theaters near your location and select your favorites. Movie times are also listed for all available theaters. When you select a movie more information is given about it and some movies have the ability to play the trailer for you. This is a nice clean app that easily lets you select your entertainment choices for the night.

5) Twitterific - This is a really good Twitter app. You can view your friends' tweets and post your own. You can also view all tweets if you choose. There's nothing spectacular about this app, but it is pretty good.

Bonus: I also liked the game Fuzzle. It's a really neat free game that will take up lots of your time. The Labyrinth lite edition is pretty good also, I'll probably wind up buying the full version of that.

Post in the comments and let me know what your favorite apps are.

Microsoft Expression Blend

Until recently the way Microsoft allowed you to design windows programs with .NET was called Windows Forms and this feature set of familiar looking tools was built into Visual Studio (which is a relatively expensive program but makes editing code much easier). Now Microsoft has released Expression Blend, the new way to create Windows Applications. Guess what, Expression Blend is a completely separate program from Visual Studio. You know what else, you can't edit your code directly from Expression Blend either now. So if you want to use the newest Microsoft technologies you have to fork out the money for both programs.
Now that I've got that out of my system I'd like to introduce you to creating Windows Applications with Expression Blend through what Microsoft calls WPF or Windows Presentation Foundation. Essentially you don't need Blend to create forms through WPF but it's a lot easier if you do. CoDe magazine online has a great article that helped me get started using WPF called WPF meets iPhone. This tutorial takes you through the steps of creating a new project from scratch making an interface similar to the iPhone. The online article has everything you need except Expression Blend and C# 2008 Express or VB Express (depending on which language you prefer, the tutorial offers code samples for each) including the C# and VB source code and all the resources needed. Following the article isn't hard and taught me enough to start creating my own forms with Expression Blend.
If you like this article and use Microsoft Technologies for your programming I would highly suggest subscribing to the magazine. You can read a lot of the content online, but as usual subscribers usually get a little more content.
Try and put your own twist on the iPhone interface and

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.

Google Chrome

Well, Google Chrome has been out for a few days now and I have to say I like it. If you've been keeping up with my posts you should know that I regularly use Opera as my web browser. So far I don't think that has changed. Chrome is laking some very important features that Opera includes, such as syncing bookmarks, no Mac support, and a built in RSS reader just to name a few. I do like how the bookmarks are set up similar to Safari. As far as the RSS feeds go I've been getting by using Google Reader online, but sometimes I'm not connected to the internet (Shock!) and I would like to be able to read previous posts on some blogs. With Opera I can go back and reread blog posts because it download the feed to the hard disk and I can read them when not connected. Google Reader requires a connection to the internet to load. At first I downloaded Chrome on my work computer and as soon as I tried to run it an error message came up saying that the program failed to initialize in memory and nothing would happen. So, I installed the browser on my laptop and it worked just fine. After a couple of days a solution arose on the internet. Chrome does not play well with Symantec programs. See Chrome runs each tab in a sandbox so that if one tab crashes then it will get rid of that tab and it's instance in ram, allowing the other tabs to run smoothly. Symantec doesn't like this feature and thinks that Chrome is trying to do something funny to your memory so it blocks it. How do you get Chrome to run with Symantec? Well you turn the sandbox feature off. Can you do this through the setup or options? Sadly Chrome doesn't have an option for turning off sandbox, so you have to edit the shortcut icon that links to Chrome. In the target box you have to add a space and --no-sandbox after the last quotation mark.



This will turn off the sandbox feature and allow Google Chrome to run alongside Symantec programs.
Overall I really like where Google is taking the browser experience, especially with the search feature built right into the address bar (Opera will search Google if you type in g and then the search terms). I acknowledge that Chrome is still in beta and being developed, but I can really see this going places. Is Chrome going to be my default browser, no. Will I use it and keep an eye on updates, yes.

You can download Google Chrome at Google.com/chrome

Kids In Mind

Today I bring you Kids-In-Mind.com. If you have children, take children to movies or just like to know what the movie is rated for then this is your site. I like to know what kind of content is in a movie before I watch it, sometimes I can tell by the trailer, sometimes I can't. At Kids in Mind there is a listing of movies currently out in theaters. With a quick glance you can see the ratings for sex, violence and profanity. When you click on the movie title you can read a synopsis of the movie, and then detailed offenses in each catagory.
Under the sex category anything from kissing, touching, lovemaking or displays of skin are recorded. The good thing about the review is that it doesn't specify which characters offend or when so you don't know who is kissing who, you just know that somewhere in the movie someone kisses. If you haven't seen the movie this really shouldn't spoil it for you.
The violence/gore catagory is just as strict, any kind of physical violence or general gore (blood, guts, etc) counts. The same spoiler rules count here also so you don't know who got their head chopped off.
The profanity category simply counts the number of times certain words are used, and also catalog gestures and explain what the gestures were mentioning. This usually goes into even categorizing name calling and steryotypes.
There are also additional sections for substance use, discussion topics, and message. In the substance use section they discuss any alocohol or other drugs used or mentioned in the film. Discussion topics are a list of moral or values that are displayed or challenged in the film. Topics range from what did the character do right, how could the character have made the situation better to simple moral issues discussed in the film. The message section simply talks about the movies message and tones about certain subjects.
There are also links to the movie's official site, IMDB listing and critics.com.
The site's design is very clean and functional. There are adds on the site, but they don't get in the way and are minimal. Overal this site is very enjoyable and the best I've come across so far, if you're iffy about whether or not to see a movie I would check out this site for a content rating first.