As the years go by I run across things that I think might be of interest to you folks out there on the big ol' Internet. This is a just a smattering of stuff I either use myself or think is really neat; I might even update this post periodically if I find new nifty stuff. There's no real theme to all of this; I just like it.
Netflix
I can't tell people enough about this service. My wife and I have used it for years now and we have entered a place that is beyond mere movie rentals; it transcends space and time to simply exist as "movie viewing." For those that don't know how this thing works, I'll give you a quick lowdown: users can have one or more "queues" of movies that get sent to their house one at a time. You watch the movie, dance a little dance of joy, send it back and they send you the next one on your list. My wife and I have our own separately kept lists so she can get all the movie musicals and soppy romantic flicks she wants, and I don't have to deal with that. We do watch movies together certainly, but these days with my lack of time I rarely get to plunk down in front of the DVD player while she burns through a movie a day if she has them. See, Netflix doesn't care how many movies you get off your list (unless you do some dumb uber-low cost plan where they limit how many movies a month they'll send you) so your only limit is the postal service.
I've discovered some other nifty features of Netflix as well. When our daughter becomes willing and able to view some familial video goodness I can make her her own list and populate it with kid-fare. If I see an ad for a movie I want to go see but know there ain't a chance in h-e-doublehockeysticks I'll get to go while it's in theaters, I pull up Netflix and search for the movie there. 99% of the time they have a listing for it and I can "save" it to my queue, which they'll dump over once it becomes available. You can buy used DVDs from them, watch movies on your computer of what they have available, even get into all kinds of community silliness where you review movies and recommend others to friends. It's chock full of movie goodness, and it fits whomever chooses to use it. I've spent the last few years "catching up" on movies I've never seen while my mom uses it to watch oodles of classic movies they have available. I really can't say it enough: use Netflix! It's an affordable way for me to keep up with one of my favorite hobbies.
Password Safe
This one is easy and hard to recommend. Over the years I've tried to compile all the online accounts I have and the passwords to go with them, but no tool or utility really fit the bill until I found this one. It does a couple neat things: first and foremost, it is a "safe" of accounts and passwords you so choose to keep which it encrypts into a database. It's secured by one "master" password that you have to input in order to open the database or make changes to it, so you'll never be fully free of having to remember some good password. It does take it down to one though (that's right, One Password to Rule Them All), so it's really the best way to deal with having so many accounts out there. I don't know about you, but over the years I've accumulated three webmail accounts and innumerable forum logins, not to mention important stuff like my bank account login, credit card, etc. When you really stop to think about it, if you use the Internet extensively you've got a bunch of this stuff out there, and let's be honest: you use the same username when possible and the same password of "Johnny7." Any computer person will tell you all the wrong things with this approach, but Password Safe solves all of that.
Not only does it keep all this information for you (so I don't have to remember what danggone name I used to register at 1-800-petmeds; is that the same one as 1-800-contacts?), but it actually generates secure passwords at the drop of a button press. As many characters as you want to use in any bizarre format that the website can handle. Google lets me use a 16-character password with uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and funky icons (what is a tilde anyway?) that would take Big Blue hundreds of years to crack (yeah, I'm concerned about this). My bank account? Yeah, they're web technology is a bit behind cause they're a small bank but I can tell Password Safe to generate me a 30-character password with just letters and numbers that is such gobblegok it doesn't really matter. And when do I have to type this in? Never. It uses the clipboard to copy/paste all this stuff and even type it in for you. For the security conscious, there's no better password utility I've found. Bear in mind, it's open source so it's not the most user-friendly of softwares, but if you take the time to figure it all out (and the time it takes to scour the net and find all those accounts you've got in order to get Password Safe to remember them for you) it's a golden piece of coding. It's really just a high-tech piece of paper that has all your accounts and passwords kept safe for which only you have the key for.
You either install Password Safe on a computer you use, or I find the better way is to install it to a removable USB drive for example (look for the "green" install option) and tote it around with me. This way all my accounts and passwords go where I go, whether that be at home or work or even a pal's computer (since you just have to run the .exe file to open up your database). Granted, if you choose this portable option you'd better back up the database in multiple places just in case that small USB drive falls in the gutter. If you decide to get into Password Safe, I recommend reading the help file at the first install to become accustom to the program. On the surface it does all the neat stuff I've outlined here, but if you dig even further it can turn into a slick form-filler and whatnot. With effort, highly recommended.
Edit March 11th, 2009: See the Dropbox recommendation below to get an idea of how to get rid of using a USB drive for the purpose of Password Safe.
Gmail
This one should be easy to figure out since I'm using Blogger. I will fully admit that after a bit of apprehensiveness to jump onto the G-wagon I'm a full-on convert. They make such neat stuff! Their mail system has come a long way and if it were in Yahoo's power I wouldn't even use any other webmail account. See, Gmail lets you POP mail (download it) from other accounts you have, except Yahoo is just plain wrong with their restriction of POP only being available to paying customers. This wouldn't bother me except Gmail has so many bloody options to it that it makes just about every other webmail service out there...well, just dumb. Yahoo has become a pale imitation of what Gmail offers (which includes POP access, for uh, free) and if it weren't for the pesky restrictions of Yahoo I wouldn't even bother with my old webmail accounts.
Anyway, the coolest thing I find about Gmail is for me it has become a gateway to so many of their other services. As I said before, because of Gmail I now use Blogger, I've recently started using Picasa (if this recommendation post wasn't already full of too many Internet-related things I'd be blogging on about the simplicity of that program as well) and will be taking advantage of their web albums, Google Desktop is integrated into my work experience which is great...the list goes on. I'm not saying use all this stuff, but at the very least Gmail is worth it by itself. Their storage capacity is just stupid and I've bought into the whole "search everything" mantra. It really does work. If you so choose you can use their Calendar and Contact service, which I hear is hit or miss, but for me the real recommendation comes from just the plain ease and niftiness of their mail service.
Netflix: Watch Instantly
See here for updated impressions...watching instantly on anything that isn't some kind of set-top box is just kind of silly at this point.
Idiocracy
If you're a fan of Office Space you're probably among the ten or so people that actually saw this movie. Of them I've probably shown it to about half. I got into it from the review in the headline link and he summed it up pretty well. It really skewers the mode of life we live in, that is obnoxious, wasteful, and stupid (brought to you by lots of sponsors). It doesn't take too much imagination to see this kind of society already in us now, and in hundreds of years? Yeah, it could happen. The movie is actually painfully funny; not in "I laughed so hard that it hurt," but so much of it is mind-numbingly stupid that it hurts to watch. This is a good thing, at least with my warped sense of humor. The movie is not bad but unabashedly mocks our most moronic cultural obsessions and pretty much blows them out of proportion. It's what makes it hilarious but probably hit too many nerves on the studio side and wasn't marketed. I try and spread the word on this movie as much as I can so I felt the need to recommend it here.
Gmail: Labels
OK, I already talked about Gmail in this post a bit of a ways up, but here's another reason you should check it out. Like I mentioned before I've taken a bit to The Google's "search everything" mantra and have actually pared back my decades-old insistence of organizing my data into folders and such. With Gmail, you really don't need to do that. Labels are kind of like tags or categories. It automatically labels all mail as Inbox, and you can create as many other labels as you like and apply them to mail. It then has a feature of looking at just a certain label, almost as if it were in a folder of that category. The best part is though you're not moving any mail around, just tagging it, as it were. You can add as many labels to a piece of mail as you want and then view each label and the mail shows up; I label my mail first by who it came from (friends or family) and then whatever subject I want to further label it by (holidays, sports, etc.). It's like folders but better. Give it a shot.
OCRemix
I haven't talked much about my fondness for video games here on The Ballad. There have been a few links here and there that might have pointed you in that direction, but overall a visitor to this blog wouldn't get a real gaming vibe from me. Part of this is intentional: when I was growing up games were taboo enough that if you were a fan it was almost a badge of shame, and nowadays a "gamer" is a teenage or young adult male that specializes in gritty shooting games and gore-fests that make the taboo of my younger years tame. Since I never was nor am not of this vocal "hardcore" set in gaming I don't associate much with it as a hobby as I might other things. I'm guess I'm old fashioned when it comes to this stuff cause I sure do like the good old days of stomping goombas and doing random weird things with blocks and bubbles just cause the game told you so. This was fun, and while part of this is definitely coming back these days due to new technologies and retro always being the new cool, the vast majority of what most people (gamers included) think of as modern nowadays are physics systems that define how a character can be tossed around like a rag doll and its reaction to its own death. A more realistic game does not make a game better in my mind, but this is all besides the point of this recommendation.
Music! Whether you like games old or new, or video games at all in general, there are certain tunes that just about every human knows. Even in text form: do do do, do do, DOOT! You all know where that one came from. In thinking back to where this site came from, whether it was myself, my brother, or any myriad of friends that caught on to it, I really don't recall how it was found. Nevertheless, if you enjoy games or music (or even better, music in games) you owe it to yourself to check this site out. What starts out as a simple "hey, I remember that song!" to a run-of-the-mill remix of the ubiquitous theme to The Legend of Zelda turns into a site where you suddenly start finding songs that aren't just mere "remixes" as the title might imply. Some of the artists that create this stuff can only be considered true musicians in my mind as they deconstruct, invent, and rebuild a song from a game into a wholly different musical composition. While there is the simple joy of old tunes reinvigorated, there are musical arrangements that go beyond the term "mix" of any kind (care for a little Mario waltz?). The naming conventions of some of these songs too deserve special recognition: BasesLoaded, from Contra? Wait, Contra wasn't a baseball game! Ah, but just think about where that music came from in the game and suddenly it is a genius use of wordplay. Dabomb also seems an odd choice for a Lemmings' remix until one thinks about one of main occupations of those little order-following creatures. This Super Metroid piece is also titled in a reference to one of the only spoken lines from the game; subtly and sublimely geeky. For music that is almost unrecognizable in its game form and practically transcends the media, look no further than chthonic's Anthem of a Misguided Youth and Mazedude's Sno Cone Heaven. Sublime. One more for you, just because it's insanely rad: CastleMania. Dig in.
Goozex
I believe it was a GamerDad link that got me to this game trading site. In a nutshell that's basically all Goozex is: sell games you currently have for market value "points" and then buy other games you want using those points. At first I started off with unloading a few games I would never play again to get a couple of recent games (read: from the last year or so) that I didn't want to shell out full price for. A long time ago I also wanted to stop giving money to the GameStops of the world and Goozex is a great place to do that. You're trading games directly with fellow gamers and getting good deals on pretty much everything. The games I've gotten through the site have all been in great shape, some even better than what I would consider "used" (again I think this has to do with trading directly from the gamers; at a pawn shop like GameStop I think they beat the heck out of each used game before selling it back to you at a huge profit margin). Since you are directly responsible for trading games to people you can't get away with poor packaging, poor shipping, etc. because of Goozex's feedback system. If you treat the games like crap and then expect a trader to like it, expect some negative feedback and stripping of trading priveleges. It's a nice golden rule type trading site.
It's also a good for the environment type venture. Rather than having copies of games I'll never play again I can unload the gaming love and let someone else experience it while giving myself new experiences or games from the past I never got a chance to play. It's all about keeping your "stuff" within the ecosystem instead of constantly buying new things and adding more junk to the world. My wife does this kind of thing with books (www.paperbackswap.com) and I've started with DVDs (www.switchplanet.com). She likes the book site but I can't really recommend Switchplanet at this point; it's not quite as polished as Goozex but it does have the problem of trying to switch many things (I get the feeling it started off with movies but has tried to branch out; unfortunately I think this has stretched the usefulness of the site a little more thinly). Give them all a shot or just try the ones that interest you. It's all a great way to give your things a little more life and get some stuff you'd rather not spend full price on.
Netflix: Watch Instantly (round 2)
At this point there are so many devices that connect direct to your TV that you can watch Netflix on that if you're interested then I say take the plunge. You may already have one: they stream off the Xbox 360, TiVo boxes, some DVD players, etc. My device of choice right now is the Netflix Player by Roku. This little bad boy is just awesome. It has just about every output under the sun for any kind of home theater you might have, and honestly the quality is pretty good. When you consider you're watching a movie or TV show streamed over the Internet at the sound and video quality you get with this itty bitty box, it's more than worth its weight in gold (which I suppose actually wouldn't be that high; the box is very small and unassuming). The pause and resume functions actually work (go ahead, pause a show you're watching and come back to it three weeks later; it'll pick it up where you left off without a hitch). It's ideal for catching up on TV shows I have little interest in watching live and when there's a movie to check out it's of course great for that "in between movie mailing" time. For us it works perfectly and I'll more than likely be overusing this thing from now till whenever. Highly recommended.
Dropbox
I was hesitant to try something like this when I first heard about it a while back. Basically you can think of it as a flash drive in the cloud (Internet). Dropbox acts like a regular folder on your computer that is then synced with a copy online, which you can then access from multiple computers. One thing I used to do (before I tried Dropbox) was truck around a USB drive with me pretty much wherever I went but mostly from home to work and back. What I stored on this drive was mostly Password Safe (green install, see above) in a folder along with my actual password database. This gave me the advantage of having my latest passwords on hand and never having to remember passwords with the exception of the One Password to Rule Them All (which is just how PSafe works anyway). When I started playing around with Dropbox, I was a bit concerned about plopping my PSafe install there only because it meant my password database was "out there" on the interwebs, but Dropbox assures me that their security practices are industry standard. As you do need an account and password to use Dropbox, safeguarding your stuff becomes paramount and using a crappy password isn't going to help. I ran into a bit of a catch-22 with trying to keep my password database in Dropbox, but I got around this by using a different password for my Dropbox account than I do for my password database anyway. If this is confusing you, don't worry. I have some difficulty wrapping my brain fully around the idea too. In my case it might be more confusing than most, but just think of Dropbox as a USB drive in the cloud.
You get 2GB of storage free and can buy more if you so choose. (Also, they use a referral program to give away more storage for free; click the paragraph title link above and sign up, I get more space that way!) However, when you again just think of Dropbox as a USB drive in the cloud, 2GB is more than enough (that's the biggest flash drive I have anyway). The other big point to Dropbox is it is cross-platform. I use Windows at work and on my main computer at home but also have a Linux distribution on a laptop. No problem for Dropbox: just use the correct installers (which their site will auto-choose for you based on your OS), link your account and set your Dropbox location on the computer, and away you go! It simply works, and when I find technology that does that it behooves me to share as it seems tech stuff can get a bad rep for not working much of the time. Dropbox works, plain and simple. If you bounce between multiple computers like I do, it is worth its binary weight in gold (and it's free!). Also if you use or are considering going to a password database (like I have recommended), using Dropbox in conjunction can give you easier and more secure access to your passwords. Highly recommended.
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