If you're looking for car speakers....

Recently I ordered a set of car door speakers to replace the factory ones in my car, and I can't say enough good things about the company I ordered through - Crutchfield. Their web site does an extraordinary job of selling you speakers that fit your car, and then it ships you all the pieces you need along with detailed instructions specific to your car. For my car the doors had to be removed to replace the speakers, and the instructions with the kit from Crutchfield were better than the service manual. Shipping was also prompt. Definitely give them a look if you have any interest in ordering car speakers.

http://www.crutchfield.com

Bugmenot and Mailinator - Two great anti-spam tools

Two web sites I've found particularly helpful in empowering me to avoid having to give my email to certain web sites. They are mailinator.com and bugmenot.com.

The later, bugmenot.com is a site that has a database of userids/passwords for common sites on the internet. So if you are going to a site and it asks you to log-in in order to access content, you can check on bugmenot and usually find an id/password to use (so you don't have to register with your own email address).

But there are still a number of sites that bugmenot doesn't have a userid for. In those situations, turn to mailinator. Despite sounding like a slang name for a virus that wipes out your inbox, mailinator is actually one of the good guys. When you need to register for a site you can use [whateveryouwanthere]@mailinator.com. Going to mailinator.com, you type in the email address you used and you can view any messages that have been received. This allows you to confirm registration without having to expose your personal email.

So the next time you go to a site that you would rather not give your email address to... give bugmenot and mailinator a try.

Instructables.com - One of the reasons I waste so much time on the internet

I'm not saying I am a major DIY guy, but MacGyver is definitely my view of the "real man." He knows something about everything. He can fly a plane, disarm a bomb, and even manages to win the occasional fist fight he gets into.

So if you share the ideal, but your skills are, well, less than ideal then Instructables.com might be a good site for you to visit. It has step by step instructions on building and doing thousands of things. It even includes a category labeled "not liable" with projects like making a giant match or an electric shocker. Great projects for the kids on a rainy weekend.

Check it out... instructables.com

My new macbook pro, coming straight from... SHANGHAI

I knew most of our products were made in China, but I didn't expect to get a shipment directly from there. Hopefully, I don't have to mail it back to China if I have a problem.

Cheap iPods

Apple has been running a promotion for college students that if they buy a computer they get a free iPod. Well, it turns out many of these college students already had an iPod, thus ebay has been getting flooded with good deals on people selling these brand new iPods.

If you are looking for a way to pick up a new, under warranty iPod at a discount... check out ebay.

Firefox + AdBlock Plus = Smoking Fast Internet

If you have the status bar enabled on your browser, the next time you notice a web page loading extremely slow glance down at the status bar. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred the page is waiting on a 3rd party ad server to serve an ad for the page. Generally, I'm ok with ads on the page, but when they greatly diminish my web browsing experience I loose my patience. As a side note, the ad companies can serve their ads differently such that they do not stall the loading of the page, but they choose not to do so.

Fortunately, there is an answer to this problem. It's called AdBlock Plus. Its an extension to the Firefox browser, which means you have to install Firefox (if you aren't using it already) and then install the AdBlock Plus extension. It eliminates all ads from the page seemlessly.

Of course there is a dilemma here: If everyone used this then those that host sites wouldn't make money and wouldn't be in business anymore. But hopefully the companies that serve the ads will catch the hint, and revamp their services such that they don't unnecessarily negatively impact the viewing or loading of web pages. In the meantime, use the following links to have a smoking fast experience of the web.

Firefox can be downloaded here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
AdBlock Plus can be downloaded here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

Custom iPhone/iPod Paint Jobs

Some third parties have put together some pretty impressive color options for your new iPod or iPhone (among a host of other products supported).

I was impressed with how nice the new color combinations make the phone look. But before you get too excited, it ain't cheap. Prices start at $149 for the iPhone. Check it out.

http://www.colorwarepc.com/products/iPhone.asp