All Things Nerdy | allthingsnerdy.com

Have you heard about this new service? Yes it is from the company that Linux lovers would rather puncture their ear drums than hear here the name…Microsoft. Live Mesh is the perfect blend of Windows Live Sky Drive and Windows Live Folder Share. You can sync between computers, access select files online, and add permissions so that others can share and access these items as well.

AllThingsNerdy, what would it take to make this the unstoppable app? Well grasshopper, a limit of 5GB of online space takes out the option of using this as a one-stop shop for backup and synchronization unless your have a remote backup computer that you can leave connected.

Bottom line, is AllThingsNerdy using this on his/her computer right now? Oh, yeah.

On December 20, 2007 I blogged about how to effectively get rid of almost all SPAM that still makes it into your Yahoo! Mail inbox. The article was titled SPAM be gone @ Yahoo. Apparently, no one cares that I figured out a better way that what Yahoo! has come up with to block SPAM from entering your email inbox…and its free no less!

How did I come to this conclusion? I have registered a whopping 4 hits on that blog entry since 12/20/2007. I guess you all like wasting time clicking delete.

Enjoy reading about how to enlarge your penis and make tons of money on the the stock market.

Like many, I use Google Reader to process way to much information everyday.  So much so that it feels like an addiction and probably is.  But that is not the purpose of the blog post.

Some feeds just have too many items that come through each day and overwhelm the other feeds so much so that I feel like I am always reading the feed with many entries.  I wish there was a way to throttle back the amount of entries that come through on a given feed.

Well in least in my eyes MacWorld 2008 come up short.  I perceive the four things that Steve Jobs introduced at MacWorld as more of expected evolutions than revolutions with the possible exception of the MacBook Air.  Time Machine was very cool, nothing needs to be said for MacBook Air except for awesome, Apple TV is a great enhancement but not a show stopper, and then there is the iPhone updates - UG.  The iPhone update with Google Maps just bugs the crap out of me.

Let me just preface this with - Apple has come up with a very ingenious way to locate iPhone users on Google Maps allowing them to route themselves around, etc.  BUT, aren’t we overlooking a very simple solution to locating ourselves?  Given the fact that triangulating cell towers and wifi hotspots would allow you to locate yourself inside that is where the benefit stops.  Why not add a gps?  Even use it in conjunction with the above if you wish.  You will have to go outside anyway to get where you are going so you would be able to pick up your gps signal then.

And just another quick gripe, where is the larger storage capacity?

Until there is larger storage capacity and gps included in the iPhone they have not won me over.

That said, no one can say that Apple does not have an impressive line-up of products.  And now I think I am going to go rent a movie on iTunes.

Lifehacker.com is by far one of the best blogs on the Internet. They cover a barrage of topics and are always good and to the point. So let me get to the point as well.

Lifehacker has covered many personal finance sites expensr, wesabe, etc. but they have not mentioned Yodlee MoneyCenter? In all of the posts they have on their website their loyal readers try to call out from the comments section boasting Yodlee’s site but their cries fall on deaf ears. Take a look at the comment section on any relevant post from Lifehacker and you will see that I am not the only fan boy of Yodlee.

Get your finance shit together. Tighten up your game.

So in this blog post I will not even link to those other flashy, new web 2.0 sites but I will send a shout to Yodlee MoneyCenter. Thanks for your free service and fantastic customer service. http://moneycenter.yodlee.com

Note: This blog post also applies to countless other news sites and blogs but I have choosen Lifehacker to be my whipping boy just because I had to mention someone and I figured this would raise some eyebrows.

If you use Yahoo Mail (may apply to other ISP and web accounts) as I do you may have noticed there are a ton spam message getting through their filters. Now of course this might be some of my own fault: i.e. allowing suspect places to have my email address in my youth. BUT, “what can I do about spam” you might say?

I have noticed a trend, at least in my emails, that the spam message is not addressed to you directly. This can work for our benefit! How? Well all you have to do is apply a filter to your email messages and send messages that weren’t addressed to you to another folder so that you can review them later. Mine is called Likely SPAM. I review this every so often and find that 99.99% is actually SPAM. The exception is the case if you belong to an email group such as a Yahoo Group. The message will get caught by this filter and is not SPAM. But this is a rare case.

See the screen shots below for help setting this up in Yahoo.

1) Goto Mail Options

2) Click on Filters on the left side and then click on the ‘Create or edit filters’ link

3) Add a new filter with the following parameters with your own email address in the proper field and the specific folder you want to save the possible spam message to. Then click the Save Changes button and enjoy a large reduction in SPAM coming to your inbox.

Guys, in case you didn’t know already, I am a news junky. I utilize Yahoo’s My Web to save all pages that of interest that day. You can benefit from my wasted time and addiction by subscribing to my My Web xml feed here.

http://myweb.yahoo.com/mywebrss/user/OTQWs84CZuXv5mWeIDM-/urls.xml

Does anyone know of any web apps that allow you to search another individual’s My Web? This would come in handy because of course I can search my own My Web but it would benefit you even more if you search my My Web. Anyway just food for thought.

Do you know Plaxo?  You should. 

Plaxo is an online address book, calendar, and task manager that syncs with Microsoft Hotmail, Google Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL, Mac, Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook, and your mobile phone. 

The initial idea behind Plaxo was to have other contacts signed up for the service as well and therefore your address book would be updated automatically if the person ever made any changes to, for example, their phone number.  Oh but it can do so much more than that.

There is no need to mention their excellent online interface because as soon as you get Plaxo set up you won’t even noticed that is working.  It seamlessly works in the background to sync all of your data.

I currently sync Plaxo to Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, Work Outlook - Exchange Server, and Home Outlook.  My Home Outlook is then used to sync to my PDA/phone (T-Mobile Dash: excellent phone by the way).  It works like a dream and cannot imagine my life without it. 

I definitely will not neglect to tell you all of this is covered under their free service!  See the Free vs. Premium services breakdown below.

Intellisync:

It all started when I wanted to sync my work Outlook to Yahoo so that my work event would show up in my personal calendar and vice versa. What do think happens, a cryptic error that is wrong. “Cannot log into Yahoo. Please check your user name and password and try again.” Well actually, you dumb program, if you enter a wrong user name and password you will get a prompt to re-enter them again.

So being a happy premium member that I am, I search Yahoo help. No luck. Oh here is phone number for premium members. Thats Me! Joy, my problems are solved!

I call Yahoo support line and ask about Intellisync. Well they can’t help but they can give me a number, OK. I also asked two other questions while I had them on the phone, but I will come back to that.

I called the Intellisync support number and find that it is no longer in service. I call Yahoo back and let them know. They tell me that since they just found out that the number no longer works that I should send a message to support via one of the web-based forms. OK, bye Yahoo support. I submit the form with my Intellisync problem and sure enough I get an auto-response that says they don’t f’ing support Intellisync.

Are your palms starting to sweat like mine are? That’s because you are pissed like me.

Two other questions:

Remember those two other questions I asked about when I was on the phone. Well…

1) Do you have an estimate on when Yahoo! Go will be ready for the T-Mobile Dash?

Response: I don’t know but here is an email to contact someone who will know.

Me: Well I send off the email and sure enough it gets kicked back as undeliverable. My mouth is now just hanging. It might not even be attached anymore, I don’t know because all I feel is rage.

2) I noticed a message on the login screen that Yahoo! Mail will now have unlimited storage, is that for premium users or free users?

Response: That is for all users.

Me: Wow that is great for everyone but what the F do I pay for a premium membership for? I guess that can now be answered one less advertisement on the Yahoo Mail interface and a customer support line that might as well be making up shit and telling it to me in German.

Let me weigh in my thought on the Yahoo!/Microsoft talks. Although it sounds like for the time being that the talks are over and Yahoo! is not interested, this did raise a lot of eyebrows. You can read other articles on the clash or benefit of the potential Microsoft and Yahoo! merger but I would like to think about an alternative: Google buys Yahoo!.

This partnership seems to be more in-line with both companies cultures. At least more in-line than a Microsoft/Yahoo! merger. A couple of creative powerhouses (Google -> Yahoo!) more concerned with innovative and pleasing customers and letting the money follow rather than forcing customer into things and thus sucking the bucks right out them (Microsoft). Don’t get me wrong I think Microsoft has done some great things as of late with their web initiatives, but they are just not quite on the same page as a Yahoo! or a Google.