• That Michigan offers VirtualSites, which lets me remotely connect to a Windows machine with a boat load of software

• Biking directions have been added to Google Maps!

tags: biking, online, umich

TXTING COSTS R $£&+%$*&!:

“The maximum size for a text message is 160 characters, which takes 140 bytes because there are only 7 bits per character in the text messaging system, and we assume the average price for a text message is 5p. There are 1,048,576 bytes in a megabyte, so that’s 1 million/140 = 7490 text messages to transmit one megabyte. At 5p each, that’s £374.49 per MB – or about 4.4 times more expensive than the ‘most pessimistic’ estimate for Hubble Space Telescope transmission costs.”

Text Messaging is the Biggest Scam of the 21st Century:

$800/GB is what the world record holder is able to get. If you use a different text messaging plan or none at all the cost is higher still: 1500 at $15/month = $75,000/GB
200 at $5/month = $192,307/GB
Non-plan per message = $1,533,742/GB at $0.20 per message

I lasted exactly 1 month as a smartphone owner before caving in and buying a data plan. It more than doubles my monthly cell phone bill, which is depressing…but on the up side, now I can ditch my text messaging plan by using my Google Voice number.

The Google Voice app for Android suspiciously doesn’t have push notifications, but the Gmail app does and you can easily forward GV texts to your Gmail account and then receive and reply to texts within Gmail. It’s not optimal, because when I do actually open up Google Voice it can’t tell that I’ve already read messages in Gmail. But for now it’s fine. Hopefully push notifications (and maybe an option to switch to white-on-black text) will come in an update soon, just like pinch-to-zoom did.

tags: android, online, webloggish

Google is currently hosting ad-blocking extensions for Chrome. It’s kind of surprisingly given that the majority of their income comes from advertising.

tags: online

If you’re like me and you are about to graduate soon you are probably looking for a new free email provider because your school address is going to run out, and someone has already taken all the reasonable variations of your name in Gmail.

These are some of your options:

• Lavabit was created as an alternative to Gmail in response to privacy concerns. I like that it is geared towards people like me who are at least semi tech-savvy, that there are multiple account options, and that they offer IMAP. (Note that the free options offer 128MB – 1GB of storage.) The major downsides are that they only allow underscores in their usernames and not periods, their current webmail interface looks like it’s circa 2000, and I can’t get over the fact that “lavabit” just doesn’t look professional on a resume.
• Inbox.com offers 5GB of storage. They have a very nice ajax-y web interface with multiple templates including one that is text-only. Downsides are that the homepage is cluttered, ugly and kind of sketchy (are they trying to trying to be the next Yahoo?). Also, no IMAP, and when you log into the web interface each time it bounces up from the bottom of your browser window, which is only cute the first time.
• GMX is the international version of German site GMX.net’s email service. They offer 5GB storage space, like Inbox.com. The interface is still in beta and has a few kinks. I wish there was a text-only version and I can’t figure out how to send my emails in plain text. Also it the interface pops up in a new window when you log in. But, they offer IMAP, and I like how short their domain name is. For now I think I am going to use them, although I am little suspicious that this is too good to be true because I haven’t figure out they are making money yet. Maybe when the interface goes out of beta there will be some ads in the side column — I noticed they conveniently left some blank space there. I wouldn’t mind that.

tags: experiment, online

Lately I have been trying out the various free sites that let you access keep track of your expenses:

• Buxfer
• Mint
• Yodlee MoneyCenter
• Wesabe

Of those, only Yodlee MoneyCenter currently supports Citizens Bank. Mint uses Yodlee, so I think it will probably support Citizens Bank in the near future. All of them support major banks like Citibank, Bank of America, Wachovia, etc.

Buxfer and Mint have the nicest interfaces by far. Buxfer uses Google Gears to save all your login information locally on your computer. You can also use your Gmail account login instead of creating a new username. I think I probably like Buxfer’s minimalist Google-inspired layout better than Mint’s, but ultimately it comes down to who supports Citizens Bank first. For now, Yodlee MoneyCenter, which has been around for the longest, is plain but functional.

Anyway, it’s worth checking out at least one of them. Interesting see where your money over the past year has gone.

tags: experiment, online

I am very curious as to who spent a half an hour thisr morning reading 27 pages of Toast. People I have ruled out:
* Mummy (at work)
* My grandparents (away, and can’t use the internet)
* McComas or anyone else at Brown (Maryland IP address)
* Ben Dickman (see above)
* Maya (in Europe)
* Brittney (still at school)
* Katie (not awake this morning)
* Maddie (I was with her at the time)

So, that leaves:
* Maurie (not sure if she would be awake that early or why she would read so many pages since she usually keep up with the site regularly)
* Mike (don’t think he reads this site anymore, also kind of early in the morning and it was using Windows and not Linux)
* Sara DZ (suppose it is possible but again doesn’t make much sense, also not sure if she has Verizon)
* Someone I don’t know or can’t think of using the most recent version of Firefox on a Windows box

Anyway this is killing me so if you are the mystery person and feel like being generous, introduce yourself! I don’t bite.

tags: online, web