Neat Internet Stuff
Alright, so here are a few things I have been testing out recently to see if they are better than their counterparts.
First on the list is the Yahoo Music Engine. Okay, I know what you are saying. "But I like my music service." Well, you don’t have to use it to download music. Yes, it is cheaper than Napster. Napster is 15 bucks a month, whereas Yahoo is 5 bucks a month. But that’s not why, or how I am using it. What I like about it is that it is a really neat organization tool. It also integrates well into the Yahoo Instant Messenger. Plus, it has taken a cue from the Firefox Browser and left thier code open enough to where developers can make plugins so the application can be used in multiple ways. I think this is neat. You can use it to make a podcast, or as a video player, or make your own smart playlist like in iTunes. It is a really neat little app, I normally use iTunes for my music needs, but this may takeover for listening to music at the PC. Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to move the music I would download from Yahoo to my iPod since they use WMA. Stinky!!!!
Okay, number two on the list is just something I found a few days ago and I thought some of you might enjoy it. I am a Googlaholic. I use Google’s multiple tools for a lot of stuff. From Gmail to Picasa, I love Google. And this could be really good. They are taking a cue from the My Yahoo page and making a customizable Google page. It is a personalization of Google. You can put a preview of your Gmail account, local movie times, news feeds, and driving directions. And what I like that isn’t here yet is the ability to add any RSS feed, which is to be coming in the next month. So I am ready for that. But it is neat and I am sure it will get better as they listen to their consumers.
The last thing I am going to talk about is the desktop search stuff. I know I just said that I am a Googlaholic, but their desktop search is just bulky. I soooo wanted to like it because I would love to just use one engine/ company for everything. But it just doesn’t do it for me. So I thought that maybe I could go all Yahoo then and try the Yahoo desktop search. And again, it is just too bulky. I want something quick, easy, and that I can use without it conflicting with the other programs I am running at the time. So I tried the last ditch effort of using MSN desktop search. And I must say, I was very sad when it actually worked really well. I didn’t want to branch out to another company, but I had to as it was extremely useful, quick, and it even had autocomplete. It is really good. It indexes your entire hard drive so that it can keep up with where everything is so you don’t have to. Here’s the deal. Rather than having to look for everything in a certain spot. You can just go down to your taskbar and just type in what you want to look for and it starts to appear. Then if you want, it can integrate into XP, or it will open a list of items that fit your criteria. It is really neat. And I use it a lot. it is a whole lot better than using the integrated windows search.
So, those are the things I am using at this point. They all work extremely well. If you haven’t downloaded these yet, you should. I am used to them, and will let you know if anything changes. Enjoy.