Smarter Travel Making Travel Planning MUCH Easier
I have spent so many hours trying to find the cheapest flights. I’ve started at travelocity, gone to hotwire, then orbitz — and then gone back and missed a price on a flight. Aaaarggghh! Here’s a geat site that represents the best of the web by creating a portal to look at all of the major travel sites at one site.
1. Go to Smarter Travel (http://www.smartertravel.com).
2. Under Travel Tools click on “Compare Prices”
That’s pretty much it. Phew!
Google Alerts Part II
if you already have Google alerts set and want to change what kinds of sites are searched, here are instructions for changing them from just news to comprehensive if you also was to monitor blogs and websites.
Go to Google
Go to Alerts
Click on “Manage your Account”
Log in
See your list of alerts
Click on edit for the first one
Click edit
Switch type of News to Comprehensive
Now your Google Alerts will include news articles, web site postings, groups and blogs.
Blog searches
I’ve been asked by a couple of folks why certainly news items or web posts haven’t shown up on their Google Alerts. Here’s why: When you sign up for Google Alerts, beneath search terms is a box that has a drop down menu for the type of search. You can search news, blogs, web sites, groups or all of the above (comprehensive.) If you initially selected just news, then the only Google Alerts you will receive are the articles from the particular news sites that Google searches within the time period you suggest. However, if you change the type to comprehensive you’ll get the same number of emails that now includes web sites, blogs and news articles that mention your topic.
But, I have an alternative search tool just for blogs. Technorati.com (http://technorati.com) is a website that just searches blogs. Technorati was the first blog search site, it has a wide variety of ways to search blogs, and it was started by my friend Micah Sifty’s brother David. But, alas, I am not aware of a way to have the searches brought right into your inbox only onto your desktop if you’re using Google or Yahoo as your home page.
Happy searching, but beware, it’s addictive!
Homepage with a Heart
My friend Nicole told me about a new site alled Goodtree.com. It is a home page and search engine that uses the pennies these sites get when their users “click through” to other sites to donate to a set group of nonprofits.
Each user clicks on a list of pre-screened charities (and users can suggest ones as well.) The money you generate from clicking is evenly distributed among the charities that you choose.
Goodtree is very easy to use, has simple step-by-step instructions for making the site your home page in different browsers, and adding your bookmarks, etc.
Goodtree has just recently launched, so it’s hard to tell how it’s doing, but certainly seems worth clicking on and sharing with your social network.
What Should I Read Next?
I hate running out of things to read. I know the world is filled with wonderful books, but I don’t know where to start. Conversely, sometimes I read something and I want the whole world to know what a wonderful book it is. If you’ve ever felt like this, www.shelfari.com is the place to be. It is a social networking site, a place to connect with like-minded existing or new friends around the books everyone likes.
It’s very easy to get started.
1. Sign in using a log in name and your password.
2. You will receive an email asking you to respond to it to activate your account. Click on the link.
3. Click on Step 3 and exploring and building your bookshelf.
4. I started by clicking on “Build My Shelf”. It was very easy to add books to my bookshelf by putting in the title or author.
5. You can click on “Profile” and write a paragraph about yourself. You should be careful about the privacy settings in the upper right corner. You may just want your friends, people you give persmission to, to see your bookshelf.
6. Finally, click on “Friends.” This is the point, of course, that you want other people to see what’s on your shelf and vice versa (I’ll show you my self if you show me yours.” Here, you need to be very careful not to upload your entire address book. You can search for existing Shelfari members you know, or you can invite someone to become a Shelfari member. You may want to email people before hand to see if it’s OK with them that you add them to your friend list.
Blogs, blogs and more blogs
Everywhere you turn people are talking about blogs. Blogs are online diaries or journals that individuals write and post online. They are exploding in number (literally, about 10,000 a day are being created) because they are so easy to develop and maintain. You can go to www.blogger.com (a product of Google) or www.wordpress.com (the source for this blog) and create your own journal. Both are free and take just minutes to set up. I tried both and found wordpress more intuitive and easier to manage.
Blogs are different from websites for several reasons:
1) You can post a message and other people can comment on it, creating a two-way conversation instead of a brochure;
2) Blogs have lists of other sites on the side called a blogroll. These are other websites that the blogger likes and wants you to try. Think of how different that is from an old media company, like, say, CNN, that wants to keep you captive on their site only. Bloggers now know that it’s a great big network out there of people connecting and sharing with one another.
Try blogging — it’s fun and easy!
Step-by-Step
1. Click on www.wordpress.com
2. Click on blue box in upper right, “Create A WordPress Blog Now”
3. Type in a user name (you will use this to log in later, it’s not for public eyes) and your email address (don’t fake the address, you have to email them back to activate the account), and click on terms of service (we’re in big trouble if these things ever say anything serious!) and click on Gimmie a Blog!
4. Reply to the email that you will get shortly.
5. Log in using your user name and passcode.
6. Start by clicking on “Options.” Here you will fill out the basics of your blog, what you want the title on top to be, and a tag line beneath that if you want one. Check on the membership box, this will make sure that people are commenting on your blog, not spammers adding a lot of junk to the comment boxes. Make sure that the dates and times below read the way that you want them to for your future postings. Then click “Update Options” in the bottom right and your blog is ready to go.
7. Next click on “Presentation” to choose a template (a graphic design) for your site. You can pick a template and then click on “View Site” at the top next to your blog title to take a peek at how the new design looks quickly. You can change design templates any time that you want, so this is not a be all and end all decision.
8. Now you’re ready to post a message to your blog. Click on “Write” on the tool bar beneath your blog title at the top. Now you can type your message. Make sure to proof the spelling, there isn’t any spell check on WordPress. You can stop writing at any time and save your message to come back to it later. When you’re ready to let the world see your message, click on “Publish” below the test box and, presto!, your first blog entry has been uploaded to wordpress.
9. You can begin to play with categories, different folders you can save your posts to for easy finding later, and you can click on “Manage” and edit blog posts that haven’t been published, or edit old ones, or delete them.
That’s it, you’re officially a “citizen journalist” now!
Instant Protests
If you’re in a protesting mood, say there’s a new development going up in your neighborhood, or your local schools are considering eliminating music programs, or traffic is horrible where you live and the city is considering selling off half of the open space in town to the highest bidder, CitizenSpeak is a great, free, email petition tool for you to use. You can create your own campaign that asks people that you know, and anyone they forward it to, to send an email in support of your protest. Jo Lee, the brains and brawn behind CitizenSpeak, has done a tremendous job of making the site very clear and easy to use. For step-by-step instructions just click here.
If You Still Need to Receive a Fax
When’s the last time you sent or received a fax? But if you really need to receive a fax, there is an easy free way to do it without needing a fax machine.
eFax is a website that offers free and subscription services. The free service, eFaxFree allows you to sign up for a fax number that people can send faxes to for free. There are also two additional services, eFaxPro and eFaxPlus, that can allow you to send faxes from your computer, but for a monthly fee.
I have used the free eFax service for years without any problem. There are other online fax services, if anyone knows of one where you can send faxes for free please post it!
What’s a Blog?
Well, you’re on a blog! This site is part of the WordPress.com blogger site. A blog is an online diary or journal that anyone can keep about any topic. There are blogs about hobbies and TV shows, politics and books, the Supreme Court of the United States and Jessica Simpson. Anything and everything. Some large blogs have thousands of people read their site every day, but most have just a handful. If you have a passion about a topic, blogs are a great way to plug into a community of people with the same interest who want to share their views and share information with like-minded folks. Most blogs have a column called a blog roll that lists links to other blogs that the blogger likes. This is one of the key differences between blogging and broadcast media. Bloggers hope and expect that visits will click and visit other sites. Broadcast media wants to keep you captive – an unrealistic goal in this connected age.
Here are some popular blogs (as reported by Technorati, a blog tracking site, really there are sites that track these things!):
Meetups
Meetup is a website that helps people who live near one another, but who don’t necessarily know one another, organize meetings around a certain topic. People are meeting up around the country who want to talk about knitting or their dogs or Elvis. The Meetup site burst into public consciousness during 2004 as the primary tool that the Dean for President campaign used to organize local Dean enthusiasts to meet and plan local campaign activities.
The great thing about meetups is that you don’t have to create anything online to participate. You can just type in, say, moms and your zip code and joint a group that meets at 10 o’clock Tuesday mornings at a local Starbucks. I was going to list steps for creating your own meetup on Meetup.com, but you have to pay at least $12 a month to organize your own meet up. There is another site called Zanby that does the same thing and is free. Why would Zamby be free if Meetup is making money? Well, that’s the beauty of Internet true believers, their site says that “Zanby was created on the premise that community organizing and meeting sites, by their very grassroots nature, should be available to all, not just those who can afford the fees.” How they’re going to stay afloat, well, not my head, not my headache! It’s easy to use and free, so let’s use it! Here are the steps for creating your own group on Zanby:
- Register as a new user.
- Search for a group by you by zip code or interest area.
- If there isn’t one that you want to join, you can create your own group
Warning: I have to admit that I have tried several times to register at Zanby to create my own group with no success. I will keep trying and if it doesn’t work soon will take down this post.
