Robert Vrabel

I stumbled upon an online family tree web application called itsourtree.com.  I test it out and it works great!  Its very user friendly and the interface is built VERY well.  I started populating my tree and now am currently looking into how to share my tree with other family members to expand it.

I would definitely recommend this application if you have ever had any interest in creating a family tree.  Its quick and easy to use give it a shot, you won’t be disappointed!

I just go back over the weekend from a 5 day Cruise we took with some family. It was nice and relaxing up until we got off the boat for the last time and ran into all the American Airline flight cancellations. Originally we were supposed to fly from New Orleans to Dallas, then to Detroit. Both of those flights got canceled so we had to stand in line to get booked on a different flight. The only opening they had was 11am the next day, from New Orleans to Washington to Detroit. We decided to take that flight since it was our only option and they placed us up in a hotel a couple of miles away from the airport.

When we went to get our tickets the next morning, they said they can’t access the second flight information so they cannot print the tickets there and that we would have to talk to someone once we arrive in Washington. Meanwhile, they will ship our bags straight to Detroit on another flight. We arrived in Washington, and went to the United desk to get our next tickets and they told us that our flight does not exist, that they booked us on the wrong flight.

They made us go back to the American Airlines counter to talk to them since it was there problem. We waited in line, and all they could do for us was book us the next morning again and give us a hotel. We were furious at this point, especially since we had no luggage, and asked if there was anything else. They found a North West flight from Baltimore to Detroit, which was leaving about 2.5 hours from that time. We decided to take that, splitting into 2 groups and taking 2 cabs over to the Baltimore Airport which was supposed to be an hour drive.

Traffic was horrible and it was taking us 1.5+ hours to get to the airport. About 1.5-2 miles before the airport, our cab broke down and we had to pull over. Our cab driver barley spoke English and refused to get us another cab. We grabbed our carry on luggage and starting booking up the freeway to make our flight which is supposed to leave in 50mins. Luckily, someone saw all this happen and offered a ride for us about 1/2 mile after we power walked to the airport. He dropped us off and we ran insid, got our tickets and got to the gate just in time for the flight to leave.

At this point we were amazed to be in a plane headed to Detroit. When it was almost our turn to take off, the runways got shut down due to “Weather Conditions”. The captain told us that we have to wait 20-40mins for an update to see how long it will take. About 45mins later we finally took flight and made it to Detroit. Thankfully our luggage was sitting in the American Airlines terminal which was all the way across the airport.

So thanks American Airlines!

I used to keep a documents folder on my computer which i would store reminders, snip its of text, wish lists etc. It used to be a real hassle accessing this information as i had to be at home on my machine to access anything. I transfered all my stuff into Google Docs and it has been a real treat to be able to access this information anywhere, even on my phone! The application is built just like any other suite like Microsoft Office or iWorks. It offers you the ability to store documents, presentations and spreadsheets online.

One of the best features is the ability to collaborate with people by editing a document at the same time. You will see there changes as they are made and you never have to worry about overwriting someone else’s work as it saves all pasted revisions as well.

One of the most used documents I have saved is one called “My Wish List”. Anytime I see something online or hear about something I want, I add it to my wish list with a link to the product. I share this document with my fiance and when it comes time to gift buying, she has access to all the things I want. It makes life a lot easier around the holidays when you get asked that dreaded question “what do you want?”. I never struggle with that anymore as I always have an up-to-date list to give people ideas.

Mint is like using Quicken, but is a easier approach. It takes very little work to manage your money and all of your banks, loans, and credit cards are accessed by securely logging into your accounts and downloading the information into Mint. It organizes all that data, and displays it in nice, easy to read graphs on where and how you are spending your money.

Using Mint has been a wonderful way to keep track of how much money I am spending on gas each month, or how much I am spending at restaurants. You can setup budgets and have them alert you when you exceed those budgets. The only requirement on your part is adding your accounts in and categorizing your transactions if Mint can’t figure it out automatically.

Currently Mint does not support every bank or credit card.  Almost all major ones are supported and Mint is always working on adding more in. Head over to Mint and start seeing how you are spending your money.

Flickr is simply the best way to store, search, sort and share your photos online. I love to take pictures, but getting them online and sharing them has always been a hassle in the past. Now it is a very simple process for me. I simply upload all my pictures to flickr, add them to a set, and send that link to everyone who I want to share it with. The best feature about flickr is that it stores your high resolution shots online for you. No need to downgrade your photos to store them online. If you ever want to print a photo and don’t have it on your computer anymore you can still grab it from the website to print it off.

Flickr is free, but has limitations to how much you can upload per month. If you don’t upload a lot of photos the free version will be enough to get by. If your like me and love to shoot pictures, you can sign up and upgrade your account for unlimited access. It is well worth the money for about $2.00 per month.

Tips

1. Download Flickr Uploadr for a faster way to upload and batch organize your photos. I use this tool rather than uploading images through the web browser, it makes it a lot easier.
2. Organize your photos by adding them to Sets, every event you attend and shoot pictures at create a new set and add those photos to it. Think of it as a photo album.
3. Add tags to your images. Adding tags allows you to quickly search for someones name, which would bring up all photos that person is in. The more tags you have added to a picture, the better.
4. Add your friends so you can easily see their newly added pictures. By clicking “Contacts” you will see a photostream of all of your friends pictures. Its a nice quick way to keep up with what your friends have been doing lately.
5. You can join Flickr Groups for your favorite types of photos. Love dogs? Simply join the group “Dogs! Dogs! Dogs!” to get instant access to tons of photos of dogs. There is a endless amount of groups out there, find which ones you like!

Google Calendar has been a huge part of the way my fiance and I keep track of what we are doing. We both have an individual calendar, and a calendar for things that we both are attending. We share these calendars with each other so when we login we can easily see everything that is going on between us. You can color code calendars so you can easily tell what type of event it is. I would highly recommend this for anyone who is struggling in keeping track of upcoming events. This has saved us a lot of time and has made making plans a breeze since we can access our calendar from anywhere. Needless to say without this we would probably miss a lot of things. Just head over to Google Calendar to get started.

Tips

1. Ever forget someones birthday? I know I always do. Create a new calendar called “Birthdays” and add an event into that calendar as a yearly recurring event with the event title as that persons name. Now every year you will see an event for their birthday.
2. You can add public calendars like Holidays etc. by clicking “Add” next to calendar, and click “Add Public Calendars”.
3. Don’t want to always view a certain calendar? Simply click the check box next to it to inactivate/activate it.
4. You can have Google Calendar notify you of upcoming events by phone (SMS) or E-mail by going to Settings -> Calendars, then click “Notifications” next to the calendar.
5. Want a reminder for a specific event? Simply edit the event and click “Add Reminder”

To understand Google Reader you will have to understand RSS. Like anything doing certain routines get old, and newer ways are created. Instead of going out to all of your favorite sites to see what new things are posted, why not have the news come to you? RSS works by simply subscribing to a website feed, and anytime something new is posted it gets delivered to you similar to how e-mail works. The next time you login to read things it shows all your new items and automatically marks things as read as you read them. This saves time by not having to go out to a website and try to figure out what the new information is posted. It also saves time because ALL of your favorite sites are in one spot organized however you want it. Here is a very useful picture to explain RSS.

Sign up for Google Reader before continuing. Now lets discuss how to subscribe to a feed.

Subscribing to a Feed

Using almost any new browser will display the RSS icon in the URL address. Simply click on this and add it to Google Reader. It’s as simple as that!

Tips

1. Organize your feeds by adding them to a folder. Personally, i have some folders setup called News, Gaming, Web Development, Blogs, etc..
2. As you scroll down the list you will notice the items being marked as read (the number should decrease). Anytime you see a number next to a feed name, that means you have unread items in it.
3. You can easily share stories from a feed by clicking “Share” (this will send it to anyone in your Google Address Book who uses Google Reader. Next time they login to Google Reader they will see your share) or by hitting the “Email” button which will allow you to e-mail the article to anyone.
4. Reading an article that you would consider a favorite? Simply hit the Star button next to it to add it to your favorites. You can see all of your favorites by clicking “Starred Items” at the top.
5. You can also search all of your new and past read articles by using the google powered search input at the top of the screen.

According to joystiq, the Pixel Junk Monsters expansion pack is heading our way late april, less than a month away! Needless to say I can’t wait to see what they deliver. New levels, new towers, new monsters, online support…? Looks like we will just have to wait and see!

UPDATE: 

Some new information has been been revealed about the expansion pack, check it out!

How many times have you wished you had your bookmarks with you either at work, or a friends house? Most people use the old method of bookmarks using the one built directly inside of the web browser. Lets take a different approach to see how we can store our bookmarks online so they can be accessed from anywhere.

Online Bookmarking

1. Download Firefox (explained here).
2. Install the del.icio.us extension.

Upon installing the extension, firefox will need to restart and you will see new buttons.

The new buttons are the “Del.icio.us” home button, and a button caled “Tag”. To use this, hit the del.icio.us home button and sign up for the website. Once you are signed up, you simply just hit “Tag” on a web page you want to bookmark. Upon doing this, you can type in (or select recommended tags) to categorize your bookmarks. The more tags you create, the easier it will be to find your bookmarks in the future.

Finding Your Bookmarks

Visit http://del.icio.us/yourusername to visit your bookmarks. To see an example, visit my bookmarks. You will see on the right hand side a bunch of tags, which you can click to filter the list down to those bookmarks. Now all of your bookmarks are online and can be accessed from anywhere.

Tips

1. You can hide your bookmarks so they are not open to the public. Just checkout the “settings” page when visiting http://del.icio.us/
2. You can subscribe to someones bookmarks by visiting their page at http://del.icio.us/username .
3. You can add friends to your account by also visiting their page.
4. You can recommend a bookmark for a friend by clicking “Tag”, then under “your network” select the person’s name and hit “save”.

The Rock Band drum sticks tanked last light… pretty nuts! Its almost just like the real thing… except we didn’t have a “real crowd” to throw them into!