Want to try out the new Yahoo Mail Beta? Wasn’t invited to try it out or don’t know how to try it? I found a post on makeyougohmm.com that explains how to do it for anyone outside of the United Kingdom. Just need to change your location to English: United Kingdom and get the invitation. Can always change your location back and still have access. If you don’t like the beta version then you can switch back to the current version. The new beta version is nice. Similar to outlook and can be used with the keyboard easily. Try it out and see what you think!

Technorati Tags: yahoo, mail, beta, yahoo mail, johnramirez

If you ever found yourself trying to make a web page with matching colors then I found something for you. It’s called colorMatch Remix! Sometimes when I am building a web page or doing graphic work I find myself using weird colors together. I don’t have a good eye on what colors go with other colors. I constantly find myself going a bit too crazy with the colors. When I found this site I bookmarked it quickly and figured I should post it here for anyone else who needs this help. You just pick a favorite color and it will give you back 6 other colors that will match the original color. Really nice and I’ll be using it from now on!

These past months I have been playing games in a virtual world called Second Life. It’s not exactly a game because there is no goal. It’s mostly a platform where users can create anything they want with the tools provided. I signed up at the beginning of this year and have been satisfied with it. I am on their free account which allows you to log in as much as you want, use anything in the game except for owning land. If you want land then you must pay for their premium account which is $9.95 per month.

It’s hard to explain how much you can do inside the game unless you try it. Here’s an article from business week about second life. It will explain a lot to the new users. Some of the games I have played inside second life are, Slingo, Tringo, Blackjack, Slot machines, War and Quintzee. All these games have been created from regular users. There are plenty of other games that I haven’t played yet and more are being created all the time. You can also buy cars, planes, clothes, furniture and gadgets for your avatar inside the virtual world. The one thing that makes this world different than others is you can buy Lindens(game money) with real money and you can sell Lindens for real money. This brings in some business minded people. Some ways of making money in the game is creating objects that others would buy, making scripts for games or vehicles, buying lindens at a low price and selling them for a high price, buying land to place games on and making money from them when people play and escorts or stripping. Yes this is a mature platform and can be used for anything that is legal. No one under 18 can sign up and use second life unless they use the teen grid which is not connected to the mature grid at all. In  the mature grid there are PG places also so not all of it is adult.

I’ve been using second life for entertainment. There are some singers and musicians who play live in certain places. These aren’t wannabe singers. They are very professional and give a great entertainment value. I also play the games for fun too. I haven’t found a business plan for myself in the game just yet but still thinking all the time. I use the name, JohnnyRS Hoggard, in the game. Join up and have fun for free or pay for some nice privileges.

Technorati Tags: second life, games, gaming life, virtual world

There have been a couple of times I needed to find stuff on my computer fast! The windows searching capabilities are terrible. Bad Microsoft! I tried Google Desktop a little while ago and I liked it but rarely ever used it. I keep forgetting I have it installed. So When I heard about the new Google Desktop I needed to try it. It now has a docking capability that has plugins that can add other benefits. I have a 19in monitor so I can give up desktop space. I actually have two monitors with two computers on my desk so I can easily give up space on one of my monitors.
I‘ve been happy with Yahoo’s Konfabulator with it’s widgets. Some widgets from there are very useful like website monitor and a timer. One thing it doesn’t have is a way to dock them to the side of the desktop. I don’t like having to resize my windows so I can see the widgets. I don’t want to see a widget over something I am trying to read. Now if google desktop had more plugins like the widgets from yahoo it would be perfect for me. So at this time I can see some benefits to Google desktop but it’s not exactly what I need at this time. I will keep using Konfabulator and google desktop as just a searching capability for now.

Technorati Tags: Konfabulator, google desktop, Google, yahoo, johnramirez

   Synergy is a software that I recently found which allows me to use two computers with one keyboard and mouse. A sort of KM switch without the wires. It works over your home network passing the mouse and keyboard info to the other computer via network. When I move the mouse off one screen it switches to the other computer. Exactly the way it works with two monitors on one computer if using windows XP. In theory one can have more than 2 computers. In the management area it has 4 possible positions for the monitors. I was all ready to buy myself a KM switch but this works even better than the ones I was looking at. I can easily copy and paste text between two computers. NOW that’s impressive!

Get Synergy Here

Technorati Tags: Synergy, software, KM switch, johnramirez

   I like trying new things out so when I heard about a new yahoo messenger I had to try it. Now there are many things I hate about it and some interesting things. They are trying to get into the phone calling area. Now I haven’t tried there net2phone or the Call Computer stuff just yet. I’ll try the call computer when I can find someone who installed the beta version also. That is the biggest problem I found. All the added features are not compatible to the older versions. I can’t use the voice capability anymore. Their is a cool feature that one can drag and drop pictures in the message window and it will transfer it to the other person. Now that is cool but I of course can’t try it unless the other person has that capability. Now I am all for more features but please give the capability to work with the older versions. I have to go back to the older version so I can use voice chat. ugh. I’ll try it later when more people update or when they have every feature in the current version working in their beta version.

Technorati Tags: yahoo messenger, johnramirez

   It’s 2005 finally. Another Year and more work. Christmas day was fun. New years was a non event but that’s ok. Played some new games I got. Roller coaster 3 is a lot of fun but it does take a little to get used to. Can be hard if you don’t update right away! Now I got the basic process to win some of the scenarios and it’s getting easier. I got Sims 2 also and It’s interesting but haven’t played it fully yet. Looks promising but lot of time to figure things out which I don’t have. I took a week break from work so now this week I’m prepared to work non stop.
   I have a new niece and was born last week. That’s going to be fun getting to know another person in the family. Lot of things changed for good and bad last year so I hope this year will continue with the good. My best wishes for everyone in the world including the Tsunami victims. I still can hardly believe how devasting it was. Shows how much power water can give. Never underestimate the power of water!

Technorati Tags: Christmas, New years, Roller coaster 3, Sims 2, johnramirez