This is a great list compiled by makeuseof.com. It’s 20 tools to make your ipod better.

My faves:

Sharepod: another free program that can run from directly from iPod, let’s you easily transfer files between your machine and iPod without using iTunes. Features; built-in music player, search, create winamp-style playlists, network file sharing (using this feature you can allow other network(office,college, etc) users to run your copy of SharePod from their own computers and download music directly from your iPod) and more

CantoPod: get favorite lyrics on your iPod (with over 200.000 lyrics to choose from)

iPodGym: turn iPod into your gym advisor; iPodGym is a website where you can find over 80 exercise videos (incl. descriptions) all of which can adopted to the iPod format.

Ipodlinks: variety of icons and wallpapers

Did you know Costco has a recipe book? These are recipes submitted by well known chefs from around the world using Costco products. I ran across this book when I went to visit some of my relatives who are all Costco lovers. Well turns out they have the whole book online. They have some great recipes! I love recipe books with pretty pictures that make me want to eat it it looks so good. Now only if Trader Joe’s would put out something similar!

I like this recipe. It sounds so easy and would make a great appetizer for a party.

Sausage-Cheese Balls

3C Original Bisquick Mix
1lb uncooked bulk pork sausage
4C shredded Cheddar cheese (16oz)
1/2C grated Parmesan cheese
1/2C milk
1/2 tsp dried rosemary leaves, crumbled
1 1/2 tsp chopped resh parsley or 1/2 tsp dried parsley flakes

1. Heat oven to 350F. Lightly grease a 15x10x1 inch pan.
2. Stir together all ingredients until well mixed, using your hands if necessary. Shape mixture into 1 inch balls. Place in the pan.
3. Bake for 20-25 mins, or until browned. Immediately remove from the pan. Serve warm. Makes 34 servings (8 1/2 dozen).

* You can make these a day ahead of time and refrigerate; bake as directed. Or cover and freeze unbaked balls for up to 1 month. Bake frozen balls for 25-30 mins, or until browned.

I just recently found some great websites for people who like to read and people who can’t find the time to read but would like to.

1. This One Next – Enter the title/author of the books you like and it will recommend a book to you based on your tastes! It also works for cds and dvds. I already compiled a list of books I want to read. I’ve been in a girl book reading mood so here’s my ‘to read’ list:

sushi for beginners by marian keyes
i dont know how she does it by allison pearson
the devil wears prada by lauren weisberger
the girl’s guide to hunting and fishing by melissa bank

I also want to read a book that makes me cry! Any recommendations?

2. Daily Lit – This is a cool site that sends you increments of a book to your email. Most of these books are “classics” and is a great way to read that book that is hard to get through normally. I’ve always wanted to read Jane Austen books, but I’m not sure if I have the patience to read it. So I subscribed to Emma and will have a chapter sent to me every day (or how often you prefer). DailyLit says it will take me 191 days to read it. Also, it’s nice if you are using Gmail, it should organize the emails all in one link. If this works out, I may try Moby Dick next!

I think it’s a good idea to spend a few minutes at least once a year cleaning up your computer. If you surf the web as much as I do, your computer can start to get bogged down with a variety of useless files/viruses that get saved to your computer. Here are a few tools I use to clean up my computer and help it run as smoothly as possible:

Glary Utilities: Will clean up your registry and other useless files. t’s amazing how many files it ends up cleaning/repairing for me. also, it lets you modify what apps are brought up when you first start up your computer

Superantispyware: i’ve blogged about this before but I recently recommended it to a coworker who was having some virus problems and had tried countless other big name antiviruses to no avail. Superantispyware worked for him! Highly recommended!

It doesn’t take too long to run either program and think of the time you’ll save when your computer runs faster after you’ve cleaned it up!

You always hear about how cool the offices of Google and other web startups are. Click here to get an inside look at other internet startups like Skype, Jaiku, and others.

And check out this video that people at Connected Ventures (they are behind websites like College Humor and a bunch more) made:

Lip Dub – Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo.

Doesn’t it make you want to change jobs?? hehe.

Wow, I can’t believe 2006 passed by so quickly. I hardly remember any of it!

Highlights:
– Experiencing my first international vacation! I went to Japan in March and loooooooooooved it. Japan is all about yummy food and cute stuff and so am I! I would gladly go back any time. It was a great first group friend vacation too. So many memories!
– Boyrobot meeting my parents. I can’t believe it’s finally over! My overly critical parents actually liked him. M was a perfect gentleman during the whole trip. I’m so happy!
– 9/18 and 5/25 hold a special place in my heart and this year was no exception!

Lowlights:
– Having a bad experience with the new roommate so much that we still haven’t gotten a new one and I am fine with that!

I don’t really remember anything else majorly bad happening. That’s good!

My 2007 Goals/Resolutions:
Just so you know, I forget about these a few weeks later but it’s nice while it lasts! And perhaps my friends and family who read this can keep me accountable.

1. Visit home more often. I said this last year and it didn’t happen! This time I’m prepared. I’ve already set my kayak fare alert to notify me of cheap airfare throughout the year. And probably sometime in May(?) I will be flying home because my sister will have given birth to her new baby, which is a girl btw!! I’m so excited to finally get a niece. My sister has two boys already. I can’t wait to adorn her with cute girlie clothes!

2. Keep this blog up and increate girlrobot traffic. In about 3 months I’ve been able to build up my average visitors per day from about 2 to 199 (as of Jan. 1st!). I’m really happy how much this website has grown. By 2008, I would really like an average of 350. I’m not sure how I will achieve this but hopefully if I provide content worth reading it will grow on its own. If you have any criticism or suggestions of my site, feel free to contact me at kim at girlrobot dot net!

3. Be a better person. There is still so much wrong with me personally that I need to work on. It’s hard when the people around you accept you for your faults, but for myself I would like to work on those things. IE: being more patient, better housecleaning (hah!), exercise more, being more tolerant of others, etc.

4. Visit another foreign country. We have plans, but nothing set in stone. I can’t wait to finalize our 2008 trip and I hope it goes as well as Japan! I love travelling!!!!!

5. Bring my lunch to work more often. I better with my Mr. Bento!!!

6. Handle my finances better. This includes optimizing my savings and learning more about stocks and investing. I’m having a hard time coming up with a number to strive for. What percentage of a person’s salary should be saved up?

I think that’s it for me. What are your resolutions?

Happy New Year everyone. I wish you all the best in 2008! I wonder what it has in store for us…

I have seen a few things that I am thinking of buying but I am not sure if it’s worth it. Does anybody have information or opinions on these things?

1. Apara Jammies with Aloe Vera – These are those super soft fuzzy socks with built in Aloe Vera! You are supposed to wear them if you have dry feet. I think they would be great for the winter since my feet can get dry and very cold! I love soft socks too. But how do these work to moisturize your feet? Do they even work? I can’t seem to find any information about socks with built in Aloe Vera. Anybody have experience with these? They are pretty pricy….I saw them at Bed Bath and Beyond for 7 bucks a pair. Even with my 20% off coupon it’s hard to justify paying that much for 1 pair! haha.

2. Chia Herb Garden – Ok, I don’t really have a green thumb AND I don’t even cook that often but when I do it’s such a pain to have to buy fresh herbs when I use so little! Sometimes I just forego the herbs because I don’t have any on hand or I only need like 1 tsp and it’s not worth it to buy a whole bunch just for that. I also think it would be nice to have fresh herbs on hand! The only problem I have with these is it looks extremely small. The box itself is small and supposed to hold 4 pots so I could tell what size it would be. In the picture it looks like it’s so much and so big but I know things like these are very good at advertising themselves to be much better than they really are. The most tempting thing about buying this for me was I saw them at Target yesterday marked down to 7 bucks!!! The list price is 30 bucks! Then again, if something is marked down that much…that’s a bad sign right? :P

Hey sorry for not being so great about updating this site. It’s the holidays and I am enjoying them. :) Boyrobot’s meet with the parents went great. They loved him! I will update with some pics later on this week.

Anyways, I just read this article about gmail getting hacked(?) and about 60 users’ contacts and emails getting PERMANENTLY deleted. OMG, I’m so glad that didnt’ happen to me! I have close to 1000 emails and 150 contacts in my gmail including a lot of unique information that I don’t store anywhere else. But even though this happened, I still love google and trust them. Although google won’t state how exactly it happened, it was a very isolated incident and considering how many people use gmail, 60 is a very small percentage.

For all of the paranoid people, here’s the gmail help center’s link on how to backup your emails.

On another note, while reading up on gmail I found this article. If you click on this link (make sure you are logged into gmail before you click), you can see who in your list of gmail contacts is “closest” to you by who you email the most often and even the interests you share. My roommate beat out boyrobot for my top spot! hehhe.

There’s a new website out there hoping to compete with Evite, the popular electronic invitation system. Renkoo, which just opened it’s public beta, is a web 2.0 version of evite. The design and color scheme is very cutesy and the AJAX code makes sending out evites easy on the eyes. I signed up and the only problem I noticed was it was a little slow loading. It’s still in beta though so I expect there to be a lot of problems. My favorite feature so far is being able to import all of my contacts from gmail. It also works for other popular emails like hotmail, outlook, etc. From what I remember, evite did not have this feature. Another cool feature is you are able to add your chat name and it will notify you by Aim or whatever you use about upcoming events. Also, it automatically uses your flickr profile picture for your Renkoo profile picture too!

Some things I noticed that it did not have that evite does are:

1. You can’t create unique invitations with cool themes
2. The profile information is simple and boring. Evite allows you to add your favorite restaurants and review it. I kind of liked that feature even though not everybody used this.
3. From what I see, you can’t see when people view your evites. This was a nifty feature to see if people actually got your evite or not.

One thing I will not miss about Evite is that whenever I sent out invitations about 10% would usually not get it for whatever reason. I hope that does not happen with Renkoo. Perhaps I will try them out the next time I need to send an invitation out.

If you liked this post and are interested in hearing about more cool, new websites, consider subscribing to my blog!

If you notice on my bot page, I recently added my sister, sweetposiebot! With the addition, I had to learn how to export her exisiting wordpress.com hosted blog to my own domain. It turned out to be pretty easy except for a few snags!

1. First download the wordpress-to-wordpress plugin and follow the instructions on this page.
2. Go to your old wordpress blog’s dashboard and go to manage->export and download the export file.
3. Go to your new wordpress (that’s hosted on your own domain) and go to the import option and import the file you just downloaded!

If all goes well, your posts, comments, etc should be ported over now.

Some problems I encountered:
– I received an error that said I was unable to create the folders that the import wanted to auto create so I had to change the permissions on my folders since they were not all 777 (read/write/executable).
– The original about page was turned into a post so we had to delete that post and make it into the About page again.
– All of her blogroll links were lost so we had to enter those in again.

Other than that it was a relatively easy and painless process. I love wordpress!