Affordable Web Technology, Inc.

Many of us use Google Apps for e-Mail, word processing, calendars, and on-line storage. Can you afford to lose it? Backupify.com to the rescue! Simply sign up for an account, enter your Google ID and password — Viola! Now your cloud storage is backed up to your new cloud storage. Ranging from $10 to $60 per year, you have to go check out Backupify.com.

While there are a number of sites that enable you to resize and enhance your photos on-line, picnik has recently been purchased by Google, so you know their a road worthy application.

You can resize, rotate, crop, adjust color, add labels, apply special effects… and the list just goes on and on. You can do a number of great things, just by going to their site. If you want more functionality, sign up for a free account. If you’re after yet more functionality, they have a Premium upgrade for approximately $2 per month.

If you want to look good today, you owe it to yourself to check this out! www.picnik.com

Today, my best friend of 14 years passed on. My dog, Dufus, yes… that’s his real name. He was diagnosed in December with terminal Cancer and given weeks to live. Weeks turned into 6 months.

Over the past 14 years, he enjoyed running, green peppers, oatmeal, ice cream, and more lap time than any other dog. If I was driving, 10 miles or 1,000… he was on my lap looking out the windshield and ensuring that I was piloting the car correctly.

Since his diagnosis, we were all determined to let him live with dignity. Thoroughly enjoying people food, car rides and lap time. I have been fortunate to have shared his live and been the alpha dog in his little pack.

These past four weeks brought about the largest changes for him. He gave me 14 years of unconditional love – asking only in the end that I be there for him. My wife forwarded me an article  that said “As your pet, I may not understand your words, but I will recognize your voice”.

His last car ride found him gleefully on my lap looking out the window calmly and content. His final moments with us were spent looking into my eyes, hearing our voices, feeling my touch, and smelling my hand. In the end, he passed on peacefully, gracefully, and with all the dignity he earned and deserved.

Way back… When… We used to barter. We’d trade chickens and goats and cow milk for horse shoes, grain, and textiles. Then came coins. We’d carry a pouch full of heavy coins and trade those for purchases made in the open air markets. Paper money soon came into favor. Much easier to carry.

Do you take “plastic”? How many times have we asked merchant that? Now -Starbucks has released an iPhone app that lets you pay for your coffee by simply scanning the screen. OK. right now, it only works in Seattle, San Francisco, and every Target store in America. But, this is the face of future money.

My local target store wouldn’t accept the scan as a “Black Card” for the 10% discount. Something about them being “licensed – not a company store”. Anyway, the scan of the screen worked as planned, but their computerized cash register wasn’t set-up yet to process the scan.

I’m still excited about where all this is going.

Hybra Advance Technology has announced the O.R.B. It’s really a bluetooth headset, yet you can wear it as a fashionable ring when not talking on the phone. Two models will be released. The deluxe version will notify you of incoming text messages, calendar reminders, and phone calls. Sound to good to be true? Read their F.A.Q. page.

Nuance Document Imaging solutions has released PDF Reader. It’s got a small foot print. It’s FREE! And it converts PDF’s into Microsoft Word and Excel. What’s not to love? Check them out today.

The February 1st issue of eWeek magazine has an article that discusses the 25 technologies that have changed the way we work, play, and live. I’m not going to re-type the entire article, but how many of these do you remember?

1. 3G Broadband
2. 802.11g
3. AJAX
4. Amazon Elastic Clompute Cloud
5. AMD64
6. BlackBerry
7. Blade Servers
8. Bluetooth
9. FireFox
10. Gmail/ Google Apps
11. iPhone/ iPod
12. Mac OS X
13. Multicore processors
14. Netbooks
15. Openoffice.org
16. Power Over Ethernet
17. Salesforce.com
18. Social Networks
19. Treo (an early smartphone)
20. Twitter
21. Red Hat Enterprise Linux
22. VMware
23. VOIP/ Skype, SIP
24. Solaris 10
25. Windows XP

Access free content from:

• www.hulu.com
• www.youtube.com.shows
• www.joost.com
• www.cbs.com/video
• www.nbc.com/Video/Library
• www.thewb.com
• www.cwtv.com
• www.fxnetworks.com
• www.comedycentral.com
• www.crackle.com
• www.clicker.com
• www.bc.co.uk/iplayer

You’ll need to use www.witopia.net to get virtul UK IP address in order to watch the BBC stuff.

If you’re looking for media center software, try:

• www.xbmc.org
• www.plexapp.com
• www.boxee.tv

Most cell phone carriers have a way to send an image to their customers. Use the following email address formats:

• Alltel – number@message.alltel.com
• AT & T – number@mms.att.net
• Bell Mobility (Canada) – number@1x.ball.ca
• Boost Mobile – number@boostmobile.com
• Cingular – number@mms.mycingular.com
• Fido (Canada) – number@fido.net
• Rogers Wireless (Canada) – number@pcs.rogers.com
• Sprint/ Nextel – number@messaging.sprintpcs.com
• T-Mobile – number@tmomail.net
• US Cellular – number@mms.uscc.net
• Verizon – number@vzwpix.com
• Virgin Mobile – number@vmobl.com

In each case the number is the phone number of the destination phone, entered without any dashes.

Do you need to resize your images into Avatars or just make them more web friendly for your website? Don’t have Photoshop or don’t want to mess around Photoshop Elements? Try http://shrinkpictures.com.  They let you select any image up to 6 Megabytes in size – then select basic re-size options and Viola! a resized image ready to go.

There are many utilities on-line today that perform this function, but this one actually allows you to change the pixel density (DPI) – thereby creating a much smaller image.

Check them out today.