jeffchin.com

Google just announced a web service that they will be launching called PowerMeter.  If you know me, you know I love stats, graphs, charts and visualizing things – so this is right up my alley.  They’re currently in a closed beta, but I would love to see the effect on the energy used when I leave a light on all day by accident, when we do laundry, or the benefits of our programmable thermostat.

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Netflix on Boxee

I installed Boxee on my Macbook the other week, and so far, it’s awesome.  I think this was the thing I’ve been looking for for a long time.  I’ve floated the idea of buying a Roku box to stream Netflix movies, but something felt left out.  Boxee adds a extremely easy to use interface that allows me not only to access Watch Instantly on Netflix, but also Hulu, CBS, MTV, CNN, Revision3, Joost, etc…It also adds last.fm support so instead of just playing my iTunes library, I can start a station off of one of my existing songs – complete with lyrics and visulization.  Read the rest of this entry »

Here are some things that I’ve found to help out with my internet addiction:

• WSJ Mobile Reader.  I haven’t downloaded anything for my blackberry in a while.  I’m jealous that iPhone users get all these fun apps to play around with, so I decided to look around. I found the WSJ Mobile Reader.  This has been an addictive app because it has multiple tabs with customizable content.  Many of the tabs are for WSJ content, but on one tab you can easily add keyword search via Google or Yahoo News.  Another tab lets you add your own feeds and creates a constantly updating feed with whatever sites you read the most.  It keeps track of if you’ve read it or not so you don’t end up reading stories over and over as well as letting you mark things to read later, bookmark on facebook, delicious, or email yourself the article to read once you get back to your desk.

• Poynt Beta.  This is another BB app that helps with local search, movies and directions.  You can search based on a zip code or GPS location (a la Urban Spoon iPhone app) although I haven’t gotten it to pick up my GPS location successfully yet.  It’s the most slick looking app for blackberry that I’ve seen (aka not many).

• Mozilla Ubiquity.  This is a nerdy one.  It’s a add-on for Firefox, but it allows you to do a variety of commands right from the page you’re viewing.  It’s a little hard to explain, so check out this video, or this blog post for more details.  I just installed it, but can imagine that this will become more useful as people create some interesting commands.

Have you found anything you think I’d be interested in lately?

The year is pretty much up, and the results are in.  Here are the top posts and search terms from my site!

Top Posts/Pages – There is a huge drop off after the top 3 posts.  The Garmin post was linked to from a GPS review site and the Zantac post has been linked to from Wikipedia, and turns up in the top search results when search for “Zantac ” + drinking/alcohol, etc..

10.  Trip to Grundy, VA
09. Verizon FiOS Interactive Media Guide
08. Create Flashcards Online
07. About Me
06. Pictures from Juniper Lane / Coldplay
05. Jake & Amir: Ace
04. Fully Loaded Nachos
03. Recover Your iTunes Library with CopyTrans
02. The Wonders of Zantac
#1. Review: Garmin Nüvi 650 GPS

Top Search Terms – These almost line up with the top posts of the year…

10.  amir ace
09.  recover itunes
08.  jeffchin.com
07. zantac alcohol
06. fully loaded nachos
05. axl rose
04. bjorn borg
03. recover itunes library
02. jeff chin
#1. tennis costume

Can you pick out the random ones? (#5, #4, #1)  These all resulted in viewing the Halloween Kegger 2005 Pix, but search volume was too low overall to push it into the top 10.  Also that post received the bulk of traffic during the Halloween season of 2007: