Tech Roadshow

Taming the Wild EMail!

noreply@blogger.com (Waldemar Kowalski) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 02:29:00 +0000

Anyone who knows me knows that I love information. Doing research and figuring things out is FUN! The problem is, how does one cope with an overabundance of information? Specifically, way too much email? I receive several hundred email messages a day (no, I won't admit in public how many), besides the multiples of hundreds of messages from the RSS feeds I follow. Every few weeks I archive my email as my mailbox is getting too large for our system, and in six months the email I've kept ends up as a file of about 3 gigabytes. There's a lot of great information in there, but how is one to get at it?

Here's what I'm now doing, and I must say it's working phenomenally well. You need to know that I am doing this on a Mac. I would imagine there may be similar solutions for the PC (and the first part of my process works on PC, Mac, or Linux), but I'm not aware of them - if you are, please share these in a comment.

I have 14 years worth of stored .PST files. My first task was getting these into some format that was open and not proprietary. The most standard format is probably the .mbox or .mbx (mailbox) format, which is used by quite a few mail programs. What I found is a treasure called Emailchemy from Weird Kid Software. It takes many different proprietary email formats and converts them into many other more open formats. (It runs best, from what I see, on Mac, but Windows and Linux versions are available - they simply require Sun Java 1.5 or higher to be installed.) That was a pretty painless process - I pointed the software at a folder of .PST files, and it created another folder with .MBOX files. At $30 for a single user (and if you ask nicely, you might qualify for an education discount, as I did) it was a steal! Yes, there's a demo version available.

Then comes the heavy lifting: creating easily searched, fully accessible databases of all those emails. The tool for this is something called MailSteward. There's a demo version of this as well (limited to 15k emails), along with $20, $50, and $100 versions, the last of which requires you to set up a MySQL database. I went for the $50 version (alas, no discounts...) and it's serving me superbly. I fed it my individual converted PST chunks, created searches that let me extract all the info on bikes, scanners, photo gear, bass guitars, etc. that I had been collecting, and created much more easily manageable files from which I can now retrieve the specific info I need. It keeps the message format pretty well intact, and can either keep or discard attachments, depending on your preference. MailSteward also can be set to archive current email from Mac Mail, so that your mailbox doesn't bulge too much and choke your system. It can do this automatically, delete the original after it's been archived, and a bunch of other stuff.

Yep, I'm an info geek, and maybe this doesn't thrill you at all. That's okay: this has made me so very happy, to quote Blood Sweat and Tears, one of my favorite bands in my teens. Maybe it'll be of use to you as well...

Great Information!

noreply@blogger.com (Waldemar Kowalski) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 04:06:00 +0000

I've mentioned RSS feeds a number of times on this blog - I thought it might be useful to explain a bit more and provide some more resources. RSS stands for "really simple syndication", and is basically a system for subscribing to blogs, much as you might use iTunes to subscribe to podcasts. Rather than having to use a browser (IE, FireFox, Safari, Chrome, etc.) to go to individual blogs and see if something is new, you can use feed reader software (also called a feed or news aggregator) to subscribe to any number of blogs, and have these served up for you to view and do more - much more.

So, first things first: which reader software to use? You can use Google Reader (www.google.com/reader) directly in a web browser window, as it's become one of the major ways of organizing, saving, and sharing your subscriptions. You'll probably find, however, that using a stand-alone program will offer benefits, even though I'll sometimes go into Google Reader itself. Opinions will of course vary, but I really like Feeddler Pro on my iPhone and Reeder on my iPad (these are my main devices for following all the blogs I track), and before that I used NetNewsWire on my Mac. Here are some suggested readers for the Mac and some suggested readers for PC.

Next, the question is what to subscribe to? I've provided for you my lists of tech blogs I follow at the right side of this blog (they're called "bundles"). You can click on the names of the individual blogs to visit these, click on preview to see the collection, or subscribe on a bundle, which is the easiest way to get a quick start. I've organized my tech blog bundles in terms of iPhone/iPad related blogs, and then more generally tech-related blogs. (If you're interested in my church-related bundles, check them out at my church-related blog: communiocate.blogspot.com.)

How did I create these bundles? That's a function within Google Reader - if you'd like to know more about how to do that, let me know in a comment.

I have also marked a number of blog entries as starred (items I think will be of future use to me) and as shared (items I think will be of interest to my tech friends). My shared list is pretty large, but there are some incredible bits of information in there, more quickly accessible than reading through the thousands of blog entries I've read through (I read, on average, about 500-700 blog entries a day). To see my shared items, see http://www.google.com/reader/shared/06701517268185061680. To subscribe to my shared items as a feed, click on http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user/06701517268185061680/state/com.google/broadcast. This would in essence let you subscribe to a special feed of only those blog entries I've found of interest.

If you have further questions, or if I'm not being clear in what I'm saying, please let me know! This is an incredible source of information, and I'd love more people to have access to it.

Keeping Data Available and Synced

noreply@blogger.com (Waldemar Kowalski) — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 22:28:00 +0000

Remember (if you’re old enough) how exciting it was to be able to put big chunks of data on a USB memory stick, or more accurately, flash drive (the “Jump Drive” was an early model from Lexar). So much better than floppies, and who uses floppy drives any more?! The problem is, though, that these are easily misplaced (especially a problem if you have any sort of sensitive data on the drive), they can cost a fair bit, and they can fail – a colleague recently discovered the danger of relying on a USB flash drive when it failed just when she needed it for preaching a sermon in chapel!

There are a number of excellent methods now available for making data broadly and safely available, and even keeping things in sync. I’m going to highlight two quite similar services that may well be entirely free to use, depending on how much space you need, and fill related but distinct roles in my use. A disclaimer here: I will give you a link for the services. If you use this link both you and I will get extra free space, so I do benefit by your use of the link. If you have a friend that you know is also on one of these, by all means use their referral link to benefit them. You definitely will want to take the referral path, though, as it gives you extra space as well as me or your other friend. Now to the services!

The first one I became aware of and put to use was Dropbox (referral link at http://db.tt/D2QRwTf). Offering 2 gigabytes of space free (and more via referrals or on a paid plan) this was a fabulous, free, accessible replacement for my USB drive. If I could get to the internet, I could simply log in to the Dropbox site and access my files. I could also put files in a folder (photos, music, documents, whatever) and send a link to that folder to someone via email, and they could then retrieve those files. Besides that, I could also install the free Dropbox software on my PCs (of whatever sort: PC, Mac, Linux, and mobile devices) and have the files automatically replicated on all the PCs. (Dropbox also now allows you to select which portions you replicate, so that you don’t overwhelm a computer with low capacity.) The only glitch, and it was by no means a deal-breaker, was that Dropbox set up a folder on each PC which was the place everything was stored, so I had to put a copy of my class notes in there to get them from one machine to the other. (Yes, there are ways of setting up linkages and doing all sorts of exotic maneuvers, but that goes well beyond the basic stuff.) Dropbox was, and continues to be for me, an incredible and excellent alternative to USB drives for transferring and sharing files.

Another issue, which I had also originally solved with a USB drive, was keeping my files in sync. I generally did most of the work on my academic class notes on my home laptop (currently a Macbook), and taught from a tablet PC in the classroom (currently a Lenovo). Keeping my files in sync was a pain: I tried multiple software programs and used a 16gig USB drive to transfer the synced files from one to the other. It took time and had dangers of over-writing files where I’d made changes in both locations between syncs. It was a pain! Then I discovered Sugarsync (referral link at https://www.sugarsync.com/referral?rf=dw9857q0vd78j). This excellent service offers 5 gigabytes free to start with, is very reasonable for larger sizes, and also gives extra space for referrals. It runs on the same types of gear as Dropbox, but differs in that Sugarsync makes it very easy to sync files between various computers. After you install the free Sugarsync manager program, you can designate any folder(s) on your computer(s) to be synced to each other. I chose, for instance, to sync my class notes from my home laptop to my class tablet, as well as being available to me on my iPhone and iPad. Now, when I change a file (as I did in our Bible study class this morning on Hebrews – link at http://communiocate.blogspot.com/) on one computer, even on my iPhone or iPad, that change is propagated to all the linked computers without me doing anything else! Very cool! I’ve since created sync linkages between a number of different computers, linking different data between them all, and Sugarsync has never let me down.

Is it safe and secure? About as much as anything is on the internet – make sure you choose a good password (and I plan to do a blog posting on that soon). In some other important ways, though, it is VERY safe.

· Think about it – both services back your data up to multiple locations. It’s available to you on the internet, as well as locally on whatever machines you’ve enabled for replication. If the internet is down, the information is still on those local machines. If you’re working away from the office and can connect at an internet café or library, even from the other side of the world, your data is backed up. If a machine is stolen or lost, that data is still on the other machines as well as the internet.

· What happens if you accidentally make an unintended change? Won’t the syncing/replicating mess you up? Yes, it can, but fortunately both services offer versioning. I used this just last week. I was editing a file and changing some information, but absentmindedly hit “save” rather than selecting “save as”. I needed both the original file and the new one (it was an exam for my students, and they would have been heartbroken at being deprived of this evaluative learning exercise!). Fortunately, all I had to do was log in to the Sugarsync website, find the file (which had already synced to my other machines), and select “more” on the dropdown menu to find the “versions” tab, and a few seconds later I had both versions of the file, just as originally intended. What a relief!

Well, these services provide a terrific deal! You may well decide, as several friends have, that it’s worth paying for a paid plan and extra space. Even if you don’t, they offer useful tools and a safety net, and I recommend them highly.

Planned future information here on the blog: safe and easy password creation, management, and deployment tools, as well as backup and high availability strategies to make sure that when things go really wrong, you can keep on working. Stay tuned! And do spread the word: I intend to become more regular and frequent in updating this site!

Excellent and Free Drive Cloning Tools

noreply@blogger.com (Waldemar Kowalski) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:56:00 +0000

I'm a long-time user of Drive Snapshot, a tool which allows you to make a backup copy of your computer's hard drive onto an external hard drive. It's a useful backup tool, distinguishing in that it makes a cloned copy of your hard drive without shutting your machine down - you can keep working while it's doing its stuff. That makes it practical to do frequent backups. Another distinguishing aspect is that the backed-up clone of your drive can be mounted as a virtual drive, so that you can recover specific files without having to go through some arduous restore routine. This program is a huge component of any system migration for me, and has more than once saved my bacon. Well worth the 39Euros (well under $60 currently) they're asking for it.

I've just become aware of a tool called Clonezilla, which is free on a GPL license. I haven't used it yet, but while it doesn't offer some of the features of Drive Snapshot (the "keep working" and "mount as virtual drive" aspects), it does offer free cloning of your hard drive for backup or transfer purposes. Another thing it offers, which Drive Snapshot does not, is the ability to "multicast". If you are putting a bunch of essentially identical machines into use, rather than install all that software on every one, you would build one machine, test it thoroughly, clone it, and then multicast that out to all the rest. In the example cited on the Clonezilla website, it took only about 10 minutes to clone a 5.6 GBytes system image to 41 computers simultaneously. There is also software available to correctly differentiate all those machines so that they can properly be added to the network.

I'll probably continue to use Drive Snapshot for my tasks, but there are situations where Clonezilla would be superior, especially when deploying a bunch of machines. It can also be used to remotely "push" a clone out, which could be useful if you're in a school or church environment. If you have a lab where you'd like to refresh all the computers nightly or once a week (undoing any changes made by users, either mischievous or unwitting), or kiosks in the foyer where you'd like to either refresh these to undo damage or put up new content, Clonezilla could make your life significantly easier. And of course, free is a really good price!

Compact Printable Calendar and other Productivity Tools

noreply@blogger.com (Waldemar Kowalski) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:11:00 +0000

Just found this site from designer David Seah. What attracted my attention was his compact printable calendar - a template you load into Excel or the spreadsheet of your choice to create your ideal customized calendar. On the site you'll find templates pre-loaded with holidays for various countries, now updated with the 2009 calendars. I could see this being used for calendar inserts to church bulletins, bookmarks, etc.

From the look of it, though, there's a lot more available on his site, including his "printable CEO" series of materials. Well worth checking out!

Converting files from Acrobat (.pdf) to Word; Back-country Internet

noreply@blogger.com (Waldemar Kowalski) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 04:19:00 +0000

Sometimes you have a .pdf file and need access to the contents. While in many cases you can copy and paste bits, if you want an easier way to access the whole thing, check out http://pdfundo.net/convert/ for a free online pdf to Word converter.

Also, if you don't have easy access to high-speed internet because of where you live, you may want to check out http://lifehacker.com/5066868/how-do-you-get-broadband-in-the-boonies - lots of ideas presented in the comments section on how to get access in challenging areas.

Reference and Bibliography Manager

noreply@blogger.com (Waldemar Kowalski) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 14:24:00 +0000

You may want to check out http://www.zotero.org/ for an open source reference and bibliography manager. It runs within FireFox and is attracting a LOT of attention, with quite a few people switching to it from Endnote and the like. It can easily be carried around on a jumpdrive, etc., and in fact, you can use a portable version of FireFox on your USB drive, install Zotero to that, and then use it anywhere. They're also beta-testing a sync solution which would allow you to backup and share your database between all your machines.

In my preliminary tests I'm quite impressed. I like its ability to grab online data (whether you're browsing Amazon or your library database) and inserting that info rather painlessly in your local "library" file. It does a number of things better than Endnote, and needs a bit of improvement on a few others. Since it's open source and has a strong and enthusiastic following, I'm confident those improvements will be coming. I haven't switched over entirely yet (I've only been using it since about 1am this morning...) but most likely will do so. Compared to $300 for Endnote ($200 academic, $100 each upgrade) or $100/year for an individual subscription to RefWorks, free is a great deal!

More Free Stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Waldemar Kowalski) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 16:10:00 +0000

Hard on the heels of last week's article, here's another article from ComputerWorld with more free software and some services.
One that intrigued me right on the first page is a service to which you can forward emails you get when you buy stuff on the web. They'll find the tracking number and give you a unified page where you can see all the different things you're waiting for. This will save me a lot of time (though, sadly, no money whatsoever).
On page three there's a free program that lets you set up an encrypted "virtual drive" - great for keeping sensitive stuff safe, especially on vulnerable machines like laptops, as well as software for blocking spam and viruses.
There are pages full of some really neat stuff. Just one warning: you can "invest" a lot of time here, because there is so much excellent material to explore.

Free and Excellent Software

noreply@blogger.com (Waldemar Kowalski) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:24:00 +0000

Here's an article from ComputerWorld which lists a bunch of software (from email to Office suites to graphics to money to antivirus to....) which is mostly free (a few items offer enhancements for a bit of money, like generally $10 or so). What is very exciting about the items on the list, though, is not only the low price, but also that in many cases the free stuff outdoes the expensive stuff - now THAT'S something I can really appreciate!

Ease Office 2007 Frustrations

noreply@blogger.com (Waldemar Kowalski) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:15:00 +0000

If you're frustrated by the changes in Office 2007, here's some help:

a cheat-sheat for Word 2007 – http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9010482

a cheat-sheat for Excel 2007 – http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9028228

a cheat-sheat for Powerpoint 2007 – http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9063119

If this isn’t enough and you find yourself frustrated on an ongoing basis, you might want to invest in a copy of Classic Menu – free to try for 30 days at http://www.addintools.com/english/menuoffice/, about $30 if you like it and want to add technical support (doesn’t seem to actually time-out). It adds the old menus and commands to the new office, so you get the best of both worlds. (Thanks to Mel Ming for making me aware of this one.)

The Easiest YouTube Conversion Yet!!

noreply@blogger.com (Waldemar Kowalski) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:52:00 +0000

Thanks to Glen Davis, via Mel Ming, for this tip:

Check out the service and more importantly, the downloadable program, at http://vixy.net/. This is a one-step capture and/or convert process for YouTube and other web videos - basically converts from .flv to a number of formats (.mp4 for iPod etc., .avi for general PC use, .mov for general Mac use) or simply capture the .flv file.

Now for the caveats: the online service to do it didn't work when I tried it - simply never was able to contact the server. Could be all sorts of things, and you may have a different result. However, the great news is that there's a downloadable program (still in beta format) which is currently free, is available for Mac as well as PC, and it worked brilliantly, couldn't be simpler, and gave terrific results. This is a must have - check it out!

"Fix" Vista

noreply@blogger.com (Waldemar Kowalski) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:00:00 +0000

Many of my friends have expressed frustration over some of Vista's "features" which make it so power-hungry and slow. Here's an article from Information Week which talks about a program named vLite, which can strip Vista down to a lean and mean operating system. It is used in the installation mode, so unfortunately it is not designed for those who already have Vista running. (You use it during the installation phase: as the makers of the tool say, "vLite is a tool for customizing the Windows Vista installation before actually installing it.") It is excellent in this mode, and besides, it's free!
UPDATE: another journal article from Computerworld praises this tool and indicates that it can reduce the installed size of Vista from 15 gigs down to 1.4 gigs - a very significant reduction in footprint! And, by the way, there's a similar tool for Windows XP from the same programmer, called nLite. It's not nearly as necessary, as XP is not nearly as bloated as Vista, but for those who insist on the most finely tuned system it is worth using.

What about those who already have Vista installed? Here are a few sites and tools. The instructions from the folks at ExtremeTech are not as technically involved and dangerous as some I've seen. Also, check out Mobile Pedia, the instructions at the TweakVista site, and those at cucirca.com. The latter makes references to a tool called Tweak VI, which is available as a free download and will automate a number of the processes described on these other sites, which you would otherwise do manually. This (Tweak VI) is probably your best choice.

Totally Free Photos

noreply@blogger.com (Waldemar Kowalski) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 07:13:00 +0000

A challenge in doing affordable but legal design work is finding a source for good free photographs. With a stock photo you pay based on how you are using the photo (and each time you want to use that photo). With a royalty-free photo you pay a set fee for the right to use that photo in just about any way and as often as you desire (google "royalty-free photos"). What I like is the totally free photo, which can costs you the time to download it and which you can use as you like (within reasonable limitations imposed by the site). Here are some of my favorite sources.
A disclaimer: I cannot guarantee that there are no offensive images to be found in these sites.

Sources of Totally Free Photos
http://www.sxc.hu
http://www.morguefile.com/
http://pdphoto.org/
http://www.freephotosbank.com/
http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html
http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/
http://yotophoto.com/
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/clipart/default.aspx (suggested by an anonymous commenter - thanks!)

There is no good way to know which of the images at http://images.google.com/ and http://flickr.com/ are in violation of copyright law and you're better off avoiding them. As you find other good sites, please let me know and I'll add them here.

Video "Capture" on the Web

noreply@blogger.com (Waldemar Kowalski) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 02:58:00 +0000

Since we've had high interest in the process of capturing video from websites like YouTube and Google Videos, I thought that the next blog entry might usefully outline this process. I'm labeling this "capture" rather than download, since the websites in question aren't really offering you a simple button to click on for downloading, so we're capturing the video to our local computers by using some nifty technology. Yes, I know that Google has a download button, but there are other limitations in place which we're bypassing.
One small warning: although YouTube generally exercises care in eliminating offensive material, Google is generally more open, and even on YouTube stuff gets by. Also, exercise caution regarding violation of copyright law - availability is not the same as permission to use.

UPDATE: I've just acquired a MacBook Pro (may write more about this in an entry later) and have tested and can confirm that Firefox and Downloadhelper work perfectly well in the Mac environment. Also, VLC has a Mac OSX option which works superly. Quite a bit of the NCH software is available in a Mac variant, but sadly, not Prism.

Software for Capturing Videos
The key to my system (not to say that there are not other methods) is to use Firefox as your web browser. This is a free download, and I've gotten to prefer this browser quite a bit over Internet Explorer, not least for the add-ons. The add-on you need to capture video is called Downloadhelper, also free and a very simple tool to install (it'll even update itself as needed, with the help of Firefox). By the way, another tool I really like, mentioned in the sessions, is Flashblock, which gives you control over whether or not you want to play Flash content on web pages.
Once this software is installed, you'll see a little graphic which looks like a molecule between the address bar and the Google search bar at the top of the screen. If there's downloadable content, it'll change from grey to multi-color and start spinning. Click on the downarrow just to its right, and select which file you'd like to save (generally only one is listed, but sometimes there are several). You may need to change the download directory, but on my system the default download directory is My Documents\My Videos - go there to examine your new guests. You'll know the download is done when the (1) is gone from beside the spinning graphic.

Software for Viewing Videos
There are many possible formats for videos - .flv (YouTube and Google), .wmv (Windows Media), .mpg/.mp4 (these ones are generally fairly "portable" and easy to play), and .avi (MANY variations on this one). There are two ways I'll mention here for playing these varied formats: installing a codec pack like KLite Mega Codec Pack (free), which gives your regular software the capabilities of playing almost everything (it should add this capability to PowerPoint also, but I haven't tested this yet - let me know if you've tried it and I'll update the blog with a yes/no on that); and a second option is using a universal player like VideoLan (or VLC), which is also free. I've personally chosen to go the VLC route, as it's an excellent and compact solution, and I like the elegance of this.

Software for Converting Videos
While the viewing solutions mentioned above take care of your computer, what about if you need to insert a video into PowerPoint and play it on another machine? The safest thing to do is to convert the file from, for instance, a captured .flv from YouTube and convert it to an .mpg which will play in PowerPoint without any coaxing. For this I use a free program called Prism which is made by NCH software (I'll be using a number of their offerings - excellent stuff: you might want to upgrade some items to their pro versions just to support them, as we'll use a LOT of their free stuff).
To use this, download Prism and install it (click on the .exe file). Once it's installed, click on the icon (or select the program from your start menu), click on the "+ Add File" at the top to add a file (for instance the downloaded .flv in your My Videos folder), select the output format you want (lower left of the window) - I'd suggest .mpg (Prism's default settings for .mpgs will work well), and then click on "convert" (lower right of window) to let the program run. Could hardly be simpler. (I just noticed that there's an "Add DVD" option - I'll have to play with that and try it.) It'll save the file into your My Videos folder by default - move it wherever you want to use it.

Have fun!

Blogging and Gmail

noreply@blogger.com (Waldemar Kowalski) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 04:17:00 +0000

Blog Hosting and Software
Free software and hosting for your blog is available here. This is a part of the excellent set of tools offered by Google and is very easy to use.
We'll talk about some other options, like the powerful options available at wordpress.com, but that tool is more complex and has been less stable than the Google blogger in the experience of my colleagues. Wordpress does include more capabilities for podcasting, but we'll talk more about that in another blog, and there are ways to add podcasting into blogspot.

GMail and (Some of) Its Wonders
If you don't already have a GMail account (another Google offering), you should do so: there are some real benefits to such an account. Information on getting an account can be found here. One of these benefits is the GMail File System, which allows you to use the generous amount of space on GMail to store files which you can then easily retrieve anywhere you can access GMail.

Shopping and Pricing Gear

noreply@blogger.com (techroadshow) — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 02:55:00 +0000

Checking Prices and Vendors
I like to check for prices at pricescan or Google Product Search (which used to be called froogle). You can look at categories of items or enter a model number to search for prices. Nervous about buying online from an unknown company? Check them out first at the reseller rating site.

Places to Find Deals
Not sure what you're looking for, but like good deals? I like to see what the current Woot is (this is a site which offers one item every day, starting at midnight Central time, with a flat $5 shipping). I also like to check techbargains, which tries to put together a list (contributed by internet users) of all the good deals to be found on the 'Net. There are also several sites that offer coupons which could reduce prices at general sites or on brands (rather than specific items). For instance, one such site is the techbargain coupon site, and there are others (which I'll add as you make me aware of these or I remember them).

Places to Buy Stuff
A few places I've found to be reliable and worth my business because of price and service include

Newegg, which sells all sorts of electronics and computer gear
BuyDig, which is a bit more oriented to photo and video gear but also often has the best price on other stuff
B&H Photo and Video, which is a terrific source for all sorts of professional (and amateur) photo, video, and audio gear, as well as other stuff. They generally are not the cheapest (although every now and then they are) but they have a GREAT reputation
CompGeeks, which has some electronics but is more computer oriented, and often has excellent prices on close-out gear. A hint: on most items you can save 10% by entering "techbargain" or "techbargains" in the coupon box (can't remember which: leave me a comment if you find which one works and I'll edit this post).

Welcome and Structure

noreply@blogger.com (techroadshow) — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 03:29:00 +0000

Welcome to the
Tech Roadshow

Welcome! This blog will originally created to aid with the LEAD Seminar: Technology, presented by the Northwest Ministry Network of the Assemblies of God. Besides distributing and augmenting the information generated during the session, I envision it becoming a resource for a much broader community. A blog makes the information more available and easier to update, offers convenient access to the sites mentioned, allows you to be a part of the discussion and us to help each other, and it's also good stewardship, saving a chunk of a tree or two. Besides, it's just plain cool!

I'll be doing a thematic blog, which means that each entry will be associated with a specific topic rather than simply journaling what is happening that day. Small editing changes will simply be done in place, which means that if you're doing an RSS feed you may not see those changes. Major changes and enhancements will be noted by deleting the original entry and creating a new one, which will show up as a new item in your reader.

Disclaimer:
This is NOT an official communication of the NW Ministry Network or of my employer, Northwest University. It has been set up by Waldemar Kowalski for the convenience of participants in the LEAD Seminar and to benefit anyone who is interested. NU as well as the NW Ministry Network bear no responsibility for the contents of this blog nor any consequences resulting from use of information posted here. Yes, this is indeed the Small Print.