Thanks to Wakerupper, now every day is a hotel day.

It’s simple:

1. Go to the site.
2. Enter your desired date and call time.
3. Input your phone number.
4. Optionally, type some text to be transcribed (reverse-Jott style, as Tom pointed out).
5. Get a wake-up call (or any reminder call, for that matter) — you can even snooze your call.

(Thanks for the recommendation, Tom!)

Between this and my new iPhone 3G, I’m surrounded by a sea of techno-euphoria tonight.

Oh yeah, and my favorite bullet point from the Wakerupper site: “Escape from a boring date or meeting.”

Then I became a bit more serious about my running — I’ve logged about 640 miles so far this year, have begun training for my second marathon, and recently ran my 6th race — so I started to get frustrated with the fact that the iPod with Nike+ wasn’t totally accurate in terms of distance and pace (I was calibrating often and it always seemed like it was either telling me I was running too far or not far enough; the accelerometer technology is cool, but not without fault).

It was time for GPS — on my wrist:

So I started doing some research and knew pretty quickly that I wanted a Garmin Forerunner. My buddy Alex, with whom I trained for the Rock ‘n Roll Marathon in San Diego, picked up the Forerunner 205 during our training, and loved it. Given that it’s GPS and all, we always used his watch to track our distance and pace vs. my iPod, which was pretty accurate, but not exact.

The 205 is an older model and doesn’t have a heartrate monitor, which is something I was also curious about doing: Monitoring my heartrate while I run. So that narrowed it down to the Forerunner 305 or the Forerunner 405.

The 405 is the newer, smaller model, just released this summer, and which is getting all the hype. I read lots of reviews that compared the two and ultimately decided to go for the 305 for a number of reasons:

• Money: I saved about $150 (I bought my 305 on Amazon for about $210 vs. the $350 it would’ve been for the 405 with heartrate monitor).
• Display: The 305 has a bigger display (I love data and the 305 can display 4 data fields at once).
• Features: From everything I read, the 305 and 405 are virtually identical besides the design (405 is much smaller and sleeker, but I wouldn’t have worn it when I wasn’t running anyway) and the fact that the 405 has iPod-like “touch bezel.”

I’ve only run with my 305 a couple times this week so far, but already I’m loving it. There are so many features that I haven’t really leveraged anything but the basics yet.

Some features that are really cool about the watch:

• GPS tracking precision
• Accurate pace
• Heartrate monitoring
• Race against a virtual running partner
• Map courses & compare past results with current
• Create quick, interval, or advanced workouts
• Download data
• Follow on map and graph what my current pace & heartrate were at any point

Some things I don’t like about the 305 so far:

• Connecting to the satellites can take a while
• It is a bit on the big side (but doesn’t bother me too much)
• Every time I download my data & close the Garmin Training Center, the data seems to go away (so I have to download again)

Overall, it’s a great investment and I’m excited to leverage it to help me take my running to the next level.

Some nice improvements I’ve noticed:

• Faster load time
• Faster browsing (Gmail is incredibly fast)
• Improved user interface (new icons, polished look)
• Sliding tabs as you open & close
• Auto-URL completion with favicons (those little browser icons you see when you bookmark)
• More stable
• Google Desktop searches actually open my default browser (Firefox) now instead of IE7 (woohoo!)

Review the top new features.

I’ve downloaded Firefox 3 on two machines now and have helped contribute to the record-breaking attempt. As of now, Firefox 3 has already been downloaded 6,424,790 times since early yesterday afternoon — blowing away the 5 million goal that was set by Mozilla.

Download your FF3 today and be part of this world record (download by 2:16 p.m. EDT to be part of the record attempt)!

Domain Name: GABEANDERSON.COM
Created on: 10-Jun-98
Expires on: 08-Jun-09
Last Updated on: 30-May-08

In 1996, my Netscape 2.0-optimized Web site looked a little something like the below, and proudly declared that “this is my little contribution to one of the fastest-growing communities in the world: the Internet:”

In 1998 when I registered this domain, I relaunched it to look like this (this is the about section):

Ten years might not seem like a long time, but in Internet time, that’s pretty much an eternity. Recall that the Web as we know it didn’t really exist. Netscape 1.0 (which I vividly recall using on my PowerBook 520c) was only launched 4 years prior, in 1994. Amazon.com was still a new company (launched in 1995). Ethernet, wifi, and broadband connections weren’t really prevalent; it was during my years in college that my campus made the switch from AppleTalk to Ethernet (circa 1997 or 1998). A 500 MB hard drive was considered huge and no one could imagine ever filling one up. My foray into the e-elearning industry in 1999 was with an employer (e-learning pioneer Headlight.com) whose original Web servers were connected to the Internet via two 56k modems (remember those?).

So just how long ago was 1998? Let’s reflect a bit on some of the other events from that year:

• Blogs didn’t really exist (nor did any blogging software)
• Smoking is banned in California
• The Unabomber pleads guilty
• President Bill Clinton is in office
• Monica Lewinsky captures the public eye
• Titanic sweeps the Oscars
• Apple launches the first iMac
• Microsoft releases Windows 98
• Google is founded (yes, youngins, there was a time before Google!)
• A professional wrestler (Jesse Ventura) is elected governor of Minnesota
• AOL rules the Internet & acquires Netscape for $4.2 billion
• Gabe enters his senior year of college
• gabeanderson.com is registered & goes live for the first time

It’s hard to imagine what the Internet will be in another 10 years. Yesterday Apple announced the second-generation iPhone (iPhone 3G), which includes broadband-like speeds on your phone, GPS-enabled mapping, and, of course, photos, music, video, and lots more. No one could’ve imagined such a device in 1998.

What will technology look like in 2018?

Doesn’t Windows have built-in dual monitor support? Sure, but it’s very limited. And it doesn’t allow you to do all the cool stuff that UltraMon does.

Features, as noted on the UltraMon site (followed by my commentary):

• efficiently move windows and maximize windows across the desktop (one-click button to make a window jump to other monitor)
• manage more applications with the Smart Taskbar (unique task bar for each monitor to accurately display running apps)
• control application positioning with UltraMon Shortcuts (for example, I can create a shortcut, accessible via my desktop or even when I login to my computer, to launch PowerPoint, maximized on monitor 1 — or even with custom resolution settings for the monitor)
• multi-monitor support for desktop wallpapers and screen savers (set up wallpaper profiles and show a different background for each monitor; run a different screensaver on each monitor):
  

• mirror your main monitor to secondary monitors for a presentation (just like the built-in functionality in most Windows laptops)

If you sport dual monitors — and if you don’t, you really should since you won’t believe how much more awesome it is and how much more productive you can be (your productivity will more than double) — then your first utility to install should be UltraMon.

I’d read about the free services way back when, but never signed up for one since it seemed like kind of a pain and I didn’t really feel like going through the process of opting out from the multitude of direct marketers’ lists. But a couple weeks ago, while reading this post on GetRichSlowly, one service caught my eye: GreenDimes.

My favorite part about GreenDimes? The part where I don’t have to do anything besides sign up. So sign up I did (on May 3, 2008) — I opted for the $20 Premium account (one-time fee) so that GreenDimes would do all the work for me — and the junk mail stopped flowing in almost immediately.

It’s only been a couple weeks and our mailbox is beginning to feel a little lonely. When the occasional catalog does sneak in, I just login to my GreenDimes account, search its vast database of vendors, and with a single click tell GreenDimes to go after the mailer on my behalf. It’s brilliant.

But it gets better!

If you’re not interested in paying 20 bucks (it was well worth it to me), you can actually have GreenDimes pay you $1 to stop your junk mail. If you go that route, you get the Basic account and have to do some opt-out work yourself, but who doesn’t want to stop junk mail? Go for it!

With my Premium account, I get all this good stuff:

• 5 years junkmail protection (sweet!)
• Proven system that will significantly reduce postal junk mail (bring it!)
• Catalog Screener (works like a charm)
• Automatic removal from common junk mail lists (oh yeah!)
• Monthly junk mail list monitoring (rockin’!)
• Protect unlimited number of household names (key to have both me & my wife listed)
• Postage-paid postcards for special mail list removals (since some mailers make it difficult to remove your name)
• 5 trees planted on behalf of member (trees rule!)
• 24/7 Customer service (I like CS!)

The highest-level plan — the Bundle — gets you all that and more goodies, like energy-efficient light bulbs and a reusable shopping bag.

I like that GreenDimes is going after the environmental angle — hence encouraging people to sign up by paying them $1. I’m sure the business angle there is that they’ll generate a lot of buzz and get enough people like me to pay for the Premium or Bundle plans to more than make up for the $5 million they’re investing in the $1 sign-up program.

GreenDimes rocks and yes, it actually works!

The timing chips, from a company called ChampionChip, were fastened to each runner’s shoe, and ensure accurate start and finish times, triggering when one crosses the start and finish lines, where we all ran across magnetized mats that communicated with the chips. With 30,000 runners, some people didn’t even get to the finish line until as much as an hour after the race officially began. And with the help of this cool chip technology, friends at home and around the globe could monitor our progress in real time via the Web.

What if we all wore similar tracking devices in our everyday lives? Obviously there are oodles of privacy concerns with a proposition like that, but there are lots of cool benefits, too — see where your friends are; meet up with family members if your paths happen to cross; keep tabs on sneaky teenagers; safely monitor elderly grandparents with Alzheimer’s.

While running the race and while traveling to Nashville, I thought about the concept of six degrees of separation. How many of the people at my layover in Chicago had I crossed paths with before? How many of them would I see again? And in the race, besides my group of friends, did I know anyone else or have any connection to any of the 30,000 people?

It would be cool to see a dynamic race map that showed all runners’ positions as well as other stats like hometown, age, and maybe even how each runner is connected to the others. For example, while playing around with the race results search, I found that there was one other person not with our group who had traveled from our town; there was one other Gabe; there were 77 other Andersons (I placed 4th overall among Andersons); and there were 735 other people my age (264 other men).

With so much data available just based on simple vitals like name, hometown, age, and gender, how else could we all be connected?

Until we’re all wearing personal location devices, we can stay connected through sites like LinkedIn, which is a networking site for professionals; it’s like your online resume. Think MySpace or Facebook without all the clutter and social elements. LinkedIn is a truly useful tool for establishing and harvesting professional connections between you and your friends, your current and former colleagues, business associates, and more.

With LinkedIn, you can do things like the following:

• Establish 1st-degree direct connections with people
• Search your network based on name, company, location
• See how you’re connected to people
• Discover that you & someone else you know may be connected in a way you didn’t realize though a mutual contact
• Post job listings & find contractors who specialize in particular skills
• Search job listings

It’s similar to the type of data I was searching in my 1/2 marathon race results, but from a professional standpoint. In Chicago, my wife and I were debating with our friend traveling with us about the concept of six degrees of separation and how powerful it is.

For example, if you look at my LinkedIn profile page, you’ll see that I have 198 connections. Dive a little deeper and learn that my 198 connections “link (me) to 1,417,600+ professionals.” That’s a lot of people.

The power of networking, combined with searchable data, is pretty awesome. It’ll be interesting to see what the future brings.

Enter a super-simple utility that will make this process really easy: ClipboardPath. Just download and install it, and then you’ll be able to right-click on any file to Copy Path to Clipboard:

…then simply press control-V to paste your file into your Web-based email attachment field, WordPress file upload field, or whatever Web application you’re using:

If there’s a field with a browse button, you can kiss that browse button goodbye.

Enter Internet Download Manager (IDM) — the great little utility with the ugly logo. Once you start using IDM, you’ll never want to go back. Downloads are so fast — I get nearly 2 MB per second download speeds — that I actually had a hard time capturing this screenshot of an 18-megabyte download in progress:

Sure, part of all that speed is due to my rockin’ Road Runner Turbo cable Internet connection, where I’ve clocked up to 15 megabits per second download times, but believe me when I say that you’ll notice a huge difference with IDM.

It also gives you all these cool features:

• Automatic file type download connection
• Auto-segmenting of downloads into directories based on type
• Download scheduling
• YouTube video grabbing
• Download resume
• And lots more features

Get IDM and super-fast downloads will be yours!

Hiding this status window is as easy as 1, 2, 3 (4, 5):

1. Open up a new tab in Firefox (control-T, as you might recall from my earlier post on Firefox shortcuts).
2. Type about:config into the address bar and hit Enter.
3. In the Filter field at the top, type download:

   

4. Look for the option called browser.download.manager.showWhenStarting (you can also filter for exactly that phrase).
5. Double-click that option and the value will change to false:

   

That’s it! Next time you download a file, you don’t have to worry about the annoying status box, but you can check on it at any time by pressing control-J to open the window.