Ice Road Truckers Season 1 DVD

Ice Road Truckers Season 1 DVD will be released on Nov 20, 2007. You can pre-order your copy now.

Netspend All_access prepaid Visa card

I recently purchased a netspend pre-paid Visa card and have only been able to use it once. The card was blocked twice without anyone calling me to tell me that there were "issues" with my personal information. The first time I was able to resolve the "issue" over the phone. When I tried to use that card again, it was declined, prompting another call from me to their customer service. After being on hold for 15 minutes, I was told I needed to fax my ID, or Social Security card to their office to reactivate the card. Frankly I have more to do with my day then go through this hassle, so when I asked them to close my account and issue me a check on the balance, I was told it would cost me $4.95. I finally convinced the agent to waive the closure fee. Now I only have to wait 20 business days for my check.

A simple phone call from Netspend warning me that my card was blocked would have saved me some embarrassment. I will recommend to my readers you do not use Netspend.

Using your Treo to avoid traffic

Use your Treo to avoid traffic and get detailed directions on Google Maps. You don't need a TomTom, no monthly subscriptions, you don't need GPS on your Treo. You'll also have access to Google Earth images.

Real-time traffic stats are available in 30 major metropolitan cities. Go here to see if yours is listed.

Follow the easy download instructions at http://www.google.com/gmm/treo

Things I'd like to see in Gmail

I've been using Gmail, including Mail Fetching (pulling your e-mail from another mail server into Gmail). It took one month for Gmail's SPAM filter to kick in, but this may be due to the large amount of SPAM I receive. I love Gmail, I've stopped using Eudora, and stopped using Outlook several intrusion attempts on my laptop ago.

I do have a few features I'd like to see added:

1) I'd like to have a different signature for each e-mail address I use in my Gmail account. I have three addresses in my Gmail account, and each one has a different purpose. I'd like the opportunity to have three signatures.

2) In Gmail mobile for your browser I'd like to be able to select which of my three e-mail address I am mailing from. Currently, when I send an e-mail, the return address is the default address I set in my account settings.

Tip: If you are using Mail Fetcher, it can take a long time to download all your previous e-mail. One address I have has so much SPAM that Mail Fetcher cannot keep up. The mail server continues to have approx 40,000 e-mails on it. Mail Fetcher pulls in the e-mail every hour, 200 at a time.

OpenOffice.org 2.2 is here

If you are still using MS Office, why?

OpenOffice.org is free and has 99.99% of all the commonly used features in MS Office.

If you haven't tried it, you should.

OpenOffice.org

Google Maps available for mobile phones

Google maps are available for Windows and Palm OS mobile phones. I've loaded the Palm OS version on my Treo 680, and it works perfect. I use the option to display real-time traffic in San Diego and Las Vegas. More about real-time traffic in a future post.

Google Web Accelerator

I'm blogging from Panera on their free Wi Fi this afternoon. The connection here is better then the T-Mobile connections at Starbucks, and they have Diet Pepsi :)

I downloaded the Google Web Accelerator this weekend on my laptop. It definitely speeds up web browsing on sites that are notoriously slow. The accelerator has a timer that shows howmuch time you've saved. I've saved 20.4 minutes in 24 hours!

OpenOffice

I've been a long time proponent of Microsoft products, however my laptop with Office 2000 recently crashed. I am using my wife's laptop, and she does not have Office. I'm too cheap to go purchase a new copy of Office for her laptop. So I downloaded OpenOffice for free. I have only used it for a few hours, but so far it has done everything I was able to do in MS Word and Excel. Specifically, I had to print 300 address labels from a .csv file. I only took me a few minutes to learn to import and export between the suite of products. OpenOffice is 100% free. there are no ads, no spyware, no registration required. OpenOffice works with your MS Office files. Give it a try and leave your comments below.