Nate-Tech Reviews

Another free online software that I am trying out this year is It's Deductible this is an online service from Intuit (the makers of Quicken and Turbo Tax).

It's Deductible allows for you to track and value your charitable contributions over the year, and then at the end of the year when tax time comes around you can print off a list of your charitable contributions for use with your itemized deductions; and if you are a Turbo Tax users, you can automatically import your charitable contributions into Turbo Tax.

I think that this is a valuable service on the and the price is right (free), I am a fairly charitable person, but one of the problems that always arises when donating items to charity is deciding on the items fair market value, It's Deductible takes the headache out of trying to figure out how much everything is work, and the headache of trying to track your donations on a piece of paper or spreadsheet (though you probably should still keep your donation receipts).

Check it out if you are a fairly charitable person that hopes to reduce your taxable income through charitable contributions.

Any information you obtain from this site or made available to you from any site to which you may be directed is not intended to be legal, accounting, tax, investment or other professional advice.

Labels: It's Deductible, online service, taxes, turbo tax, website

I've been using Mint.com for about a month now, and I am really liking it.

If you are not familiar with what Mint.com is, it is a free online money management service from Intuit (the people that make Quicken and Turbo Tax). The website allows you to tie in almost any account from any bank or investment firm, and will automatically update the balances of each account, remind you when bills are due, and allow you to track your adherence to your budget.

The only issue that I have came across with Mint.com is that it puts all your financial information out in the cloud in a single repository. This is good from the perspective that it makes it easy for you to manage your money; this is really bad though if you are worried about your financial privacy.

Mint is defiantly worth checking out, but may not be for everyone.

Any information you obtain from this site or made available to you from any site to which you may be directed is not intended to be legal, accounting, tax, investment or other professional advice.

Labels: money management, reviews, taxes, website

Recently for my wife's birthday I picked her up a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XS.

More specifically it was the...

Canon Rebel XS 10.1MP Digital SLR Camera with EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS Lens (Black)

It is proving to be a great camera. And wanted to share some things I found about DSLR Cameras that I did not know.

• Going back and forth with the different sales people at MicroCenter and Target and also reading the reviews at NewEgg.com, I found that Mega Pixels make no real difference once you get above ~9 Mega Pixels. This is because the eye cannot detect any real difference in the quality.
  
  The one caveat to this is if you are going to do some photo editing on your computer and zoon in, or crop and enlarge the photo, the quality will degrade at some point and you will wish you had gone with the higher mega pixel camera.
  
  
• Lens Filters, Are important for the quality of the image and also for protecting the real expensive part of your camera, the Lens. Alot of people suggest using a Polarizing filter or a UV filter as an 'everyday filter' for protecting your lens.
  
  
• When swapping your lens with another lens, you want to make sure that you do this quickly so dust does not get into the lens or onto the CMOS sensor in the camera.
  

This camera has been taking good pictures, we have had it for about a week now. I would suggest it to anyone.

I also found an interesting blog out on the net for teaching yourself to "Stop Shooting Auto"

Labels: Canon, Digital Rebel, DSLR, EOS

One thing that I really liked when I did not have a laptop that I could take back and forth with me from school to home was portable applications.

Labels: blog, check it out, FireFox, portable applicaions, portable apps

Electrified Clothing Seems to be coming no matter what in the next few years.

Whether its going to be some sort of computerized clothing or clothing with embedded GPS in it so you can keep track of your kids or my personal favorite clothing as of today.

Surfing the web today I cam across a jacket that serves as a sort of taser in case of attack. Check out http://www.no-contact.com/ to see this jacket.

The goal of this jacket is to according to the website:

"The goal of the No-Contact Jacket is to call attention to violence against women and to offer an alternative response to the body's vulnerable space and boundaries that society, culture and fashion have created. The development of the No-Contact Jacket is to intervene into the social condition of violence against women. This project enters a new realm of communication by expanding the borders between technology, visual arts, culture, product and the mass market. These alliances create new vocalizations and encourage thoughtful explorations into new social dialogues and new human/machine relationships."

This week also in the news, Russian astronaughts tested a space suit that has a computer and LCD display in it that hopes to reduce the chances of errors by displaying contingency plans on the LCD monitor. Read More Here

Either way computerized clothing is comming, be on the look out for this cool new self defence clothing.

Read More at "How Stuff Works" Here

Labels: blog, computerized clothing, look for it, self-defence clothing

There are alot of social networking websites out there, and most of them are copy cats to MySpace, Twitter, or FaceBook; but once and a while a new social network comes along that does something unique and better than any other social networking website.

Enter ShoutEm if you prefer check out Nate-TechCom on ShoutEm

ShoutEm is similar to Twitter in that it allows you to post 140 character updates to the site, and everyone can see these updates. The ShoutEm also has a mobile API which allows for integration with Mobile Browsers.

Labels: blog, Micro Blogging, publishing, ShoutEm, social networking, twitter

Today Google is honoring the 25th anniversary of Tetris Holdings LLC, by changing their standard "Google" image to a Tetris looking version of the Google homepage image (see image below).



Given that image I decided to play a little Tetris this morning to celebrate "Tetris Day" as it were.

I found an awesome place to play Tetris online against other players for free, and it is a version of Tetris that is very close to the classic version of Tetris. (they also do have a flash version of the 1989 version of Tetris)

The website is called Tetris Friends.com

My favourite version of the Tetris Friends game is the 6 player Battle Version, where you have to get a higher score than everyone else by eliminating as many lines as you can. (see screen shot below)



I would check out Tetris Friends if you have some time to waste while you are at work, or bored at home.

Follow TetrisFriends on Twitter if you would like to hear about their updates, they are currently in Beta, so I am sure they will be comming out with some more cool updates to the online game.

p.s. I would be willing to argue that playing Tetris as a child improved my ability to pack my trunk when moving Laura to California and back to Minnesota

Labels: blog, browser, games, internet, online games, tetris, twitter