Free Web Hosting

So you want your own website but don’t want to pay for it? No problem! Go to http://pages.google.com/ and set up your personal site. Unlike the similar service from Microsoft, this does not require a credit card (because it is free and will apparently remain free), is quicker and easier to use and allows you to do cool things like upload HTML. That means you can, if you want, create pages (in applications like FrontPage) that are more interactive with the users and link to other pages. Or you can simply create the site using Google’s on-line tools. I have a page with a free account here: www.contemporaryworship.net. This is a Google Pages site that I do not pay for. I do pay GoDaddy.com $7 a year for the use of the name (contemporaryworship.net) but I don’t have to. It’s just that most people probably wouldn’t remember http://bkunkle.googlepages.com/index.htm as easily. You can store up to 100 MB of stuff on these pages. Pictures of your dog, your vacation, recipes—anything you feel compelled to share with the world can go here. And, if 100 MB (which is a lot) is not enough, well there may be ways around that too. I don’t see why you couldn’t get two Google Pages and link them together for twice the space.

Read the Funnies On-line

Newspapers aren’t as popular as they once were. But why should you miss your favorite comic just because you no longer subscribe (or your paper dropped your favorite comic)? This site www.gocomics.com will email you one free comic of your choice each day, and they say they have more daily comic strips than any other source - in print or online. This means that you can get just about any comic emailed to you each day for free. You can also go to this site and read today’s strip for all of these comics and you can go back and read a month’s worth of archives of them too. But that is cumbersome and the website does have a lot of ads and pop-ups. However the comics that are emailed are no trouble at all. And if you want more than one strip mailed to you daily, you can get that for a fee.

Forward This and Win a Prize

You receive an email from a trusted friend. As a favor to you, they warn that waterproof sunscreen causes blindness or that Pepsi eliminated the words “under God” from the pledge of allegiance. Or they warn that you can be strangled by shrink-to-fit jeans or poisoned by the glue on ATM envelopes or by madmen randomly handing out tainted Halloween candy. Or that swallowed chewing gum stays in your system for seven years or that a fast food restaurant is the world’s largest purchaser of bovine eyeballs. Or that signing a petition can get Yasir Arafat’s Nobel Prize revoked. Or that you can win a cash prize for forwarding an email.

So you forward this email on to all your loved ones because it is important stuff that can keep them out of trouble or help right a terrible wrong. Then one of the recipients tells you that you’ve been suckered by another urban legend and you feel like an idiot. All of the above legends are listed as false on what is probably the most authoritative debunker of myths, http://snopes.com/. Before you warn your grandchildren about LSD-laced cartoon tattoos or that canola oil is toxic, check here first. Oh, by the way, some urban legends are true and for some the jury is still out. These are covered at this site too.

This Is True

While truth may be stranger than fiction, it can also be funnier. Once a week, I get a free email with true stories in the news that range from the asinine to the ridiculous. http://www.thisistrue.com is the history's first for-profit e-mail publication and it now reaches more than 120,000 readers. These are amazing stories from legitimate publications about bizarre subjects like dumb criminals, ignorance in high places and everything in between.

Google Desktop Search

This might be the best thing from Google ever. Install this on your computer and it will index all your files when you are not using the machine. Then all you have to do to find anything on the machine is hit the Ctrl key twice and type in what you want. It will quickly list all the data on your computer that match your search. Of course, if the file, email or website you want isn’t on your computer, you can use the same tool to search the internet.

Plus, there’s a toolbar that can sit on the side of your screen (it can hide there) with all kinds of useful gadgets (and dozens to choose from). Useful gadgets include the current weather conditions, a scratchpad, a battery meter, my most recent email and the latest news.

The Weather Quicker Than Looking Out the Window

There are lots of weather sites out there. Most have so many details, slick graphics, features and pop-up ads that the weather has changed by the time you're done surfing. But the National Weather Service Forecast http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ gives you the forecast, the current conditions and it loads up fast with no ads, pop-ups or anything annoying. The forecast is pretty much the same on every weather site, so why not go to the one that wastes the least amount of your time?

Rminder.com

You know now that you will need to do something later. But will you remember that important thing you have to do, person you have to meet or place you need to go? All you have to do is go to www.rminder.com and enter you phone number (or better yet, your cell phone number), a typed message and a time to send it. Then at the appointed time, r-minder calls your number and reads the message to you. Of course it’s free. And the phone number need not be your own; you can call anybody and tell them anything. There have to be a thousand uses for this.