The Joy of Life

Nice. Of course I'm partial to the GP/FBB version of the tune.

Great App: TuneIn

If you have $0.99 and an iPhone/iPod, check out TuneIn, a great app for listening to radio stations on your device.

I bought it because the free apps I had to listen to WHK1420 and KRLA870 just quit working after I upgraded to iOS 5.1. But this app is even better than I*Heart*Radio, imho. It does background playing, plus it immediately starts playing the station when you select it--there's no delay. Plus you can record audio, which is something you can't do with iHeart, as far as I know. Great app.

USPS finally getting with it

The US Post Office in my area has three new cool services that are immensely helpful to anyone with a PO Box. First of all, there's Real Mail Notification, a service that basically sends you an email if you have mail. That saves you from checking your box and having it be empty. Ever.

The second service is called Signature on File which allows you to leave a signature image on hand so you never have to actually sign for anything you get. Some people wouldn't dig this, especially those in the tin-foil hat crowd. But listen, folks, the Federal Government runs the post office and they can screw you if they want to already. So leaving them an image of your sig isn't really a big deal in my book.

The third is Street Addressing which provides for UPS and FedEx to deliver to your PO Box. So if your PO Box is 1234 and your post office is located at 567 Main Street, your street address becomes 567 Main Street, #1234. It's that simple. All on one line instead of PO Box 1234. But the old PO Box 1234 address will still work the same as always for regular mail.

These were all free to me so I signed up for all of them. They've already saved me mucho time. The USPS site has a page that talks about these here. Hopefully this will allow the USPS to lay more people off or at least get them doing something besides providing substandard window service.

Great Product: Stick it to Obama Sticky Notes

Buy them here. Here's what they look like:

They are a little pricey, so you could always make your own. They were inspired by a homemade one originally that someone found stuck to a gas pump.

I'm buying 400, for the record.

Good email product for parents

Thought I throw this out there as some free advertising for one of my favorite companies. I've been using Zoobuh for my kids' email addresses for a year now and I really like it. You do have to pay for it, it's not advertiser supported like some services. But it allows the parent to monitor emails their kids get AND ones they send out. So I highly recommend it for parents who want to allow their kids to use technology but who are conscious of the possible abuses and dangers.

It's especially nice for our kids to have email accounts because my mother-in-law who is widowed likes to send the kids emails. She lives out-of-state and doesn't drive except locally, so it's a good way to brighten her day.