Garage Sale America

OK, let's switch gears a bit. Here's a fun site. Garage sales have been around forever -- well, at least as long as people have had garages, I guess. With the explosion of antique collecting and the promise of finding that potential treasure in your neighbor's basement, plus the recent popularity of shows such as "Antiques Roadshow", the garage sale is as popular as ever.

Well, Bruce Littlefield has taken it upon himself to travel to garage sales from coast to coast, and as many as he can find. Then he reports on his finds on a blog, and the wonderful website that surrounds it. You'll find a spot to list your own garage sale, find others, do's and don'ts, and much more. The site is beautifully put together and a pleasure to navigate.

Here's a fun example from his blog:

EVERYTHING I EVER NEEDED TO KNOW ABOUT LIFE, I LEARNED AT A GARAGE SALE

•Everybody’s looking for something.
•Just because it’s old, doesn’t mean it’s gold.
•One man’s junk is another man’s treasure. And vise versa.
•When you give, you get.
•Life can be perfect, even in its imperfections.
•There’s nothing worse than the one that got away.
•Even “free” comes with a price.
•A bargain is something you didn’t know you needed at a price you couldn’t resist.
•Greed isn’t pretty.
•Know when to cut bait.
•Nothing is yours forever.

So dive in -- or maybe, drive in -- you never know what "gotta-have" is awaiting you, maybe on the next street over this weekend.

Bruce Littlefield's Garage Sale America

[link courtesy of gettrio.com emailing]

Free Software: Bryce 5.5 for Mac & Windows

You gotta love free stuff, right? Well, it's not Free Friday yet, but this one is too good to sit on. Bryce is an application you use to create 3-D landscapes and more. From the product download page description:

Create breathtaking realistic 3D landscapes and animations with DAZ 3D Bryce 5.5. The easy user interface simplifies the design process for a novice or the seasoned professional. Start out building or importing a landscape as impressive as the Grand Canyon. Populate it with buildings, people or any other object you create or from the extensive DAZ 3D library. The Light Lab provides you robust control over your sunsets, moonlight nights or high-noon ambiance. Tree Lab allows you to plant your landscape like the gardens of Versailles. You'll have to register your copy of Bryce 5.5 on the publishers web-site to gain access to your free Bryce serial number.

It turns out that that Daz 3-D, the company that makes Bryce, is touting version 6 now, so what better way to get folks interested in maybe upgrading to v6 than by offering v5.5 for free? Niiice. It's available for Mac and Windows platforms off the downloads.com website.

Search link for Bryce 5.5 on Downloads.com

Once you get a copy of Bryce (it is a longish download depending on your connection speed; my T1 took almost 30 minutes), launch the app, and then it will ask you for your license code. You obtain a free code by going to the Daz3D site and creating a Daz account for free.

Daz3D webpage to obtain free serial number for Bryce 5.5

Not bad...this product retailed for about $80 when it was out on the market new...enjoy!

SuTree: Free Video "How To" Lessons

I like this one a lot...I've run across some websites that tell you, via text descriptions, how to do certain tasks, like tie a necktie, solder a wire, cook an omelet -- and they are fine for what they are. But, if you're a visual learner like me, you tend to do better when you can see someone showing you how to do something.

SuTree is that site. From the home page, it describes itself as:

SuTree is a knowledge community. We nurture the ultimate tree of knowledge: the world's largest index & library of free video lessons, video tutorials, video lectures & video how to guides. Our content is handpicked by our users and then examined by our team/community.

Very cool. Also, you can add comments and rate the training as well. Pretty sweet! Now I can learn to sketch that cartoon cat!

SuTree

[via getTRIO.com newsletter]

Extree! Extree! This just in! I was also reminded that another tutorial site in the same vein is ExpertVillage. Indeed! More great content...a 2-fer-1 post today!

Verizon's Fast Action Hero

(Tip courtesy of SheWhoShallNotBeNamed. OK, we'll call her Nancy) ;)

"Verizon's Fast Action Hero

R/GA's bringing a new kind of heat with
Action Hero, an initiative for Verizon touting the power of the provider's
broadband network. After picking one of three basic action plots (killer bugs,
mad scientist or robots on the loose) you get the opportunity to upload a photo
of your own face, pinpoint the dimensions, and have it made into 3D. After the
upload you direct the action, off the completed project goes—to a group of
servers, where it runs through the modeling program Maya and, in under 24 hours,
returns to you as a completed film. While in the past similar technologies have
been used in video games, this appears to be the first time a dedicated,
customizable 3D effort has appeared on the web in a promotional campaign, and
Verizon doesn't seem reticent to flaunt it—the site took over MySpace for a day
in its launch phase. http://actionhero.verizon.com/ "

Thanks again, Nancy. And yes, you too can be featured on this very blog! Send your finds to the email address on the sidebar to the left.

Joost Invites Available

Hello. You may have seen the small banner near the bottom-left of this blog mentioning a service called Joost. I have been a beta tester for it almost since its inception, and it's coming along pretty well.

What is Joost, you say? Well, in a nutshell, it's a website where you can view TV programs in much the same way that you might flip channels on your TV at home. There is content by some of the big cable companies, like MTV, National Geographic, and Cartoon Network, amongst others. What it isn't is live TV -- you aren't going to be able to view live network shows. But the limited content they have right now is fun, and more is being added all the time.

Check out the Joost promo video.

Per Joost themselves:

Joost is a new way of watching TV on the internet. With Joost, you get all the things you love about TV, including a high-quality full-screen picture, hundreds of full-length shows and easy channel-flipping.

You get great internet features too, such as search, chat and instant messaging, built right into the program - so you find shows quickly and talk to your friends while you watch. And with no schedules to worry about, you can watch whatever you want, whenever you like - as often as you want. Joost is completely free, and works with most modern PCs and Intel Mac-based computers with a broadband connection. Get Joost today!

Also, from the latest e-mail I received from them:

Last but not least, we invite you to enjoy the variety of new shows we're introducing each week. This week will bring you a host of over 40 new channels in the US including Adult Swim, five new channels from National Geographic, new channels like Spike TV from Viacom, great comedy from Heavy, and classic series from Hasbro such as The Transformers. And that's just the beginning.

And, as a beta tester, I've been given some invitations to hand out to folks that are interested in checking it out as they work through the beta phase of development. If you would like an invite, feel free to drop me a line via e-mail (please put "Joost Invite" in your subject line).

Finally, I don't know of anyone anymore that *doesn't* have a Google Gmail account. But if you're one of the few, and would like an invitation to open your own Gmail account, drop me a line about that as well.

Picnik: Online Photo Editor

A picture-editing website for the rest of us. While I love my Mac, and iPhoto for doing just about anything to my photos after I bring them in from my digital camera, sometimes I'm away from the Mac, and want to manipulate a photo somehow. Picnik (currently in beta) allows you to do some nice editing -- cropping, re-sizing, rotating -- and for now, you can also apply some filtering. I understand that some filters may be available to premium subscribers later, but for now that part is free; the basic editing features will remain free. Finally, once you get the picture the way you like, you can save it back to your computer. Neato! Create a free account, and they'll update you as the site progresses.

Picnik

iTunes Plug-In: DockArt

Here's a little Friday fun in honor of the upcoming weekend. I got tipped to this via the TUAW. It's a plug-in to use with iTunes called DockArt, and it does something pretty cool when you install it. It simply displays the album cover art (if you have it) of the iTunes track currently playing in your dock. Pretty sweet, huh? Oh, and it's free. Gotta have, now.

System requirements listed for the plugin are: iTunes 4.1 or higher, and QuickTime 6.4 or higher. Apparently, the latest version available does work with the latest release of iTunes, 7.1

DockArt

Free Fonts? Sure. How about 9800?

Every now and then you're putting together a flier or other advertisement, and want to crank the creativity up a bit by using a font different than the same-old, same-old. I keep looking out for free font sites, and there are a few out there. Here's a good recent find. 9800 free true-type fonts. You can type in a line of text to see how it appears, and then click to download the font to your system. Once downloaded, us Mac folks will need to drop the .ttf file into your hard drive > Library > Fonts folder. You Windows folks should know what to do with yours ;)

9800 Free Fonts

"Essential" Mac Apps

Every now and then, a Mac fan comes up with a list of essential, "must-have" applications that all true Macolytes should have on their systems. I'm sure the same goes for the Windows crew as well, but you'd have to check their blogs to be sure. In any case, a good app-list came up on a blog, and a lot of folks commented on the list, but then the list stayed stagnant, and some of the app pages disappeared. That's where Peter Baer Galvin stepped in, on his Peter Baer Galvin's Blog:

Mac Specialist posted a great list of essential Mac OS X Applications here, and it caused lots of discussion on the topic. Unfortunately they never revised the list based on this input and now it takes quite a lot of effort to navigate through the list and all the comments. I thought I’d take a run at creating a new “consensus” list starting from theirs and adding all of the other input.

And so he did. I believe I have even posted a Mac app list here at least once, but if you want a great list of goodies to potentially use on your Mac, I'd take a gander at the list he's put together.

"Consensus" "Essential" Mac OS X Applications

Mac App A Day: Free Mac Software Thru December!

Yes, you heard correctly. In order to bring more publicity to Mac software developers, the Mac App A Day website is going to be releasing a new Mac app for free each night starting December 1st and continuing throughout the month, plus one more on New Year's Day. These will either be entirely free, or will have a trial period that has been greatly extended. The biggest problem will be remembering to visit the site each day! No titles have been announced, so we'll all find out together. Can I get a w00t w00t for free stuff?

Mac App A Day

Free Downloads at iTunes Store

Free is good, my friends...so let's call it Free Friday. One of the cool things Apple does in its online iTunes Music Store (ITMS) is offer a free music single each week that you can download to your iTunes and iPod. Recently, they've also offered some free movie and TV downloads. Problem is, I can never remember from week to week to get over there and find out what the free download is for that particular week.

Well, someone else apparently had the same problem as well, and decided to do something about it. Voila, the website Get Free Downloads on the iTunes Store was born. When you visit, you'll see lists of what has been recently offered for free at the ITMS, with buttons in front of each selection, leading you to its location in the store. Pretty cool! When it comes to enhancing your music collection, or perhaps trying a new music group or style, this site keeps your free options open.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Get Free Downloads on the iTunes Store!