Windows on the Web:  Time for a Tour

By Bruce Kratofil
NABE Webmaster

There's no theme to the sites we look at this issue, other than they are a collection of sites that are useful or, in some cases, fun.

SignalMap

SignalMap.com is a new Web 2.0 application that is developing a user-supplied database of cell-phone signal strength. Planning a trip somewhere and wondering how your cell phone will work? Go to the website and enter the zip code and your network in the Find a Signal searchbox.  Since many of you will be going to the NABE annual meeting, you can enter 94108 as your zip, and choose your network. In this case, it looks like Sprint has pretty good signals through most of downtown San Francisco.

Because this website depends on users, the coverage can be somewhat spotty. There are plenty of entries in the geek-heavy San Francisco Bay area, but aren't as many entries in some other cities. It only takes about a minute to add your experience to the database, so if you use it to check out signal strength, take the time to make an entry of your own. There's already been a huge increase in entries since I found this site a month ago.

BookTour

Many NABE members find themselves looking for speakers, either for their local chapters, for roundtable teleconferences or seminars and meetings. A new place to look for speakers is BookTour.com, which is a “free online service that connects authors and potential audiences of all sorts, from book groups to civic organizations, from bookstores to corporate events.” Authors register and list their tour event; others can register and track which speakers are going to be in your area, or you can request an appearance by a particular author who's listed on the site. The site has only been open to the public for about a month, so the list of authors is not yet extensive; hopefully it will keep growing.  One of the founders of this site is Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired magazine and the author of  “The Long Tail.”

Lifehacker

Instead of alerting you to this site, I should keep it to myself and pass off their tips as my own. Lifehacker is a “blog that covers tips and tricks for streamlining your life with computers (and sometimes without).”  It generally has about five posts a day, and a couple of times a week it alerts me to useful software for Windows or Mac, an add-in for Mozilla, or some tip for making your life more productive. For instance, it linked to this useful site that shows “What Does 200 Calories Look Like?”  for different foods, Merlin Mann talking about how to achieve Inbox Zero, or OneBag.com, on “the art and science of traveling lite.”

Real Estate Roller Coaster

A blog called Speculative Bubble plotted inflation-adjusted real estate prices from 1890 to 2007. That itself isn't out of the ordinary. What's unusual is that they used Roller Coaster Tycoon to construct the graph and give it some visual pizzazz. You can take the ride yourself here. 

Economic Blog Links

The Economic Blog Links page consistently ranks in the Top Ten for the most popular pages at the website. The page has been updated recently, pruning dead blogs off the page and adding nine new ones. If we've missed one of your favorite economic or financial blogs, please send the link along.

And finally....

Christopher Guest has made a number of “mockumentary” movies, including maybe the first of the genre, “This is Spinal Tap.”  He has now adopted the Spinal Tap style to make a number of IT commercials for Intel. You can see a number of them at YouTube. If you prefer more economic content in your music videos, you can try this one.