The Consumer’s Corner

A long, long time ago I posted an article on a little piece of mobile phone software named GoBible. I love that program, it has served me quite well over the years, but since upgrading to the iPhone, I couldn’t just couldn’t help but believe that something a little bit better was available. As usual, I was correct.

Long story short, I opened the App Store, hit ‘Search,’ and typed in ‘bible.’ The first thing available to click was ‘Bible,’ and it’s brought to you by YouVersion.com. It was free, so there was no harm in checking it out, so download it I did. I have not been disappointed in the least bit, and this iPhone App is becoming something I’d find very inconvenient to live without.

In this single App, you have access to multiple translations of the Bible, a time-tested daily reading plan, and quite a few commentaries. Often find yourself in an environment where Internet access is restricted (airplanes?)? You can download selected translations directly to your phone, and you’ll be good to go.

There are a few more Bible reading Apps available, but in terms of features and costs, this offering from YouVersion is difficult to beat. If you’re a spiritual person who reads the Bible often, this is a definite ‘Recommended!’

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–Jeremy Hobbs

During my ‘hiatus’ this summer and fall, I purchased a neat little digital camera off of eBay. This little thing has become my constant companion; I rarely leave home without him (yes, my camera is male). Nothing too fancy; 6 megapixels, 4x optical zoom, a gig of memory. A bit simple, but it’s more than adequate for my needs.

What is not adequate is my skill as a photographer. I’ve gone through about a thousand shots now, and while I’m getting better as I go, this blogger will not be winning any Pulitzer’s anytime…. ever? It’s just a hobby, that’s all it will ever be. But, being the perfectionist I am, I want my ‘art’ to at least look good, even if it cannot be great.

Photoshop is completely impractical for hobbyists. The Gimp is very effective, and I still use it, but it does have a bit of a learning curve. So what’s a fellow to do when he wants to do a quick touch up, or his skill isn’t quite where it needs to be to do fancy effects? Enter Picnik, a free web-based photo editor.

I’d tell you it’s limited, but I honestly haven’t tried to do anything that Picnik is incapable of. You hardcore geniuses will find it’s limits rather quickly I assume, but you guys already have Photoshop, and the knowledge required to opperate it. Picnik is for the rest of us.

It will auto-correct some stuff, but it’s honestly more fun just to do it yourself while playing with brushes and sliders. Adjust lighting, colors, contrast, apply masks, do that neat ‘everything is black & white except for this or that’ effect; the sky is the limit. I’ve turned some fairly pedestrian looking shots into things that I wasn’t ashamed to upload to art sites like deviantArt, and they were well received. Do something wrong, and screw your photo up? Just hit undo! Or, don’t save it. Your original is never copied over unless you want it to be.

Upload photos into Picnik directly from many popular sites, including MySpace and Facebook. You can’t upload them to those sites yet (so far as I can tell), but I’m betting you will be able to in the future. Picnik is 100% free (‘Premium’ upgrade is available), and it doesn’t even require registration! Amazing. Considering it’s absolute lack of cost, usefulness, and user friendliness, this site is a no-brainer ‘Recommend!’

Official Site

–Jeremy Hobbs

deviant ART is an amazing user driven art web site that everyone should know about, eveN if for no other reason than their selection of brlliant wallpaper images. The site as a whole covers all things art, from traditional paintings, 3d digital images, photography, even poems and short stories!

I think places like Deviant are what makes the internet such a great place; where else can thousands (millions?) of artists come, and show off their goods, just for art’s sake. All the images can be downloaded  directly to your hard drive absolutely free of charge, where they can be printed. Better yet, you can have some of the pieces professionally printed (on canvas or poster paper) in many sizes, and shipped to you for a reasonabl fee. They even make coffee cups! Anyway, you get a high quality product for a low price, and help that starving artist out at the same time.

When you register, you’ll receive your own little page, where you can store your favorite works by others, and have your own submissions on display. You can even run a blog. The search features are super easy to use, allowing you to type in whatever you want to look for, or use the menu to find things by process of elimination. Each image has a ‘Zoom In’ and ‘Add to Favorites’ buttons which are self explanatory. Most artists will personally thank you on your page if you make one of their images one of your ‘favorites.’

For the kiddies and the conservatives out there, the site does host a massive collection of nude photography (some of it well past the ‘is it art or pornography’ line), so be careful while surfing. A filter is available, should you choose not to be exposed. The great majority of it is tasteful, and falls well within the ‘art’ grouping rather than straight ‘porn’, but I just thought I’d give you a heads up. Enjoy!

Official Site

–Jeremy Hobbs

I love reading the news via the internet; it’s cheaper (like, totally free) than news papers (and much more green!), you have the ability to search for actual news worthy (to you) stuff, and most places will allow you the ability to add comments and discuss stories with others. You can gain a vast amount of insight into the world this way, mainly how ignorant people are.

Thoof.com offers you personalized news through their site, automatically. ‘Personalized?’, you ask? Yep. As you read stories, Thoof will remember what you’ve clicked on. That’s it.  All you have to do. Should you have read the story and didn’t happen to like it, you will have the option to tell the Thoof God’s that you weren’t impressed. It learns! Follow this process enough times, and soon you’ll be presented with a huge page of news customized just to fit your particular tastes.

Thoof is comparable to other services like Digg, Reddit, plime, and especially Stumble. The difference is, there’s really not a ‘front page,’ just your page, displaying only the stuff Thoof thinks you’ll want to see. Users submit stories and blog entries, and by using a tagging system, you’re shown only the results that are filtered to correlate with your previous likes and dislikes. Bloggers can even add Thoof Rank Badges to items they submitted that detail how relevant the article is to the rest of the communities tastes.

Try it out, and leave me some feedback about what you think. I’m sold already, but if you have any differences in opinion, don’t be shy.

Official Site

–Jeremy Hobbs

Very useful blog post that I found from Stumble, so I figured I’d share with you guys. It’s not really ‘review able;’ it’s just a nicely organized list of free/open source programs. Hope you enjoy it!

Best 101 Free Computer Software For Your Daily Use

–Jeremy Hobbs

I can’t so much as offer this as a review, but an experiment. Many of my regular readers are other bloggers, so this one is for you guys. rssHugger is a free* service that will help you gain a bit of exposure to your RSS feed. RSS readers are the ‘Holy Grail’ for bloggers, so you can understand how important that exposure is.

rssHugger, in it’s current state, is big enough to hopefully offer some positive gains for your site, but it’s not so big that it would be easy for you to get lost in the shuffle. I’ll be giving them a shot; I hope you will as well.

Official Site

–Jeremy Hobbs

Recently I reviewed / recommended the excellent news source ‘The Drudge Report.’ Matt Drudge runs a tight ship, bringing you the best of the best in mainstream news. But there is another side to the news industry; an ‘underground’ if you will. People that spill the beans, and tell you the things that ‘they’ don’t want you to know. Alan Watt, and his site ‘Cutting Through The Matrix’ is one of those sites, and I bring you this ‘review’ if for no other reason than to be thorough.

Alan is based out of Canada, runs a (bi-weekly?) internet radio show, produces books, CD’s, and DVD’s that ‘enlighten’ people as to how the world really works. I’ve had the pleasure of listening to a few of his broadcasts, and at the very least, what you’ll hear is bizarre enough to keep you interested. Especially the callers!

Whether I buy into these conspiracy theories or not is inconsequential, I just think it’s great that we can live in a world where this type of ‘information’ is freely available to those who want it.

As far as a ‘real’ review goes, I can’t give you one. I have not, nor will I ever purchase any of his products. No good can come of doing so; if he’s right and ‘they’ are out to get me, I’d rather not be on the mailing list of the guy who exposed ‘them.’ Should he be (gasp!) wrong; I’ve wasted perfectly good money that could’ve been spent on genetically modified food.

Take a peak, if for no other reason than other reason than to hear a different point of view. Keyword being ‘different.’ Who knows, you may be one of the few who becomes ‘awakened.’ Remember to keep an eye over your shoulder though; just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you!

Official Site

–Jeremy Hobbs

alan watt, cutting through the matrix, conspiracy theory, underground news

Everyone in society should do there very best to be an informed citizen, and to do that you must keep up with current events. An easy way to do that is by reading your newspaper, but I detest newspapers; they’re big, bulky, cost money, and are slam full of things that most people really do not need or care to know about; also known as filler. Again, not trying to be an activist, but they’re also a tremendous waste of resources. Useful for local news only.

So where does one turn for news? You can try sites similar to Digg, but you’ll end up watching Mentos vs Diet Coke videos, and Britney’s latest screw up. Your local paper’s site might be of use, but it will be be full of ads, and (most likely) not full featured.

Me? I use the Drudge Report, which offers a unique selection of news covering a very broad spectrum of topics. You’ll get the major (read: important to the average person) financial, political, weather/natural, celebrity, and overall current events, usually with an odd ball story or two thrown in for the entertainment value. The site works by finding the biggest stories that are going around, and then linking to the page that authored said story. There is no personal commentary, minus an occasional jab in the stories title.

You can stay fairly up-to-date by checking in twice daily, though the site itself refreshes and adds content throughout the entire day. It even auto refreshes! I usually read once in the late morning/early afternoon, and again later at night. Maybe sometime again in the middle of the day if something major is happening, or I get bored and can’t think of anything to blog about.

This site isn’t the end all, be all of news sites, many of you will need more specific information on certain topics. To do that, you’ll of course have to find a more specialized site (or blog!) tailored to your specialized needs and/or interests. Drudge just offers you a ‘best of the best right now,’ and is more than suitable to allow you to appear knowledgeable while standing around the water cooler.

To my younger readers, I recommend (read again: plead with you to start) frequenting this site to get into the habit of knowing what’s going on in the world around you. Ignorance is not bliss, it’s sheer laziness. Older readers, considering this is one of the most popular sites on the web, you probably already check it out from time to time, but thanks for reading anyway!

Official Site

–Jeremy Hobbs

drudge, news, current events

One of the first articles I ever wrote (a very long long time ago) was on ‘GodCasts.’ That was a subject that I was very passionate about at the time, and I still am. Since then, YouTube has exploded, and videocasts have become a far more popular device for delivering ‘home made’ media. It’s hard to believe I’ve been writing since before YouTube really took off. Maybe my time line’s off, that just doesn’t sound right.

Anyways, GodTube really works as a purely religious alternative to the all mighty YouTube. Granted, YouTube does have most of these religious inspired videos (probably all of them?), but it’s nice to have them all grouped together, without having to wade through all of the Mentos vs. Diet Coke garbage. Not to mention shady advertising.

Content includes a broad selection of movies, shorts, Christian music videos (yes, they do make those), and videos of sermons. There’s even more than that, but I don’t want to ruin all of the surprises. GodTube is simply a really great site for those of us who care about our faith, and want to enjoy faith-based entertainment. Not for everyone, I know. But the internet is a huge place, no reason that everyone cannot have their own niche.

Only downside is, things seemed to run a bit slow on my end, but it’s still a fairly young site, and I’m sure there are some kinks to work out. It’s very usable though, just expect a hiccup or two. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Official Site

–Jeremy Hobbs

video, web 2.0, christianity, religion

Today’s article is going to be a tiny bit short, simply because it doesn’t require all that many words to get the point across. PayPal, a service we (especially bloggers) all know and love, is teaming up with MasterCard to provide you with a new service; PayPal Secure Card.

What exactly is a PayPal Secure Card? Hint; it wont be a card at all. It’s going to be this little button you install into your compatible web browser of choice that is linked to your PayPal account. When shopping anywhere on the web, even at shops that have zero PayPal support, you can click this button and it will generate a one time use only MasterCard number that will allow you to complete your transaction with your available PayPal funds.

I use PayPal a lot, almost all the money I make online goes into that system, and I had grown quite tired of only buying stuff off of eBay. This is the perfect remedy, and I whole heartily commend them for implementing this into their service. Oh, and I’m sure the roll out just in time for Christmas shopping was purely coincidental.

Official Site

–Jeremy Hobbs

paypal, credit cards, shopping, mastercard