checked into the hotel late and my reservation got me the last room-the big suite, free upgrade-ahh. I’ll be late more often!

I think I lost a friend yesterday-never a good thing.

This week I will be continuing from previous weeks regarding sites that I find particularly useful.  First up is the DNR’s website located at dnronline.com.  I am only going to mention a few but look at the main titles from your own local paper’s online edition; News, Sports, Opinion, Arts & Entertainment, Skyline (my favorite of course), Classified, Services and Subscribe.  What more can I say, well maybe how you should definitely read the great Double Clicks column in the Skyline section.  You can find many other useful articles and not only local news but international as well.  Have you seen the daily crossword puzzle, other games, places to dine, archived news stories, coupons?  The list just goes on.  If you haven’t taken advantage of the Daily News-Record online experience you should as soon as possible.

I realize that I mention “Google” often, I even mentioned this particular part of it a couple of years ago.  However, in my opinion I consider this to be one of Google’s top 10 features.  It is called Google Alerts (google.com/alerts) which is labeled as Beta (not the final version of a product but it is close enough to allow the public to use).  Google Alerts has been beta for the eight or ten years I have been using it and it works very well. 

Let’s say that you have an avid interest Koala bears.  Coinciding with your interest you would like to be updated anytime there is news on the feeding habits of these little Australian mammals.  Just go to “google.com/alerts” and login with your Gmail account username and password.  Gmail.com is another good site that I regularly visit but I will just mention it in passing this time.  If you don’t already have one get a free account there.

At the Create a Google Alert area, first enter your search terms like, “feeding habits koala bear“.  Next, the type of item you want to search for; News, Blogs, Web, Comprehensive (all of these types) Video or Groups.  Now choose how often you want to receive updates.  Daily is the one that I use most regularly.  Then last, enter the email address where you want the alerts sent.  

Google will now be on the lookout for any type of search you entered for those terms and email you a list of them as often as you like.  This is a great way to keep up-to-date with sports, hobbies, politics, medical conditions and the list goes on ad infinitum. 

It has been interesting to me when on occasion I write a column about a particular product or web site and the owner of the product or site will contact me to give me additional information, thanks or condemnations.  I have asked each time if they used Google Alerts to find me and the answer has, so far, always been yes.

Check back next week for a few more interesting and useful websites.

On my way to Sandy Cove for the Calvary Chapel Pastor & Leadership conference!

good that you deleted Plaxo @leolaporte they have too much personal data anyway

As promised at the end of last week’s column about sites that I find useful, here is another one to use with EBay.  Now, before some of you get mad with me I will say that I don’t use this all the time.  However, I do use it when I have bid on an item several times and then get tired of being beaten on an item - two, three or more times in a row. 

I say that some of you may get mad because, to me, this is sort of a sneaky way to win bids on EBay.  The site is called Auction Sniper and they advertise it with these words, “Are you tired of losing eBay auctions?”  That sure got my attention the first time.  Auction Sniper is an eBay automation tool that “snipes” by automatically processing your eBay bids.  It does this by you setting the bid you want to place on the item and in the closing seconds of an auction it pops your bid in there.  Many times you will win the bid and sometimes you won’t.  It sounds foolproof but apparently you and I aren’t the first to hear about it.  Your first time is free but then you pay a small fee to use the service.

Now, for all of you word buffs Merriam-Webster has a dictionary site with more than just a dictionary (and also one of the shortest URLs I’ve ever seen www.m-w.com).  There are word games, daffynitions (you’ll have to check), word-of-the-day podcasts, thesaurus, a daily crossword puzzle and believe it or not a dictionary along with much, much more word “stuff”.  Try it out and if you have any interest in words I know you will be back there on a regular basis.

Next, since Microsoft Excel is one of my favorite programs I visit a site entitled, “Excel Forum“.  This site has many free Excel tips and tricks that you can use in business today.  It offers ways to perform functions on various versions of Excel which is very helpful to me in the training world.  One word of warning here is that they do intend to sell a book or two to you while you visit.  I am sure the books are excellent, just like their tips, but buy at your own risk.

Because of the number of emails that I have received requesting more since I started this series, I will have more for the next few weeks.  Don’t forget to check out my site at DoubleClicks.info (you’re already here).  Also, feel free to shoot me an email me when you enjoy something here, have a question or just want to set me straight on something I’ve said.

Have a great week!

WOW thegizwiz talks more than Leo?!

Good friend, Rusty, just went in the hospital with a possible heart attack. Pray for him.

Continuing in the “sites that I like vein,” this week we will look first at my favorite online weather guessing site.  I prefer “Wunderground“ and you may ask, “Why do you prefer it?”  Well not much of a discussion here, but I just like it better.  The main reason I favor it is that most of the time I check the weather it is on my cell phone and their site loads faster and is easier for me to read at mobile.wunderground.com.

It does all the standard weather stuff that you may be able to receive anywhere online.  These are things like, current temperature, expected highs/lows, chance of precipitation, moon phase and my favorite an animated radar view.  You may like others.  Let me know which weather site you prefer and why.

Since I’ve just covered the weather how about help with traffic?  “TrafficLand” is where I can look through different Interstate cameras around the area (most any area actually) and see how the traffic is moving.  To be honest with you I mainly use these in the winter during bad weather to see how slow or dangerous it may be for me to travel to work.  And when leaving to go on a longer trip I check the site and cameras along the way to see if there are currently any areas I should avoid.

Now here are two sites that you EBay users may want to check out.  The first is called “Fat Fingers“ which, you can tell by the URL, is located somewhere in the United Kingdom.  This is a very smart site for dumb mistakes.  Pretend you are in the market for a desktop computer and searched on EBay for one.  You find 1,664 items for sale.  At Fat Fingers I searched for “flat panel desktop computer”.  It generated multiple misspellings and the first one it found was labeled, “flat panel DEKSTOP computer”.  Notice the spelling.  There are hundreds of misspelled items on EBay that no one ever bids on, since they don’t know how to misspell it the way the seller did.  Bingo, due to someone’s error and an interesting computer trick you may have found a great deal.

Oops, I just ran out of space for this week’s column.  I guess we will continue on next week with some more interesting sites.  I will start with another helpful EBay site.