We are getting close to Christmas and more and more people are going to start slowing down and getting distracted by too many tasks and too many thoughts about the holidays and personal affairs.  We need a break!

Our computers have a similar problem.  They are getting slower and slower and slower with every item that we save to our hard drive, every email we receive every items that we run through our hardware, performance starts to slip ever so slightly, but that builds up over time.

Give yourself or someone you care about or even your employees a boost for the holidays in the form of more memory.

Everyone likes a faster more efficient computer after all, no body will tell you they want a slower computer for Christmas and giving more memory is definitely one of those gifts that keeps on giving.

As our Reader thank you today, we’re pointing out UpgradeMemory.com.  They are offering free shipping until 12/31/06 through the buttons above.  They also have some great deals on USB flash drives a true little stocking stuffer!.

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Lifehack.org is a utilitarian site that provides a wide range of indexes and articles on multiple topics .  Their Productivity and Life Tips Blog recently ran an article titled Lecture Podcast for Your Audio Self-Development Program which provided a great Guide showing . . .  How to Log and Measure Your Audio Book Listening Habit.

Now not everyone is into performing a statistical analysis of their reading habits, however with audio books it is all to easy to listen to hundreds or thousands of books a year and with all that content being aborbed you might want to consider just how its impacting you and how balanced you are in your reading habits.

The article Your Audio Self-Development Program was a timely find as well as I’ve been analyzing the uses, applications and multiple methods that might be employed to provide educators with additional tools to get the message out and help imprint that message more effectively.  Definitely something that I will continue to follow very closely as the theory of educating people through multiple forms of inputs continues to grow and develop with new technological aids.

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Amp’d Mobile has turned into a television producer of sorts.  Amp’d started a political parody show for mobile phones, “Lil’ Bush: Resident of the United States.”

Amp’d marketed the show to mobile phones as well as on video sharing sites like YouTube.

The show is now being picked up by Comedy Central, marking one of the first shows to go from cell phones to Tv land.

Amp’d did some smart things with this show, but chief among them was creating and marketing content to their cellular subscribers. Other cellular providers are making deals with content providers, such as Verizon’s recent deal with YouTube. The lines continue to blurr and the rewards seem to be following the content as opposed to the service and equipment that is rapidly comeditized, depreciating in value very quickly, while content can live on indefinitely in syndication both online, in TvLand and now in the cellular airwaves.

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So how does that Web 2.0 site make it to market?  Who pays for all that programming?  What VC funded that latest software download?  What’s the source for all this development???

More and more many software ideas and web designs are being incubated, designed and developed for free.

Contributors often provide their services, time and energy to new firms or collaborative online communities with out any financial remuneration, which is a very big word when you are writing an article about free work!

The WSJ covered a story recently about Zimbra a open source messaging and  email system for business.  They are trying to compete with Outlook a bit and succeeding to some small degree(see their awards scrolling in the image). 

They describe how among others a college student, a Denver techie and a Nuclear engineer in the Alps collaborated to code the problem, and all they received for their effort were T-shirts and Hats!

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There is a great little tool available from Effexis Software.  Its called the Sequence Diagram Editor and allows users to rapidly build sequence diagram.  Its sometimes referred to as UML lite.

The program works to let you quickly work with its intuitive interface.  It comes with a 14 day free trial .

The price if you like it is $99. 

I like tools like these, they are crisp in function and purpose.  You get what you expect and the output is clear.  I’m going to demo it for a few days on the free trial and provide some more information later on down the road with my thoughts.

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