Your Internet Lifestyle

Hey guys and gals on the internet! Do you ever find yourself at a friend's or someone else's home and needing to get some work done? doing some IM-ing? maybe do some surfing? how about checking you email? What if all you need is to access your old email for information but you don't have internet access or you're not at home? Wouldn't it be cool if you could take your media player, browser, email, productivity tools, photo editing software, instant messenger, PDF readers, calendar, and whatever you normally use? I know what you thinking... "I have my laptop or my PDA/phone!!!" or "Come on it's an iPhone right? I have those...why would i need anything else. Hmm... but what if I told you you don't need to lug around that 6-12 pound extra appendage and you don't need to plug that appendage into any wall socket or recharge any batteries?

Ok..ok.. what are you trying to sell me right? Oh... wait... what if I told you it was TOTALLY FREE?!?

You're probably saying what are you smoking!!!!

Ok...ok...what if you have a way to make all you portable applications and you can take it anywhere there is a computer via a USB flash drive?

Go on you say? Well they exist and they're all opensource. Programs like Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, GIMP, VLC Media Player and many many more...

All you need is a little USB flash memory. Yeah that's it Any size... I like those little cruzer ones that hooks on your key chain. I would recommend at least 512MB or more. The more you have the more you can store all you files. I've been using it for almost a year and it works great. All my passwords and forms are there whenever I visit any websites. My email are also archived so I can access it any time I want. Just plug it in and it autoruns; giving you a list of programs available on your system tray area.

So get your flash drive ready. Format it and then go to www.portableapps.com. If you have enough storage, then download the entire suite with all the softwares.. maybe about 80MB total. Or like me, you can install the basic skeleton and install each additional softwares as you need it.

The creator is always adding more software as new releases are coming out so bookmark the website and check back once a month.

Enjoy! I hope this will make your internet life much better and more mobile.

Add this lens as one of your favorite lens. As I get more information and updates you can be the first to know about other great stuff to make your internet life mobile.

OK. I hope you got a hold of the free portable applications. They have been very valuable for me since I have relatives, friends, and kids. Time is a luxury that is getting more expensive each day. So the portable applications let's me save time and take my business everywhere I go.

But, what if your keychain is full? What all you can remember is one URL? Or maybe you're on a very very tight budget like me and can't afford $15 for USB flash drive?

Well here's another option. Netvibes!!!

Netvibes?!? Sounds like a touchy feely kinda thing. Well... it does keep you in touch. It your own free personal homepage with access to your bookmarks, email accounts, rss feeds, and Netvibes universe.

You can:
- create RSS feeds...um..maybe a feed to your lense? huh? oh yeah!
- add custom pre-made widgets like weather, calendar, etc..,
- get 1GB of free online storage from box.net
- get photos on flickr

...the list goes on and on.

If you're not that creative, like me, then you want to head on over to their Universe of third party developers and get access to:

- over 1000 wigest
- over 85,000 RSS feeds to your hearts content..um...maybe your own?!?
- over 1000 podcasts
- over 200 events to put on your calendar
- over 3500 tabs which are pre-sets groups of widgets that people have created
- over 600 Universes created by media outlets and celebrities

I been using it for over two years and it never ceases to amaze me. The AJAX drag-n-drop interface is cool and fun to play with and the layout is nice and clean and organized.

Check it out at www.netvibes.com