F-Secure’s free Online Scanner is a great place to turn if you need to clean up viruses or spyware. Like with all products I would suggest for a cleanup, use them in Safe Mode w/Networking and with System Restore disabled.

Now for a note to F-Secure (even though they will likely never read this)… PLEASE CHANGE THE FORCED WINDOW SIZE FOR YOUR ONLINE SCANNER! It is kind of hard to get to the buttons to progress through the scan process when the screen resolution is limited by Safe Mode. If you don’t want to change the window size, at least consider moving the buttons a little. Please. I promise more people will use your product.

Don’t let my pleas to F-Secure scare you off from their product though. It is definitely worth the trouble of wrestling with positioning the window just right so you can barely reach a sliver of that scan button.

First off, they should get an award because their name is to the point. Also, it’s a quick download/install. Depending on the size of your drive, the scan can be a little time consuming, running a couple of hours. It might not catch everything, but I’ve seen few tools that do. To make sure you are getting the most from it, run it in Safe Mode with System Restore turned off.

They have a paid version that runs a realtime protection/scan… It still doesn’t cover everything though so why fork over the cash? Well, unless you need to because you are using it at a business… When I’ve got a little more time, I’ll talk about the other two tools I use.

You can look for upcoming auctions, see a few auctions that are taking online bids, and even search auctions by keywords. The site could benefit greatly from a few tweaks, like taking advantage of the Google Maps API so people can easily map out the auctions or making a mobile edition of the site or cleaning up the links posted in the auction descriptions, but even in it’s current form it is extremely helpful for someone needing to get their bid fix.

Some auctioneers/auction houses are better about how much detail they provide for the sale. Any more though, a number of the auctioneers have websites and you can preview some of the items online. That gives me the chance to do a little Ebay research in advance.

Anyways, if you like to go to auctions check out AuctionZip. If you know of a similar site that lists flea markets or similar sales, let me know.

Wootalyzer is a free download that checks Woot’s servers, along with the servers of a couple dozen more similar sites if you want, and displays what the current item is. You can set custom alarms and have it pop open buy windows for certain things.

The wootalyzer has helped me snag a Bag of Crap 2 of the 4 craps I’ve gotten over the past year or so. What is so special about crap? For $32 (4 bags), I have gotten a new Roomba and a refurbushed Toshiba DVD Player and 3 4gb Sansas and an MS Mouse with FingerPrint Reader and a 7″ LCD picture frame and 5.4ghz phone set w/answering machine and 3 Black and Decker batteries that retailed for $25 each. I also go some strange random things like a few t-shirts and a I <3 Mexico keychain and a beach ball… Anyays, $32 got me well more than $500 stuff shipped. How’s that for some crap?

Like I said, the wootalyzer helps me keep tabs on other sites too. I’ve only dabbled a little with the other sites but Amazon and even Big Lots is on there. You can get bike parts, stuff for your dog, board games, video games, and legal full album downloads for SUPER CHEAP.

Disclosure sort of… I get nothing for promoting Wootalyzer. I think the guy who made the tool gets a little bit if he refers you to certain sites. At least I hope so because he programmed in referral links on each thing that you have it click open.

All this happened to make a nice lead in for a couple of handy online tools I found… MySpace’s friend finder and a new found favorite called Indy911Call.com.

MySpace is my hero. I use it only for people finding. It makes the news more personal (well, that was until everyone started marking their profiles private). For example, it only took a minute to find the profile of 39 year-old involved in the sword fight. And then of course the myspace username turns up a Google Picasa account with a number of pictures.

Indy911Call.com is a mashed up yahoo map vs 911 dispatch calls. Now you can see in real-time why the police are parked in your neighbor’s front yard.

Too bad they used Yahoo Maps instead of Google. Street View would be even better. Oh well, you can’t get everything you want.

Editing is what gives writing character. Let’s be realistic, your potential regular readers could go to any one of the 137,426,958 blogs. News is the news and the events in your life have been experienced on some level by many others. Unless you are one of the fortunate ones who gets to break news or one of the unfortunate who gets to be news, you need use your “voice” so readers have a reason to return to your site.

Make sure that when you write you have an opinion. If you don’t have (and share) an opinion on a topic, you really have no reason to write about it. If you aren’t adding to a story in some way, your potential readers will read the story elsewhere. Think about where you get your news from and why.

And don’t be afraid of your opinion chasing off potential readers. No matter what your opinion is, there is an audience. As Tyler Durden would say, you are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. There are other people out there who think like you and will enjoy re-affirming their opinion by reading yours. If your opinion isn’t popular, your competition is smaller.

Another important task of editing is mechanical editing. Blogging isn’t held to the standards of a newspaper. To be honest, newspapers don’t seem to be held to the same standards as they were years ago. All the same, your writing must be clear. Leaving readers scratching their head is fine if they are doing so because what you said made them think. If they are doing so because they need a Babel Fish translator that converts nonsense to coherent text, you have a problem.

My personal writing sin is the use of unemployed words. Unemployed words are those that are not needed. I like to pretend wordiness is my style and that frugal speech is not important on a blog. I will make an effort and hopefully as time passes I will improve.