Are you off from work and want to stay updated on the Veteran’s Day activities?  In our tribute to this special day of those who put their lives first for our freedom, we’d like to provide helpful sites to learn more about what this day signifies.  Below are 5 must-see sites during Veteran’s Day 2007.

1. Watch the 25th Anniversary Wall Celebration with Colin Powell
2. Check out all of the activities, resources, and events from by the US Department of Veterans Affairs.
3. Here’s a nice slideshow of Veteran’s Day pictures.
4. See the NYC activities, parade, and timeline of Veteran’s Day.
5. Listen to 1010 WINS Radio for live reporting from today’s events.

Happy Halloween everybody!  As always, we try to see how to fit this little thing we like to call technology fit into the real world.  So, how can you integrate a little “trick or treat” action today?  Below are some fun computer activities for Halloween:

If you plan to have guests visit on this goulish day, feel free to play a free Halloween spooky movie.  You may also load a spooky Halloween screensaver for entertainment.

One of the best sites, Wolfstone, we’ve seen discusses the history of Halloween, how to haunt, and how to create scary props.

For playing a fun Halloween game on the computer, you collect pumpkins before the spiders and creatures catch you in Halloween Heist.

Our last computer site we’ll leave you with is for the kids.  After all, Halloween is for children.  This arts-and-crafts website provides instructions for building different types of pumpkins, critters, and animals.

Need directions for your summer trip?  What about weather or the score of the Yankees or Mets game?  Picking up someone at the airport and want the gate and arrival status?

You can text Google from your cell phone at 466453 for practically anything! 

Here’s a full list of what you may search for:

• local
• weather
• glossary
• travel
• sports
• movies
• stocks
• directions
• maps
• zip codes
• flights
• area codes
• airlines & airports
• products
• Q & A
• web snippets
• translation
• currency conversion
• calculator
• help

How do you do it?  First, text 466453.  Then, for directions just enter the starting and ending locations (i.e. manhattan to hamptons).  For weather, simply type in “weather stamford, connecticut” or any other city.  For flight info, punch in your flight # and airline for up to the minute flight and gate status.

The info comes to your cell phone in 3 seconds.  It beats trying to figure out some technical computer support method to get info.  Typically, a computer service way, such as Mapquest or Expedia, has you enter details that may be texted or emailed to you.  Now, you can eliminate the computer request step and simply get necessary info from your cell on the fly.

Ever wonder if you’re getting paid what you’re worth?

Payscale.com is the top site for checking out the industry average for your position, years of experience, and city.  It goes a step above Salary.com by providing anonymous samples of colleagues in the same position along with their certifications, degrees, and specialties.  Then, for a fee, the site will let you know what you need to do to increase your salary and position.

The site gets its research and data from Monster.com among other top job sites.  This information is attained by people who are seriously looking for jobs.  Salary.com, on the other hand, attains most of its data from people who just enter the info in to retrieve their average industry salary.  So, these numbers might be skewed by those who just enter anything in order to get quick numbers.

So, we recommend Payscale.com for getting accurate salaries as well as helpful job resources.

Friendster is like MySpace, but adds a layer of personal organization.  Like MySpace, you can communicate with friends, find a date, advertise a service, and more.  However, Friendster excels in the following services:

-Birthday alerts - Do you have trouble keeping track of your friends and family members’ birthdays?  Friendster allows you or your buddies to enter their birthdates so you can stay up to date.

-Share photos - Don’t worry about how to e-mail your friends all of your vacation photos.  Share them on this site and send them your link. 

-Get in touch with old friends - You may enter your college or search friends to get in touch with old pals.

Overall, Friendster is a nice way to organize your contacts, photos, and collaborate with others.

When looking for your destination, which website do you use?  Below are the best sites for for great directions and visual maps:

Google Maps:  Features road, satellite and point-to-point directions.  A bit of a memory hog, but has easy access of easily providing a phone number and rated reviews to businesses.

MapQuest:  Shows easy 10-point driving directions.

Ask.com Maps & Directions: Provides walking and driving directions

Windows Live Local:  Offers clear close-up views and saving functions.

Yahoo Maps:  Illustrates traffic view and ability to reposition maps

Lately, there has been more of a need for residential and small offices to have a collaborative calendar system.  Posting appointments and events for others to see and add to are key for great communication.  If Outlook is not being used, there are a few great calendars you may use that allow for private, shared, and public events:

1.  30 Boxes - The prettiest of all the calendars and integrates nicely with MySpace and other networking sites.

2.  Google Calendar - Detects events in Gmail and you may sent invites with RSVPs when adding an event.

3.  Yahoo Calendar - You may check others’ availability before inviting them to events.  This is one of the only online calendars that syncs with Outlook and Palm Desktop.

Have you ever needed good subway directions in New York? Typically, to find your way in Manhattan would first require checking out MapQuest or Google Maps to see where your destination is. Then, a gander at a NYC Subway Map would show how to get there. If you needed bus directions in the city, yet another website would have to be checked out.

As New Yorkers, we like convenience and Hop Stop provides this to us.

Hop Stop allows you to enter your start and end location, and then voila…you’re provided subway and/or bus directions. You may specify if you prefer to walk more, just take the subway or bus,or all of the above. You may even enter what day and time you are departing so that construction or detours will be provided.

Hop Stop is only customized for 5 cities, including New York, and you may even sign up to text your end destination so you can get directions on the fly when you’re on the go.

This site definitely gets our thumbs up!

My Space has become very popular. It allows members to create personal websites and meet others. Even celebrities have caught onto the trend to promote their image to the MySpace community.

Below are the top My Space celebrity sites you’ll find voted on creativity and popularity:

1. Diddy - Go watch Diddy (Puff Daddy) pick his nose, go to the bathroom, wake up, and oh yeah check out his music.

2. Paris Hilton - Ok, so this one is mostly for guys who are not looking to read intelligent content.

MySpace is free to sign up and is a good source of networking and publicity.

Are you ready for some football?!

Football season is in full gear. How are you going to stay on top of all the NFL games on Sunday? We’ve reviewed some sites to provide the top three football sites for watching real-time scores on your computer at work or home.

1. ESPN.com

2. CBSSportsline.com

3. NFL.com

For e-mailed alerts of football scores, updates, and news, go to John Madden’s site.

If you are itching to get involved with your own Fantasy Team, CBSSportsline.com has a user-friendly interface.

Go Giants!