I know this isn't the first time someone has made these kinds of things available on the web, but here's a nice collection of pdf format printable shopping lists of various types.

http://www.freeprintablegrocerylist.com/

Nice roundup of technology podcasts:

Podcasts, Netcasts, call them what you want. Every geek out there should be listening to these things. Every single one of you. If ever you see a geek with earphones plugged into his/her ears, I guarantee you they are listening to the latest podcasts. It’s just something most geeks can’t live without. We thrive on the latest podcasts.

Now, I know there are still some people out there who haven’t listened to many podcasts, and I’ve been feeling a bit sorry for those people because they are missing out on so much. So, I’ve decided to make a list of my favorite podcasts so that new listeners can have some suggestions while sifting through the thousands of new podcasts each day.

http://www.makeuseof...ek-should-listen-to/

Over at the makeuseof.com blog (otherwise known as the blog that ignores our software when writing about cool tools), writer Jerry Kid is an honest to god real estate broker, and has a really nice set of posts on real estate related websites.

In a series of posts with lots of nice screenshots, Jerry walks us through five different real estate tools: Realtor.com, Craigslist, Yahoo Real Estate, Trulia, and Zillow (with special emphasis on the first two sites).

If you are looking to buy a house this series of posts would be a nice place to start.

So say you want to buy a house. If you read the newspapers or watch TV or even pickup your news online, you can’t help but notice that the US real estate market is in the tank. There are many good deals to be had, if you could only find them, and then be sure that they were really a smart buy.

But where do you start? The local newspaper? The homes for sale magazines in the supermarket? Do you drive around (at $4.55USD a gallon?) and look for signs?

No! You are a reader of MakeUseOf.com and you have a technology slant on the things that you do, so you want to use online tools to find that house. This is your lucky day because today I kick off a five part series on what I consider to be the 5 most significant online home search websites currently available in the United States.

• Read Part 1
• Read Part 2
• Read Parts 3-5

Over at the Raymond.CC blog there is a nice comparison today of 6 different online antivirus scanners.

I will compare the number of antivirus engines used to scan an uploaded file, time taken to upload and scan, extra file upload methods, file information, upload progress meter and report page. I will also test the accuracy of the antivirus engines by scanning it with a detected version of Bifrost trojan.

http://www.raymond.c...lware-file-scanners/

Well, Gizmo's Tech Support Alert site has revealed it's new look and structure, and it's quite dazzling.

In addition to looking great, it's been completely wikified, with the ability for users to add comments to each of the "best of" freeware categories.

I do take issue with some of the choices (best freeware screenshot program, cough cough), but it's clear that a great site has just gotten better, and gizmo's site is one of the first places you should go when looking for a freeware program to do any given task.  Well done Gizmo!

There's even a freeware forum on the site now, though it's a bit quiet since things are just getting started over there.  I'm sure it will pick up soon.

http://techsupportalert.com

If you love audiobooks, or never had time to read all the old classics, or just want to discover some hidden gems, this might be just the thing for you:

LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net. Our goal is to make all public domain books available as free audio books.

All of the recordings are all released back into the public domain, so you can share them, burn them, give them as gifts...even sell them if you want. There are no restrictions on what you are allowed to do with them.

http://librivox.org

The title of this thread is just a play on the fact that I occasionally come across a blog which says good things about a DonationCoder.com program and I inevitably look around and come to the conclusion that it's a cool site with other content of interest.

Probably a good part of that is just innate human bias to like someone who likes you, but I think also there is probably something more to it.  Very few bloggers take the time to actually write up a real description of why they like a program, and when they do, they are almost invariable producing regular content that is worth reading.

This is from a blog called JJJunk.com..  Some nice posts on various software.

http://jjjunk.com/20...shot-captor-windows/

I order a lot from Amazon.com -- so much that i recently joined their "Prime" shipping service, where you pay a flat yearly subscription fee and then get many things send 2day delivery for free.  In this blog piece, Lifehacker lists some 3rd party power tools for you amazon.com power users.  As usual make sure to check out the comments for user-suggested additions.

http://lifehacker.co...-power-shopper-tools

This was actually mentioned previously by someone else in a thread on micro-payment systems, but i've come across it a couple of times so thought it deserved it's own post:

PPCalc.com is a free web-based PayPal fee calculator. It is an online tool that allows PayPal users to quickly calculate their PayPal fees before accepting a payment, or reverse calculate their fees to determine what amount a person must send them for them to receive a certain amount after fees. It supports calculating PayPal fees between different currencies and includes daily-updated currency exchange rates and support for cross-border transactions. It also supports PayPal's new Micropayments (digital goods) rate, and the new rate Personal accounts are charged for accepting limited credit card payments. It was originally written on May 13, 2005 and has been updated numerous times since to account for changes in PayPal fee rates. Currently, it supports calculating PayPal fees for 103 different countries and 16 different currencies and includes a built-in currency converter.

PPCalc.com is simply a third-party tool and was not written by, nor has any official connection with PayPal.com or eBay.com.

http://ppcalc.com

I've recently caught a little bit of a cooking bug.

But as enjoyable as the cooking is, i'm more of a reader than a do-er, and i'm really truly loving reading Christopher Kimball's books.  Basically he takes an experimentalist/scientific approach to these things.

He analyzes and compares ingredient/temperature/method variations as if he was looking for the cure to pneumonia.  It's really fun to read about him analyzing minuscule changes and the effects they have.  You also learn a ton about why recipes tell you to do different things.  Very fun reading.. I almost feel like i don't have to do the cooking after reading him talk about it.

• His books on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.co...pher+kimball&x=0&y=0
• America's Test Kitchen TV show: http://www.americastestkitchen.com/
• Sexy Food Nerds article about him: http://slate.com/id/2089461/

Found this cool how-to guide while looking for info on the best digital picture frames.  Cool stuff.

I got ideas from many different examples on the net and began outlining my requirements for the project:
• I wanted the frame to look as much like a real picture frame as possible. It couldn’t have any of the computer exposed so it would require a shadowbox to enclose the laptop.
• I wanted the pictures to automatically update from the web. I wanted to be able to change the photos displayed on the picture frame without needing to log into the PC with VLC or something else. It needed to be easy enough that my wife or daughter could update the photos.
• While I wanted the picture frame to access the internet, I didn’t want to have any cords coming out of it other than the power cord so it would require wifi.
• I wanted it to power up, log in to the default user (using XP) and start showing pictures as soon as it was powered up. It should be as simple as plugging it in and it just works.

http://brentevans.bl...op-into-digital.html