I go to the store. They say I get a discount if I have their club card. So some paperwork and five minutes later, I have a 2” by 4” hunk of plastic and more $10 in my pocket than I otherwise would have. But now what do I do with it? I already have a collection of similar hunks of plastic, making my wallet too fat. My option is to keep them somewhere other than my wallet, inevitably, when I want it next, I won’t have it and will be out $10.

I have to admit I’m a bit of a fan of Google’s services, and tend to pay a fair bit of attention when Google decides to pick up a company - to me, founded or not, it signals that the service will stick around and has the financial backing to continue offering a good service on the cheap.

In case you took a weekend away from the computer, which I apparently didn’t, Google has just bought out Feedburner. I’m not sure what this will mean for me, although they have promised to keep the service up and running. I imagine there will be some re-branding, and I’m hoping for better integration with my other Google services, like Blogger, Analytics, and AdSense. I’ll keep my eyes open, and let you know if something really crazy happens.

Although Nexodyne continues to work well, I came across another site that allows me to add the nifity envelope to the image, so I decided to change my little “Email me” picture. The site gives you three options, but the downside is you have to host the image yourself (Nexodyne would host it for you) and it only works for GMail. If you have another email provider, check out Nexodyne, but if you like the envelope and have a Gmail account, get your own image here! (The only downside is figuring out how to get a transparent background - Photoshop doesn’t seem to like me today).

A service I’ve known about for a while that I finally decided to check out is FeedBurner. It seems to be the ideal set of tool for dealing with your RSS and Atom feeds from your site. For those unfamiliar, RSS and Atom are a simple way for people to see if your site has updated recently. Bloggers and news web sites are among the most common users, but its use has spread a lot further than that. You can either view the feeds through a desktop program, often your email client, or through an online reader, like Google (that’s what I use).

I recently switched to the new version of Blogger. From your end, I’m sure it looks very much the same. On my end, that is for the most part true as well, but there are a few subtle changes. Most that I have come across are in the post editing options. I can edit the posting date, and individually set whether to allow your comments and backlinks, and to edit the post time. Another option that I quite like is the ability to add labels. Because it’s so new I don’t think I’ve really got the hang of it, but for now, I’ll explain the series I’ve started:

Back when the internet started and you wanted to find something, websites had simple names. As more and more people have moved onto the internet, most of the simple names were snapped up and now sell for a small fortune. Adding to the confusion is that is that many websites will pass information back to their server using what appears to be random gibberish to the rest of us (check out the URL next time you do a search at Google or the like). Someone got smart and came up with a solution! Enter tinyurl.com. Enter your long, convoluted URL in and they spit out a much shorter. For example, start with MinchinWeb.BlogSpot.com and end up with tinyURL.com/y6xxef, which granted isn’t a ton shorter, but it shows up a lot better is we go with something longer, like http:// minchinweb.blogspot.com/ 2006/12/ tinyurlcom-on-line-wonders-iii.html, the perment link for this post, and you get tinyURL.com/y3lvrh. Not so shabby! Give it a try for yourself:

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

— Douglas Adams

As life goes by, it seems more and more important to know what time it is. Your bus comes at this time, your flight leaves at this time and your meeting across town is at this time. In theory, the better you know the time, the better you are at being on time, right? I wish!

Besides the practical aspects of knowing the time, I always thought it was cool to see the row of clocks behind the reception desk of big companies in the movies. Now I found a way to add that to my blog! World Time Server.com allows you to create a snipit of code and then insert it on your site that displays an analog clock in the colour scheme, size, and time zone of your choosing. I think it’s cool. Here’s my little gallery of world times:

Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.

— Albert Einstein

With new technology, comes new concerns. In the case of electronic mail, it is that of spam. At least when we get junk mail at home, we can quickly sort through it and drop it into the recycle bin. The fact that you have to pay someone to print and deliver the flyers does serve to deter companies from filling up everyone’s mailbox with non-addressed mail. Spam, on the other hand, can be sent for almost free. I guess they must make some sales out of it, or you would think that they would have given up on the tactics long ago. But where do they get email addresses to spam? Unlike delivering flyers, where you can just walk down the street, you have to actually know someone’s email address.

The Weather Network claims that 80% of the population checks the weather forecast, so they ask why not put the forecast on your site. Best of all it’s free! They have several options for shapes and sizes, but basically, you put a little bit of code in your page, and voila. To hook up, go to