I was all set to diss TechJunk, before looking at it, as yet another tech news old-school-Digg or TechMeme wanna-be. But, the simplicity and news mix on the page really appealed to me. And, although it has a mobile friendly version, the regular web page looks fine on an iPhone or iPod touch. Check it out.

LifeHacker, a great site that is on my RSS feed list, has a post titled...

Five Best Windows Maintenance Tools

Best lists are always subjective of course. And, since I don't expect people to agree with my best lists, I'm taking the opportunity to list some alternatives to LifeHacker's list with some reasons why. Here's LifeHacker's list and my alternatives. LH indicates a LifeHacker pick.

The Miniblog sidebar to the left used to be a Twitter feed. However, we all know the problems with using Twitter for the last couple of weeks (months?). Still, I like Twitter' simplicity and didn't want to stop using it. However, everytime it went down, the site's Drupal feedreader freezes up and prevents this blog from rendering. After looking at a couple of options, I decided to use Friendfeed...

http://friendfeed.com/toddogasawara

I wrote about the tools I used to create my first podcast for O'Reilly Digital Media Mac Center. You can find it at...

A Newbie Looks at Podcasting Tools: Garageband, Audacity, and Levelator

I have a bunch of screencaps of using Garageband (not freeware but it is available on every new Mac as part of the iLife suite), Audacity (Open Source), and Levelator (freeware).

Let me know if you have any suggestions for podcast topics.

I wrote a document using Microsoft Word 2008 for Mac this evening and saved it out to the Word 2007(Windows)/2008(Mac) DOCX format. I decided to test it with the Adobe Buzzword web word processor. I was shocked but happy to find that the file imported into Buzzword very quickly and that the resulting web based document retained the simple formatting I had applied (header and multi-level outline numbering). Good stuff...

My first OgasaWalrus Podcast (under 8 minutes) is posted to Blogr.com. Click on the link below...

OgasaWalrus Podcast 20080701

...to get to browser based podcast player to listen to it. You don't need to download it or subscribe to it to give it a try.

Here's a list links to items I mentioned in the podcast...

Tools Mentioned:
Apple iLife Garageband
Audacity Sound Editor

The IMSLP Petrucci Music Library provides free PDF downloads of public domain music scores. It apparently shut down a while ago but has just been revived.

Feedbooks.com takes public domain books and provides them for free for a variety of electronic book readers (including Windows Mobile mobile phones and the Kindle). Windows Mobile smartphones can use either the Mobipocket or ePub formats provided by Feedbooks. I've installed Mobipocket (also free) on a Windows Mobile Professional Edition (Pocket PC) device and will be looking at it closer on my MobileViews.com blog.

EverNote has become a mainstay in my toolkit. It is still in beta, but the it is now available for everyone to signup. And, more importantly, they have a business model to drive revenue. The free service is limited to 40MB of monthly uploads. That seems pretty generous. However, for $5/month or $45/year, you get a 500MB/month upload allowance, more security, and support.

Can't believe I did this. I mentioned that twhirl can now play Seesmic videos but never talked about twhirl itself here before (I think). I wrote about it as part of an Adobe Air blog/article for O'Reilly's Digital Media Center though :-) So...

twhirl

Twhirl, an Adobe AIR based app, is my current favorite Twitter client. Seesmic acquired Twhirl a couple of months ago. So, it shouldn't be a surprise that they announced you can...

Play Seesmic videos in Twhirl client

Nice...

I saw this site mentioned in a tweet and in a couple of blog entries. So, I took at look at...

RepairPal.com

...whose slogan is: We take the mystery out of auto repair! It asks you for your car make, model, year, service type (from a list), and Zip code. The site looked pretty good. But, I didn't see service types specific to hybrid cars listed. I looked at the Toyota Prius after I noticed there wasn't any differentiation for the Toyota Camry hybrid model.

I just noticed that Piriform released a release candidate of their freeware Windows disk defragmenter...

Defraggler 1.02.077 RC1

I've been using it as my disk defragger of choice since learning about it back in early May 2008. But, hmm, wasn't it missing an "e" (Defragglr) back then?

If you are looking for a new job (like me) or just wondering what other firms are like, you might find this site interesting.

Glassdoor.com

It describes itself as: An inside look at companies from those who know them best. See company ratings, reviews, and salaries.

Ever wonder what would Twitter look like if it were designed in 1970s motif? Take a look at...

Plurk