Make your own Spy Camera

One of my IS professors during my undergrad had an interesting experience with a pen thief. He kept a cup full of nice pens on his desk. He noticed that his pen collection was diminishing on a daily basis and grew suspicious that someone was in his office while he was not there. To investigate the situation, he placed a small, well disguised web camera in between books on his book shelf before leaving for the day and used a program to capture video whenever the camera detected motion.

That is a spy camera - it also doubles as a laser capable of melting your face...
Oh, it also launches missiles at Russia - only Russia though.

The following morning he reviewed the video from the previous night. He found out that the only person coming into his office was the janitor and that the same janitor was indeed his pen thief. He decided to keep monitoring the situation and quickly became aware that this janitor was doing "a lot more" in his office than stealing his pens.

Like playing with his desktop basketball set...

The moral of the story? Spy on people that come into your office using a small, undetectable web camera so you can catch them red handed.

Here are some instructions on How to build a Spy Camera.

Unless you are James Bond. Q will likely hook you up with a much better gadget than you could make yourself.

Throw Out Your Workout DVD's... Workout With Free Video Podcasts!

Stop paying money for workout DVD's and hop on the Free Fitness Podcast wagon. I stumbled across an article that provides information on how to get free fitness podcasts from iTunes.

Its not at all difficult to find the podcasts:

1. Go to iTunes Store
   
2. Select "Power Search" on the right hand side of the page
3. Fill out the search parameters as shown in the picture below. Your results should look similar to mine.
4. Now just find a workout that you like and go for it. Here is a link to one that I like - although I have never used it...
   

Woot.com

I like good deals on technology. Don't you? Sometimes the best deal is available through sites that sell refurbished products. Today we will feature just such a site: Woot.com.

I found out about Woot from my brother-in-law, Jason. He likes to check it out for good deals and stuff and he got me hooked. Woot is not like other discount sites like buy.com or newegg.com because it only features one product a day. The deal on those products, however, is very good. For instance, the day I wrote this post, the featured product was a Dyson DC Slim All-Floor Vacuum selling for 259.99. I took a screenshot of it (on the right). Not a bad price for the product. I will be honest, I have never actually purchased anything from Woot so I can not say much about the quality, speed of service, or anything like that. However, I can say they feature a lot of cool stuff. I check out the site daily and I think its fun to see the great deals on different products (they range from vacuums to iPods to hard drives).

The Woot people claim they are not making a profit which was probably a joke. I think they somehow get there hands on refurbished products and are able to sell them at a great price. If anyone reading this knows more about how they get their products or about their service, let me know. I would be willing to buy a product from them that I felt was a great deal. Anyway, check out the site and tell me what you think.

Newegg.com

Need computer hardware? The best place for it is newegg.com. I have purchased a handful of products from newegg over the years. Back in the day when I used to build desktop computers, I purchased a lot of things from newegg.com. I have rarely been able to find better deals elsewhere. The company is based out of Industry, California. Here is an exerpt from their "about us" page:

"Newegg.com opened for business in 2001 and achieved $1.5 billion in annual sales in its first 6 years of operation. Inc. Magazine recently distinguished Newegg in its list of America’s 500 Fastest-Growing Private Companies. We are one of four companies in the list’s 25-year history to qualify on growth merits while also recording $1+ billion in annual sales."

It is a very legitimate, fast-growing company. I have NEVER had a problem with the site, shipping, or any of the products I purchased. The site is very easy to use. It always provides a lot of options for any type of hardware. So, let's do a little shop and compare. Let's say I am in the market for memory. That is a real common need amongst computer owners (especially if you own Vista). Let's say I own an HP Pavilion dv6700t series and want to really upgrade to 4gb of RAM. This computer needs PC2-5300 RAM. I also type in 4gb so that I narrow my options to what I really want. I know that the computer has only two slots (as is common with most laptops) and so I need 2x2gb cards. So, I enter in that info and search (right click the link and open it in a new tab so that you can follow along with me). The least expensive products are around $70. That seems pretty good, but lets check with Bestbuy.com to compare. Here are my results from Bestbuy.com. The cheapest option there is $349.99. Hmmm, a bit of a difference. Okay, so lets just do a search on Google and see what product results we find there. Here are the results. The cheapest, that's not found on ebay, is around $75 and from newegg.com and buy.com.

There you have it, newegg offers a great deal on hardware that anyone can get behind. So get behind it. Check it out and search for things that you may need or want for your computer.