Well look what we have here. A young, inventive entrepreneur that started up a campaign to get rid of all those pennies you have lying around the house in jars taking up space. How do you get rid of them you ask? Well you send them to him of course! His goal is to receive one million pennies from one million people. So far he has received 82,025 pennies and you can see where all the contributors are from right here. And how much does one million pennies weigh you ask? 3.2 tons.

sendmepennies.com, pennies

If you’re a Flickr.com lover and you want to keep up on all your friends photos, then you must sign up at notifyr.com. It’s a very simple process all powered by Ruby on Rails. The site lets you subscribe to a Flickr.com photo page and you get email notifications whenever new images are added to it. It’s as easy as that.

notifyr, flickr

With the holidays fast approaching we’ve been a little busy around here. Sorry for the lack of updates. We will be in full speed ahead mode when the new year arrives. I read over on the Official Google Blog about the Google Earth Santa Tracker. They have hidden presents all over the earth and it’s your job to find them. That should keep you busy for awhile. Enjoy! Have fun, and most of all, Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!

google earth santa tracker, google earth

The people over at SEOInc that specialize in natural search optimization have just launched the newest version of their SEO Toolbar Version 2.0. It does tracking and monitoring of any site, allowing you to quickly view site stats and data all in one location, with no spyware.

It will give you the page rankings of your site on all the major search engines including Google, YAHOO, and MSN. It will check your keyword density which basically calculates how many of your targeted keywords are in your content. It also will check if your HTML is valid which is important not to bottle neck the search engine spiders with bad code.

And it will do a general site analysis for you, checking image alt tags, broken links, and your site load speed. This is a handy toolbar you should add if you want to get ahead of your competition on the SERPS (search engine results pages).

SEO Toolbar, Search Engine Optimization, organic search engine listings

Since one of our favorite sites, Lifehacker named Hamachi as one of the Best Apps of 2006 we thought we should feature it. We use it every.single.day. and we couldn’t live without it. Ever. Period. It’s a zero-configuration virtual private networking (VPN) application. Really. That is the best description for this app, and I lifted said description off the Hamachi site.

We work from home, and all the machines at the office across town run Hamachi. We’ve set up our VPN using Hamachi, and we can access each other’s shared files. This is by far, the easiest VPN app you can find. It takes absolutely no knowledge of networking and you can have your own VPN set up in seconds. Yes, seconds. We promise.

There are other great features also. It is totally secure, and free. We like free here at UtterlyGeek.

Hamachi, VPN, VPN software

You’re at the electronics store and something catches your eye. You walk over and pick it up and your heart starts pounding from the excitement. You push all the buttons and play with it, and then your hands start shaking. Then you say out loud, “I WANT THIS!”

That was us last night at Fry’s seeing the Sony UX Series for the first time in real life. Besides the fact it is super small, weighing in at only 1.2lbs. that little monster runs Windows XP, with an Intel® Core™ Solo Processor U1400 (1.20GHz), 1 gig of RAM, Bluetooth, and integrated WLAN/WWAN. The mouse was the easiest thing to learn to use. I picked up on how it functions within seconds, and was quickly listening to mp3’s using Windows Media Player.

Yes Santa, we will take two please! Oh and while you are at it, can we also have the James Bond 007 UX Spy Gear Bundle to go with it?

Sony UX Series, James Bond 007 UX Spy Gear Bundle

While cruising around Flickr today we came across Phillip West’s profile and found his pictures of Star Wars Origami. How sweet are those??!! We thought they were uber cool and just had to share them. I hope you like them also!

Star Wars Origami, flickr

Tear up that to-do list and throw it away. You no longer need to make list on paper of all your important dates like doctors appointments, business meetings, birthdays, and kids sports schedules. When you’re out and on the go writing down reminders can be hard especially in your car and you don’t have a pen. All you need is your cell phone and this sweet cool app called BrainCast.

It’s a free and easy to use, internet & phone based message/memo recording & reminder organization system, and it’s compatible with any U.S. based cellular or regular telephone network. You record audio messages to your phone by simply calling and leaving yourself a message. When you get home it’s there waiting for you on your computer. And best of all it’s free to use.

mobile phone applications, reminders, to-do list

If you own a website it is very important that you consider doing some type of online marketing. I use to be an SEO Consultant and one thing you really want to do is to optimize for the organic search listings.

A good way to achieve those listings is having keyword rich content. Another approach towards getting your page higher in the SERPS is building a good link popularity campaign is a good place to start. This will greatly increase your rankings on Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.

Another rule of thumb is to stay away from companies that guarantee results. This is impossible to do as the search engines run on their own algorithms that we as SEO programmers cannot control. We play by their TOS and rules and hope for the best.

seo, website popularity, organic search results

Chances are you have boxes of pictures lying around the house like I do. Mine are all unorganized and simply taking up space. I found a cool little project to do on a cold winter day in the house with all those photos. Why not make Christmas ornaments out of them! All you do it cut them into thin strips, add a paper fastener, tie them together with yarn, and fan them out. Great concept and the finished product will look great on your tree.

Christmas tree ornaments, picture projects