Who is Noel?

Last night I sang a few Christmas songs at my church. One of the songs was “The First Noel”. The song goes like this… The first ‘Noel!’ the angels did say Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay; In fields where they lay keeping their sheep, On a cold winter’s night that was so deep. Noel! Noel! Noel! Noel! Born is the King of Israel! So like, we sang Noel Noel many times, the pitch went from super low to super high. But I was like, who is Noel? I know Noah, maybe they are cousins? ...

December 11, 2008 · 1 min · birdchan

Finance software

Since some of my friends talked about finance, I guess now is a good time to bring this up. Mint.com is an online personal finance software. From the website description: “Mint downloads, categorizes, and graphs all of your finances automatically every day— so you don’t have to. Know where you’re spending, without spending any effort.” I remember back in the old days I wrote all my expenses down on my little note book, but those days are gone. Mint can analyze all of your transactions and plot graphs for you in a secure https manner. All of these come to you for free! I am not sure when they will start charging but I would be more than happy to pay for their service. To say the least, it will save you tons of time if you are in the business of taking care of your personal finance. ...

December 5, 2008 · 1 min · birdchan

File conversion service

This is a pretty cool file conversion online service. It’s called Zamzar. It can convert documents, images, audio, video, and compressed files. The whole list of file formats is here. As a free service, the file size limit is 100Mb. You can increase the file size limit by upgrading your account.

November 26, 2008 · 1 min · birdchan

Google Flu Trends

This tool made use of the google searches people around America made to predict if there are any flu outbreaks. The idea behind it is that, there is correlation between people getting sick and people who will do a “flu symptoms” search. However, it is not meant to be an accurate tool because there are people like the elderly who will not go online. Nonetheless, sacrificing accuracy, this tool gives faster flu level “reports” than any traditional tools. CNN has a post on this too. Take a look! ...

November 12, 2008 · 1 min · birdchan

Dictionary

If you are looking for a dictionary freeware, I would recommend this one called Lingoes. Yes, you can surely go to some online dictionaries, but having your own on your computer gives you the flexibility down the road say when you are trapped in a basement or whatever. Lingoes allows you to download your own dictionaries, do cursor translation, translate to different languages, and can even say the words. This is often all the things you look for when buying a dictionary software. Now, these is one here for free, think about that! ...

November 6, 2008 · 1 min · birdchan

18 ways to beat inflation

CNN wrote this “18 ways to beat inflation” article. Some of these are common sense, but it doesn’t hurt to visit these money-saving ideas right now. http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/pf/0806/gallery.inflation_beaters.moneymag/index.html

November 6, 2008 · 1 min · birdchan

Solving Math problems

This site is amazing! It solves all kinds of Math problems you can imagine… From pre-algebra, to algebra, to trigonometry, to precalculus, to even calculus… You can see the step-by-step solutions… that’s pretty good!!! Try seeing the solution to this calculus problem.

September 30, 2008 · 1 min · birdchan

Wallpaper download

This site InterfaceLIFT has pretty good wallpapers for free download. These wallpapers are pretty amazing!

September 30, 2008 · 1 min · birdchan

Firefox's Ubiquity

I am not sure why it seems like no one is paying attention to this awesome piece of plugin for firefox. There are many things we do on firefox can be automated. Imagine many the copying the url, opening up google map, cut-&-paste, all that can be simplified with a few key strokes! If you are a launchy or quicksilver user, this firefox plugin Ubiquity will make you feel right at home! Check out their promo video and try it out yourself! ...

September 19, 2008 · 1 min · birdchan

Tech interview puzzles

I came across this site techinterview.org that lists many of the tech interview puzzles that you may encounter sometime in your career path. For me being a puzzle lover, this site is awesome! I hope you like it as well! If you are looking for some more intense technical interview questions, here is another website you may want to check out: techinterviews.com. Notice that there are many questions on this site, but you need to find the answers yourself… ^^; ...

May 28, 2008 · 1 min · birdchan