Are you thinking about going to law school or business school?  Or perhaps—like crazy yours truly—both at the same time?  This blog entry covers the following:

- Is law school right for me?
- Is business school right for me?
- How do I narrow down which school to apply to or attend?
- Okay, I picked a school and got in!  Now how do I prepare?!

* * *

Over some coffee this afternoon, I contemplated what I have now coined the “Filled to All Available” or “FTAA” syndrome.  Here’s what it means, basically.  As humans, we tend towards and often feel more comfortable within defined boundaries.  Ambiguities and uncertain limits force us to think, to apply sometimes-risky judgement calls, and in our rushed and often bureaucratic society, that can be stressful.  So, we thrive in a FTAA environment; we fill up our desks, our closets, our schedules to capacity.  If we get larger desks, bigger closets, or unexpected free time, somehow we find a way to fill or fritter away the excess space.  At an all-you-can-eat buffet, we tend to think of “getting our money’s worth” and—you guessed it—filling up rather than lightly sampling.  We eat until we are not just satisfied, but stuffed.  We store junk until our apartments are bursting at the seams.  We live a life that is “Filled to All Available.”

I invite you to go grab your cell phone / mobile phone / home phone whatever and program the following numbers into it:

- 1-800-555-8355 ("555 TELL" -- TellMe)
- 1-800-373-3411 ("FREE 411" -- Free411)
- 1-888-392-7563 ("EZ ASK ME" -- AskMeNow - Initial signup on site required)
- 46645 ("GOOGL" - Google SMS beta - Google via Text Messaging)

NOTE: One or more of these numbers may be U.S.-only... sorry :|

For details on each service, read on...

After hearing good things about StatCounter from friends who've used it, I decided to give it a try. I liked it so much after one day, that I decided to shell out $9/month to see stats on many of my sites.

Introduction

What is Google Desktop ("GD"?
Google Desktop (formerly known as Google Desktop Search or "GDS" is free program from Google that enables you to search for data on your computer much like you use Google to search the Web. You can look for and open e-mails, photos, music files, PDFs, and lots of other good stuff. No ads are shown. Below you can see a screenshot of me searching for "drink."

How to get GD

A couple of weeks ago, some jerk stole the laptop one of my clients was loaning me. This royally sucked for several reasons:
- This laptop allows me to be productive during my commute and when otherwise off-site.
- I am in the midst of several projects, with data critical to each of them all on -- you guessed it -- the laptop.
- And yeah, I had to shamefacedly explain to my boss and my colleagues how I managed to lose a company laptop in the restroom on our floor, and what I was doing with a laptop there in the first place (let me clarify this now: I was on my way out to a friend's going away party, and was brushing my teeth).

Anyway, I spent (unpaid) overtime redoing the research and planning I had notated on that computer... only to discover (both with a huge sigh of relief and head-smacking frustration) that *ALL* of my work had been backed up. I was smarter than I had remembered, since I had not only saved many files directly to the client's server, but had set up OneNote to do regular backups to my desktop.

I was both smart and lucky. And now, with the tips below, you can be smart and lucky, too.

1) http://www.weatherreports.com/ rocks. Simple, crap-ad free, and easy-to-grok at a glance.

2) Also, try typing weather [your-zip-code] into Google -- e.g., weather 94112. Nice, eh?

My one complaint? I wish these two offerings would provide more info with one click (hourly forecasts, etc.).

Oh, and here's one by phone:

3) From any U.S. phone (other than a payphone), dial 1-800-555-8355 ("TELL") and say "Weather." Then say a zip code or city name and you'll get an detailed, often rather extended and informative forecast. TellMe offers lots of other great services, too, that you can glean from their main menu.

Try out the Google Suggest tool, a new Google feature currently in the Labs.


I've long been amazed at the computational power and speed of Google, but this real time demonstration of the company's muscle is simply astounding.

How is this latest offering useful? From my perspective, it will come most in handy with searches in the following contexts:
- Names
- Narrowing down from general to specific topics
- Webmaster on-the-fly search engine optimization efforts (finding / measuring most-searched phrases)

I'm curious to hear from my readers on this one. What are other ways in which this new Google service will be particularly useful... or especially fun / entertaining?

[Yes, I admit, I'm a bit embarrassed that I'm so often gushing about Google stuff... but this particularly offering is just too cool to ignore, IMHO :D]

Edited to add:
- 12/10/04 11:02am: Forgot to give credit to Waxy.org (specifically their links page) for the heads-up!

I was able to score an exclusive interview with Adam Lasnik, supreme geek, Google connoisseur, and Google Desktop Search expert, and I'm very pleased to offer the full transcript below.

Adam, thanks for coming today. To start, why don't you give us a quick overview of what Google Desktop Search ("GDS") does?

It's delightful to be here!

Well, GDS enables any personal and business user to search their computer's hard drive much as they would search Google... typing in a search term using Google's general search syntax and getting a results page in under one second.

Specifically, GDS searches both the filenames and contents of the following: Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail, AOL instant messages, Internet Explorer (Web page history), text files, and also files from Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.

Do note that GDS only works on Windows XP and 2000 at this time.

I'm a glutton for punishment. When new music services come out, I love to try them, including Roxio's Napster, MusicMatch, iTunes, BuyMusic, Rhapsody, Coke's music service, FullAudio's MusicNow, RealOne, emusic, Weed, and many, many more.

Trying Sony's new music service, Connect (which runs on Sony's SonicStage software) was probably one of the most punishing of all. Let me count the ways: