The ATP 2GB ToughDrive 200X USB Flash Drive is one of the best USB flash drives available. (1) Along with the Patriot Xporter XT, it’s one of the fastest (30MBps read/20MBps write), making it a great choice for use with Windows Vista’s ReadyBoost technology. (See the results of a comparison of various USB drives here.) (2) It’s incredibly durable and built for rough handling (including a 5-year warranty). (3) It’s a great price—on sale for $59.16 at Buy.com, with free shipping. There’s a $25 mail-in rebate, and if you open up a Buy.com credit card (takes about 3 minutes), the price ends up being $16.41 (after mail-in rebate). Not bad for a high-speed 2GB USB drive! I was hoping to be able to save an additional $10 by using Google Checkout, but they don’t allow that in conjunction with the 30% off credit card deal. If you want to go the Google-Checkout route, you’re final cost ends up being $24.16—still a great price. So if you’re in the market for a good USB drive for yourself or as a Christmas present, you might want to check this one out.
Technology
Create Your Own Search Engine
I recently found out about Google Co-op. It allows you to create your own web search, or as many different searches as you want. In other words, you tell it which websites to search, and it will search just those sites or simply put those sites first. Take all your favorite biblical resources sites, create a search, and then add it to your Google homepage (or bookmark it) and share it with others.
I’ve played around with a few, and I think this has real potential to be very helpful! Try out my Reformed Theology search, and feel free to edit it by adding other Reformed sites. Maybe we could start an MP3 search for sermons and lectures. Lots of potential here. Let me know if you create any.
Firefox 2.0 Is Here
If you’ve been using Firefox 1.5, you might be interested to know that Firefox 2.0 was officially released yesterday. (If you haven’t been using Firefox, now’s a great time to start.) It’s got a lot of great features that keep it a couple steps ahead of the new Internet Explorer 7. E.g., FF 2 (1) has a built-in auto spell checker that will underline misspelled words in red when you type text into text boxes (I love it! It’s great for bloggers!), (2) forces a new window to open as a tab instead of a new browser window (very nice), (3) implements improved tabbed browsing, and (4) will reopen your browser exactly how it was before if it happens to crash (which isn’t very often). Download it now.