jonlee.ca

I had a bunch of Louis Vuitton gift boxes lying around the house from last Christmas that I decided to recycle them into something a little more useful.  These gift boxes are pretty nice so it seemed like a waste to just throw them out.  Stacking them on their sides and suddenly — instant stylish mini-drawer for your desk.

I didn’t want to glue them together so I just tied them together with the original ribbon they came with.

This works with other gift boxes too of course, assuming they’re appropriate dimensions.

Popularity: 2% [?]

For the holiday season, my favorite online back-up solution, Mozy, is giving away a bonus 512 megs of space for their free 2 GB accounts.  This means you’ll get 2.5 gigabytes of encrypted online back-up storage (25% more than usual!).

I’ve reviewed Mozy before and found it to be the best back-up solution.  2.5 gigabytes isn’t much space by today’s standards but it’s more than enough to store important documents and files offsite.  Backing up everything to an external hard drive is a good idea but if some sort of accident (e.g. fire, earthquake) damages your computer, chances are, your external hard drive will be lost too! That’s why it’s also important to keep at least one extra copy of your back-up offsite.

Not to mention, it’s one of the only online back-up services available for Mac OS

Enter referral code T3DN37 to get the bonus 512 megs of space (full disclosure: I’ll get a 512 meg bonus as well).  This offer ends January 10, 2010.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Here’s a story reminisent of an XKCD strip that made me chuckle.  Norwegian hosting provider Syse Data was served a notice from the Norwegian name registry when their new company name was too similar to their old one.  As a result, they changed their old company name to something very clever.  Their new name is:

‘;UPDATE TAXRATE SET RATE = 0 WHERE NAME = ‘EDVIN SYSE’

That’s right! Their new company name is an SQL injection attack!  Luckily for the Norwegian industry, they took the appropriate steps to prevent SQL injection attacks so it didn’t affect them directly.  I’m sure the funny guys over at Syse Data weren’t legitimately trying to evade paying taxes, but just wanted to have some fun.

They were asked to change that name though since their little charade caused a lot of buzz and generated too much traffic to the Norwegian registry and they weren’t able to handle it.

Popularity: 8% [?]

If you’re a gadget loving person like myself, today had two exciting announcements from Lenovo and Dell in terms of notebook offerings.

Dual Screen Madness
First, Lenovo announced an option for a secondary 10.6″ 768×1280 monitor to their line of W700 workstation/desktop replacement laptops.

Dual monitor on a laptop! That is a dream come true for me and workplaces all around the world since adding a secondary monitor is the biggest productivity booster!

Weighing in at 10 lbs, it’ll be quite a workout to move this around day to day but the tradeoff is well worth it if you only move your laptop once in a while.

Thinner and Lighter than Air
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Dell mentioned that their new line of computers, the Dell Adamo will be coming soon and may be thinner and lighter than the Macbook Air and as much as $400 cheaper!

No other details are available at this point but I have a feeling it’s going to be an exciting 2009 for technology!

What do you think? Dual screen on a laptop too much?  Thinner than Macbook Air unnecessary? Can’t be too thin or have too much monitor real estate in my opinion!

Popularity: 8% [?]

The Canadian government has just opened registration today on the National Do Not Call List.  Basically, by putting your name on this list, you will significantly reduce the number of telemarketing calls to you.  Registration is completely free and will take effect within 31 days.

It won’t completely eliminate all unsolicited calls however.  The following organizations will still be able to call you:

• Registered charities asking for donations
• Newspapers selling subscriptions
• Political parties and their candidates
• Companies that you have dealt with in the previous 18 months (i.e. to follow up on an order)

Aside from those exceptions, you can expect all other telemarketing calls to stop.  If you don’t want the above calls either, you can ask them to put you on their own do not call list whenever they first call.

I was a little weary about this at first but having gone to the site, it is a legitimate site owned by the Government of Canada so I do think it will work and will be enforced.

United States
If you’re from the US, you guys are a little bit ahead.  You’ve had the Do Not Call Registry since February 2008 which works in much the same way.

Popularity: 39% [?]