Home Sweet Home

Chances that an American lives within 50 miles of where they grew up: 1 in 2.

New Exercise Routine

Banging your head against a wall burns 150 calories an hour.

(Please don't try this at home . . . . . or anywhere else. No matter how tempting it may be. T'would be better to go jogging up the hill in shorts in the middle of winter at 1:00am. Maybe. Well, they're both not advisable. Don't try either of those at home. Or anywhere else.)

Gas Price Tracking Websites, et al

There are a number of different websites, which all take a number of different approaches, that track gas prices and can tell you where the cheapest gas is in your area. The two that stand out to me are (in no particular order):

MSN Autos - Local Gas Prices, the upside of this site is that their pricing data is provided by OPIS (Oil Price Information Service) - which makes it accurate. The downside is that OPIS data, even though it is updated nightly, might not be truly up to date. It may be up to 7 days due to the electronic processes by which they collect their data (e.g., through credit card transaction records). As well, the mapping element is provided by MSN MapPoint - which means that you can't scroll a map the way you can with a GoogleMaps mashup (in fact, you can't scroll this map at all). You can zoom, though, within the specified zip code without requiring an annoying page refresh.

Map Gas Prices, the upside of this site is that their mapping element is provided by GoogleMaps, so you can scroll without requiring a page refresh. Also, users can enter pricing data directly - which means that this site may be more up to date, but it also may be inaccurate due to the possibility of human error. It is unclear whether all of the pricing data on this site is obtained merely through user input (which I doubt, since 110,000 price points is an awful lot of user input), or if user input simply supplements data acquired through other means, e.g., OPIS. Another nice feature of this site is that you can sign up for automatic alerts via email for the lowest price point near you.

Map Gas Prices is produced by a company called Orbizon, Inc., which also produces a site called Map Sex Offenders, which (yes, you guessed it) displays the registered street addresses of registered sex offenders on a GoogleMaps map - this data is compiled from the web-based databases of various states.

Barbara Streisand Needs Spell Checker

"Barbra Streisand has launched a new spelling error-ridden dispatch on the Internet -- a dispatch that mocks President Bush for being a 'C student!'" (This is, by the way, the second time she's done this).

News Brief
Actual Barbara Streisand dispatch (as captured by a webcrawler)

Legos

Check out this list of Top Ten Lego creations.

Business Managers Finally Discover What Everyone Else Has Known for Years

Outsourcing customer-facing business processes, such as tech support, is a bad idea. I'm glad that Einstein was reincarnated so that the world could be thus enlightened.

Cola Wars, Browser Wars, now Mouthwash Wars

Pfizer rules mouthwash market for more than a century with Listerine.
Proctor & Gamble gets jealous and develops Crest Pro Health mouthwash.
Not bothering to poll actual dentists, P&G advertises product as "4 out of 5 dentists would recommend it."
Pfizer sues to prevent "irreparable harm and damage to Pfizer, as well as to consumers."

Don't believe me? Go here.

Free 411

I know I've already told some of you about this, but, for those of you who haven't heard about it yet:

1-800-free-411 is a service that gives you free 411 directory assistance any time. The catch is that you have to listen to a 15 second ad. But hey, it saves for a buck or two.

Extra cheese and pepperoni

On average, Americans consume 18 acres of pizza a day.

Fr. Fasano's Dream

New paint blocks cell phone signals on command.