Yodlee Hehoo

Something has got me singing this past year or so. I have been using a web site called Yodlee to assist me in keeping track of my financial accounts. The site is an aggregator of information from various accounts. I can’t actually do anything with the money in the accounts through Yodlee, but I can view, sort, and group transactions from bank accounts, credit cards, investment accounts, student loans, mortgages, and just about every other type of money-related account that involves me. The site can even keep a relatively accurate estimated home value (by tying into Zillow.com) in order to calculate my net worth. The only thing missing from the picture is the values of my assets around the house (only eBay knows what that is). There are also many useful features, such as charts, graphs, and email messages that warn you of all sorts of things that you might want to know about (such as a withdrawal over a certain amount, or a minimum balance alert).

I personally use Yodlee to send me an email every week that gives me a summary of my bank account balance, just to make sure that everything is going according to plan. I have done searches through my transactions for a particular merchant, and it returns any purchases made to them through both my credit cards and my bank account. I often give a brief scan to the balance of all of my accounts just to make sure that no irregular activity is going on, especially for those accounts that I don’t use very often.

Yodlee is very secure, requiring authentication to log in, with strong encryption, and periodic requests to enter a password. Even with all this in place, your account numbers and passwords are still hidden from view, and I don’t see how anyone could do any harm even if they did get your account (although I’m sure there is something, somehow).

Bottom line, I love the site, and if you do most of your transactions via a credit or debit card, it is a handy way to archive and organize your financial transactions in one place.

Posted on January 18, 2008 by Ryan

Filed under Financial, Technology | | 1 Comment »

Google Browser Sync

Google Labs

For the majority of my Internet browsing life, I have been the user of multiple computers. I use a browser at work, I use a browser at home, I use a browser at the university, and I use a browser at other people’s computers. Managing the cookies, passwords, and bookmarks between these various locations has been difficult, if not downright annoying.

For example, I have some web sites that I use that require me to sign in with some obscure username and password. It is nice to have the browser memorize these for me, automatically inserting them when I need them. Also, it is often the case that I’m talking with a friend about a cool new site that I found, only to forget the address of it, and not have my bookmarks handy to pull the page up.

I have tried using services such as del.icio.us in the past, and while those sites have their merits, what I was really looking for was a synchronization of all aspects of my browsing. Little did I know that Google was working on something to fill that exact void.

Google Browser Sync.

I have been using this program for the past year now. It is amazing. I can choose to have my history, cookies, passwords, and bookmarks (or any combination) synced between an unlimited number of computers. This is an add-on for the Firefox web browser, but sadly is not available through their add-ons dialogue. You must go to Google themselves to get this addition, the website is http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/browsersync/

The tool has built-in security features, including double password authentication and encryption. It must be installed on each machine that you are syncing, but the setup is not hard, and takes a couple of minutes on most machines. I even have a version running on my portable Firefox app on my thumbdrive (perhaps explained in another post), that I keep on my keychain at all times. This way, if I am at a computer that I don’t normally use (like in a computer lab), I can plug in my thumbdrive and *presto!*, I have all of my bookmarks and passwords right there in that browser.

Since using this add-on, I have saved time looking for a bookmark that I already discovered while at another computer, and it also saves me the headache of trying different passwords over and over until I found the right one. With Google Browser Sync, I am always surfing from a familiar browser, no matter which computer I find myself at.

Posted on January 14, 2008 by Ryan

Filed under Technology, School as Student | | No Comments »

Student Gimp Projects

Here is some work that my students created with a program called GIMP . The project was to create a realistic image from scratch (not importing any clip art or other photos), using only the basic tools that GIMP provides. In a few of the images, there is a realistic wood grain, which comes with the program, but other than that, everything is an original art creation

Gimp Creation

Gimp Creation

Gimp Creation










Posted on January 9, 2008 by Ryan

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