Remember President Obama’s iconic colorized posters during his presidential campaign?  Well, I just learned about a website that can do the same effect with your photos!  Here’s mine…

Click here to create your own!

I don’t know why I never looked for it before, but I’m so excited I found the Wordpress iPhone app. It’s a lot easier than going through the iPhone’s Safari browser to blog. You can easily add photos too, straight from the phone’s camera or photo library.

The above photo was taken at one of the workshops by www.NYWeddingWorkshop.com I attended.

I know lifestyle and family health history affects life expectancy.  Well, I just found a tool that will give you a number.  Life Expectancy Calculator – isn’t that interesting?  It’s not really meant to scare you.  Though limited, I think it’s a nice tool to let you know if you need to change some things in your life.

I plotted down my info and got the following results:

Results 
Based on your answers to the above questions, your current life expectancy is 90 years. If you’re not happy with the result, consider that by adopting a healthier lifestyle and avoiding various risk factors, you can increase your life expectancy by up to 15 years.

Your “ideal” weight for maximum longevity is: 123 lbs.

The three biggest positive factors that you have going for you are:
    1. Age
    2. Gender
    3. Personality type

The two biggest negative factors that you have going for you are:
    1. Family health
    2. Diet 

I agree that I defnitely need to improve my diet.  But it’s nice to know that my current weight is close to my ‘ideal’ and I don’t need to obsess about losing weight.

Hey Cosmo is a FREE automated telephone service that works like an automated personal assistant – though limited.  What does it do?

Looking for restaurants, plumbers, or any type of business? Hey Cosmo can search for them and call them for you with questions you pre-defined.  You can then review the answers to your inquiries at the website.

Need to call a lot of people to invite them to your event? Hey Cosmo can call them for you and inform them of your event. Hey Cosmo also lets you set up options where your guests can vote on the phone (i.e. time of the event).  You then monitor who picked up the phone and listened.

Wanna give your friend a funny prank call? Hey Cosmo can do the dirty work for you. Type your message and Hey Cosmo makes the call

There are more, so click here to start.

GeekSugar

I was introduced to the Chinese birth calendar by my pregnant co-worker. She came upon the calendar and all of us in the office tried and tested it. So far, it was right. I know nothing about the science behind it, if there is one. But it’s just amazing how it has been accurate most of the time. It has been mentioned that it is 99% accurate.

According to the calendar, my co-worker is having a boy. Since she wanted a boy, she was hoping so bad that the Chinese birth calendar is right. Last week, she had an appointment with her ob-gyn and guess what she’s having… a boy! Congratulations!

While we’re in the topic of pregnancy, I found a list of tales and myths regarding pregnancy for your curiosity. Remember these are just tales and myths.

You can now add your event at Dial DIR-ECT-IONS so your guests can easily phone in for directions to your event, if necessary.

Dial DIR-ECT-IONS (347-328-4667) is a free voice-activated service where you can phone in for Mapquest directions to any location. You will then get the directions on your cellphone as a text message. The service is totally free, but you may incur airtime, long-distance, or messaging charges from your phone company.

Booking Buddy is another travel search engine that searches several travel booking agents including Kayak.com (my favorite), Expedia, Travelocity, Cheaptickets, Orbitz, Hotwire, Priceline, and more.

All you need to do is enter the travel information then click the travel provider on the right side to search.  The only downside to this is that you have to click each travel provider to search all of them.  I usually end up searching Kayak so why not go to Kayak.com directly?

Our house is tiny, but I’ve always loved this place because of its location.  It is very accessible and convenient, but still a little remote.  Our street is only one block long.  The subway station is two blocks away.  It takes about 15 minutes to get to Manhattan via the subway.  There’s a shopping center a block away and another three blocks away.

I found this site called Walk Score which assigns a score to a property based on nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc.  It practically answers how walkable your property or neighborhood is.  This is very helpful if you’re looking to buy a property.  My house scored 85 out of a hundred.

Some of you might prefer to drive, but as a New Yorker, I prefer to walk.  I need the exercise anyway.

 Loading …

I’ve listed references, aggregators, booking/travel agents, and others on my travel page.  Now I’ve added the following travel tools as well, under Tools of course.  Click here to see the whole list.

MileageManager
It is pretty hard to keep track of your mileage especially when you are a member of several frequent flyer programs.  Some programs even give you hard-to-remember usernames!  The MileageManager can help you keep track of your accounts all in one place.  It provides account summary, elite-status summary, expiration summary, recent activity summary, program activity and bonuses and guides, award schedules, email alerts and more.

SeatGuru
Often times, it is possible to choose your seat on a flight you purchased.  But how would you know what seats to choose without knowing more about the seats of the plane.  SeatGuru gives you the info you need to choose.  It gives you a seating chart of the plane that shows good seats, ‘be aware’ seats, poor seats, seat details, exit locations, galley, lavatory, power ports, closet, and more.

FlightStats
FlightStats is a great tool to have on the day you travel.  You can track flight status, check airport delays and security wait times, rate flights and airports, and more.  It’s free to register.

LongTermParking
LongTermParking makes it easy for you to find off-airport parking that costs a lot less than airport parking.  The best part is that most, if not all off-airport parking listed at LongTermParking offers free shuttle to and from the terminal.  Some even offer free valet service.  Just click on your state and your airport and you get a list of off-airport parking plus discount coupons for additional savings.

TravBuddy
For those who believes “the more, the merrier” adage, this tool is great for you.  TravBuddy allows you to find people traveling to the same destination at the same time as you.  In addition, you can share your experiences by creating a travel blog and write reviews.  It’s free to register.

I’ve been recommending Kayak.com since I learned about it and have it listed on my Travel Resources page, but I think Kayak.com deserves a post solely dedicated to it.

I can’t say enough good things about this travel aggregator.  Kayak.com is not a booking agency.  It is more like a search engine that searches several websites including travel agencies and airlines, eliminating the need to visit numerous websites to find the best deal or the flight that suits your needs.

Features I love about Kayak.com:
Some features require user to log in.  It’s free to sign up.

Kayak searches hundreds of airlines including JetBlue and thousands of hotels and car rentals making it one of the most comprehensive travel search engine.  Click here to see a partial list of websites.

Flexible date search option – You can choose to search up to 3 days before and after the date you specify.

Detailed search results – In addition to the basic information (airport, airline, time, etc), each search result inludes number of seats remaining if available, websites that offer the cheapest flights and their prices, fare code, aircraft, miles, and more.  You can also email, print, save, pin, delete each search result.

Read on…