Weird but useful websites

Here's a great list of sites I stumbled upon in my many hours of surfing each week. I hope you find them helpful!

* Hard to Find 800 #'s *

When you're having trouble with a product, the toll free support # seems to be the last thing you can find! Enter http://www.hardtofind800numbers.com/ to the rescue.

The tag line is really cool on their site, "You keep them in business. Yet they hide from you. Until now." They boast about having 800 numbers for Microsoft, Amazon, eBay, Paypal and more.

The site makes it easier to avoid adding insult to injury by paying per-minute for the privilege of waiting on hold.

* Rentometer.com *

http://www.rentometer.com/ enables you to compare rental rates on one

property or apartment against rents in the surrounding

area. The site uses a "mashup" with Google Maps to show not

only what other properties rent for, but their exact

locations relative to the property you entered.

The site rates especially useful for homeowners weighing

renting vs. selling their property and need a fast

thumbnail sketch of rental rates in the immediate area. Oh,

and if you currently rent, the site can give you an idea

whether your rental rate puts you at the top or bottom of

the local scale.

* DaFont.com *

Despite that fact that everyone typically only uses 2 or 3

different fonts (Arial and Times New Roman for me), a whole

world of cool and useful fonts exists online. Log on to

http://www.dafont.com/, browse through over 7,000 different fonts

separated by category, and then spice up your greeting

cards, web graphics and more.

Most of the fonts work with both PC and Mac, but the site

assumes you know how to install a font on your computer.

For PC, simply unzip the font in your Windows /Fonts/

directory. For Mac, consult your help files.

* OldVersion.com *

Ever upgraded to a newer version of a software product and

almost instantly regretted it? Log on to http://www.oldversion.com/ and

download one of over 170+ common software programs with

upgrades that left people less than impressed.

For example, need to test your PDF file on an older version

of Acrobat Reader? OldVersion.com lets you dial back the

clock all the way to Acrobat Reader 2.0 (along with

versions 3-7).

* Any Chat - Anywhere *

If you like online chat, I'll bet you maintain more that

one ID on multiple online chat services. Well instead of

installing several different chat software programs or even

installing any software at all, you can use http://www.meebo.com/.

Meebo.com enables you to chat on MSN, AIM, Google Talk, and

Yahoo! with just your web browser and makes a great way to

chat either from either home or on the road.

* Convert File Formats *

http://www.zamzar.com/ makes it easy to convert files from most popular

image, document and video formats into another. Previously

you had to scour the web to find an app to convert each

type of file, but Zamzar.com will convert files up to 100MB

in 4 steps at no charge (and my tests on Word docs and PDF

files proved very promising).

Well worth a look before you buy a piece of software just

to convert a single file from one format to another.