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Use Burpee to Deepen Grow That Green Thumb

I was recently asked a question about how to grow different herbs and spices in someone’s home. My memory immediately flashed back to my early childhood when I would thumb through the pages of my grandmother’s Burpee seed catalog.

burpee-seeds-plants

Burpee has done a bit of growing of their own lately and are now filling the Internet with their wealth of horticulture resources and growing tips.

As with their paper catalogs at my grandmother’s house, the Burpee website provides information on flowers, herbs, vegetables, gardening supplies and a cornucopia of tips and tricks for getting the most out of your gardens and flower beds.

Some of the information you can rake from the pages of the Burpee website are what items will grow the best in your area of the country. Just enter your zip code and you get your growing zone. Match that growth zone with all the plants that grow well for you in that zone.

Along with giving you all the information you need, the Burpee website does exactly what the old catalog did so well too. Allows you to purchase anything you need at your convenience from home.

Uncover some new passion and hobby that’s been in your yard all this time. Visit Burpee and get that thumb of yours a deeper shade of green while you’re at it.

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Send Documents to Evernote Quickly

I’ve been using Evernote more and more lately to try and keep my blogging life and other business objectives straight. Working with it today I was kind of came across a new functionality that’s existed before but I tweaked it a bit to work more with how I process information.

evernote-import

Basic Evernote functionality provides the ability to import files into your notebooks for easy management. By default Evernote will import PDF’s, images, text files and audio files. You can import folders or files as needed or have Evernote monitor a specific folder and automatically import files from that folder.

I decided to combine an earlier tip on customizing your right-click “Send To” function with this Evernote import function and see how it works. I created a folder in “My Documents” called “My Evernote“. I then used the Evernote import wizard to setup Evernote to regularly check this folder and pull in any files that it can into my specified, default notebook.

All I need to do to send a file into Evernote now is to right-click on a file that Evernote will read and use my customized send-to routine to in essence send it directly to Evernote. So far it’s worked fairly well with the PDF’s I’ve tried. I really wish I could send any file, specifically Microsoft Office files, but we’ll see how this goes. Using CutePDF, it’s easy enough to save any document to a PDF file.

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To TiVo or Not To TiVo…That Is the Question

I’ve been a TiVo subscriber since Christmas of 2004. I was a fan of the service before that, but had just never purchased a unit yet. For Christmas 2004 my wife and I decided that we would get a TiVo and service as a gift to each other. Perhaps one of the best gifts we’ve ever received from one another.

tivo-series-2-80hr-dvr

The challenge recently is that through my migration from Comcast and now to AT&T U-verse, I already have a DVR that’s included with my cable TV package. I think the TiVo functionality still trounces the other DVR functionality, but TiVo has become increasingly more difficult to integrate with these other services.

I just can’t bring myself to discontinue my TiVo membership. I’ve been a member for so long I’ve got an amazing monthly rate. Compared to what I would pay if I had to start over, I’ve made the decision that it’s cheaper to keep it each month than to discontinue it and miss it if I ever changed my mind.

I recently decided to setup my TiVo at my parent’s house since they got a new 42" plasma, HD TV. The user-friendly interface would be perfect for my parents. In the process I determined that my existing TiVo Series 2 unit has died.

Here’s my task, do I take advantage of some of the deals on a refurbished unit and setup the device for my parents? Is there an easy way to integrate the TiVo functionality in with my existing AT&T U-verse setup? I’d love to hear some feedback from anyone that’s using TiVo with U-verse. What new features and functionality do you incorporate with your TiVo to extend the usefulness of the device onto your home network or computing tasks?

Image: Product image from TiVo website