(0|MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC|NOV 08 |www.maximumpc.com
T
he last thing you want to deal with aft er a
devastating fi re is wrangling with an insurance
company. You can make the process less painful
and recoup more of your losses if you have a thor-
ough, up-to-date accounting of all your stuff. Enter the
Insurance Information Institute’s free Home Inventory
soft ware (www.knowyourstuff .org). The app lets you
create inventories for all of the rooms in your home.
You can include information such as each item’s pur-
chase date, serial number, and price, and even a digital
picture if you’re really meticulous. Then make sure you
save a copy of the inventory outside your home!Inventory Your Belongings
Y
ou fi nish down-
loading a fi le,
your computer
pops up a little win-
dow. Your friend logs
online, another mes-
sage pops up. You’re at
20 percent battery life,
another pop-up.
A free applica-
tion called Snarl (www.fullphat.net) collects all
of these notifi cations and spits them out under a
single manageable interface. Plus, there are plugins
available that let you add pop-up support for your
favorite apps: See what song just loaded in iTunes,
what friend just signed on in Pidgin, or what email
just arrived in your Thunderbird inbox.I
f your idea of fi nding someone is doing
a simple Google search, you’ll never get
your $200 a day plus expenses. Even
though your best bet is to burn shoe leather,
there are certainly better tools a mouse
detective can use than a basic search engine.
We always begin our searches at Zabasearch
.com. Where the data comes from we don’t
know, but we oft en don’t have to look much
further than that site.Phone listings are another reliable
resource. We prefer Anywho.com, but
there are a number of other white page
directories online as well. The key is to
search not only for the person’s full name
but also just their last name.Y
ou don’t need to sell your soul to get
your music into the major digital mu-
sic stores. TuneCore (www.tunecore.
com) makes it possible for you to distribute
an album through iTunes, eMusic, Rhapsody,
Napster, and other sites with very little
hassle and minimal expense. It’s the service
Trent Reznor is using to distribute his album
Ghosts. Here’s how it works: You pay $19.
a year for TuneCore to store your uploaded
album, plus a one-time fee of $.99 per song
on the album and $.99 per store you want
your tunes sold through. TuneCore passes
along all the money from your music’s sales
and you retain all the rights.Distribute Your Music
Independently
U
.S. state treasuries are safeguarding $32.87 billion that comes
from a variety of sources, including lost or forgotten tax
rebates, insurance refunds, traveler’s checks, and bank ac-
counts. And some of that cash might be yours. To fi nd out if you are
in for a payday, go to MissingMoney.com. Enter your name and the
site will search a database of 41 states, as well as several Canadian
provinces. MissingMoney also links to databases for states that are
not yet part of the site.Claim Money That’s
Rightfully Yours
Find Even Folks Who Don’t
Want to Be Found
Find Even Folks Who Don’t
Keep Your Pop-Up
Notifications under
One Roof
35 AMAZING
THINGS