How much does it cost to wash your hands?

As much as I appreciate the concern for the public to maintain cleanliness, seeing printouts and plaques like this just makes me shudder - and it should do that to you, too. In the same way that we don't think about how many plastic bottles the world goes through every time we crack open a new Evian, we don't consider how much society pays for little (oft-ignored!) messages like this.

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Business Expense Tracking with Android (um, for free)

I just tested / established a convenient way for tracking business expenses and keeping receipts digitally. For free. There's a for-pay option for Android which is even easier called ProOnGo, but you'd have to pay $5 per month (or more) for a useable plan on it.

Anyway, this is what's needed:

Sign up for an account at www.xpenser.com - this is free for now and will eventually have pro features for pay.
Install PixelPipe Uploader (not just the Picasa one) on your phone. Then set up a pipe to email r@xpenser.com and make sure the email's coming from you, not PixelPipe. (this is all specified when defining the pipe) If this is all you're going to use Pixelpipe for, then you can set this pipe as default - but I wouldn't, because PixelPipe can be used for sooooo much more.
Finally, when you get a receipt, take a picture of it with your regular phone camera. Pixelpipe will pop up, and you set the title to "{category} {price} {notes}" and send.

Pretty slick.

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Net Neutrality: MORE regulation?

Image via Wikipedia
A good idea, such as freedom of speech, is not made better when codified into legalese. We already have in existence the established right to net neutrality in our First Amendment. When you consider the already-proven, criminal ineptitude of government agencies such as the FDA (see: Monsanto, aspartame, hydrogenation, et al), or ICC*, one should seriously consider the act of giving specified powers of regulation to agencies that quite likely will be influenced by major ISPs, once passed.

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