>> Welcome to a special edition of Loaded. We're off
for the holidays, but we've put together a special show
for you about how to save time using the Internet. I'm
Natalie Del Conti with CNET TV, and it's time to get
loaded. We all know the Internet can be a big waste of
time, but it can also save you time. We've picked out
some great web sites to keep in mind just to make your
day a little more efficient. Spreeder is a web site
that I use every day. Reading news articles on the web
can take a long time, but you can speed that process up
by using Spreeder. It let's you copy the text of any
article into a text box. Once you click play, it shows
you the article one word at a time. This prevents your
mind from sounding the words out which is the basic
technique for speed reading. It trains your brain to
read and retain more articles a whole lot faster. Try
it for yourself. You will never be without it again.
Waiting at a restaurant for a table is a pain, but you
can prevent this if you use Opentable.com. Open Table
let's you make restaurant reservations at restaurants
around the country. Every time you honor a reservation
you earn points. If you accumulate enough points you
can get gift certificates to participating restaurants.
So not only do you get a table faster, you also get free
food. Remembering passwords can be a nightmare. You
don't want to use the same password for all of your
accounts, but how in the world do you remember all of
them. You can avoid password disfunction by using Open
ID. This is a web service that let's you create one
user name and password and then use that I.D. all over
the Internet. Web sites have to accept Open ID, but if
they do, you don't have to keep signing up for new
identities all over the place. It's really convenient.
Research shows that we spend nearly 70% of our time on
line going to web sites that we've already been to
before. So basically we're repeating ourselves over and
over and over again. You can stop surfing from site to
site by creating a personal homepage. I like Net Vibes,
but you can also iGoogle or My Yahoo. This allows you
to aggregate all of the basic information you look for
every single day, such as news, stocks, weather,
traffic, e-mail, and more. You have a hard time
remembering things? If so you may want to check out
Alerts.com. This is a site that let's you set
notifications for anything And everything. It will send
you reminders over e-mail, instant message, or even
voice mail. Want to be notified about when news comes
out about your favorite band, or do you need a text
message about your mom's birthday. You can set
reminders for anything and everything, and then
customize how those alerts will be delivered to you.
That wraps up your special edition of Loaded. Hopefully
you've learned a thing or two. If you have other web
sites that you use to save you time, send them our way
at loaded@cnet.com thank you for watching. I am Natalie
Del Conti for CNET TV, and you've just been loaded.
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