Few things (family tree, backup et al)

I have a few things to write about. So here goes:

1. Tribalpages: I have setup my family tree here. You can check out a sample family tree of the British royal family. After I added photos to each person, the views got really interesting. It acts like a address book too. I suggest you give it a try.

2. External hard-disk: I once heard on Leo Laporte's radio show, the importance on having a backup solution at home. I recently got to implement one at home. My digital videos and pictures collection absolutely needed it. The question was "What if my system crashes and I lose everything?". The company built external hard-disk solutions have smaller hard disks and high prices. I had a friend of mine suggest how I can build one myself (Thanks Suresh). I went to Micro Center and got a internal IDE hard drive for a cost of $120 ($60 mail-in rebate). I then bought a hard disk drive casing for $25. For a final cost $85, I had a 200GB external hard disk solution. Setting up the casing was pretty easy, just put in the hard disk and connect the cables. It works like a USB flash drive. You get a new drive letter and it is simple copy and paste operation to backup the files.

3. Name search: If someone knows your name, wants to find out where you are and what you are up to, what do they do? I was thinking, they would do a Google search. But Google search results are random and not a ideal way to do this. If you don't have a online presence (homepage etc), you will never show up. The next option is to use a website that has tons of members. Yahoo is one such. I have now updated my profile so that I show up on a search like that on members.yahoo.com. There is a check box on the profile that has to be checked so that it shows up on a search like this. Now the question is, who is going to bother search for me? :)

4. Free postal service to India: Free online postal service is one that provides a e-mail to paper post service to reach people in India without e-mail access. Alcacrity housing in Chennai once had a service like this. Now that site is down. I went searching and found a list of websites providing this service. Indianservice is one that stood-out in the list. Has anyone tried it?

5. Yahoo Answers and Ask: If you have not check these yet, you should. Ask has an XML feed.

6. Definitions: Did you know Google can be used as a online-dictionary?