You and your friends want to do an hour of power, but now one has the time or the desire to create a power hour CD.  Well, don’t worry.  Our Internet friend is not lazy and will glady help out.

What’s the site: DrinkingPartner.com

What is it: With DrinkingPartner you can stream power hour music. No need to download or install anything. Stream sixty one-minute clips from the 80’s, 90’s or throw those shots back to a stream of Dave Matthews songs. Even if you don’t have friends, you can still use this site for a solo power hour. With DrinkingPartner.com, you always have a drinking partner.

Everyone these days fancies themselves a writer.

Well, at least I do.  And my neighbor.  And my sister.  And the person who lives below me.  A number of people I went to law school with.  All those people in the coffee shops with computers.  Or journals.  Or iPhones.  Or coffee.  That Tom Clancy guy.  Oh, and that Twilight person too.  The one who writes those vampire books.  About vampires.  Who, apparently, love humans.  Not for eating.  For loving.

Well, hell, I say, here you go, Everyone.  Knock yourselves out.

The site: www.booksie.com.

What it is: Yes, it’s a site just for you, Everyone.  It’s straight forward.  You write something.  You post it.  Others read it.  You get feedback and exposure.  If you’re good enough (yeah right), you get published.  Or you can build a fan club.  Agents love those.  Or if you’ve finally become bitter and jaded and angry and have decided that writing’s impossible, here’s the great thing.  You get to be a reader… I mean, a critic.  So tear up someone else’s work.  Leave mine… I mean yours… alone.

There you have it.  A site that combines the fact that everyone’s a writer with that old saying, everyone’s a critic.  So go ahead, get published.  I dare you.  I’m not bitter.  Or anything.

The Salesman: (Entering before Joey can say anything) Good afternoon, are you the decision maker of the house?

Joey: Uhhhh. (He’s not sure)

The Salesman: Do you ah, currently own a set of encyclopedias?

Joey: No! No. But ah, try the classifieds, people sell everything in there.

The Salesman: Actually, I’m not buying. I’m selling. Let me ask you one question. Do your friends ever have a conversation and you just nod along even though you’re not really sure what they’re talking about?

(We go into a flashback sequence with Joey remembering some of those times.)

[Cut to Monica and Rachel’s apartment, all are there.]

Ross: …I’m telling you it’s totally unconstitutional.

Monica, Chandler, Phoebe, and Rachel: Oh yeah, I totally agree.

(Joey just nods his head.)

[Cut to Central Perk, the entire gang is there.]

Monica: …I think he deserves a Nobel Prize. (Joey starts to nod ‘Yes.’)

All: Nooo!! (Joey quickly stops nodding his head.)

And scene!

Poor Joey.  In the end Joey could only afford to buy one encyclopedia from the salesman.  He decided to go with the V and read about volcanoes.

Had Joey enlisted the help of our friend the Internet, he would have been directed to a bottomless vault of information and educational materials.  The Internet would have let Joey know that everything he needs to know and everything he doesn’t need to know can be found at one particular site.

What’s the site: http://www.openculture.com

What is it: Open Culture.com is a clearing house of lectures, audio books, videos on a wide range of topics. There are over 250 free courses. You can study and learn about anything from Archaeology to Zymurgy. Check out the site and get started on your education. (Soon you will know what Zymurgy is). And of course, this is all free.

Download the course “Dante in Translation” for your commute to work and carpool with Alighieri. (Soon you will find that delightfully droll.)

That plate of broccoli looks good, so does that hamburger. Which one should I have? Hmm. Need a little help from the Internet to decide? Ok, choosing between vegetables and junk food might be easy. What about when you want to choose between a Big Mac or Whopper. You might want to choose between that red delicious apple or a naval orange. The Internet can help you compare apples to oranges.

What’s the site: www.twofoods.com

What is it: TowFoods helps you to compare your culinary options.  The site will tell you which one has more calories, fat, carbs and protein.  You can compare generic food types or brand names like Whopper and Big Mac.  The site will give you the information you need, what you do with it is between you and your waistline.

You can’t feel your leg.  You’re pretty sure you have deep vein thrombosis (DVT).  You are stuck in one of the worst seats on the plane for your 7-hour long, cross-country flight.  With the help of our friend the Internet, this situation could have been avoided.

The site: www.seatguru.com

What is it: With seat guru you can find the best seat before you fly.  Select from the database the kind of plane on which you booked your flight.  (Note the type of vessel is available at the airlines Web site or on your plane ticket.)  Seat guru will provide the seating chart for your flight with information on seat width, pitch, and comfort.  The site offers:

• Detailed seatmap graphics
• In-depth comments about seats with limited recline, reduced legroom, and misaligned window
• Color-coding to help identify superior and substandard seats
• In-seat power port locations
• Galley, lavatory, exit row, closet locations and more

Halloween is around the corner. You are probably shopping for the perfect mask to complete the costume for your fright night doppelganger. Don’t forget about your phone. You can put a mask on your phone’s caller ID so that it too can assume an alternative identity and get in on the fun.

The site: www.spoofcard.com

What it is: Spoofcard.com allows you to mask your caller ID and have show up on the caller ID of the person you are calling any number you want. If the recipient of your call has a name attached to the number you choose to have display, that name attached to the number will show up.

With the power to assume an identity of your choice when call, comes the responsibility to not abuse this power. Use it to have some fun and play harmless pranks on your friends. You can use it to call a client and make it appears as if you are calling from your office so that your personal phone number doesn’t show up.

Books.  DVDs.  Clothes.  Saliva.  Wives.  Whatever.

If all that (actually, any of that) sounds fun to you, here’s a club for you.

Well, not the wife part.  Or the saliva part.  They have other sites for that.  Sick-o.

The site: titletrader.com.

What it is: The deal.  You join the club, you list your books, movies, your whateva (again, not your wife–that part was a jk).  Once you get notified by that electric friend of ours, the WWW, that someone wants one of your items, you mail it through this thing called snail mail and viola–you get a Request Credit, which you can swap for any other item on the site.  Full Metal Jacket.  Dirty Dancing.  Armageddon.    (You can also buy Request Credits with real money or wigwams if something comes up that you really want but don’t have the points to request yet.)

The more you send, the more you receive.  Like joy.

Spilled coffee on my keyboard.  Damn.

I have a pool and the water’s getting cloudy.  Now what?

It’s getting near Christmas time and you know what all that means… yup, Christmas sap everywhere.  Rugs.  Hands.  Underwear.  F!

I really have a lot of blood on my hands.  And so it got on my clothes.  Stuff?

I’ve never been the clean one among my friends.  So what do I do?

Lucky for me there’s a site that tells me how to fix all of these problems.

The site: www.howtocleananything.com.

What it does: I hope we don’t need to explain this site.

Now, if only our friend the web would figure out a way to do the actually cleaning.

I like to drop things off.  Kids at pools.  Unmarked bags in garbage cans.  Friends from still-moving vehicles onto curbs.  My laundry at my girlfriend’s.  Large files into cyberspace.

Life’s just easier that way.  Especially, the putting large files into cyberspace part.

The site: Drop.IO

What it is: With Drop.io you can upload files as large as 100 megabytes. As expected, this is a free service.  With drop.io’s fast transfer rate, you can upload a large file quickly, get a url for it’s location that is password-protected with a password of your choice. Then you simply email that url and the password you chose to your intended recipient.  This is a great, fast and easy way to share files between friends and colleagues.  When you need to make a large secure drop, try drop.io.

Don’t worry, this is not the kind of “drop” where you having to watch to see if you are being followed.

The dance.

You’re standing on foot, then the next.  One foot.  The  next.  One foot.  The next.  You’re kind of bouncing.  Clenching those core muscles.  One foot; the other.  One foot; the other.   You’re not sure if you’re going to make it.  Clench, step.  Clench, step.

You go into a store, hopefully.  Despite the fact that a big sign hangs over that door with those 5 words.  “Restrooms.  Are.  For.  Customers.  ONLY.”

Fine.

At this point you’re willing to buy something.  Anything.  A bottle of water.  A muffin.  A flat screen tv.

A child.

You’re almost there.  You can feel it.  Clench, step.  But then.  Then there’s a sign hanging on the door.  Some more words that mean business.  “Out.  Of.  Order.”  Or maybe you realize that you don’t have any money on you.  “Credit.  Cards.  Not.  Accepted.”  You’re hopping faster now.

So comes a site.

The site: www.mizpee.com.

What it is: MizPee will find you the closest, cleanest toilet in your area.  You can add and review toilets–and for those extra long trips, you can even play toilet trivia.  Targeted for “the needs of urban women, mothers of young children, sufferers of Crohn’s or Colitis,” keep in mind, as in the words of that children’s book, everyone poops.  Oh, and she’s available on the mobile now.

Help keep your city clean; save the dancing for the dance floors.