I was sent a link to today's website by Eric Willis and at first had no clue what was going on. Once I figured it out, I fell in love with the idea. By getting the correct word association on the page, 10 grains of rice is donated to an international aid agency for hungry people! The site not only is helping to feed people around the world, but they are also helping improve your vocabulary.

So, how can this website afford this? At the bottom of each page, paid advertising is shown. With the money they make off of the advertising, they are able to pay for the rice.

I played until I got to 200 grains of rice, and plan on playing every morning to help out with this great cause....are you going to play?

Today's website: Free Rice

Today, October 15, is known as Blog Action Day. It is a day that blogs around the world talk about making the world a Greener place. Bloggers are supposed to talk about Green Earth in any way they want to, so I have decided to help promote the day in my today's post.

I know we have days throughout the year (like Earth Day) to help the world recognize to "save a tree" or to recycle, but why should there be days like this when it should be happening every day of the year? It seems that every year, more "green" days are popping up on the calendar, and that is excellent. Hopefully there will be a day in the future when we all take care of our planet and these types of days will no longer be needed!

One thing that I noticed on the web this weekend were people all over the world signing up to help clean up parks, beaches, trails, etc through Google Maps - International Cleanup Weekend. Google created a map on their site where you could select an area and have people meet up for a clean up! The site was intended for this past weekend, but it looks like you can still use it for more meet ups.

Asking people to do the extreme and change their lifestyle to make the world perfectly green is not possible, but asking them to change a few things here and there, a little at a time, is a great start!

Today's website: Blog Action Day

This past week, I have seen a bunch of billboards around town that are promoting Google's 411 service. I did not hear about this in the news, so I had to jump on Google's site to see what this is all about. Amazing! Google has created a 411 (company information) service that you can call at any time. It is 100% free to use, and they even give you a 1-800 number to use so you will not be charged long distance. I called up the number this morning and was really impressed by the quality of the call.

The first thing asked is what City/State you are looking up. After that, you have to say the company name or the category you are looking for. I tried my sister's company, and it found it no problem. It offered to connect me immediately, if I wanted more detail about the company, or if I wanted the company data to be sent to me in the form of a text message. How awesome is this! Of course I asked for a text message, and things got even better. The company name, address, and their phone number was sent. They also included a link to a map image to show where the address is located. This truly is really well done.

Another feature that was nice was the ability to type in content using your phone's dial pad. I have a Pocket PC phone, and was not able to use my QWERTY keyboard, but using the number pad worked perfectly.

This is going to be a number I will not be able to forget, and will be something that I pass along to everyone that I talk to. It is a really nice service, and will save you some money if you have used other 411 services in the past. I hope you enjoy!

Today's website: Google 411