I get emails frequently asking a basic, "Ron is there a site (or application) that I can use to do…?" You can fill in whatever you are wondering about for the last part of that question. Today I thought I would mention a few of the more popular requests.
Many people have several email accounts. If you do not that is fine but I suggest you have three: one that you only use for online purchases, one to sign up for sites (where you will get the largest amount of spam) and finally the one you use for family and friends. The request is that they want to read and send from all of their accounts using one application. This would be done in lieu of going to Gmail.com, Outlook.com or Yahoo.com, etc. and logging in and out of individual addresses. There is an application I can highly recommend called, "Thunderbird" which was developed by Mozilla. Yes, the same folks who also own the Firefox browser.
This is a very good email application that will allow multiple accounts, rule creation, folders and all of the other things you think about for your email needs. Of course, it is free. Do you even need to ask me?
Another one is, "Ron I think there was a recall on my _________ where can I find out for sure?" There is a government recall site, Recalls.gov that you should check out. Here you can search for recalls on your cars, trucks, tires, boats, drugs and most anything else you can think of. How much information you will find depends on what you are looking for. For example I found a recall on a car yesterday regarding an "Oil Pressure Switch" with details describing what it is, what caused the issue, and what could happen with a failure as well as who to contact to get it fixed. They also have links to use if you feel as though you need to file a complaint about some item.
Two that generated many emails from a couple of recent WSVA Radio shows are Coffitivity and Rainy Mood. I personally do not understand the fascination with these two but apparently many of you have a need to be somewhere else. Basically, when you go to the Coffitivity site you get murmuring, clinking, coffee shop sounds. The site promotes that, 
"Research shows it is pretty hard to be creative in a quiet space." To that end this free site offers you the slight hubbub of sound. I will say that I work best in a local bistro when I write…this column to be exact. However, I like drinking and eating their foods and not just listening to background noise. Rainy Mood is similar but instead of coffee shop noises you get a nice gentle rainstorm in the background. One of the better things about both of these is that you can control how loud the sounds are.
If you find this article interesting shoot me an email and let me know. I can continue with a few more suggestions I have made to readers in the past.
