Larry Ellison, the co-founder and CEO of Oracle, indeed saw this whole netbook/nettop trend coming, 8 years too soon.  In 2000, Ellison thought the time was right for a PC replacement that could access the internet and do little else.  He imagined that all work would be done in the browser and data would be stored on servers somewhere [in the cloud].  Sound familiar?

In our line of work, Evan and I run into lots of strange file types.  Instead of keeping a few different programs to handle all our conversion needs, we let the online service Zamzar take care of it.

Last week, we talked a lot about Twitter (follow us @justplaintech).  Though the blog-o-sphere thinks Twitter is the best thing since sliced bread, many of you may not know what it is.

Despite the praise I had previously bestowed upon Google Notebook, Google has decided to stop development on this unappreciated service.  With Notebook on death row, where do we go now?

Hulu really came into its own this year.  It might not have a huge selection, but everything it does have is quality.

Gazelle is a website that buys back your old gadgets.  It is much more convenient than trying to sell them on eBay.  Read on to see how you can get money for your old stuff.

Adobe Buzzword takes on Google Docs and Zoho. A great online document editor.

One of Google’s lesser known tools, I have found Google Notebook to be very helpful to me in school.  It installs as an extension on Firefox for Windows, Mac, and Linux.  Additionally, it is available as a plugin for Internet Explorer 6.  Unofortunately, there is no support for Internet Explorer 7, Safari, or other browsers.  The point of Google Notebook is that you can save websites, or highlight selections of text, or select an image to save to a central Google server.  There you can organize your web clipping into …

So recently I finagled my way into an invite to the private beta of JamLegend and gave it a try. If you don’t know what it is think Guitar Hero, free, online, and no guitar. I don’t really think this free web service is anything to go crazy about but it has potential. Read on to find out more (including Luofei’s thoughts).

Pandora is a great free web service that lets you create your own radio stations based on either your favorite songs or artists. It’s great for finding new music that you’ll love because it’s based on the Music Genome Project which uses some fancy math to organize music, meaning if you like one song, it’ll tell you another that you’ll probably like too. If you have an iPhone, you might want to give the Pandora app a try, considering its one of the best iPhone apps out there. Make …