By Scott Merrill, TechCrunch – April 22, 2010 at 06:00PM
I often wonder if plumbers reach a point in their career, after cleaning clogged drain after clogged drain, that they begin to hate plumbing. They hate pipes. They hate plumber’s putty. They hate all the tricks they’ve learned over the years, and they hate the need to have to learn tricks. It’s plumbing, for goodness sake: pipes fitting together and substances flowing through them. How complicated can it be?
I hate computers. No, really, I hate them. I love the communications they facilitate, I love the conveniences they provide to my life, and I love the escapism they sometimes afford; but I actually hate the computers themselves. Computers are fragile, unintuitive things — a hodge-podge of brittle, hardware and opaque, restrictive software. Why?
You want to use secure passwords, but you can’t remember random numbers and letters. You’d also like a fail-safe plan, in case your computer password system goes bad. PasswordCard provides the best of both worlds, offering strong passwords with a 
There’s more to Google Maps than a place you double-check your directions. Google’s data-stuffed site offers a lot of helpful tools for vacationers, spreadsheet nerds, bikers, and others. Today we’re digging into Google’s data-rich geo-tool and pulling out some helpful lesser-known features.
It’s a subtle little thing, but clicking the star icon next to a location listing in Google Maps is a real time saver. On Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian phones—and, presumably, iPhones in some future update—you can pulled up “Starred Items” when you’re plugging in the address you’re getting directions to. It’s a lot faster than thumb typing, and if you’re assembling a temporary list of places to go, starred items can be a disposable checklist.
It’s easy to miss, between the four-point navigation tool and the zoom slider. But 
Want to get around a new city without having to pull out a smartphone or big folding map at every other intersection? 
Maps doesn’t get everything right every time. If Maps has a marker that’s off, a wrong number, or a dead web site listed, you can sometimes fix it yourself. Click the pin for an address, hit the link for “More,” and select “Edit Details.” It won’t work on businesses that have “claimed” their listing through the 
Google Maps’ 
If you’re into the 
Wherever you go, someone has been there before, and probably snagged a picture, too. So if you want to make sure you recognize a particular destination from the road, or want to see what the fuss is about any old place, find it in Maps, click on its pin and access Street View, then look for the Photos button to appear in the upper-right corner when you’re virtually facing the place in Street View. As you “walk” around, you’ll find different perspectives taken from various spots, and possibly some historical photos that have been properly geo-tagged, too, from Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, and Panoramio. (
If you’re searching for a particular place—a street name, a business, or other landmark—you can click on a marker and hit the “Search nearby” link to find coffee, gas, banks, or whatever else you need. What if you don’t have a place to pin down, but want to generally browse an area? Right click anywhere on a Google map, click “What’s Nearby?” in the box that pops up, and Google will create a pin based on a rough street address estimate, or with precise GPS coordinates. From there, you can click on “Search Nearby” in the box that appears in the left-hand pane, and search around without worrying about specifics.
When you’re lost and out of mobile internet territory, that’s when directions are probably a really helpful thing. If you can still eke out an SMS message, you can text GOOGLE with a message formatted as “Directions A to B,” substituting a town, ZIP code, or street address for A and B. Google will hit you back with the same directions it would provide via Maps, and your friends will say that you’ve saved this road trip.
Spreadsheets are the best way to gather and organize information in standard form. If you’ve got a whole host of options to keep track of in different locations, the clever Maps/spreadsheet mashup