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It’s 10:30 pm, and I’m sitting on a baggage cart on the tarmac of the Monterey, California airport. My U. S. Airways flight was set to depart and then an engine warning light went on—this was two hours ago. The reason we’re all on the tarmac is that a fire alarm went off, so we had to evacuate the terminal.

Still, this is better than the last time I flew on U. S. Airways. That time the one of the plane’s engines died, and we made an “unscheduled stop” in Kansas City and then had to wait four hours for another plane to fly in. What’s all of the got to do with this entry? Nothing except that I’ve had two hours to compile a short list of cool stuff.

It’s been one of those days. This afternoon I spoke for my buddies at Cisco. Just before the speech, I discovered that the recently dry-cleaned pants that I packed were my son’s, not mine, so I had to give the speech wearing jeans. One high point: Reggie Jackson was on the flight too, but he left after two hours of waiting. He was giving out autographs—though he didn’t ask me for mine. :-) If I get to Las Vegas anytime soon, I’m speaking for the Entrepeneurs’ Organization.

  • “25 Tools to Compile an In-Depth Dossier on a Competitors’ Site.” This article contains description and links for you to scope out your competition’s web site. It covers topics such as ownership, traffic, links, trademarks, and browser compatibility.

  • “The Web Entrepreneur’s Customer Service Toolbox: 100 Hacks and Resources.” This is a compilation of useful tools and services to maintain a high-level of customer service. These tools help you keep in touch, run meetings, do accounting, provide support, and solicit feedback.

  • MeVu. This site enables you to create a page of links to all your web presences. This means that people can go to one location for your profiles on Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn; pictures in Flickr and PhotoBucket; videos in YouTube; and musings in multiple blogs. Here is a sample.

  • Catalog Choice. This is a not-for-profit that helps you reduce the amount of tree-killing, dump-filling, money-wasting catalogs that you receive (19 billion catalogs are printed each year in the U. S.). You denote which catalogs are coming to you, and Catalog Choice tells the companies to back off. It’s a free service.

  • Best Book Combo. The site searches the catalogs of AbeBooks.com, Amazon.com, BetterWorld.com, and Alibris.com and determines the best total price (that is, including shipping and handling) of a book. For example, the AbeBooks price for The Art of the Start was $17.54 compared to Amazon.com’s $18.20.

Incidentally, this is a stock photo, not the MRY terminal, from iStockphoto by “Sparky2000.”