Tech DC – home and office computer support for D.C., Virginia & Maryland
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Ikea Hacker
Ikea Hacker is a popular website showing projects where Ikea furniture has been repurposed or modified somehow to make it more useful. Turn a CD holder into a dish rack, a door into a computer table, a cabinet into a computer server enclosure, or a metal box into cable/power supply holder to declutter.
The D.C., Virginia, Maryland area has some of the best culinary diversity in the country. These web tools can help you find some good eats.
Finding Restaurants & Reviews
Chow.com has Chowhound reviews of local restaurants by members. Membership is free.
DonRockwell.com is a forum on local D.C. and Baltimore area restaurants, farmers markets, and food events.
eGullet.org has forums specific to D.C., Virginia, Maryland dining and cooking.
VegDC has a list of local vegetarian friendly restaurants. HappyCow.net has vegetarian restaurants worldwide.
Washingtonian has the best known local reviews and news on D.C. metro area restaurants. They also have a search with Restaurant Finder.
The Washington Post has a Food & Dining section.
Booking a Table
OpenTable.com has a D.C. area section for booking restaurants over the Internet.
Whether you’re buying, selling, or just want to know what’s going on, it’s easier than ever to follow real estate online.
Finding Comparables
Zillow provides a property value estimate based on neighboring comparables and their sale prices. It was started in 2005 by the people who started Expedia.com because they were frustrated that these tools were only available to real estate agents.
Real Estate Listings
Google recently added Real Estate to their Maps option. Google Base also recently began listing Real Estate with full search capabilities.
Long and Foster has been one of the most popular sites to search MLS listed properties.
Credit Report
Before buying a house, you need to know your credit score. You should also check it occasionally just to be sure that there are no errors. It is not uncommon to find that someone has impersonated you or that the credit agency just got something wrong.
AnnualCreditReport.com allows you to request your credit report for free once every 12 months from each of the nationwide consumer credit reporting companies: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.
Mortages
Bankrate.com provides a good starting point for finding mortgage rates.
If you are in the Military or part of a Military family, consider Pentagon Federal Credit Union or the Navy Federal Credit Union. There are local offices in Washington D.C., Virginia, and Maryland.
Realtors
If you understand the comparables and have done the search yourself, you should consider a low-cost realtor.
Both ZipRealty and PenFed Realty (for Military personnel) both offer low fees or cash back.
Real Estate News
The Washington Post – Real Estate section provides real estate news and stories in D.C., Virginia, and Maryland.
Everyone in Washington D.C. is talking about the government takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. They’re headquartered here in Northern Virginia. People who work there are anxious about a big management shakeup.
If you’re interested in some historical perspective on Freddie and Fannie, there is a podcast called My History Can Beat Up Your Politics. Its last episode talks about the origins and life of these companies. iTunes users can subscribe to it here.
Bruce Carlson of My History Can Beat Up Your Politics describes this podcast:
Not everything from the New Deal lasted. Some of the programs were abandoned in a couple of years, others lasted four or five, some until after World War II. Social Security remains. Fannie Mae, also known as the Federal National Mortgage Association, is a legacy of the New Deal. One that is now in trouble. A look at Fannie Mae, which for the first time since 1968 has come under Federal Government stewardship. And a quick contrast between the Bush Admin’s suprisingly muscular government actions and those of the New Deal.
The Washington Post writes Even Spies Go to Trade Conferences about yesterday’s Open Source Conference 2008 organized by the DNI (Director of National Intelligence) at Washington D.C.’s Ronald Reagan Building. The “open source” here does not refer to open source code for developers, but to open sourcing of intelligence by using the Internet and other publicly available sources to gather information.
Unlike Cold War-era spies, intelligence analysts and government policymakers can no longer rely primarily on cloak-and-dagger operations to keep track of global threats. Now, like businesses and other organizations, they’re increasingly turning to the torrents of information available on the Internet and through other non-classified sources.
Booz Allen Hamilton offered a service called InTrack to help collect, monitor and process data collected from the Internet and other sources. LexisNexis promoted a system for sending automated warnings of trouble abroad. There were companies selling translation systems, Web search tools and data-mining supercomputers. One of the more popular booths was Google’s.
The Google booth displayed a high-definition video of a virtual car driving through an exact digital representation of San Francisco — streets, buildings and all. But Google exhibitors said they were not allowed to tell a reporter why the company was there or what it did for intelligence or anything else.