Are you watching the housing market and wondering what might happen next? Have you been trying to sell or are you hoping to qualify for a loan to buy your first home? Or maybe you’re just hoping you can continue to make your mortgage payments until the economy stabilizes.

With housing prices so low, this would be a great buyer’s market except for the difficulty in securing financing. Rather than doing nothing, this is a great time to do research and figure out what neighborhood you might like once our economy is in better shape. That’s what I’m doing by keeping an eye on homes and neighborhoods at Cyberhomes.

This one-stop home finding site can narrow down your search by zip code or street address, minimum and maximum price, bedrooms, bathrooms and even foreclosure sales. You can search for specific schools and there’s even rental listings. The reading room has some very informative articles including A Homeowner’s Guide to the Financial Crisis.

Unless you’re in the market for St. Martin villa rentals or your own private island in the Pacific, you’ll find exactly what you need at Cyberhomes.com. The site covers buying, selling, renting and even moving. This really is a one-stop site for house hunting.

Most of the sites I blog about here have the potential to appeal to a wide audience. I’ve only occasionally mentioned any type of spiritual site. Although I have a spiritual blog for those who are interested in my meditations, it isn’t really a “review” site. I mention this so that if spirituality with a Christian or Catholic bent offends you, just skip this post.

My grandmother said the Rosary every day. My dad keeps his Rosary near his bed; he can’t remember all the prayers to say it anymore. I’ve always loved saying the Rosary but I can never remember the mysteries for each decade. The Virtual Rosary has solved that problem for me.

There are two important parts to the Virtual Rosary site. First, the Virtual Rosary is a free computer program that runs on Windows, from 95 to Vista and Palm. (Mac and Pocket PC versions are not yet available.) The software detects the day of the week and walks you through the Rosary with the appropriate Mysteries for that day. It even includes the Luminous mysteries, which I just love. The site also offers additional modules so you can use other meditations, change the graphics or install other languages.

The other part of the Virtual Rosary site is integrated into the VR software. Prayercast is where you can enter your prayer request so that others praying the Rosary can add your intentions to their own prayers that day. At the bottom of the Virtual Rosary software, you’ll see a new prayer request for each Hail Mary.

If you’re like me, you have parents who don’t really need anything for birthdays or Christmas. I’m always trying to find something to give them. Oh, sure, I’ve bought pretty picture frames and filled them with pictures of the family as a gift. I’ve picked up a special book here and there or a favorite movie that one of them would like to see again. This year I’m installing the Virtual Rosary on their computer so that my dad can read the prayers that he no longer remembers. In fact, I think I’ll make a point of saying the Rosary with him at least once every week, too.

Prayer is powerful.

With winter just around the corner, cold weather lovers are probably looking forward to that first snowflake. (The rest of us are still dreaming of swimming pools and sunny days.) My kids, especially, love this time of year. When they were younger and fall lingered too long, they’d sit around cutting out paper snowflakes.

If your little one isn’t quite ready for scissors or you just want to avoid the mess right now, you can still have snowflake fun with the Make-A-Flake site. Just click on Make Your Snowflake and when you see the scissors, place them over the paper. The center of the scissors will turn green and then you start cutting.

You can undo a cut or redo one. You can preview your flake and save it or go back and cut some more. You can save it as a jpg or download the eps file. And if you click on Gallery, you can see your flake online.

As you prepare for your holiday celebrations, dishing up holiday appetizers and wrapping gifts, bring up Make-A-Flake site to keep the kids busy. They have a blast creating unique designs and you won’t have any little pieces of paper to clean up when they’re done!

Everyone knows that Google set out to create digital copies of every book for searching or whatever. And then there was some (expected) uproar over copyright. Laws are laws, you know. But did you know that there are websites that offer the full text of many books and that it’s perfectly legal? Once such site is The Literary Network.

This site offers the full text of over 1900 classic books and over 3000 short stories and poems. Its database of Quotations numbers over 8500. You can find more than 250 authors listed here, each with a bio page and a searchable collection of works.

I know some people would rather fill their hard drive with music or video; I prefer books. With the Literary Network, I don’t have to download a thing since it’s all right there, completely searchable. When I find sites like this, I can’t help but think how useful this would have been when I was in school, back in the dark ages. I imagine any student or teacher would love to bookmark this for future reference. As a parent, I know I’ll be hanging on to this site for the kids.

Sometimes I wonder how many tech people (aka geeks) have college degrees and how many are self-taught. I’m not putting down a college degree; I wish I had one. With technology, though, it seems there’s a lot to be said for hands-on education. I taught myself enough to be hired by an ISP in 1999. The owners at the ISP were very generous with their knowledge and I found myself learning even more than I ever thought possible.

Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that I learn best by just rolling up my sleeves and jumping in to whatever project interests me. From xhtml and css to taking a screwdriver to my tower, I learn by doing. While I’m sure I would do well in college classes, I’d much rather find online tutorials or the cool programming lesson at HacketyHack.

Hackety Hack is a free download that walks you through lessons (currently) on Ruby. Kids are using Hackety Hack but there’s no reason why adults wanting to pick up new skills can’t use it as well. It’s a quick download and is written in easy to understand language.

Part of the “bylaws” of Hackety Hack state:

• Beginners should be greeted to Hackety Hack by a cartoon character. (For the sake of argument, let’s call this character: Hacky Mouse.)
• Also, helpful sentences. Preferably short and with a period.
• Hackety Hack is fundamentally a browser and a programming language. For now, Gecko and Ruby.
• I’m only using Ruby because I know it. Hopefully, more languages can be added!
• Again, this isn’t about Ruby, it’s about simply offering a place for plainspeople to tinker with code.

My kids love video games but I’m hopeful that installing Hackety Hack on their computers and bookmarking the site for them will encourage at least one of my kids to give programming a shot. Surely, I can’t be the only geek in this family.

I’m still going to pick up a few books on programming since I like having a hard copy of whatever I’m learning. (And because I’d rather hold a book while I’m soaking in the jacuzzi than a laptop.) Hackety Hack is perfect, though, for hands on experience and for capturing a kids’ interest.

If you use a Windows based computer, you probably know all about protecting yourself from Malware, worms and other nasty stuff. It isn’t that other OSes aren’t vulnerable, they are. It’s partially because Windows is more widely used so those wishing to create chaos are naturally drawn to Windows.

Anyone who has been infected by one of these exploits knows the signs. Your computer slows down. Your interent connection slows down or gets flaky. Windows pop up. The machine shuts down. And those are just some of the things you may notice; other behaviors may be happening underground that are even more dangerous. Your files may be erased, sent out to random email addresses or who knows what else.

If you’re going through this or if you just want to be prepared for the chance that it might happen to you, check out Castle Cops Malware Removal and Prevention Guide. Read carefully. Follow all the instructions. Download the programs that are listed and run them in the order the Guide gives you.

These are some of the best programsfor cleaning a computer. They each hunt down bad files, clutter and general nonsense from your drive. It’s like they have Nikon rifle scopes honing in on each problem file. Of course, you want to always back up your machine first, just in case something is removed that shouldn’t have been.

For additional help, check out Castle Cops refernce on HijackThis as well as how to get help with your Hijack This log.

Once you’re all squeaky clean, follow the instructions to Prevent Re-infection. And stay alert!

I have teens. Mostly, my teens hang out online to talk to their friends. I’ve tried to encourage them to blog but they usually look at me as if my lips are moving but no sound is coming out. Kids can make you question your sanity, you know.

And yet, I still love finding sites for my teens. I love being able to say, “Hey, look at this great site I found for you” even though I know they’ll roll their eyes. I love even more when they check out the site and realize that maybe – just maybe – mom is really on to something. Such is the case with Teen Freeway.

This site is jam-packed with free stuff for teens. Yes, I said free. From cool pens to blemish acne cream to mascara to magazines to phones to…. well, you get the idea. Free stuff. For teens. It’s magic!

If you have teens, pass this one on to them. It’ll keep them busy for hours as they sign up for all the stuff that’s offered here. In fact, even if you don’t have teens you might find something that appeals to you. So sign up and get some free stuff!

You can map anything, you know. You can map your trip to avoid detours. You can map the shortest journey to your new home to reduce moving services expenses. You can map the distance between your home and office. Heck you can even map different terms for carbonated beverages.

HUH? Is that right? Well, yes, it is. Strange Maps is just that: a blog full of maps that depict all sorts of odd things. The pop vs. soda map is one of my favorites but there so many others there that everyone will find something to amuse and entertain.

For instance, did you know that there was once a state in the US that never quite made it to official status? Check out the map of Absaroka. Or how about a view of cannibalism throughout history? Didn’t know that map existed, did you?

Go ahead and look around the site. See something really odd? Let me know about it. With two years worth of entries, there’s just too much there for one person to discover alone. Post your favorites in my comments!

Everyone has a favorite super hero. Most of us have a most coveted super power, too. My confession: even though being invisible or having x-ray vision may be more useful, I’d rather be able to fly. Yes, that is my secret desire – to fly.

Kevin Cornell and Matthew Sutter play an online game in their blog, The Superest, creating superheros to “out-super” each other. Okay, maybe that’s a confusing explanation. From the site:

The Superest is a continually running game of My Team, Your Team. The rules are simple:

Player 1 draws a character with a power. Player 2 then draws a character whose power cancels the power of that previous character. Repeat.

Some of the Super Heroes look like they’ve been spending their free time with the latest fitness equipment while others look like they might need some time at the gym. And that just adds to the fun!

This is one of those blogs that you want to read each day so be sure to add it to your feed reader.

We all know there are some really great videos on youtube, especially funny ones that help to break up the workday. Some videos are inspirational, too, but those are usually too sappy for me. I don’t like sappy. Most of the videos I see are passed around in emails so if I’ve seen one, you probably have as well. It’s the whole viral thing you know.

One series of youtube videos, though, are worth mentioning. Lauren Luke aka panacea81 is a makeup genius. She applies makeup with step-by-step instructions. Whether she’s creating a Sweet & Innocent Wedding look or Amy Winehouse eyeliner, you’ll be treated to a transformation that is amazing and yet very easy to follow at home.

Keep in mind that Ms. Luke is very lovely with great eyes. Her eyebrows are perfection. Since I’m afraid of being waxed (yes, I’m a wimp) I’ve been inspired to invest in Rubis tweezers so I can mimic panacea81′s brows. My biggest dilemma is deciding which video to watch and what look to copy. There are just so many videos to watch that I could spend days on end watching, trying, washing and then starting over.

If you’re a girly geek or just a girly girl and you’re looking for a site that’s fun and feeds your “inner pretty” then head on over to Lauren Luke’s YouTube site and try on a new You. If you have a blog, post your pics and then come back here and let me know about it. I’d love to see what you do with these great video tutorials.