Did You Know You Can Use the Internet to Do These Ten Things?

Did you know you can use the Internet to star in your own reality television show, download songs while you are driving, charter a private jet, publish a novel, scan your computer for spies and do so much more--with most of the tasks being free? There might be a lot of things you can use the Internet for that may surprise you.

The website, www.charterauction.com, is under construction, but you can e-mail for information at info@charterauction.com, or call (603) 610-4491. It may cost you $2,100 an hour to charter a jet, but if you have the money, it can be done. You will have to put $100,000 into an escrow account before you can book a flight, however. A round trip from San Francisco to New York might cost you $30,000, but think how much you can impress your clients.

So you always wanted to be a television star? You always wanted your own reality show? With ManiaTV, you may just get your chance. You can submit your own five minute video clip to www.maniatv.com. If your video is picked, the producers of the show will allow an hour of video programming about your life. The website will also accept video clips from your mobile phone. The website receives one million new visitors per month and was made to be like MTV.

Did you ever think you would be able to buy a song while you are still driving that have heard on the radio? You may have wondered, because when you have heard a song in your car, you may like it, but you have forgotten the name of it by the time you get home, so you can't buy it online.

You can buy the tune as soon as you hear it, however, with Music on Command. According to the website, http://www.musiconcommand.com/, all you need to do is call 866-585-8748. The artist and song will be identified, and you will be e-mailed links to download the song.

You can download your novel or other book to one of several websites for free as an e-book. If you want to have it published as a paperback or hardcover it may cost you, but it can still be downloaded online to a site, and it will be published.

There are at least three sites that will publish your e-book novel or other book for free. Two that will download them and sell them on their site, with the proceeds being divided between the publisher and you are smashwords.com and lulu.com. Just follow the instructions on the websites. With Lulu you can sell through Lulu, your own website, Amazon.com, or Barnes and Noble. You might not sell too many books, however, unless you promote your works yourself. You can also publish with Amazon Kindle (a Kindle is a handheld computer device, sold by Amazon, that allows users to download books) at https://dtp.amazon.com/mn/signin. Because the site and Kindles are owned by Amazon, you might have a slightly better chance of selling your masterpiece that way with less promotion by you, although self-promotion can never hurt.

If you would like to trade your old, unwanted baseball cards, LP's, or whatever for something you want more, give http://www.swapthing.com a try. You might be able to swap old schoolbooks, trading cards, art and music. You might even be able to sell the items.

You can upload gigabytes of music and video files, Word documents, Web presentations and many other things for free at www.streamload.com. With a free account, you can have 100 MB of downloads and 10 GB of storage for free, and for an unlimited amount of storage space, you will pay $5 to $40 a month.

If you would like to find thousands of documents that have disappeared from government web pages for "national security" purposes or political reasons, you can find many at

http://www.fas.org/sgp/, http://www.thememoryhole.org, or http://www.cryptome.org. You will also find recently declassified documents.

You can receive computer technical support for free at http://www.helponthe.net/. There are two dozen forums to post your question to on the Tech Support Guy. There are 30,000 threads to search for an answer. You may not receive as quick an answer as calling an expert, but it is free, and you may not get as frustrated.

Have you ever wondered where to get parenting advice when you meet your daughter's boyfriend, or when your son doesn't come in until three in the morning? About My Kidsprovides a personal parenting coach to answer your questions by e-mail, phone, or live chat. It doesn't matter if the kids or toddlers or teenagers.

If you have ever wanted to literally keep track of your money as it goes from business to business, you can now, using the serial numbers, at http://www.wheresgeorge.com.

Citations: 30 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do on the Internet Dan Tynan, PCworld.about.com

Music from any Phone, no author listed, Musiccommand.com