I had a chance to meet Cliff Stoll a couple summers ago. He was giving a presentation to a quilt society and it was great. If you ever have a chance to see him in person, no matter the topic, you will be greatly rewarded! He is such an energetic and enthusiastic person and he finds the beauty in all sorts of everyday things. I was captivated by him the entire time on a topic I only had a passing interest in at the beginning.
I second this - been using Netvibes since Google Reader went away. Clean interface and reasonably customizable. At the time, it was the closest to feature parity that I could find and I haven't felt the need to look for a replacement since.
Sending stock quotes, scores, weather, etc. reminds me of a service that Google used to offer via text message. I used that a ton before I got my first smartphone: text W[ZIP code] to 46645 (GOOGL) and it would text back the weather. Same for stock:[symbol] and many other things I've since forgotten. Of course Google killed it, but it was neat while it lasted!
I second that thought. Years ago on a Nortel PBX, we had a line in the factory where I work that had a fault. It would intermittently dial my extension (411) and I figured that it was from pulse dialing. Eventually the fault in the line was fixed and, along with that, the 'phantom' calls I received from that extension. Interesting coincidence that in both cases the number dialed was 411. I guess I'm lucky our phone didn't dial 911!