"The safe way to double your money is to fold it over once and put it in your pocket." Kin Hubbard

Want some free money? OK so I’m not giving away money but I will introduce you to some sites that will help. The first one that has saved me a bundle on music is Dealnews. This site has a ton of categories that you can choose from. They seem to scour the net so they can present you the very best deals. I tend to jump on the free ones. (I’m cheap) From technology to clothing, they seem to have it all. They turned me onto Amazon’s free music list which has almost 2500 free, legit, music. They’ll even give you local discount on restaurants and other deals closer to home.
The other site is Groupon. My friend Nate turned me onto this one. You sign up and they take your zip code and assign you the closest large city. In my case it was either Providence or Boston. Both are not exactly close but I’ll take what I can get. Groupon will present you with a limited time offer that will be something like buy a coupon for $15 dollars that is actually a $30 dollar coupon at a restaurant. So in effect you get double your money. You print out the coupon and bring it to the place. It works nice and easy. I do have a couple of issues with it as much as I like it. First it requires a bit of preplanning, which I am not the best at. Also because the range of locations is so large you might get a deal an hour away. I guess that’s fine but I’m lazy but I am not running out the door for that one. You can specify the types of deals you want like food and museums and not health and beauty stuff. However it doesn’t seem to listen to those preferences. I got two for liposuction. I took it personally.
Anyway I recommend trying either one at least for a bit just to see the one you like most. I should mention that Dealnews also covers coupons from Groupon as well.

“The Creator has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do” Orison Swett Marden

Recently I did a class on a website called Zoho. Zoho is a free/paid collection of fantastic online tools. Now I could go through them all and tell you that some of them rival Google Docs in their ease of use and shareability but that’s not why I write this. Microsoft Access is a database program. This means that you can create different forms and enter in data that will allow you to get reports and understand more about your info. OK now you know all that what is the problem? Access is a pain in the neck. I am a firm believer in the theory that both hardware and software should be as easy to use as it is powerful. Access can be a powerful tool but it is difficult for no reason. In place of this I recommend Zoho Creator. It uses a drag and drop design and is a simple part of the Zoho site that allows you to create forms for people to fill in. It has most of the power of access but very few of its drawbacks. Either create a form from scratch or use one of their templates. Need a way to keep track of books you are lending out from your home library? They have one made already that is easily customizable. Now the simplicity is great but what about other features? Any forms you create can be embedded on a website or blog in two seconds. You need to know when someone fills out the form? You can have an email sent out to notify you. Once the data is filled out it will be put into a Excel like spreadsheet for easy viewing but you can always export it in multitude of ways. So if you need to keep track of some info give Zoho a try.

"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence." Robert Frost

I love audio books. They are great in the car or while cooking. Many times in the wee cooking hours of the big turkey day I will listen while I cook. We have tons of audio books at the library and I have listened to most of them. We also have access to e-zone. E-Zone is an online catalog of audio books that is free for our patrons. It works well and has lots of titles. Unfortunately most are for nonipod users this is changing however. The other day I wanted to listen to Redwall by Brian Jacques on my iPod and could not find a compatible version. I could have grabbed the CD version and copied it to my computer but that takes a lot of time. So instead I tried a nice offer by a company called Audible. They are also an audio book site that is mainly for listening through iPods or iTunes. Their Thanksgiving deal is one free book of a selection of titles till Thanksgiving. Even if you only grab one title and never use it again I would say it’s worth it. Also they do not require a credit card to try the freebie. My recommendation is simple look through our online selection and if we don’t have it try Audible as a possible second but don’t think too long because it ends November 26, 2009, at 11:59 PM.

"This little piece of gum is a three-course dinner." Willy Wonka

Chocolate is sweet but free chocolate is sweeter. Many website offer free samples or other goodies. Here is one such yummy from Mars. If you get a sorry page just try again some other time. Also Thunderfap has a list of the goodies that you can sign up for as well. Now before you get angry and tell me that you have done that and now all I get is spam and junk mail offers. I recommend two strategies. The first is my old fall back register with a junk email address that you don’t mind filling up with crowd. The second is even better. The problem with the first one is that you must periodically open the email to keep it active. I like using 10 minute mail. You can read more about it here. The gist of it is that after 10 minutes it deletes itself so you have just enough time to register and answer any reply emails but you never have to worry about getting spam from them. I should say that there are some advantages to getting company emails. Many of them have specials, offer, or coupons. I use them every time I go to the grocery. So at least you have options. Go ahead and give these a try.

"Why waste money on psychotherapy when you can listen to the B Minor Mass?" Michael Torke

So you hunger for music and you want to make sure it is on the up and up but in the current economy your wallet has issues. Well then give Amazon Music a try. They have been around like many places peddling legit and reasonably priced songs and now that most music sites are DRM free it has become a fun place to get music again. But what about the price you say? Well you if have specific songs you may need to buy them for around .99. However if you are interested in doing a little digging you can grab a ton of great songs for free. Yes Free. Amazon has a sampler plate of songs that ranges from Jazz to indie. They have a convenient sample play button to the left of any song and “get MP3” button to the left. It is really very easy to click the button and go through their setup. At this moment there are 789 songs available so why not give some good songs a chance. If you don’t find what you want there you can always use their catalog and still get songs inexpensively. Give it a try.

“I would rather have a big burden and a strong back, than a weak back and a caddy to carry life's luggage” Elbert Hubbard

Have you ever tried to email a file to a friend like a photo or a video only to find that your email box can’t handle it? I come across this over and over again. My Gmail account allows attachments to be sent but they must be smaller than 20 megabytes. Now that seems large on the face of it but get a zip file full of photos that you need to send to a friend and suddenly you are way past that mark. So what to do? Well for a long time I have used the free serve TransferBigFiles. It is a wonderfully easy way to transfer large files around the web. All you do is browse for the file and then select recipients and hit send. The files can be up to 1 gigabyte in size so you have plenty of space to send over that high resolution video of your friend’s last party. So what are the downsides you ask? Well the files only last for five days. Meaning when you send that work file to someone and they wait on downloading it for a week the file disappears from TransferBigFiles system. To help with this I always do two things. I send a copy to myself in case someone didn’t get the email and I always send another email explaining about the deadline of disappearance. It is easy and it works. What more would you want? Oh yes this site is good to recommend to those family member that, for whatever reason, have the ability to send large attachment sizes and send everything into a shrinking work email. Tell them to send this way and save your space for something really good. Give it a try.

“Television is called a medium because anything good on it is rare” Fred Allen

The picture you see is of a TV that is two years older then I am (35 Years). This TV lives at my father’s house where he changes the channels using a pair of pliers and has to adjust the rabbit ears plus tin foil contraption used to get a signal. Amazingly he still gets great reception with it. The problem here is the date Feb. 17, 2009. Once we pass this fated day analog reception and broadcast TV will die and be replaced with a digital signal. This means for my father to still be able use this ancient television he must get a digital convertor for this TV. Thankfully he can get a coupon from the Digital TV Transition and public safety site. The US government has put aside money for all those that need these convertor boxes. You can either click the link on the right side of the site, which was down when I clicked it, or call the phone number. Once you get the coupon you can head to most electronic resellers and get the convertor box at quite a discount. Now there is potentially good news and bad news here. With the new box installed you will not have to try to watch a TV show through snow or white noise. If it can pick up a signal it comes in perfectly. The downside is that if the signal is not perfect it will reject it and you get nothing. According to what I have read it is mostly going to be good for the TV watcher. If you are not using bunny ears or antennas for your signal then most likely you do not need the convertor. If you have an older set you have two choices get a new one or get a convertor. I am of the mind that if it aint broke don’t buy a new one try the convertor first. If given a choice of watching what is on TV (American Idol) today or doing something else (surfing the net, read a book, anything) I will take the latter.

“If it's far away, it's news, but if it's close at home, it's sociology” James Reston

The Atlantic Monthly Magazine has been around for quite a while. It was founded in 1857 and it is considered a general editorial magazine. As of January this year they have dropped the requirement of registration to see back issues and made it free to view for anyone. What are the details you ask? Well you can see full issues dating back to 1995 and hundreds of articles dating back to 1857. In addition to this they also are offering slideshows, videos, and blogs to , as they out it, entice viewers to become part of their subscribership. If have ever wanted to delve in to the Atlantic’s history now is your chance. Give it a try.

“If classical music is the state of the art, then the arts are in a sad state” Frank Zappa

Almost a year ago I wrote about Classical Cat which is a free place to find classical music. At that time is was great but a bit unwieldy and felt a bit like the internet from 1998. The net has changed a great deal since then and for the better in my opinion. So we need a new classical music catalog and that is what Musopen is. Essentially it is a database of out of copyright classical music. This is a list of great music that is available for your own projects or just listening pleasure. The reason it is so much better is the simplicity and basic understandable controls. It also has some tools that are fun like the ability to embed music in your website and just an easy play button. You can browse by all sorts of criteria like the musical instruments played or form or period. So if you have a hankerin’ for Holst or Jonesin' for Johann Sebastian Bach give this a try.

“I don't have a photograph, but you can have my footprints. They're upstairs in my socks.”

I have written of the wonders of Flickr many times before and it seems I am not the only one to find it useful. The Library of Congress has released 3000 photos onto the site. The idea is brilliant, harness the Web 2.0 communities to identify, categorize, and just enjoy these works of photographic art. When I checked this out it seemed that every photo had at least 50 comments with full discussions ranging from fashion to propaganda. I will say if you do go onto this site make sure you have nothing to do because it is quite extensive and addictive. You just want to keep walking through out the archives that have remained unseen by the general public for so long. (Selfish plug coming up) For the same reasons I have been really enjoying Rick Ring’s blog about Providence Public Library’s special collections. These places that take care of our histories are our time machines to the past. Sometimes they are the way back and amazingly others show a way forward. I recommend giving both a try.

“Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.” Maya Angelou

A long time ago I setup a list of all the free software I recommended for students that was free. One of those programs was Avast which is a free antivirus program for PCs. Many people scoff at a free antivirus program because there has always been a sentiment that if it is free how good can it be? However this nice program in test after test has shown that it does a great job even when compared to any of the store bought ones. PC World magazine chose it as their top antivirus program. Avast is available for both XP and Vista. Also from many reviews I have found they talk about the fact that it does not try to take over the entire system and slow it down. This is always a big problem for some of them. Many make the computer so slow it feels unusable. I guess the thought is to make it so slow that you cannot use your computer and get into trouble. I will take Avast until there is something better. Give it a try.

Note: I am also a fan of AVG antivirus as well.

“Histories are a kind of distilled newspapers” Thomas Carlyle

So you are a news hound and nothing excites you more than reading the paper well then the New York Times has something for you. Recently they opened up their archives that have only been accessible if you had subscribed. They have two sections 1981 to the present which is available in text from only and 1851 to 1980 in PDF from. Clarification is needed here. Some articles are still being charged to view. All the articles previous to 1923 are free in PDF format. 1923 on till 81 might be charged. It is a hit or miss feature. However if you are looking for some recent research (80’s till now) or you want to go way back (23 and previous) all seems free. PDF format is a standard format that any system can open. To read it you will need a Adobe Acrobat which is free. To access all of the archives just go to NYTIMES.com and use the search bar at the top of the page. You can adjust the period by clicking on the pull down menu. So if you need to do some research from one of the largest papers in the US it is time to give it a try.

“I had beautiful wavy hair and a waxed mustache.” Curly Howard

Before I begin this post a couple of small notes first if you don’t mind. I would like to apologize for the lack of posts. I have been sick and am now playing catch up. Also I thought I should mention a birthday. Growing up I had several people I looked up to, but this person was one of the tops. Today is (would have been) the 103^rd birthday of Curly Howard. So to Curly we can only wish him a happy "nyuk-nyuk-nyuk!". Now onto the post.

Recently I was on a message board reading other peoples thoughts and I started looking on the left hand side of the screen at the avatars. Avatars are the small pictures we choose to represent us when we step into a forum or a virtual social group. As I looked at them I noticed many that were left blank. I thought this was so strange. It would be like talking to someone at a party who is faceless, kinda creepy. So where does one get an avatar? Well there are tons of places on the net that have every style you can imagine. However for today I choose to highlight Meez. They have been around for a while allowing you to create static (non moving) or animated avatars. It is free. But if you want certain special extras, you can pay for them. Essentially you register an account on Meez and then go into creative mode. You can choose pretty much every part of your character down to the eyebrows. I think my favorite part is the animation that you can choose from. They have stuff like dance moves or expressions or foods for your virtual character to eat. Once you create your character they will give you a bit of code to paste into your registration page of the forum your in. If you are confused, they have a decent help page as well. Give yourself some style and give it a try.

“If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun” Katharine Hepburn

I try as best as I can to bring you helpful and useful bits of information. However occasionally I like to throw in the frivolous. Unfortunately many people still consider the computer in the same way the phone was first greeted. Essential for business but not for personal use. Well today I recommend Jib Jab’s Starring You site. Jib Jab became famous for a video highlighting all the candidates from the 2004 elections. This fun and completely no useful site allows you to upload a photo and attach it to some sort of video. This may sound difficult but really there instructions are perfect and to get the photo to fit are flawless. I had a lot of fun just getting the photo just right. Once your picture is set you decide which scene to attach it to. I chose a Charleston dance video featuring Steve jobs and Bill Gates. You can also choose from their heads or there people who have made their heads available. Once you finish you can embed it into a website like below or send it to a friend. It’s a lot of fun so why not give it a try.

“I've a grand memory for forgetting.”Robert Louis Stevenson

Do you carry your cell phone with you at all times? Are you forgetful and would you benefit from a little prompting? Well, oh, don't forget is a great service for all of us that are always having to apologize for not remembering. All you do is type in your cell phone number, the time and date you wish the reminder to show up, and the message. You are correct that you will have to pay the text message charge but that usually cost around .10 cents and the service is totally free. Why is this useful? Spend a half and hour and type in all the birthdays you have to remember and on that day "pop" you get a text telling you not to forget. Anything could be put here or just and text to yourself from the past saying keep up the good job. This is very Total Recall. Remember to give this a try.

“We have the power to do any damn fool thing we want to do, and we seem to do it about every ten minutes.” J. William Fulbright

Alright, you need to see an article online and when you click on the link to read it the page says you must subscribe to read it. Now there is nothing wrong here on the face of it but what if they sell your email to a several companies. Suddenly you have tons of spam and junk mail just for reading one article. This is not a fantastic trade off. There is a nice way around this. You can use 10 minute mail to circumvent their efforts. Essentially you create an email and then register for what you need to and then in ten minutes it completely disappears. It is a nice free service that avoids giving your real information out. Give it a try!

“There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.” T.S. Eliot

Since I started the weeks post reviewing a book about a music player I thought it is only fair to speak about music that is open to any player that can play a MP3. Unfortunately the atmosphere today with music companies and pirated music sites has left the consumer to think that all music found on the internet is illegal. This is major misconception. One of my students had asked whether her son was going to get in trouble because of the music he had downloaded. The answer can be confusing. If he downloaded it from a network that shares illegal music like Limewire then possibly. If the son paid for the music using a service like Rhapsody or iTunes then no. However there are other legal and free choices that are open to anyone as well. I recommend stopping off at CNET's music site. They have categorized all the music to find what you are looking for easier. Some of the music will have either a listen button or a download button. If it has the download button then you may bring it into your computer and play as much as you would like. The reason for the free downloads are simple. The music is put up by the artist and they choose whether or not to have free downloads. They want you to hear their great hits and go buy the album. The nice thing here is that it is a mix. Not just mainstream but someone who has a sound studio in their basement but makes spectacular music. I was extremely happy to find a download from a geek artist called Barcelona. Whatever your tastes give it a try!

“The only real valuable thing is intuition.” Albert Einstein

Have you ever needed to get rid of something or needed something but did not want to pay for it. Well then freecycle is for you. This a website that allows the posting of the stuff you want to be rid of as long as you offer it for free. Now generally the pickup is first come first serve. I recommend setting up an account ASAP so that you can jump on items quickly. I have seen everything from pets to a tractor to a whole set of new Ikea furniture. You may want to register in a few different areas so that you have a wider selection of stuff. By the way don't believe the old maxim: you get what you pay for because those people miss out when it comes to freecycle. If you are desperate for some space or the feel of a yard sale then give it a try!