12 Ways Free Is An Advantage

I love free items but I'm not a fan of having a drawer full of one dollar sample products. Instead I look for free items I can use over and over again or that have a higher retail value. I make certain to check for any hidden fees before using though.

1. Birthday Food - I sign up at different eating establishments that I would normally go to, that offer free items or meals for my birthday. If I'm already going out to eat that day, then why not get part of the meal free.


2. Phone Apps - My phone is expensive enough and I have yet to purchase an app since there are quite a few free ones out there. I have the garage sale rover (free version), I use a calorie counter app to input my food and exercise without wasting paper. And I have the kindle on my phone for reading as well.

3. Free Books, Movies and Music - Besides the free items that can be gotten from the local library or downloaded e-book or music online. I have to say watching tv shows and movies online has been a great way to save time (and money for a second cable box) while I do other things online.

4. Free Diamond Cleaning - Although this isn't something I do more than a couple times a year, I do like to take my ring in for a free cleaning and they also check it out for any loose diamonds. True I could clean my ring with any number or free items around the house, but this is a better cleaning in my opinion and those are fine for a quick clean in between.

5. Free Computer Protection - I haven't bought any anti-virus and mal-ware software for years. I use free items that are available and well recommended by CNET.

6. Free Workouts - This can tie back in to the possible free trial traps, but many gyms and fitness areas have free workout times, know 24 hr fitness has a 7 day pass and Core Power Yoga has a free week as well. Of course there are also the workout videos from the library and the many options available through cable On Demand.


7. Free Phone Service - When I'm at my computer I use Google Voice to call friends and family through the speaker/mic of my computer and I also use Google Voice on my Droid instead of my minutes as a way to save minutes if I'm near the end of the month. The downside is that google voice through droid uses a random area code and phone number. It is now free to everyone and you don't need an invite.

8. Free Wi-Fi - Besides my library, I have found that book stores, many eating establishments (Village inn and McDonalds) and even some malls allow you access. The site Wififreespot has a few of the locations by state. Although beware of some free public wi-fi

9. Free E-books - I don't like buying books and I don't like buying the "cheaper" e-books either. On my phone Kindle I have a few classics like, Brave New World and The Count of Monte Cristo, but also I have Trent's book that was free a while ago, Simple Dollar: How one man wiped out is debts... I'm always on the look out for interesting free books from my library or offered from amazon. You can also download e-books and audio books from Project Gutenberg for free

10. Free Days for Sights and Sounds - Fee-free days at the national parks and free days at museums and zoos are wonderful. I absolutely believe that paying entrance to these is the best way to support and keep them around, but when they have free days it's a little piece of heaven, especially at the Denver art museum. Also check out FactoryToursUSA for free tours that might be in your area and many times they give away free stuff - Such as Coors giving away 3 free beers, but some don't, Denver Mint does not give out free money!

11. Free Bill Paying - Most banks offer this free and if not, I have also used Mycheckfree.com to keep them all in one place or go to the billers website to pay. I now buy stamps for sending out holiday cards.

12. Free Credit Report and Score - The Annualcreditreport.com is the only place to get a free report for my state without strings attached. And now I also use Quizzle.com to get a credit score from experian. It isn't the FICO score, but it gives a good estimate and I can check it out every 180 days (6 months). Another free site is CreditKarma.com for a free score and report.


What do you use free that is an advantage for you?


Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/IpRp/~3/rYqv42axqlg/12-ways-free-is-advantage.html

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Who Is More Evil, Charlize Theron or Julia Roberts? [Trade Roundup]

This is an important question that Hollywood is scrambling to answer, fairy tale style. Also today: Carrie-Anne Moss moves to the small screen, Torchwood news for you spazzes, and Seth MacFarlane's movie is assembling its cast. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gawker/full/~3/gL_POwYNjAQ/who-is-more-evil-charlize-theron-or-julia-roberts

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Holiday Gift Guide 2010: Electronics Tools

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Whether total beginner or seasoned pro, there's one thing that all electronics enthusiasts need to do their work: the right tools! Here are some of my favorites for the circuit tinkerers on your gift list.

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Extech EX330 multimeter, Extech, $55
A multimeter is one of the basic tools that you'll depend on, so it makes sense to put a little money into a good one. The Extech EX330 is the winner of Dave Jones's extensive multimeter shootout, and it's a great little meter. I picked one up when my formerly trusty benchtop meter died, and I haven't looked back.


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Multimeter Kit, Maker Shed, $20
Rather than buying a commercial multimeter, another fun option is to build your own. Though not quite as fancy as the above Extech, this kit is capable of making basic voltage, current, and resistance measurements, plus you get the satisfaction of knowing you built it yourself!

Read the Full Story » | More on MAKE » | Comments » | Read more articles in Gift Guides | Digg this!

Source: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/12/electronics_workbench_gift_guide.html

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Expired Bread and Trashed Produce

I was in a Wal-mart about a year ago, before dawn, to pick up some groceries and walked past the bakery. I stopped and back tracked to watch what was happening.

An employee was looking at different packaged bread then tossing a few here and there into a cart. The cart was pretty well full already and didn't have much room left. Once she packed that cart, she grabbed another one and started filling it with pies, cakes, cookies, etc.

I walked up to her and asked if those items were expired, and she responded that they were. I asked what the store does with them. She replied that they package them all up and toss them in the trash compactor. "Really?" I replied unbelievably. "Yes, she said,  'it sickens me to think how much this store wastes, we don't even give it to a shelter, not even this time of the year."

flickr/cc - Tomi Tapio
It made me wonder that if this was one store, on one night that tossed out 1 1/2 carts full of bakery items. Imagine what all these stores put together throw away in a year! And they go into a trash compactor, so you can't even dumpster dive for the food.

I asked one final question, "If I wanted to buy those, would I get a reduction of price due to the expiration?" She didn't think so, it would have to be run by the management, but seemed unlikely since many others have asked and nothing has been done.

However, since this conversation, it appears Walmart does have a small area in the freezer section where they mark down a few bakery items that are close to expiration (1-2 days away) and they also have some organic bins outside in the back of the store. These bins are supposed to be locked but not all bins have the locks.


Recently I was able to take a look into one of these bins and found them to be as expected, produce items that were in bad shape, but not all of them.  The pineapples looked like they had seen better days, the melons looked ok but I was only interested in the green pepper and the apples.

I grabbed my canvas bag out of my car and tossed in a few Braeburn apples and the green pepper and speed walked to my car so I didn't get into trouble. I was on their property even though they had tossed the food out. This trash bin was full and about a 55 gallon size.

I wanted to call up some Freegans to swoop over and take what they took so the food wouldn't go to waste. And I did try. I looked through Meetup.com for freegans and tried emailing a lady on the site but got no response. Unfortunately, there isn't a regional or city contact for freegans to get the word out on food that is tossed out unless you know someone directly from already being part of the group.


With what I grabbed out of the trash, the 8 apples I picked up would have run about $4 if I bought them in the store and the green pepper ($1) was going to be used on a sandwich for that day. However, after cutting into the pepper, the smell that emanated from the blackened seeds crushed that idea quickly as I'm not as adventurous yet. But the apples have tasted delicious after cutting out the few bad areas! And yes, I rinse the apples thoroughly.

Here is my question to you:
If you didn't know these came from the trash and you pulled them out of the crisper looking like this (pock marks on the apples and bruising on the top of the green pepper as well). Would you have continued to cook and eat them?


Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/IpRp/~3/aVZ3iHCrnN4/expired-bread-and-trashed-produce.html

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Bing Feature Update: Find and book flights faster with Bing

Tired of filling out forms when booking flights online? With improvements to natural language search arriving in Bing, you no longer have to manually select your airport, destination, dates or other options to conduct a flight search. Just type what you’re thinking into the search box, and let Bing do the work.

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For example, entering “flights from Boston to Los Angeles in June” will fill in the flight search forms with the parameters you need, putting you one click away from a list of results that match your query.

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You can use a number of different combinations including airline names, number of stops or time of year.

Try it now at Bing.com and let us know what you think.

www.facebook.com/bing

www.twitter.com/bing

- David Lindheimer, Bing Travel

Source: http://www.bing.com/community/Site_Blogs/b/search/archive/2010/12/13/bing-feature-update-find-and-book-flights-faster-with-bing.aspx

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Time: Free, But Priceless

?Time is free, but it's priceless.
You can't own it, but you can use it.
You can't keep it, but you can spend it.
Once you've lost it you can never get it back.?
~ Harvey MacKay
When we look back on our years, we don't count the money we spent and determine if it was a good or bad purchases, we think about the time we spent, both the good times and the wasted times.

Since time is a currency like money, though abstractly, then how we would spend it? At birth if we were given a watch that had the hours left of our life, what would we buy with our time? Many in the simplicity movement and in well regarded book, Your Money or Your Life, take a look at the impact our time has on the things we buy. Is buying the $1000 TV worth the 50 hours at work to pay it off or is the $500 TV a better investment of our time?

flickr/cc - sirspacepilot
This idea of buying and selling time is being made into a Sci-Fi movie to be released in Fall 2011. In the movie, the not-too-distant future "everybody has a clock on their left wrist. It doesn't start counting until you reach maturity, and then you start out with a year. The clock counts down how many years, days, hours and seconds you have to live, and as long as you keep adding time to it, you can live forever. Most people in this world only have a day to live at any given time, and have to keep scrambling to add more time to their wrists before it runs out."

In the movie, the time you have left buys you the basic needs in life like food, shelter, and transportation. And just like money, your time/life can be stolen by someone getting the "upper hand" on you. They do this buy putting their watch over the top of yours and sucking time from you into their life.

It is a interesting interpretation that I look forward to viewing next year because in my own life I consider these concepts on occasion. Is the money, and time at work, worth the extra cost a longer time in the hot shower for me? And since finding that table by the dumpster, it will save me from the overtime at work to pay for a new or used one.

In the movie, called Now, we see the affects that thieves, inflation and greed play on this currency of time/life, and this is where the value of time finally comes home. With our currency of money,when there is a bank error, we know the money is not ours and have no troubles about giving it back because we can still go on with our lives. But with the movie, this is the time left on your life that you are fighting for.

As I was reading through the spoilers for this movie, I considered different advantages to leading a life in the now or waiting and then flip on the scarcity switch as my time ticks to a close. What we have around us in possessions and memories, have they been worth giving up a precious life in order to get what we want?

Other movies with a similar plot:
? Logan's Run - In the year 2274, the world's urban centers have been abandoned due to ecological disaster, and the remaining population has forged a society in a domed city, where no one is allowed to live past age 30. Michael York stars as a population control agent who, nearing the age of 30, goes on the run to avoid certain death, and Richard Jordan plays his ex-partner determined to hunt him down.

? The Island - Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson as members of a strictly regulated indoor futuristic colony who hope to win the lottery, a contest in which the grand prize is a trip to a Utopian island. It's reportedly the last uncontaminated place on Earth. But a startling discovery about the true nature of "the Island" -- and their very existence -- leads the two to stage a desperate escape to the outside world.

? Clockstoppers
? Click


Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/IpRp/~3/tx2VxxKy3Sw/time-free-but-priceless.html

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Record-setting 33 MJ railgun test shot footage

The shot took place on December 10. From the US Navy's YouTube channel:

The Office of Naval Research Electromagnetic Railgun located at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division, fired a world-record setting 33 mega-joule shot, breaking the previous record established Jan. 31, 2008.

Target effects footage, almost certain to be classified, is conspicuously absent.

Video of the previous record-holding shot, which was reportedly "over 10" MJ is here. Per Popular Mechanics, the Navy is reportedly working towards a 64 MJ device for deployment. [via Neatorama]

More:

Read the Full Story » | More on MAKE » | Comments » | Read more articles in Science | Digg this!

Source: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/12/record-setting_33_mj_railgun_test_s.html

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