I am you is our attempt at the unification theory. I am you.

By:  son                        Source

There's a good chance you're familiar with Liz Pulliam Weston. She has a syndicated personal finance column that appears in my local newspaper and perhaps yours as well, and she is a popular columnist at MSN Money. As if that's not enough, she writes books. I've just finished her latest, Easy Money, and here's the scoop on it.

Subtitled "How to Simplify Your Finances and Get What You Want Out of Life," Easy Money is relatively short (roughly 200 pages) yet hits all the major topics you need to think about in your financial life. Among the topics covered are: basic tools to get your finances organized, budgeting, credit cards, saving for retirement, saving for college, buying homes and cars, insurance, shopping and travel deals, dealing sensibly with customer service issues, and more. She also caps off the book by looking at important but less tangible issues, such as how attitudes about money can make you sink or swim, and how to set your compass so you're not just making money but working toward the life you want.

Many personal finance books get bogged down in telling you too much in too many words-Weston's strength in Easy Money is telling you what you need to know and doing so efficiently. There's a lot packed into a fairly lean package, so it's a quick but informative read.

Among the many tips and resources Weston offers, here are some I found most useful and/or interesting:

* When creating a budget, Weston makes the point to be extremely realistic, taking into account where you are today and what you really spend, not creating a budget around some idealized version of yourself that always spends wisely or will soon be making more money.

* The concept of a "Buy Nothing" month, in which you do your best to use what you have in your home to keep yourself fed and entertained for a whole month. This can save you some money while also being a fun challenge, and maybe open your eyes to how much unnecessary spending you do without realizing it.

* The sections on insurance are very good, with good tips on what types of insurance you need and how much. Example: If your annual premium for comprehensive and collision coverage on your car is more than 10% of its current value, drop the coverage.

* While we're all familiar with the fees around trying to re-book airline flights, Weston says there's usually no fee for re-booking hotels or car rentals if you find that prices have gone down since your original booking. It would never have occurred to me to do this (and I'm probably too lazy to start), but Weston says she's had significant savings doing so in the past.

* The section on how to successfully deal with customer service people is excellent.

I only had a few quibbles with the book:

* Weston is very big on getting yourself automated and electronized, meaning she wants you receiving and paying bills electronically online, and/or automating payments. I think this is fine for the well-organized person, but I question whether it's really the way to go for people that aren't always on top of their finances. It seems easier to miss payments when you're not getting any sort of paper reminder, and automated payments sometimes cause you to keep paying for services you don't really want anymore, where a paper bill might trigger you to get on the horn and cancel a service. Also, if you're not disciplined and backing up your electronic files, you could lose past financial records. I suppose this is personal preference, but it makes me a little nervous.

* I think the section on credit card arbitrage should have been left out. People have enough problems with credit cards as it is without bringing up a tactic that can be very dangerous and lead to only marginal gains. (If you don't know what credit card arbitrage means, I'm not telling you.)

* She did not list the other site I run as a recommended resource. Maybe her editors mistakenly cut it out?

All in all, Easy Money is informative while being easy to read, exactly what you're looking for in the not-always-exciting world of personal finance.

By:  Justin McHenry                        Source

256kbps high quality music?

No DRM?

Cheaper than iTunes Plus?

Are those your criteria for online music? Then perhaps Rhapsody is for you. From Real Networks, this could well be the next king of online music.

They are so confident in their serivce that they are going to give away $10 credit to the first 100,000 signups, enough to buy an album for free!

Try it. Please try it.

By:  Jordan Grodecki                        Source

The world is full of day-to-day challenges, seemingly common problems, which in some cases defy obvious solutions.

Overpopulation, difficult traffic situation, shortage of finances and most basic tools - all contribute to the over-the-top, wild spurts of creativity, super-energetic ways to achieve things, often with mixed success.

By:  Gerard                        Source

The Windowfarms project turns your window into an urban farm, using inexpensive and recyclable parts. The results are a “curtain” for any window that is also a year-round, high-yield, vertical, hydroponic, modular, low-energy, edible garden. The open designs are free to download and easy to implement. The project also encourages the community to innovate and share improvements.

Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray started this project in February, 2009 during their artist”s residency in New York”s Eyebeam Art and Technology Center. Their mission is to encourage sustainable solutions that can be implemented today by anyone. Recently, Riley presented developments of Windowfarms at the New York chapter of Dorkbot.

By:  Sarah                        Source

Photo: James Tse

According to a study by Ketchum that was reported in the February issue of Canadian Grocer magazine, 78% of Canadians would like to get their food from local farms or companies by 2020.  Regrettably, this isn”t likely since as Rebecca LeHuep, executive director of the  Ontario Culinary Tourism Alliance pointed out in the September issue of that same magazine, “by 2012, more than 60% of farmers and farm managers will be retiring. The average age of a farmer is about 57 and he doesn”t have a succession plan for his farm.” In an email correspondence Rebecca shares another grim stat that between 1991 and 2001 Ontario lost 135 of its farmers.

Beyond the fact that these stats reveal a disappointing gap between Canadian consumer aspirations and the reality of farming situation, LeHeup”s comments point out that we may be en route to becoming a society almost solely dependent on other countries for food.

Would you ever consider being a farmer?  Or, if you are a farmer, is it a career choice you”d make again?

By:  danamccauley                        Source

Recently specs and images of the new Blackberry Gemini have been leaked on the web and it sure looks amazing. Judging from the images it looks like an advanced version of Blackberry Bold 8900. Here are the rumored details:

Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and Tri-band UMTS/HSDPA

A larger display & higher resolution as compared to the Blackberry Bold

A stronger processor (possibly Snapdragon?)

5 MP camera?

WiFi, GPS

Source: BGR

By:  Umair Khalid                        Source

I have kids now, and I'm already dreading the day when I have to let them go out on their own for the night for a date or with their friends. If I'm not willing to totally trust them by then, I could use the Keruve to keep track of them.

All I would need to do is attach the watch-like device to my child's wrist. Assuming my kid would let me do that, I would let my kid know that it won't come off without the use of some special tools. This device is a GPS transmitter that uses cell-phone towers to give the correct location, and I can track my offspring with the GPS receiver, which has an LCD screen.

I'm not sure where you can get this particular device, as the company is in Spain, and I cannot read the official website. I have a hunch we will be seeing a surge of products like these as our youth continually finds more ways to get into trouble.

Source

By:  Mark Rollins                        Source

DiggGraphr is a treemap view of Digg, where each story is represented by a rectangle and the area occupied by each rectangle is proportional to the number of Diggs relative to the other stories in that channel.

You can hover over the rectangles for more info. Clicking on the rectangle takes you to the source page.

By:  Gerard                        Source

Q10 is a freeware word processing program which is not designed for you mere mortals. Oh no. This puppy is for us elite, the writers of the world. Those with something important to say. Geddit? Why do I say that? Because it comes with a number of things that you ordinary folk won’t appreciate. Like full screen editing by default. A target word count feature and a timer alarm. To make sure you do your quota no matter what, OK?

What else? Oh yeah, custom autosaving (every paragraph if you like), autocorrections for teh annoying mistakes we all make, and last but certainly not least, dear reader, typewriter sound effects with customisable audio themes. Perfect for the Hemingway deep inside us scribblers all. Awesome. [Via The Raw Feed]

 Q10 is a simple but powerful text editor designed and built with writers in mind. Q10 is freeware. That’s right, you can download and use it at no cost. Q10 is small, fast and keeps out of your way

By:  Redferret                        Source