Maybe I can’t play Plants vs. Zombies while I drive (or maybe I can!*), but that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of useful apps for the average driver. In its August issue, Consumer Reports reviews a bunch of apps for motorists, both free and paid, that promise to help you remember maintenance dates, get the correct info after an accident, or find your car in a big parking lot. [More]
Mint Makes Saving More Fun With New "Goals" Dashboard
By June 30, 2010
Mint was the cool kid on the financial website block until it cut its hair and went corporate, but the Intuit-owned service can still roll out some nifty features now and then. The latest is a “goals” dashboard, which takes advantage of our natural tendency to try harder if there’s some way to see immediate feedback. Under your account there’s now a goals tab, where you can activate any of the default choices (“get out of debt,” “take a trip,” “buy a home”) or create your own (“laser hair removal,” “pvc bodysuit”). Then you can link your accounts to that goal, and have a quick visual metric you can use to stay focused. [More]
Hunt Down Your Credit Card Contract Online
By June 22, 2010
Hey, you can now look up your credit card contract online. There’s a searchable database over at the Federal Reserve that lets you check them out in both text and PDF form. [More]
LucyPhone Stands In "Please Hold" Lines For You
By May 11, 2010
Now you can get on with the rest of your life while a friendly robot named LucyPhone stands holding your place in the customer service wait line. [More]
Use Doctor Finder To Prescreen Your Doctor
By May 11, 2010
If you’re like most people, you pick a new doctor by going through an approved list provided by your insurer and selecting someone nearby. Doctor Finder from insiderpages.com hopes to make the process less random by providing reviews for doctors and dentists. You can search by zip code, then narrow down results by your insurer, distance, gender, specialty, language, and experience. [More]
Two Facebook Apps To Help You Fight Back Against Facebook
By May 4, 2010
If you’re unhappy with the latest Facebook privacy settings but don’t want to kill your account completely, ReadWriteWeb has highlighted two services–both Facebook apps–that might give you back some control. They’re not perfect solutions, though. The Green Safe app scrapes all your data into a stand-alone tab that only your friends can access, but it also means a third-party developer will replace Facebook as your data holder (the app will use your data to serve ads as well). The Give Me My Data app lets you export all of your Facebook content so that you don’t lose anything if you disconnect your profile from Facebook’s pages. [More]
Calculator Tells You Whether to Rent Or Buy
By April 24, 2010
The New York Times has a soul-soothing calculator that lets you know whether you’d be better off renting or buying. [More]
How To Find A Good Local Bank
By April 12, 2010
So you’re tired of banking at one of the big, faceless national chains and want to keep your money local? You can try one of the recent sites devoted to the local bank movement, like anewwayforward.org or moveyourmoney.info, or you can follow this Kiplinger columnist’s lead and do it yourself with a little online research. [More]
Interactive Chart Helps You Vet Health Supplements
By March 23, 2010
Are you tired of forgetting whether you should add creatine or cinnamon to your kale smoothie? Do you worry that the milk thistle you’ve rubbed on your genitals isn’t helping? The “Snake Oil?” graphic at informationisbeautiful.net can help you out–it provides a graphical overview of 166 different health supplements and arranges them according to how much evidence there is that they actually work. [More]
Track Free And Cheap Games For Your iPhone Or Touch
By March 15, 2010
There are several apps on the Apple app store that help consumers track sales and free offers from developers, but you have to launch them and check in regularly. The website App Spy offers an automated price tracker for games (just games, unfortunately) that will send you an email whenever a price threshhold is reached. If you tend to be an app junkie, it can help save you money by letting you get your fix on the cheap good stuff. [More]
Test Your Broadband Speeds For The FCC
By March 15, 2010
Last Thursday, the FCC started collecting information from consumers about the quality of their broadband service. If you’ve got a PC that can run Java, you can go to Broadband.gov and run the test now. (The FCC will collect your IP address and physical address, but not your name or email address, reports Wired.) If you’ve got an iPhone or Android smartphone, you can download an app to measure your connectivity and report it. [More]
Upgrades: Blippy Lets You Screen Out Single Purchases
By March 12, 2010
Blippy launched a few months ago as a service that lets you plug in your credit card and broadcasts online every single purchase you make. For people looking for public accountability about what they spend money on, or just another social networking vanity trip, it’s pretty neat. But maybe there’s certain things that come in brown paper bags that you don’t want your mother stumbling across. Rolling out along with a Facebook-esque site redesign, Blippy has added a new privacy feature that lets you manually screen out individual purchases before the hit the net, and your mom hits the roof. To use it, [More]
Find Out Where Your Dairy And Produce Items Came From
By March 8, 2010
A longtime reader sent in a couple of links to websites that let you find out more about your food supply chain, if you’re into that sort of stuff. Where is my milk from? matches carton codes with a list of dairies published by the FDA. FoodLogiq is less user-friendly and requires free registration, but you can apparently use it to track produce from participating growers. (Thanks to Cy!) [More]
Looking For A New Snack? Try Taquitos.net
By February 8, 2010
The Daily Beast has published a short profile of Jeremy Selwyn, a web developer in Massachusetts who runs the snack food review website Taquitos.net. Selwyn started the site about ten years ago, and now he has nearly 4.5 thousand different entries on various chips, candies, pretzels, and whatever else can be combined with salt and flavored powder. Naturally I immediately checked out the “Worst Chips Ever” section, which includes an awful lot of sea creature flavored abominations. Apparently sour cream and clam isn’t a good idea for a chip. [More]
Check Out The Department Of Transportation's New Site For Airline Passengers
By January 29, 2010
If you’ve got a complaint about an airline, or you want to find out more about whether your complaint is valid, oh boy is there a treat in store for you! Earlier this month, the DOT launched a redesigned consumer aviation website at airconsumer.dot.gov. The goal of the site is “to make it as easy as possible for consumers to find the information they need to make their air travel experience as smooth and hassle-free as possible.” [More]
Kill Off Your Online Identities With The Web 2.0 Suicide Machine
By December 30, 2009
Supposedly the most depressing day of the year is just a few weeks away, and that sucks. But if you off yourself, you can’t drink, so it’s a conundrum. What you can do is use the website suicidemachine.org to remove yourself from unnecessary social media sites that either you’ve stopped using or don’t really enjoy anymore. [More]
Never Embarrass Yourself Trying To Unscrew A Wine Bottle Again
By December 4, 2009
The horrible thing about screw-cap bottles of wine, says the website butterflywineopener.com, is that they suck all the romance out of bottle opening. But lucky you! “The Butterflyâ„¢ solves that by flawlessly and expediently opening any screw cap bottle while retaining the elegance of traditional wine service.” [More]
