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]
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Calculator Tells You Whether to Rent Or Buy
By 4.24.10
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 4.12.10
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 3.23.10
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 3.15.10
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 3.15.10
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 3.12.10
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 3.8.10
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 2.8.10
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 1.29.10
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 12.30.09
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 12.4.09
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]
Let This Flowchart Tell You Which Chain Restaurant To Visit Next
By 11.30.09
Sometimes it’s hard to decide on a chain restaurant when you’re going out to eat. Luckily, the blog Eating The Road has produced a handy flowchart. What I like best about it is it asks the important questions, things like “Are you Drunk? Do you want to be? Are you high?” And most important, “Do you mind flair?” [More]
See Which Retailers Offer Free Shipping
By 11.20.09
The website istobe offers a daily free shipping report for over 500 online retailers, where you can quickly see whether there’s a minimum purchase requirement or if the retailer offers free shipping at all. It’s a good resource to use as you compare prices, and istobe says they update it daily.
Which Router Bit Set Would You Buy?
By 11.10.09
While mucking around on Home Depot‘s site, Elliott spotted this juxtaposition of smokin’/non-smokin’ deals. It seems that the prices for the 20-piece router bit set is the same as that of the 10-piecer. He states the obvious:
Quicken Online To Be Shut Down Next Year, Accounts Merged With Mint
By 11.4.09
When news broke back in September that Intuit, the company behind Quicken, was buying personal finance website Mint, everyone wondered how the two services would co-exist. The worst case scenario was that Mint would be absorbed somehow into Intuit’s in-house competitor, Quicken Online. Thankfully, it looks like the opposite will happen.
Take More Notes, Save Money
By 11.2.09
Yesterday I grabbed a notebook app for my smartphone and spent a couple of hours organizing the various content folders—ideas for Consumerist, gift lists for Christmas, things to look up later on a computer—so that I could capture information more efficiently. Wait, why s ths n Cnsmrst? Because The Simple Dollar argues that by keeping a notebook and using it all the time (Lifehacker calls it “ubiquitous capture”), you can end up saving money.
