Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Priceline

Priceline.com: The amazing travel service where you can now choose your exact flights and times for incredible travel savings or Name Your Own Price and save even more! All it takes is a little flexibility with your travel plans.
If you can fly any time of day, agree to fly on any major airline, stay in any name-brand hotel or rent from any of the top 5 U.S. rental car agencies - you can save a lot of money with priceline!.
More at:http://www.priceline.com/

Managing Your Task Easily And Quickly

Manage tasks quickly and easily.
An intuitive interface makes managing tasks fun. Set due dates easily with next Friday or in 2 weeks. Extensive keyboard shortcuts make task management quicker than ever.
Get reminded, anywhere.
Receive reminders via email, SMS, and instant messenger (AIM, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, Skype and Yahoo! are all supported).
Plan your time.
See what's due today and tomorrow, and the things you've missed. Prioritize, estimate your time, and postpone with ease. Set tasks to repeat every week or after 2 months.
Organize the way you want to.
Are you a list lover? Create as many lists as you need. Into tagging? Use the task cloud to easily see what you have to do. Want to store notes along with your tasks? You can do that too.
Work together to get things done.
Share, send and publish tasks and lists with your contacts or the world. Remind your significant other to do their household chores.
Add tasks wherever you are.
Adding tasks is as simple as firing off an email (even from your phone). See an important date on the web? Add it to your list with Quick Add.
Take your tasks with you.
Access your tasks on your web-enabled mobile device. Print your entire list or a handy weekly planner which shows upcoming tasks. View your tasks on your calendar with Apple iCal or Google Calendar. Subscribe to feeds with Atom/RSS.
Search your tasks the smart way.
Find the tasks you want with advanced searching. Save your searches as Smart Lists, and easily see tasks that match your desired criteria.
Locate your tasks.
Use the map to see where your tasks are located in the real world. See what's nearby or on your way, and plan the best way to get things done.
More:http://www.rememberthemilk.com/

The Little Book Of Common Sense Investing

John Bogle is the founder and retired CEO of Vanguard, and the Vanguard/Bogle investment philosophy struck such a chord with me that it was the final piece that convinced me to start investing and along with Warren Buffett and Benjamin Graham are one of the three investors whose ideas and principles I truly value. So, when I saw Bogle had written a book with a title like The Little Book of Common Sense Investing, I had to give it a read.

This is the third volume in the “Little Book” series, which are intended to be introductions to specific investing philosophies . This time around, the philosophy is the Bogle philosophy, which is that the smartest investment for most stock market investors is the broad low-fee index fund. Let’s take a stroll through this little book and learn what’s within those red covers.

A Walk Through The Little Book of Common Sense Investing

This small book is divided into eighteen chapters, each ten to twenty pages long, that spells out piece by piece the ideas behind the philosophy that one should do their investing in low-cost index funds. The brief chapters are perfect bite size pieces to read during a spare moment, like eating lunch, waiting for an interview, or so forth; this is an aspect of the “Little Book” series that I quite like.

Chapter 1: A Parable

You can read this first chapter in its entirety on John Bogle’s personal site, but suffice it to say that much of the chapter focuses on a retelling of Warren Buffett’s classic tale of the Gotrocks and the Helpers. In a nutshell, the point of the tale is that individuals that you have to pay to help you make wise investment choices are actually taking money away from you instead of helping you make more money. The moral is, in Buffett’s words, that for investors as a whole, returns decrease as motion increases. An effective individual investor should thus look for steady investments with few middlemen - and middlemen that charge minimally for their services.

Chapter 2: Rational Exuberance

From the Gotrocks parable of the first chapter, Bogle attempts to apply the lesson of the story to stocks. He compares, over the long term, the return on investment for businesses versus the return on investment for stocks and finds that their correlation is very tight. What does that mean? Over the long haul, an investment in the stock of a business will match the success of the business itself. There may be short term twists in investor emotions, but when you buy a stock for a long haul, you’re buying into the underlying business. Thus, short term stock market investing is a completely different game than long term investing, and Bogle admits to not having an understanding of investor emotion which is required to play the short term game. I guess if you’re interested in short term individual stock picking, turn to someone like Jim Cramer.
More at:http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/05/04/review-the-little-book-of-common-sense-investing/

Send Your Money To China

Now you can send money to China without getting up from your computer. iKobo Money Transfer offers a new way of sending money to China that is safer, easier and less expensive than traditional, agent-based money sending location, money orders or wire transfers.

This is how it works: First, set up your free money transfer account. Then tell us the name and address of the person to whom you will be sending money. You can send money from a credit card, a debit card or your checking or savings account. Tell us the amount you want to send, and you are done. Your money transfer to China is on the way. Your friend or family member will receive a Visa Debit card that can be used at any Visa ATM or anywhere Visa Debit cards are accepted. The recipient doesn?t have to deal with an agent, and the Visa Debit card is more secure than carrying large amounts of cash.

You can use iKobo Money Transfer any time, day or night. All you have to do is go online. Send money to China or any country where Visa is accepted. iKobo Money Transfer is more convenient than agent-based money sending locations, money orders or wire transfers, and it is less expensive, too!
More at:http://www.ikobo.com/asia/money-transfer-china.html

Buy My Broken I-Pods

The young start-up offers consumers a very simple way to sell their broken or unused iPods: after indicating which model they'd like to sell and what condition it's in, the website gives an instant price-quote. Send it in, and payment is transferred via PayPal within 24 hours after the iPod has been received.
The company takes pride in extending the lives of dead or used iPods, and keeping them out of landfills. According to Mother Jones, electronic waste accounts for 2 percent of America's trash in landfills but 70 percent of its toxic garbage. Springwise likes the niche aspect—focusing on one very popular article, and making it easy for consumers to get money for something they'd otherwise leave in a junk drawer or throw away. One to set up locally, or extend to other products? Might not make you rich, but it can definitely be a good business on the side. Especially since iPods sales don't seem to be slowing down ;-) Related: Podswap and iRepair.

Website: www.buymybrokenipod.com

Hire Your Things

New Zealand-based Hire Things, which is currently in public beta, is promoted as a low risk, cost effective marketing channel for hire and rental services, and a facilitator for 'micro-hire-businesses'. Think of it as eBay for renting goods. The company is an enterprising mash-up of two major trends: minipreneurs (consumers turning into entrepreneurs) and transumers (consumers becoming less interested in owning).

Currently Hire Things doesn't charge for item listings, photo uploads or completed bookings, but later this spring they plan to charge fees for successful bookings, beginning at 5% for bookings up to NZD 100. Hire Things plans to establish similar marketplaces in Australia, the UK and other countries. The concept should definitely appeal to consumers who'd like to tackle a backyard project but get cold feet at the idea of buying tools they'll use only once, or would like to try out a new hobby without spending hundreds of dollars on something they might not be interested in three weeks from now.

Launch a person-to-person hire network before Hire Things gets to your neck of the woods. Find 'riches in niches' by specializing in one area, like art, musical instruments, photography or sporting equipment. Target expats or people on holiday, or create specially themed rental packages. First, read up on what drives transumers and how other companies are catering to their desire not to own.

Website: www.hirethings.com