Mandatory post. Keeping you “posted.” 😄
- Zipcar 🚙 (Use this link for $25 USD in free driving credit!)
Having owned two or more cars at a time for the past few years (since I can't drive my Volkswagen R32 in the winter due to all of the modified components on it)… Zipcar has been great! — In the city, you can rent cars for as little as $7/per-hour via a toll-free number, text message, their website, or their iPhone app, and that price includes free gas, insurance, and 180 miles of driving. As long as you don't have a bad driving record, you can join instantly and save some cash if you don't need a car for your daily commute. -
Mozy(Now using Backblaze instead, see below)
Backup your entire computer for as little as $4.95/month. Enough said. - Backblaze 🔥 (instead of Mozy)
I now use Backblaze for computer backups. It's great! Much faster than Mozy, has much nicer software, and even offers unlimited backup space. You can pre-pay for access for up to 2 years at a time for just $3.96 USD/month! — If you lose your data, they'll even send you a USB drive with your computer's prior contents. - Hulu 📺
Okay, so most people know about Hulu and how you can watch TV shows for free the day after they've aired with “limited commercial interruption,” but it's probably enough nowadays for you to also get rid of your satellite or cable TV subscription. — Do it! - BoltBus 🚌
One downside to Zipcar is that their daily rates (with the exception of a single-day snowboarding trip, which I've done several times with four passengers equally splitting the cost) are often comparable to the cost of flying to a nearby city. — However, with BoltBus, sometimes if you book at least 30-days in advance, your trip may only cost $1 USD! Seriously. “Bolt for a Buck” is their slogan. 😂 - Amazon Prime 📦
Imagine getting free 2-day shipping on anything from Amazon's warehouse? — It's not quite free… since you have to pay $79 USD/year to join Prime, but it saves a lot of time to just have stuff show up at your house whenever instead of having to go to the store and grab it. (Plus, if you'd have been using Zipcar to go get it, then this will probably pay for itself quickly.) 😅
… Also, here are some geeky things that have helped me out lately, too:
- Revision3 👽
Sometimes there's nothing on Hulu that I feel like watching… but, if I feel like educating myself in something geeky, here's free tech-focused online television reminiscent of the TechTV days. -
Feedly(Now using Reeder & TMNT instead… see my write-up on this!)
Feedly is a downloadable script that runs in your browser (such as Safari or Firefox) and presents a daily dynamic “magazine-like start page” with content from your Twitter streams and Google Reader feeds. — If you don't know what either of these things are… then maybe this isn't for you, but it's pretty cool if you do! - Tumblr 📝
Since migrating my blog over from Wordpress this morning, now Tumblr does everything for me and I can post stuff really easily. — I can even redesign it myself through a single template (instead of many), which is more reminiscent of the old Blogger days. (…Can't believe that they're even removing FTP support shortly!) - The Rackspace Cloud ☁️
Cloud hosting services have become mainstream, and I've been able to eliminate a ton of dedicated servers from my company and daily operations because of this. Rackspace provides both virtual servers at a cost of just a few dollars per-month, but also simple load-balanced virtual website hosting for everyone from the casual blogger to the small startup. — I host I Like B-Sides there, as well as everything else I run at this point… except for Mobile17, which is hosted at regular Rackspace since it needs several networked dedicated servers and a considerable amount of storage! The Rackspace Cloud is just about perfect for everything else. - Timesvr 🕑
If you find yourself doing boring, repetitive tasks… Timesvr might be a great way to outsource some of those. I particularly like it for tasks that can be done daily by just about anyone. — Try it for a month, and see if you really save time! (Just FYI, if the task involves any thinking… don't bother. It's mostly just for manual labor with very clear instructions.) - Coda for Mac OS X 🍃
Dreamweaver for Mac has been extremely unstable… at least for me. I highly recommend Coda as a streamlined but simple Mac web development tool, as long as you're comfortable writing everything in code without a WYSIWIG visual editor. — This app keeps everything lightweight, stable, and quick by eliminating what you don't need for just doing precise coding. Love it! 👍🏻 - CrossOver Gaming for Mac 👾
Almost all of the games I used to play are now supported by Steam, which also works with CrossOver Gaming without needing to dual-boot Windows using Bootcamp. — Sorry Microsoft! I don't even have Windows or Boot Camp installed anymore on my Mac. 😅
Hope these help someone else out, too!