Free Online Financial Calculators

Most of us don't remember the first thing about present and future value calculations (especially without the help of a financial calculator). The wonder of the internet makes plenty of good tools available at your fingertips to calculate figures for your retirement, you mortgage, credit cards, investment allocation or business. But, if you use these tools somewhat frequently you may want to bookmark Dinkytown.net. The site has a bunch of easy to use free calculators on just about anything you can think of and also has special calculators for those of you in Australia and Canada.

Image: ansik @ Flickr

Free Stuff Roundup

Everyone likes free stuff, even if it's not a big ticket item. Below is a list of free items you can get right now online ranging from post-it notes to coffee.

3M is giving away a sampler pack of Post-it Note Cubes, Post-it Flash Cards, Post-it Flags, and Post-it Flag Highlighters until September 30. Direct Link.

For the pet lovers out there, you can get a free bag of IAMS Healthy Naturals dog food, by requesting a rebate coupon here. Direct Link.

Anyone with kids, or possibly looking to relive their college years can score a free hamburger helper microwave single here. Direct Link.

The next time you are shopping at Target, if you stop into Starbucks, you can buy one coffee and get one free by printing the coupon here. Direct Link.




Image by: Eurleif

Free Online File Storage With Driveway

I have been swapping a lot of pictures lately with a few of my friends from a recent trip. The problem I have run into is that a picture from a 5 mega pixel camera clocks in at over a 1 meg and my university email account has a rather small cap of attachments. I switched over to my gmail account, but was still capped at about 20 megs. Thus began my search for a better way to transfer the files. I tried a few of the online photo services like flickr but I wanted the pictures transmitted in their full resolution glory.

I read about the DriveWay.com file sharing app and gave it a shot this weekend. It's a start-up that lets you transfer files up to 500 mb (I'm not sure how much cash they will burn through offering a free service with massive bandwith requirements, but maybe they are building on the YouTube business model that is all the rage these days).

The website is really easy to use. You simply click the browse button on the front page and then navigate to the file on your computer you want to upload. You can then type in an email address that the website will "park" the file for. The interface is also really clean and simple. Very web 2.0. My only concern with the service is that there do not seem to be privacy settings available that let you shield the download from the average "Joe" online. This service would work fine if I was sharing some freeware or a stock photo (aside from the obvious copyright concerns), but I'm not so sure I want my family pictures out there for everyone to see so easily.

The Verdict: Worth a bookmark and a try, (remember its free) but won't hit the mainstream until there are stronger privacy controls (or at least they are easier to find). I'm looking forward to following the services as they add features and products.

Free Joost Invite No Strings Attached

*** UPDATE 5/2/07: I now have 900+ invites as of 9:00AM this morning so request away ***

I recently began toying with Joost. If you aren't familiar with the service you aren't alone. Joost is an IPTV service (think VoIP but for TV). Basically you can watch TV over your computer for free. The service is ad based and actually has a lot better picture quality than you would expect. The only potential downsides are 1) you need a broadband connection 2) there isn't a tremendous amount of content out there right now on the service 3) you need an invite to use the service.

Well, I have ONE invites available. For those of you who have yet to receive one and want to try it out here's your chance. Make a post in the comments and make sure you leave your email address so I can contact you and send you the invite.

23 Things You Can Get For Free

Real Simple Magazine has a list of 23 "surprising" things you can get for free. While most aren't really that exciting (a free week or month trial at a health club), some of the others are actually helpful. The list has free online courses (MIT/Yale), telephone (Skype), paperback books (paperbackswap.com), Ben & Jerry's and some other cool stuff.

Link
Real Simple Magazine - 23 surprising Things you Can Get For Free