According to my analytics software, there are five posts which people liked the most. Here they are in digest form for your reading pleasure.

1) eTrade Bank/Broker - A Pretty Good Broker, and a Darn Nice Bank

2) Free $25 through Revolution Money Exchange

3) Pandora.com… Internet Radio With a Twist

4) indeed.com - Sorta neet.

5) Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron Released!

Thank you guys so much for your readership! I hope to continue to provide you with cool and useful and free web services in the future!

—Zach

Well, Phillips is running some incredible deals on their LCD HDTV’s. My personal “Buy” trigger was a 42″ 1080P TV for < $800.

Well, I just placed an order for a 42″ Magnavox 1080P HDTV and it came to just under $540 shipped to my door! WOOHOO!

—Zach

Woohoo! Canonical just released Ubuntu 8.04! Ubuntu is one of the most incredible free pieces of software that I have ever encountered.

Ubuntu is basically a free alternative to Microsoft Windows. While it doesn’t allow you to run Microsoft Office, it does include OpenOffice.org. A completely free, robust alternative to Microsoft Office. It even comes with a great instant messaging client - pidgin and a web browser that is much more secure than Internet Explorer - Firefox.

For a huge portion of individuals, Ubuntu will do everything you need your computer to do out of the box. For everyone else, you may have to do a bit of work, but you’ll be glad you did. :).

If you want to try it without messing your computer up, check out wubi. It lets you install Ubuntu while leaving windows completely intact, and is incredibly easy to do. Then next time you buy a computer avoid paying the Microsoft Tax and buy a cheap laptop or desktop from Dell with Ubuntu pre installed.

—Zach

For the past year, I’ve been using eTrade’s Complete Savings for my emergency fund and other long term liquid savings. I signed up back when they 5.25% APY for all of their savings accounts. It was pretty nice while it lasted, but thanks to the market it has tanked all the way down to 3.01% APY. A paltry .01% APY better than IngDirect’s Orange Savings Account. However there’s a couple things I absolutely love about eTrade, and those are it’s interface and it’s customer service.

Read the rest of this entry »

—Zach

With projects like 960.gs becoming prevalent, and grid design becoming more and more prominent in the eyes of high end designers, I spent a little time to work out a formula to generate a single columns width based upon three things. Read the rest of this entry »

—Zach

I’m not sure how many of you use Pandora, but I am highly excited by it each and every time. Pandora is basically a radio service that utilizes the Music Genome Project in order to play music that you will like based upon what songs, artists or CDs you list that you like. It then does some complicated math comparing different attributes of the songs, artist or CD that you inserted and every other song in their database.

It proves for an eclectic listening experience, I’ll give you that!

—Zach

Well I was reading my lifehacker RSS feed, and stumbled across an interesting item - indeed. No, I mean, it’s called Indeed. Indeed is a pretty… Interesting… Web site. Basically they somehow aggregate Job data for all across the United states. They then allow you to search and compare job titles across zip codes. This allows you to do some… Shall we say… Interesting comparisons.

I don’t know about you, but I think I either want to be a dealer, or a bottle washer. They get paid the best.

—Zach

So you want to be on the Internet, huh? But it’s a big playing field, ya know? There’s all your competitors from all around the world that are on the internet, and there’s literally billions of individual websites. What makes you think that you can get any single person to go to your web site and buy your stuff?

Read the rest of this entry »

—Zach

Well, I am now withdrawing my bonus for signing up with Revolution Money Exchange. Total funds: $75. Not as high as some people I know, but still a nice chunk of change. I’ll be dropping this into my new house fund…

—Zach

As I talk with some of my friends, I discover more and more of them don’t have any idea what kind of retirement accounts are out there, or what kind of benefits these retirement accounts give. Some have heard of IRAs, some have heard of 401(k)’s and still more have decided to utilize their sock drawer as means of storing their wealth. Read the rest of this entry »

—Zach