I’m a big fan of those Coinstar coin-counting machines you find in most grocery stores, but it always seemed like a raw deal having to give them nearly 9% of my money just to count it. Maybe I was a bit lazy giving up that big a cut when I could have rolled the coins myself and taken them to a bank. But I dump my fishbowl of loose change into the hopper without guilt now that you can get your money back as a gift certificate for Amazon or Starbucks — and at 100% of the value of your change with no fees. It’s a great system, especially since now you can take your gift certificate and go instead of standing in line at the checkout to get your receipt exchanged for cash.
November 17th, 2005
Chat rooms and email mailing lists are fine for some types of group conversations, but if you really need to get a group of geographically diverse folks together for a chat nothing beats an old-school conference call — especially when some members of the group are technologically challenged. My own large family has been making great use of freeconference.com for phone-based family meetings. To join in, each participant just makes a regular toll call to a number in Iowa (usually via cell phones with no long distance charges), then enters a numerical code that we agreed on in advance. The service takes care of the rest, automatically linking everyone who entered the same code with a minimum of fuss. There’s no charge other than long distance, it works reliably, and best of all anyone who can dial a phone can join the conversation.
November 5th, 2005
