Hi Everyone,
Although the holiday season is behind us, we can still support this great nation by becoming expert shoppers year-round. As promised, this issue will be part two of the series on shopping online. Included will be: group discount sites, travel comparison shopping, charity sites and more ways to cybersave!
Dave
Now that you are whole-heartedly convinced that shopping on the web is totally safe (and know the ways to tell of it's safeness), you are ready to take on the material world, save big and find whatever you're looking for (and avoid driving/parking/mall-mania at the same time).
Whether you're out of town, staying local, in the mall, or feeling philanthropic, this issue will help you with some new ideas.
Out on the Town
Best Ways to Save a Buck Around Town
"Neva, eva pay retail", a famous someone said over the din of a cacophonous mall. It would be a sin to do so in this day and age, so here are some tools/websites to help you out, to save a few bucks while doing the stuff you already do, and probably should do more!
Goldstar: Have you heard of Goldstar? It's the best. Their tagline is: "Fun ideas, half-price tickets, member reviews and everything you need for great nights out."
Note: you pay a small transaction fee with each purchase, but it still winds up being a much better deal than the original price.
TixBayArea - Also known as Half Price Theater Tickets. Go to the site to see what's available and purchase them on the spot or find out what's available at the Union Square location. Not just theater tickets, but other performances as well.
Restaurant.com - Tagline: "Eat. Drink. Save Money." Sign up for this service and get - for example - $25 worth of food for $10 at XYX restaurant. They have hundreds of Bay Area restaurants to choose from. Membership is free.
For Out of Town
Get Your Group On!
Here are just a few. Sign up for free, get their newsletter alerts and only pay when you want to purchase something.
- www.Groupon.com
- www.Livingsocial.com
- www.Coyzo.com (started by a friend of mine, it's new, so if you wanna support a new biz, this is a good one since it's also focused on social responsibility).
- www.Buywithme.com
*You don't need to have a group, the website keeps track of who is buying and once they reach their quota of buyers, you all get the deal! All about volume...
Really? No Way...
Here are some pretty cool technologies that are just, well, pretty cool...
MPire.com is like a stock ticker for item pricing. A graph depicts the average price of any item over time, both on retailer’s sites and on auction sites…”Never bid blindly on eBay again!”
Red Laser - If you have an iPhone there is an application called Red Laser that "scans" the bar code of a product and brings up all the other prices of that product, so you can find the best deals out there before you buy!
Mytriggers.com lets you set your price. Enter your product and how much you’d like to pay for it, and this site will return a list of vendors. Click the “Trigger It” button to have the site send an email when the price drops to your target.
Charity Websites
In light of the recent disaster in Haiti, some of you may be wondering what are some of the best (and most trustworthy) places to make donations. A great website for finding (and evaluating) charities to donate to is Charity Navigator where you can search for charities on particular categories, from the environment, animals (my personal crusade), the arts, education, etc. Go to www.charitynavigator.org to read more.
Some of the more well-known and trusted organizations for donating to Haiti are www.OxFam.org, www.amnesty.org, www.worldvision.org, and www.unicef.org.
Dear Reader...
Got a site or service you would like to recommend and share? Send it my way!
If you're interested, or already have something to share, contact me directly and you'll get full credit if published (if desired).
NEED HELP!
If any of you were in my Digital Storytelling classes, I am looking for a Teacher's Assistant for the upcoming SFSU class that starts this Friday (10-12pm) for 8 weeks. What's in it for you (beside getting to learn all that great stuff again?) is that you get a FREE class of your choosing through OLLI for your time. Please contact me ASAP if you are interested...
Contact David Casuto for:
Private instruction, Technical Support, Project Work and most all technology-related topics and areas.
Patient. Reliable. Knowledgeable.
(415) 509-3725 dave@senior-surf.org
