Sell your used gadgets

One of the great things about selling used stuff on eBay is that everyone wins. The seller makes some money, the buyer saves some money, and less stuff gets sent to the landfill. The bad thing about eBay is that if you're not a long-time user, you don't have a good eBay rating built up. And if you don't have a good rating built up, you won't get many bids on what you're selling. Even if you have a good rating, selling stuff on eBay is a project: write an essay about your merchandise, take pictures, upload pictures, set pricing, choose options, set shipping and handling, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

Enter Second Rotation. If you have an electronic gadget you no longer want, send it to Second Rotation. Second Rotation will then send you cash. The only catch is that Second Rotation takes a cut, so you won't get as much as if you sold it yourself. On the other hand, you save yourself some time and maybe a couple of aspirin...

hard drive prices

Western Digital 500 GB USB 2.0 external hard drive: $114.75 at Dell
Note: Just bought one for myself. Somehow there was an "instant" rebate and a sale and the grand total including shipping, tax, etc. was $110. Not bad.

Free Stock Photos

This sounds straight-forward enough. Free stock photos from Free Range. If you are a photographer, you can also get paid by submitting photos to Free range and having them used.

25 Gadgets That Actually Save Money

It's not always high tech stuff that saves time and money. The Simple Dollar

Where does the money go?

Interesting data from the US Bureau of Labor statistics shows that $2194, or 5% of the average households' annual budget, was allocated to tech spending in 2005. Interestingly, this is more than household outlays for health insurance and apparel. Also interestingly, this represents a 25% decrease in spending from 1999. Talk about bang for the buck! We all benefit from more services and more powerful devices, but for less money... You gotta love tech.

Not surprisingly, the vast majority of tech spending — more than 75% — is for subscription services. Telephone, Internet, Cell Phone, and Cable / Sattelite TV.

iLife '08: for procrastinators

iLife 08 wowed me, and here's why:

It made me glad that I procrastinated on organizing my thousands of iPhotos and that i procrastinated on learning iMovie.

I knew that organizing my iPhotos was a time sink so I just never got around to it. Ditto to using iMovie. Although intuitive, I could see that it would take hours upon hours of diddling to make even a short movie.

From what I've seen, I'll be using iMovie for the first time as soon as I buy iLife 08 (even though I've owned the older versions for over 5 years) and I'll be able to organize my iPhotos in the matter of an hour or two instead of half a day.

It may not be a killer app, but the time savings and modest price make it a vicious app.