THE WORLD AT LARGE

Citibank ATM's
A few years ago Citibank placed ATM's in every Blockbuster store. I thought it was a brilliant idea, but I guess the world was not ready, so after about 6 months they pulled the concept. Now they are trying again, this time they chose 7-11's. Even more brilliant in my opinion. Finally a fee free ATM everywhere I need one. Here is the Citibank 7-11 FAQ

Zappos

OK, I have been buying my shoes at Zappos.com almost exclusively for more than a year. Free shipping, they come to your door, free shipping back if you don't like them...But it was not until the other day when I made good on two of there offers, a 365 day return policy (return for a full refund if unworn) and 110% price protection (if you find the shoe anywhere else for less they refund all difference in cost, sales tax included! at 110%) that I said. "that's it!", these blokes are going onto hank.com

Flickr

Yeah, Flickr is pretty cool. I guess in essence it is no different than any other image hosting site, but you can do cool things like this:

These are some of my photos, the artsy fartsy kind, that I have hosted at flickr.

Phones, Faxes and Cells
Don't know why, but over the last few weeks I have had some seriously cool phone stuff going on, here's the rub:

Fax? Don't need one. You can get a free eFax account and have a fax number assigned to you. Then your faxes just show up in your email. That's it. They have a MAC and PC compatible software widget for reading them and saving them as .pdf files.

$20 a month nationwide phone service? Yup!
I Just signed up for one of the VOIP phone service called Packet8. $20 a month for nationwide service, International rates are dirt cheap, you can port your existing number over to the service, but here is the coolest part. When you leave town, you can take the phone/modem anywhere in the world and you will still be available at your home number. Just plug the modem into any high speed internet line and you get a dial-tone. That's it!

Cell phone sim card blues.
I use ATT/Cingluar for better or worse as my cell provider. The whole thing is crazy right now, but the bottom line is that Cingular (which bought out ATT on paper) does not have a clean way to add Canada to my service agreement temporarily like ATT used to ("Canada Calling" for $35.). So now I find out all I have to due is get my phone "unlocked" which Cingular will not do for me and then I can use any SIM card I want and buy a local pay per minute card while I am in Canada (I am going to Vancouver for a few months to work). But here is the cool part. Bongo Wireless will unlock my phone for my over the internet for $40. Now that is service. AND, I can pay with Paypal to boot

American Cinematheque
After years of wondering what would ever become of the Aero Theater on Montana Ave. in Los Angeles, the American Cinematheque West has finally opened. It is amazing, it is wonderful and it is pretty much the best thing to happen to the Westside of LA since the beach was created about 4.6 billion years ago. In the first month I saw: Lawrence of Arabia, 2001:A Space Odyssey, Patton, Andrei Rublev.

Time has run out on a test program being conducted by the site. Photostamps.com.
They have a temporary agreement with the USPS to test market custom designed postage. The USPS is reviewing how things went and will decide whether to continue the program within 90 days. You can send a note to this guy if you want to add your thoughts.
Nick Barranca, VP Product Development
United States Postal Service
475 L'Enfant Plaza, SW, Room 5012
Washington, DC 20260-5012
I had some made, they are awesome. High quality images, given the size. Cost $17 bucks a sheet.

Socks

Dos.
They may not be the "best sox in the world", but at this unbelievable price, I couldn't resist.
I was in the checkout line at Wild Oats market the other day and previewed some nice, soft, 100% organic socks for $8.99 a pair. I made a mental note of their website and when I got home low and behold I find out that I can I save a bundle buying socks online. Maggies Organics sells "irregular" pairs in sets of 5 pair for $15. versus $8.99 pair retail, that would be $3 dollars vs. $9??. Are they comfy, heck yeah.

Lenticularness

I saw a cool blip in this months Dwell magazine about this company that is making high end lenticular folding maps. That sounds cool enough. The first one they are publishing is for New York City available for $17.95 from their website Urban Mapping.

Lenticular is the name for the process that yields those ridgy, kinda 3-D plastic images. Like a really cheesy TV screen toy with two images that alter when you tilt the screen back and forth?

I thought it would make a great gift for someone visiting NYC. I might have to buy one myself.

The credit card that cannot exist.

I just hate shit like this. I use my Citibank ATM/Debit card for most all my daily transactions (funny to note that recently in NYC and everyone thought I was crazy when I asked to buy stuff with a debit card), anyway, they issue the cards for 4 years and after about 6 months the mag stripe gets so worn down I have to ask for a new one. Two times ago I did this and they me a new card with the same number on it, thereby causing zero inconvenience to me who keeps my cc info online at many shopping destinations.

Six months later when the new card became useless I found out that it is IMPOSSIBLE for Citibank to issue duplicate cards. Multiple levels of CSR confirmed that this has never or will never happen.

When I walked into a Citibank branch and showed them the duplicate cards there was a lot of head scratching, they xeroxed the dupes and then I felt better.

I am not sure why they don't figure this out a little better, but for now I will just get a new card every 6 months.

Patti had a great idea on how to get Jack to eat some vegetables. Make the juice extraction an activity, then when he drinks it--poof, secretly he is getting his veggies. So I look online and find the one I like, the Waring JEX 328, highly recommended at eOpinions and at reasonable price. ($99 MSRP). The street price is $79. And the best deal I can find through one of my favorite comparison shopping sites (Yahoo Compare) with shipping is $84. OK, not bad. I didn't have time to make the purchase so it was a week later and I decided to look one more time. This time trying a different price comparison engine (PriceGrabber) I get a hit for $39!. I am sure it is a mis quote, but follow the URL anyway to SmartBargains and bought it for $46.94 shipped. Now, I have seen the thing at Jamba juice for $99. Go figure, that is less than half price and I don't even half to carry it home.

FREE MONEY

I recieved a letter from the payroll company that serves much of the film industry for an unclaimed paycheck from the year 2000! Good news for me, I guess, but it sure made me think about all the pay checks that don't get claimed. The letter states that if they do not hear from me the dough gets sent to the California state Controller (so that's what he does?) where it will remain indefinitely, unless claimed. The website has claimed over $200 million in 2003. The only person I checked other than myself had $57.79 waiting for them. How can that not be worth a mouse click?

$40 Printer, Almost New!

I need a second printer and thought I would pass along that after monitoring eBay and looking through the grey market discount electronics places from Yahoo Shopping, I am very happy to say that the best deal is from Epson direct. They have refurbed units in all price ranges, many come with free shipping. total cost to me $42 delivered