Group items tagged

a verbal mash-up of the words "group" and "coupon"-is one that's legit, and full of stuff you'll enjoy.  Their offer is simple: one deal every day for each of the 30 U.S. cities they support. These are typically deeply discounted rates for services offered by local businesses (meals, custom-made shirts, museum tickets, Pilates classes, etc.).Once you enter the specific city you're registered in, you'll see that day's deal, the retail value, the discount, and your savings.  You click on the deal to buy it and then they email you the "groupon," which you redeem when you receive your service.There is a small catch:  If not enough people sign up for a given deal, it doesn't happen.  This encourages each user to invite friends into the mix (these are group discounts, after all). Near as we can tell most of the deals go through, and there's no cost if one doesn't, so the downside is minimal.  

Thanks to a new site called Walk Score, you can now determine the "walkability" rating of thousands of neighborhoods. The site considers a variety of factors (location of amenities, proximity of public transport) and assigns your neighborhood a numerical convenience grade.  It ranks each neighborhood on a scale from 0 (totally car-dependent) to 100 (Walker's Paradise).To give you some sense of rankings, Manhattan's Tribeca scores 100 while Atlanta's Buckhead earns a 61 (which makes it "somewhat walkable").To date the simple yet comprehensive site covers more than 2,500 neighborhoods in 40 major American cities. When you enter an address or neighborhood the site generates both a walkability score and a detailed map with nearby recreational, commercial, cultural, and social points of interest. This is useful if you're visiting a city and want to see how your hotel ranks.But Walk Score's greatest return on investment lies in its utility as a tool to guide real estate purchases, since walkability is generally linked to increased financial value (i.e. more walkable neighborhoods command greater prices).

a guide to coffee shops that have free Internet access (though they also take into account the number of power outlets and 3G reception). At the moment they rank some 300 coffee shops in North America, the UK and Australia. The list is not huge, but that's because it only has cafés they or their readers have first hand experience with. You can search by city or postal code (or choose from a roster of cities on their home page). The iPhone app detects your location to automatically find the nearest free wi-fi and power-ready laptop friendly café.  (And it will show you on a map, and provide directions).

 a peer-to-peer clothing exchange that lets you trade items with other people who also want to clean out their closets.When you sign up you answer a series of questions (do you live in the city or suburbs? how large is your closet?) that determine how much you have in the way of unwanted clothing and what the "value" of your closet is. From there you add the items you want to trade to your virtual closet, listing the size, brand, color and condition. Then you tell them what you're looking for, again specifying brands and sizes. The system uses an algorithm to match your preferences with other users. Once a swap is engaged you send your items using pre-paid envelopes (they come in packets of three for $25; the service is otherwise free). If you feel a little odd about taking somebody else's used clothing, rest assured that threUP claims most of their users only trade new or "like new" items.  In addition there's rating system that helps maintain quality control (it also allows the system to find good matches for you).