Group items tagged

a service that organizes your flights, car rentals and hotel bookings, storing them all in one easy-to-access place (i.e. your phone).Just sign up for a free account and begin adding your upcoming trips. You can either input information manually or simply forward travel confirmation emails to the site and they'll do it for you. (We like the latter route since we're a tad lazy).   While the site is useful, what really makes this service sing is the iPhone app, which features a host of additional features, including maps to get you to the airport and seat plans of the plane you'll be flying. In other good news, TripIt recently teamed up with Yapta (as covered in Netted, Yapta helps assure you get low-priced airfares). Now when you forward flight confirmation emails to TripIt,Yapta can track your for lower ticket prices or refunds with a single click. If your airfare dips they'll help you get a refund for the difference. You can also share travel plans with friends (when you register it searches your address book and Facebook account for other TripIt users). That way, if somebody you know is also going to be in, say, Maui, you'll be able to connect with them, and you'll know their itinerary (and vice versa).

 a free web-based tool that tracks and analyzes how you spend time while at your computer.Once the application is installed it runs in the background, monitoring both your web-browsing habits and application usage. (It does stop if you get up and walk away, so lunchtime is still your time).The service does everything from assigning you a basic efficiency rating to providing categorical breakdowns of how much time you spend on different activities (using Excel would fall under "Business" while looking at cat videos would fall under "Leisure Surfing").The time-tracking reports and graphs will show you precisely how you're spending your time (by day, week, month and year) and what activities you're doing (and, by default, not doing).Those looking to get serious may want to upgrade to RescueTime Pro (the plan starts at $5.30 per month) to take advantage of extra features. One that's especially helpful is FocusTime, which allows you to block all Internet "distractions" for a specified period of time. 

 a free service that allows you to create and share the digital equivalent of online mix tapes.To make a mix you simply pick any 8 songs (about 30 minutes of music) using the site's drag and drop functionality.  8tracks allows you to search their network of previously uploaded tracks by song, artist or genre. You can also upload music from your own library.  When you're done you can add artwork and short descriptor to your masterpiece. Publishing a mix tape allows you to share it with the 8 Tracks community and with your friends (or, if you want, just one special friend), via Twitter and Facebook You can also listen to any of the 65,000 mixes already on the site (we found some great ones and discovered a ton of new music along the way).

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 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.  

a great new service called GoodGuide, which reveals what's really beneath the labels of 70,000 products, including food, toys, personal care items and household products.The site offers a massive database of product reviews, expert advice and brand rankings, evaluating supposedly healthy products based on their personal, environmental and social impact.  You can search for a specific product or browse by category. Dive into a sub-category-household cleaners, say-and you'll see a ranked list of all the products they review (every product is given a ranking out of 10), starting with the top ranked.   Click on a specific product and you're taken to a page that has detailed ratings, information on the ingredients, user reviews and a host of details about what goes into the overall ranking.In addition to these thorough reviews, the site has relevant articles and issue guides. They also have a free iPhone app that allows you to scan the barcodes of various products when you're at the store for health and environmental ratings.

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 tough piece of software that allows you (and law enforcement) to both track your computer and remotely delete sensitive data before a thief can use it.Once downloaded, the software maintains daily contact with a monitoring center in Vancouver whenever your computer is online. If the computer is reported lost or stolen, contact increases to every 15 minutes. This allows the company's investigators to determine where the computer is and any activity that has occurred post-theft, at which point law enforcement is called.Regardless of recovery status, you can remotely delete applications, photos, bookmarks, browser cookies, financial information and stored passwords. The software is embedded in such a way that it continues to work even if the hard drive is reformatted.  And, in some cases, the company is willing to pay up to $1000 if the computer isn't found as part of their service agreement.Lojack for Laptops costs $39.99 a year (or $94.99 for a three year subscription).  But compared to losing your computer (and all the data therein), it's a small price to pay.

 the one stop online shop for all your locally sourced artisanal grocery needs. They offer everything from BBQ Pulled Pork (from Phoenix) to Zesty Peach Marmalade (made in Erwin, NC).Unlike other web-based grocery services, Foodzie doesn't hawk mass-market consumer goods. Rather, it provides access to small-scale gourmet producers and growers across the country, shipping goods directly from producers rather than some large-scale grocer's freezer. At present, Foodzie features products from 228 producers across the country. Each producer profile includes a "story," giving buyers a sense of who they are and how much passion they put into their wares. Have a favorite producer you don't see on the site? Suggest it. (The Foodzie folks encourage user feedback). 

 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).

 PassPack, a free, secure password-management tool that allows you to organize your passwords and access all your password-protected sites with one click.Once you create an account (using a secure code that not even the site has access to) you add your various passwords and PIN numbers under the Passwords tab. (You can enter up to 100 for free).  The site will also help you generate secure passwords and offers encryption tools.After you create a PassPack bookmark for a specific page (your Amazon account, say), the site will automatically log you in when you visit.You can also use Passpack to record and maintain data on your frequent-flier miles, warranties, and other PINs.And, for those times when you're not using your own computer they offer the ability to create disposable passwords.