DazzlinDonna » Good Deals

Freelancers Union

Donna — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 10:24:17 +0000

I’d like to quickly point out a site I’ve only recently become aware of (where have I been, right?). It’s called the Freelancer’s Union and can be found at http://www.freelancersunion.org. It’s headed by Sara Horowitz and you can see a short Youtube video introduction of it on CNN Money here.

Basically, Freelancer’s Union is a site geared towards giving some breaks to U.S. freelancers, including the ability to get group rates on insurance and retirement plans. In addition, the organization is involved in political action to try to bring fairness to the tax issues that freelancers face, (we generally pay more taxes than traditional employees do).

Other benefits include discounts on products and services, seminars, webinars, live events, a job board, and a community forum.

It’s free to join so if you are a freelancer, check it out.

I have no idea if this same type of organization exists in other countries, but if you’re a freelancer living outside the U.S., I’d recommend searching around for one. There could be some benefits waiting for you.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Freelancer, Freelancer's Union, Sara Horowitz

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Green Web Hosting – ThinkHost Is No Longer My Choice

Donna — Tue, 20 May 2008 17:48:09 +0000

UPDATE: Due to so many complaints, I’m no longer recommending ThinkHost. However, lucky for us all, my past and still present favorite hosting company, HostGator, has gone green, so I can continue recommending it while knowing there’s an extra goodness in its greeness! So, ignore the rest of this and just know that I love HostGator. *

A few days ago, a friend of mine had web hosting issues (and boy, oh boy, over the years, I’ve had plenty of those!). Because she’s an enlightened sort of gal, she decided to investigate using green hosting services. Since she brought it to my mind, I couldn’t help but go out and start doing a little investigating of my own.

There are a few nice choices in green web hosting, but the one I ended up choosing as the best “all ’round” choice for me or most people I know would be ThinkHost. Reasons I chose them as my green web host of choice:

Their services are powered by 100% renewable energy (solar/wind)
Plants a tree for every client
Good plan pricing with all the right plan features
Fast setup
Multiple payment methods available
Host unlimited number of sites for no extra charge
Lots of space and bandwidth offered
Been around for a long time
Sponsors many non-profit organizations and 10% of their revenue value is put back into community projects
Backed by a site I know and trust (tamingthebeast.net)
100% uptime guarantee – and they actually give you 1 day of hosting free for each 1 hour of service interruption
Backup generators in case of power outages

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve often recommended HostGator and I still do. I love that hosting company. But if you really want to move to an earth-friendly hosting company, then ThinkHost is who I’d recommend for you. If you decide to try them, I’ve even got a coupon code you can use. Just enter the following code on the secure package signup form to get $20 off any package you choose : THINKHOST20

Just wanted to pass along another hosting recommendation, in addition to the one I usually recommend. If you are interested in using a green hosting company, ThinkHost is the one to use.

Disclosure: Affiliate links may be used within this post for products I recommend. They in no way affect my judgement of said products, nor do they affect the price of the product.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: For Us All, Good, green hosting services, green web host, green web hosting, hostgator, renewable energy, ThinkHost, web hosting

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Revolution Money Is Possible PayPal Replacement That Has Real Merit

Donna — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:25:23 +0000

A new payment network, called Revolution Money, is poised to take PayPal’s place. I personally have never had a problem with PayPal but because they are not a bank, and can’t be regulated like one, the possibility of them freezing your account is very real, and has caused many people to get very upset over the years. They can put a hold on your money for up to 6 months while they investigate what they think might be fraudulent activity.

Some very important people got together to try to give us all a better option, and they just might be able to pull it off. The people behind Revolution Money are Ted Leonsis (Vice-chairman of AOL and owner of Washington Capitals), Steve Case (co-founder of AOL), David Goldman (former vice-chairman of J.P. Morgan), Russell E. Hogg (former President and CEO of Mastercard), David Pottruck (Chairman, Eos Airlines and Former CEO of Charles Schwab), Frank Raines (Former Chairman & CEO of Fannie Mae), Larry Summers (Former Secretary of Treasury and Former President of Harvard University), Jason Hogg (Founder, President and CEO of Revolution Money) and Patrick Graf (Co-Founder and CTO of Revolution Money). That’s an impressive array of people.

The good thing is that Revolution Money is administered by an actual bank (First Bank & Trust in Brookings, South Dakota), and is FDIC-insured, along with your Revolution Money Exchange Account. In addition, unlike PayPal, you can send and receive money to and from other Revolution Money Exchange members with no service charges at all.

The only way that Revolution Money can replace PayPal, however, is for it to get lots of people to sign up. So, to help achieve that, from now until April 15th, everyone who signs up (for free) will automatically get $25 placed into their account. It’s true and it’s real. I tried it. I signed up, and within minutes, $25 was ready and waiting for me.

If you want to be able to use a more secure payment system than PayPal, and you want no charges for doing so, AND YOU WANT $25, all you have to do is click on the button below and go sign up. You will have to give them both your social security number and your bank’s routing and account number, so that your Revolution Money account can be attached to your bank account (just like PayPal does). But don’t worry, it isn’t a scam, and it is safe.

I have a feeling this is going to revolutionize the online payment model.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: actual bank, AOL, bank, bank account, Brookings, CEO, Chairman, Chairman & CEO, Charles Schwab, Co-Founder, Co-Founder and CTO, David Goldman, David Pottruck, Eos Airlines, Fannie Mae, FDIC, First Bank & Trust, Founder, Frank Raines, Harvard University, J.P. Morgan, Jason Hogg, Larry Summers, Mastercard, online payment model, owner, Patrick Graf, payment network, payment system, PayPal, President, President and CEO, revolution money, Revolution Money Exchange, Russell E. Hogg, Secretary of Treasury, Secretary of Treasury and Former President, South Dakota, Steve Case, Ted Leonsis, Vice-chairman, Washington Capitals

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Black Friday Fun and Deals, Deals, Deals

Donna — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 07:02:24 +0000

It’s Black Friday, folks, but instead of fighting the crowds at the malls, you can find all the on-sale stuff online too. What a fun, fun, fun, fun day to be able to shop and get bargains, bargains, bargains! I’m going to be doing a lot of shopping at Amazon’s Black Friday Sales Event. Amazon will be offering hourly deals from 6am to 6pm PST along with thousands of products on sale for a limited time. Also, we all get gift wrapping for $.99 per item. Sweet!

So take some time off today, spend a little money, and have fun!

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Amazon, Amazon.com, black friday, deals, shopping

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Want Your Own Yahoo! Mash Space?

Donna — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 08:54:43 +0000

Yahoo! just unveiled Mash, its newest social networking space. Of course, you have to be invited to participate at the moment, as is the norm with these Web 2.0 beta things. Once you have a Mash profile, it appears that you then can invite unlimited amounts of people. I might be wrong on that, but I don’t see any limits, anyway. So, I’ll be happy to give invites to anyone and everyone who subscribes to my blog feed.

Of course, there’s no real way for me to know that you’ve subscribed to my blog, so I’ll just have to trust you when you say you did. Simply tell me you subscribed by using the contact form below, and I’ll get an invite out to you.

~~Oh, and here’s my own Mash page.~~

Mash no longer exists.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Mash, social networking space, Yahoo

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How I Plan To Survive My Next Computer Crash

Donna — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 11:29:43 +0000

My entire weekend was ruined when my computer died early Saturday morning. I wasn’t entirely surprised. My computers tend to give up the ghost every 2-3 years, and the latest had lasted nearly 4 years. I wasn’t too worried. I have backups, right? Well, yes, sort of. For some reason, my backups stopped happening 4 months ago. I don’t know why. So my latest backup is really old. It’s time to move to the online backup model. After getting my new computer into a workable state, I researched online backup options, and thought I’d share what I plan to use (so you can too).

First of all, I was amazed to find Mozy. * This service is free for the first 2GB (which is a lot of data), and unlimited storage is only $4.95/month. That’s pretty incredible. I don’t see myself needing the unlimited version any time soon, so I tried out the free version yesterday. I downloaded a program which set itself up and even suggested what to back up. I can change the suggestions, but I was happy with what it deemed to be important. I told it to back up during computer idle time, but I could have chosen a set schedule if I’d wanted. I don’t have much data yet, but it estimated it would take about 15 minutes to back it all up. I’m not sure if that ended up being true or not, since it happened when I went to bed. This morning though, it had all worked well. Here’s a screenshot (reduced) to prove it.

Here’s some facts from the Mozy FAQ.

Is simple to set up
Performs backups automatically in the background
Encrypts all files on your PC before transfer
Performs incremental backups
Backs up only blocks that have changed
Backs up open/locked files

Your first backup might take a while, but after that, the time will be shortened considerably. Mozy does differential backups, meaning it only backs up the files that have changed since the last time they were backed up.

I also plan to buy several thumbdrives for things like pictures and music that I’d want to be portable anyway, but I want to know that my important stuff (email, etc.) is safely backed up somewhere else, and that I can get to it anywhere, anytime. And the price (free) is definitely right.

Disclosure: Affiliate links may be used within this post for products I recommend. They in no way affect my judgement of said products, nor do they affect the price of the product.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: backups, Mozy, online backup model, online backup options, online backups, remote backups

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I am giving away 5 free GrandCentral invitations

Donna — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 21:11:16 +0000

UPDATE: NO MORE GRANDCENTRAL INVITATIONS ARE AVAILABLE. I’M ALL OUT, SORRY.

Have you heard about GrandCentral yet? Google just acquired the company, and for now at least, it is free. I have to say that this is the coolest use of technology I’ve seen in a long, long time. Maybe because I’ve moved a lot in my life, but dealing with phone number changes is a real drag for me. GrandCentral eliminates that problem for me – forever. The premise behind GrandCentral is that you can have a phone number tied just to you – forever. It’s not tied to a location or a phone – it is tied to you. No matter how many phone numbers you have – home, cell, work – you can have one GrandCentral number that redirects to any of them. No matter how many times you move, or how many times you change phone numbers, your one GrandCentral number can stay with you forever, and can be redirected to any new phone number you wish.

You can set it up so that different groups of people will be redirected to different phones. Different groups can get different ring tones or different voice mail messages. There are simply tons of features available. Here are some screenshots that list various features.

You can also watch a demonstration of the service via this video:

For the time being, GrandCentral is in Invitation-Only mode, and I’ve got 5 invitations available. If you’d like an invitation, all you have to do is link to this post. Let me know where the link is in the comments below. The first 5 to let me know where your link is gets an invite. Please use a legitimate email address when you comment below, so that I know what email address to send the invitation to.

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A daily surprise

Donna — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 19:27:33 +0000

Have you ever been to Woot.com? I just discovered it a few days ago, and I just love it. Woot is an online store that only sells one item each day, and that item is usually DEEPLY discounted. A new item is shown every day at midnight (CST) and is there until sold out, or until midnight comes along again. If it sells out, it is not replaced with a new item until midnight. So it really is just one item per day. They sell some really nice stuff too, at some really great prices, mostly electronics I think. But the fun part is finding out what the day’s deal is – kind of like the old “Blue Light Special”. Hey, it’s fun…a little surprise each day. Check it out sometime.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: daily specials, electronics, online store, woot

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