A
new brand of super shoppers use coupons and other discounts to get products for absurdly low prices. The Web has turned this group from a series of independent operators into cohesive groups, frustrating retailers.
posted by reenum
on Dec 3, 2010 -
126 comments
Want to get to that town in the next state on the cheap? Sure, there's Greyhound, but it's hardly a bargain at $32 for a journey from Seattle to Portland. When you really need to save the cash, use
Epic Transit Journeys wiki to plot your route entirely on local transit carriers, allowing you to
get to Stumptown for only $11.50 and a paltry five transfers. For a truly epic journey, cross international borders for the
trip to Vancouver, BC, which includes a lovely 2.9 mi stroll across the border.
Oran Viriyincy's travelogue of this trip includes lots of photos of buses and trains, and the border official's shocked reaction.
posted by grouse
on Nov 9, 2010 -
42 comments
Cheap Flights by
Fascinating Aida is a new song from a trio of satirical women who have been making people laugh for over a quarter of a century. As they say on their
homepage "It started by going fungal, then it went bacterial, and is in severe danger of going viral. Hurrah! We write a hit - it's only taken 27 years!". Other notable songs include their ode to viagra
Getting it,
White's Blues, and an old gem
Time, from 1987.
posted by handee
on Aug 26, 2010 -
9 comments
Ten years ago Valve released
Half Life, to the delight of gamers,
modders,
critics and people who hate cut scenes. Marc Laidlaw, writer for Valve,
talks about the genesis of
scientist turned crowbar wielding survivor, Gordon Freeman. Somehow avoided playing it in all these years? You can
buy it on Steam for less than a dollar until midnight November 21st.
posted by Artw
on Nov 20, 2008 -
86 comments
Cope pipe without a jig. Enter a few parameters and get a pdf that will give you a printable pattern that will allow you to notch tubing for welding or brazing to another pipe.
posted by Mitheral
on Mar 15, 2008 -
35 comments
Attention Darren Sherman: When you go on a date with someone, and they offer to split the tab, once you've declined their offer it can be perceived as bad ettiquette to threaten to get a court summons for the money if they refuse a second date with you.
Voicemails & emails of a JDate gone awry.
posted by jonson
on Jul 5, 2006 -
73 comments
"If ever a company needed a marketing department, it's New Choice, whose Original Flavor Round Crackers take the cake for stating the obvious. Points should be awarded for attempts to woo health-conscious consumers with facts about added DHA ("prevents heart attack, enhances eye sight"), but there's no two ways to look at Round Crackers: It's a badly executed Ritz rip-off." So sayeth the wits at the
Onion A.V. Club, who scour the nation's dollar stores for food products to evaluate in their sporadic feature "
Dining for a Dollar." Round crackers too boring? You might prefer
Freakin' Nuts (tagline: Is it a chip? Is it a nut? Yes!),
Thick Mints, or maybe just a handful of
Balls. Their annual
Cheap Toy Roundup is just as good;
last year's featured products such as Preeminent Car ($1), Stretchy Body Bits ($1.19), and a DVD titled
Clothes That Went to a Party ($2). Perhaps the all-time best, though, is the
Mini Wooden Furniture: Table: a "plain, unadorned wooden table." ($1)
posted by anjamu
on Mar 4, 2006 -
12 comments
Ndiyo systems consist of a central PC running Linux, serving a bunch of ultra-cheap, ultra-thin VNC-ish clients over 100Mbit Ethernet connections. The developers hope that mass production will soon make the clients cost as little as a typical video cable.
posted by flabdablet
on Jan 16, 2006 -
32 comments
Upstart travel sites challenge the big three Catering to skinflints who can't be bothered to check multiple sites for the best fares, travel aggregator sites like
Mobissimo,
CheapFlights,
Qixo, or
Sidestep allow you to search
Expedia,
Orbitz, and
Travelocity with a single query, as well as bargain airlines like
JetBlue and
Southwest, which aren't covered by the big three. (note: Sidestep requires a download, and only works on Windows; the others are all just regular websites.) But maybe you'd be best off just heading straight to
an obscure Belgian travel site.
posted by yankeefog
on Dec 13, 2004 -
13 comments
The Educator's Bed and Breakfast Network Lodging for US $34 per couple per night, and breakfast too! Required - a house of your own (or maybe a large apartment, I suppose) to host fellow members. Membership costs $35 per year with a one-time $10 initial registration fee. "Educators" is a broad category which includes teachers of all sorts, writers, journalists, researchers, librarians, probably DJ's....
many bloggers...
posted by troutfishing
on Jul 14, 2004 -
5 comments
Dr Venter says he will be able to provide an
individual's genome on a CD in about a week for $712,000 (£400,000) from later this year with the ultimate goal to sequence someone's entire genome in 24 hours for $1,000 (£562).
posted by nasim
on Sep 23, 2002 -
9 comments
Speed of light broken with basic lab kit. Physicists at Middle Tennessee State University report that they've broken the speed of light using only $500 in off-the-shelf equipment that can be set up in less than an hour. Don't expect warp drives any time soon, but this does open up a cool area of science to the "two guys in a garage" arena. Is there a Jobs & Wozniak out there who will kick start a transportation revolution?
posted by mkultra
on Sep 17, 2002 -
22 comments
