GeekSugar

Daily Tech: Remember the Milk Adds Push Notifications

GeekSugar — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:02:58 PDT

Never miss an appointment or task thanks to Remember the Milk's iPhone app with push notifications. - Lifehacker
MythBuster's Adam Savage gets reimbursed for the $11,000 bill AT&T sent him for web surfing in Canada. - TechCrunch
Instead of standing in line, you can now just check Apple's site to see where there's iPhone 3GS availability. - Engadget
Wired compares the Palm Pre, the G1, the BlackBerry Storm, and the iPhone 3GS. - Wired
Here's how you can post videos to Twitter with the iPhone 3GS.- Mashable
Log in for your chance to win the hot new iPhone 3GS. - geeksugar

Nine Geeky Tools to Make Your Life Easier

GeekSugar — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 04:00:00 PDT

This week, I heard the sad news that one of my favorite online tools, Kwiry, would be discontinuing its service. Before freaking out, I realized that there's already a number of tools and applications that can help keep me organized and on top of my to do lists. Click through my slideshow to see nine helpful tools which are guaranteed to simplify your life.

And in case you missed it, check out 10 gadgets that will make your life easier and three helpful photo sites to make your life easier also.

Remember the Milk Hits the App Store!

GeekSugar — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:15:05 PST

One of my favorite sites (and lifesavers) has been Remember the Milk. I've raved about the text messaging reminders, and the fact that you can create custom lists and share them with others, which has made my life so much easier. Especially since I have trouble remembering when to take the trash out. Well . . . sometimes.

So my relief hit an all-time high when Remember the Milk came to the iTunes App Store. And the best part? If you're a proud Pro account holder, it's still free! Free to get organized, free to manage my time, and free to share my tasks with my BF - cause you know, that grocery shopping won't get done on its own.

Website of the Day: Remember The Milk

GeekSugar — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 02:00:58 PST

If you or your significant other have a tendency to forget basic to-do tasks like picking up the dry cleaning, check out remember the milk.com. Remember the milk is a free on-line to-do list management service which basically acts as your personal nagger! Never forget the milk or anything else again. Here are some of its great features:

manage tasks quickly and easily
receive reminders via email, SMS, and instant messenger
prioritize your time
create lists and organize tasks the way you want them
share, send and publish tasks and lists with others
access to-do lists on your web-enabled mobile device
use the map to see where your tasks are located

Do you have a great website you want to share with geeksugar? Submit it to my Website of the Day group!

How Not to Destroy Your Marriage

The Good Men Project — Fri, 18 May 2012 12:30:42 PDT

We're happy to present this story from one of our favorite sites, The Good Men Project. Today, Mark Tyrrell offers eight relationship tools to make your marriage work.

"All marriages are happy. It's the living together afterward that causes all the trouble." - Raymond Hull

So how do you make your marriage work? Or do you just blindly hope it'll take care of itself?

Think of a hot, successful date with someone you’re attracted to. You have fun, great conversation and more sexual chemistry than a warehouse full of pheromones. You don’t have to “work at” the date because it’s self sustaining. It runs as smoothly as the gliding hand of a classical guitar maestro and you can’t wait for another rendition.

Teenage Dating in a Twilight-Hunger Games World

But marriage, or any long term relationship; well that’s a whole other caboodle.

If we’re not careful, marriage can deteriorate into little more than a torturous assault course; littered with routine boredoms, frustrations and resentments. Couple all that with external pressures and sometimes marriage feels not worth the effort. But there are major benefits to being hitched or committed, other than just a beneficial tax regime.

Healthy marriage; healthy people.

Being happily married bestows heaps of health benefits. You might be forgiven for thinking that if you’re married you don’t live longer it just seems like it but, no, a good marriage really can help you clock up more years (1) and married people are happier (2) even though they don’t always look it from the outside.

But when marriage doesn’t work it can feel being manacled to a maniac, marooned with a misogynist or nailed to a nag. And I don’t care what the studies say, that’s not healthy. You may hear couples say stuff like: “We are making our marriage work!” but how do we do this?

Making it work.

We pay lip service to “working on the marriage” but what is the work we need to do? Marriage vows such as “to love and to cherish” and “forsaking all others, for better or for worse” don’t really tell us how to make it work, although they give us a clue.

Fortunately a ton of research has been done on what to do and not do to make your marriage, or any intimate relationship work. Follow the guidelines here to become “good at marriage."

Tip one: Be romantic but keep it real.

We are all (force?) fed romance in movies and novels. The handsome man gets the beautiful woman. But what I wonder is what happens after our romantic couple ride off into the sunset together? What do they do exactly? Bicker? Moan at one another? Start to ignore each other?

After all that romance, our beautiful couple is bound to have massive expectations of their life together. But when rose tinted expectations clash with day to reality, watch out!

Romance is vital in any relationship. Always seeing the best in your partner helps to keep things intimate and love should be expressed. But if you have been raised on Mills and Boon Romance novels or feel-good movies, then your own romantic expectations can work against the sustainability of your long term relationship.

When day to day life fails to live up to the giddy, heady lust-filled days of the pre-settled down romance people can become angry, even blame one another: “This wasn’t what I signed up for." They find it hard to take the rough with the smooth because they never really figured there would be any rough.

Expectations not diluted with at least a dash of realism can be a royal road to relationship ruin. Your partner may be an angel, but they have feet of clay. You must learn to love those feet or at least accept them a bit!

Get the rest after the jump!

Secrets to Saving on Your 7 Favorite Indulgences

Emily Co — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 13:25:48 PDT

We all have our weaknesses, and yours may be a Starbucks addiction or even an avid book reading habit. Although we advocate saving, we're also a big fan of being able to indulge on occasion. After all, if you keep denying yourself, it might be counterintuitive because you may end up buying on impulse. Here are some ways you can still enjoy your favorite purchases, yet save at the same time:

Starbucks: Sign up for a Starbucks card and you can accumulate rewards such as free drinks. Once you buy five drinks, you get free syrup or soy milk and free refills on brewed coffee, iced coffee, or iced tea. You'll also get a free tall drink if you buy a bag of coffee beans. Once you buy over 30 drinks, you get a free drink for every 15 drinks you buy. As a card holder, you'll also get a free drink of your choice on your birthday.

Frugal secret: You can make your own Starbucks drinks in your own home. Check out Squawkfox's recipe for a homemade Starbucks Frappuccino that costs only 32 cents to make. Don't forget to also check out YumSugar's Starbucks-inspired pumpkin spice latte recipe.
Books: If you got a thing for books, there's always the library of course. But for those who just love permanent additions to their budding book collection, you can consider joining book clubs like Barnes & Nobles, which sends regular discounts and coupons to your inbox. You can also get really cheap indie ebooks for free or for 99 cents on Amazon. Some of the books are actually really good, but check out the reviews before buying if you don't want to waste your time on a dud.
Frugal secret: Shhh, don't let anyone know, but you can get free books from authors, even the acclaimed and famous ones, if you try this trick. A lot of times, you can even get the book ahead of its release. All you have to do is start building up a nice repertoire of really solid and detailed book reviews on Amazon or Good Reads, the social network for book recommendations. If your Amazon reviews are good, people will start voting on them, which may qualify you for Amazon's Vine program, an exclusive club that "invites the most trusted reviewers on Amazon to post opinions about new and prerelease items." And if you're a popular Good Reads reviewer, authors will start reaching out to you to review their books.
Yoga: You can save on yoga classes by subscribing to daily deal sites and keeping an eye out for discounts at your local yoga studio. Lululemon also offers free yoga classes, so you might want to check out your local shop. A lot of studios have free or donation-based classes on occasion, so you might want to check with them, too.
Frugal secret: Become a yoga teacher to get access to free classes. You don't have to worry about teaching taking up too much of your time because I have friends who teach only once or twice a week and still get the perks of a full-time teacher, such as being able to attend classes for free. You can also offer to trade services (writing, graphic design, admin, or whatever skill you can provide) with the studio in exchange for free classes.

Read on for more.

11 Rules to Dramatically Increase Your Productivity

Wise Bread — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:35:04 PST

We're thrilled to present this smart Wise Bread story here on Savvy!

There's a problem with a lot of productivity advice out there, and it's this - your "rules" for personal productivity are often going to be different than mine. Sure, sometimes there's overlap. Sure, you can always learn from others.

But if you want to see a dramatic increase in your productivity, spend less time reading and memorizing other people's rules, and more time figuring out what your own rules are. You'll be more productive and in a way that works with who you are.

So I'm sharing a few of my personal productivity rules. Maybe some of them will work for you or inspire you to think of your own.

1. Small Daily Movements Become Big Accomplishments

I tend to think that I must have big blocks of time in order to get any forward movement. So I hesitate and procrastinate, waiting for that "open time" when I can really push and get a lot done on whatever the current project is.

Turns out, that's a waste of time. Small daily movements add up. It's just that the movements or steps themselves are so small, I think they don't count. They do.

I have to constantly remind myself that I don't need a whole day or a whole week to devote to some project. I just need to take the 10 or 20 minutes I have here and there and use them. I need to achieve a little bit of forward movement every day. That adds up, and it builds momentum, and pretty soon there's been quite a lot accomplished.

For more rules, read after the jump.

18 Ways to Save (at Least) $1 a Day

SavvySugar — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:00:28 PST

It's true: the little things add up. As anyone who ever had a piggy bank knows, small everyday actions can help you save big. Hoping to create a financial cushion for yourself this season? Follow these 15 easy tricks to help you save at least a dollar a day:

Hold the milk. In your coffee, that is. If you regularly stop at the coffee shop on your way to work, order it black to avoid any extra costs.
Go generic. At the grocery store, pick the generic variety of different foods to save big on pantry staples.
Keep the change. Sure, sometimes it's annoying to have change littering your purse or jangling in your pocket, but you'd be surprised by how quickly those nickels add up.
Swap soda for water. If you can't give it up altogether, vow to sip water instead of soda during at least one meal each day.
Trade CDs with a friend. Hoping to add the latest Rihanna song to your workout playlist? Reach out to a friend and burn CDs for each other to gather new music for free.
Fuel up for less. Unless it's required for your specific car model, nix the premium gas habit and use gasbuddy.com to find the cheapest gas in the area.
Find free WiFi. Work in cafés or libraries with free WiFi. Not sure which spots offer Internet? Use the Free Wi-Fi app to scope out local places with wireless access.
Practice your sewing skills. Skip a trip to the tailor and learn to do the simple adjustments yourself, like shortening a hem or taking in a blouse.

Keep reading for more tips to save $1 a day.

7 Ideas to Save on Your Morning Coffee

Emily Co — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:00:14 PST

The Latte Factor is very real - the average American worker spends $1,092 on coffee, The Consumerist reports. Citing data from Accounting Principals' latest Workonomix survey, the site goes on to say that the average worker is apparently spending more than $20 a week on coffee. The amount is comparable to other expenses like commute, which were mentioned in the study. So how do we start saving on this big budget drain? Here are some ideas:

Try low-end. New York Magazine did a coffee taste test and food critic Adam Platt found that coffee from Dunkin' Donuts actually tasted better than Starbucks. If you're craving coffee, opt to get a cup of joe from a lesser-known chain.
Cash in on freebies. Keep your eye out for freebies and remember Starbucks gives customers a free birthday beverage as long as you register your Starbucks gift card and use it once. And if you're a loyal Starbucks customer, you can attain gold member status and receive free coffee for every 15 drinks. Remember that Sept. 29 is National Coffee Day, so there should be plenty of coffee freebies then. Earth Day generally offers a lot of coffee freebies as well.
Find Starbucks recipes. Find out how to make drinks just like Starbucks by doing some research online. Personal finance blogger Squawkfox was able to mimic a tall Starbucks frappuccino ($4) for only 32 cents. The secret is actually xanthan gum ($16), a food thickener that keeps the texture smooth and the drink together. There are also plenty of other sites that have copycat recipes of all the Starbucks drinks.
Go instant. Instant coffee isn't too bad if you dress it up with these recipes. Add cocoa or spices like nutmeg, blend it with ice, douse it with milk, or add honey.

Read on for more ideas.

10 Tips For Keeping the Truth About Santa a Secret!

LilSugar — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 11:59:01 PST

There's no Christmas like one when a child believes in Santa! Years ago, St. Nick showed up at our family gathering and pulled a red trike out for my cousin. The then-preschooler leaped from the floor with an expression so priceless I can still picture it. We all remember the moment we found out that truth about Santa Claus. (I was 7 when a classmate told me she found a red suit in her father's closet.) And then as parents, we have those close calls with our own offspring. If you want your tots to be believers, here are some helpful hints for keeping the jolly old fellow's spirit alive. . . at least for a little longer!

Don't play Santa at school or family events. Kids know their parent despite the padded suit, white wig, and stick-on beard.
Shop solo - children notice when you try to sneak items into the cart.
Figure out a really good hiding place to stash your loot. Lil snoops will find gifts in obvious places (and perhaps even open, peek, and rewrap them).
Have Santa gift your kid an item you would never purchase. It throws even the most curious child for a loop.
Wrap gifts from Santa in a special wrapping. If mom uses the same patterned paper for her presents or a roll is laying around the house, it can raise suspicion.
Disguise penmanship on gift tags. If you normally use cursive, print or write with your opposite hand.
Excited kids can be restless. Make sure they are really asleep (hand test, breath test, etc.) before you cart out the Christmas loot. And have a backup plan if your wee one wakes!
Consume the child's offerings for Santa. Nibble the cookie and sip the milk. Putting the full glass back in the fridge or returning baked treats to the cupboard can be a big mistake.
Even if the house is heavy with mistletoe, don't let your lil one catch mommy kissing Santa Claus!
There's nothing like a report of reindeer prints on the roof or a little soot left in the chimney to confirm that Santa was indeed on the premises.

And, if your child still figures it all out, ask them to be your elf and assist in keeping the magic alive for younger siblings.