Things I like

So in the last month, I've found a few new things on the internet that I love enough, I just have to share:

Motionbox.com-
This is actually an old client of mine I had completely forgotten about until recently. It's like youtube- you can upload and share films. But it's better, because you can actually EDIT the film ONLINE. You can even mix them- upload 5 videos and cut out pieces of each and make a new ubervideo, then share it. Since most of my baby videos are long and boring with short spurts of cute, this is a huge bonus. I find it very user-friendly too.

Mint.com-
K, I know it sounds sketchy but hang in there: this is a site where you can view all of your online financial accounts together- and it's free (think quicken, but online and free). So I can see my bank account, mortgage loan, student loan, brokerage account and credit card all in one place. You can have it send weekly emails summarizing ALL your finances together. It even sorts it for you into categories (for instance, groceries vs. utilities vs. entertainment) to make budgeting easier- and it will tell you "you've spent 60% of your monthly allotted budget for groceries" or "you've spent 20 dollars more on utilities this month than last month". It has nifty graphs and charts. You can set up alerts, too (which is really handy)- for instance: send me an email whenever my checking account gets below ___ dollars. It will also notify you of any banking fees that come through. It makes its money by having suggestions/ads on some screen letting you know where you could bank cheaper/with better rates- not intrusive and actually kind of helpful.
Here is where I sound sketchy but I promise it's not: to get it set up, you need only give it your online sign-ins and passwords for your accounts- no account numbers, routing numbers, nothing like that. It uses your sign on information once to find your account, then dumps it once it's established the account (so no, there is no hackable database out there storing ALL my personal sign-in info together). It is read-only- you can't transfer or withdraw money, or even get an account number off of it. It doesn't store any of your personal information- no SSN, no address- so in that way, it's safer than a lot of online banks if someone does happen to get your mint.com logon info. It's been recommended by PC World, PC magazine, it's backed by Verisign and TrustE... so yeah, GREAT free tool.

Gmail-
k, I know this is old news now. But I love the new themes and the options from the labs- I now have a pretty skin, tasks, calendar, news forecast... all on my gmail screen. Very nifty.

ChaCha
"The Human Search Engine". You can text from your phone (242-242- it spells "chacha") any question and a human will receive it and research it for you. For FREE! For instance, while on a long drive, you get in an argument with your husband about the name of an actor in a movie, you can text "who is the guy that plays Smee in Hook?" and some stay-at-home mom or starving college student will look it up for you and text back as soon as they find the answer (almost always within 3 minutes). It's true just texting google can give you an address... but chacha can give you human directions. They make their money by attaching tiny little ads at the end of their responses.
I'm a chacha guide (question answerer), I make a whole 20 cents each time I answer someone's question. General Conference was fun, I got a lot of LDS questions- "Where does Elder Marcos A. Aidukaitis's accent come from?" (brazil-born with scottish parents). So next time you have a nagging question but no access to a computer, text Chacha.

Goodreads.com
Great way to keep track of books you've read or want to read, review them, and compare to your friends and see their reviews. If you're on there, find me- just use my gmail address.