Author: Aaron Nelsen

  • Link Love

    Show us some sweet linking action, and we’ll return the favor.

    If you’ve linked to us in a blog post, or given us permanent residences on your blogroll, let us know. Each week we’ll put up a post with all the blogs/sites linking to us for that week.

  • The $5 gets redesigned

    Hot on the heels of the dollars decline The Bureau of Engraving and Printing has announced that they will releasing a redesign of the five dollar bill. You may recall that originally the five wasn’t going to be redesigned. But they quickly changed their minds once counterfeiters began bleaching $5 notes and printing fake $100 bills on the bleached paper to take advantage of the fact that some of the security features were in the same locations on both notes.

    To pimp slap this counterfeiting trick, the government is changing the $5 watermark from one of Lincoln to two separate watermarks featuring the numeral 5. Also, the security thread embedded in the $5 bill is being moved to a different location than the one sported on the $100 bill.

    Larry Felix, director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing was quoted as saying

    “We wanted this redesigned bill to scream, ‘I am a five. I am a five,’”

    during a recent interview with The Associated Press. Alrighty then, Larry…

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  • Web Design

    I do a fair amount of web design, I don’t think I’m amazing at it, but I also don’t suck. But here’s the thing, while I can design a good looking website, there’s only so much I can do to code sweet features. I have a basic understanding of PHP, a splash of Javascript, and a good handle on CSS, but I certainly have my limits.

    There in lies the problem.

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  • Longterm Savings Growth

    Focus on the big picture, get a savings account with a good interest rate and try and set aside a certain amount of money each month. Even if you’re only putting in $50 a month, it still adds up over the course of a few years. Figuring out just how much you’ll have put into saving, but figuring out how much you’ll have made from interest is somewhat more time consuming, so here’s a simple way to figure out just how much money you might save over an extended period of time.

    Savings growth calculator after the jump.
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  • NBC Direct – Free TV shows

    Here’s a random fact for you, NBC is a division of General Electrics, who knew? Okay, I’m sure a lot of you, but I just found this out 37 seconds ago.

    You read the news, right? You know all about the NBC vs. Apple spat that ended in NBC planning to offer their videos through Amazon.com (ick). Well, it seems in a new development NBC will be launching its own free download service, called NBC Direct, for viewers to download their shows for free. The downloads will feature a TV like experience, complete with commercials that cannot be skipped.

    The service, which is set to go public in November will allow users to subscribe to NBC programs and have them delivered to their computers automatically after the program airs, however the file will expire one week after the show first airs. To add further insult to injury, NBC Direct will only be available to Windows users. Take that Apple!

    Now correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t this stem from NBC waiting to charge users more per download? And now they’ll be offering them for free? Umm, okay? I realize they will probably make a bit of money off the built in commercials, but can that really compare to the money they made through their offerings on iTunes?