And it happened on Instant Messaging, G Chat to be specific. This guy pretending to be my cousin…

At this point I say call me and let’s talk about it, obviously suspecting some BS due to the horrifying English.

I checked the transcripts again and they’re gone! Any suggestions as to what I should do? Also this guy is the weener of the week for trying to f’n scam me.

UPDATE: 12.21.09

Quote:

From Mint.com, we will incorporate:

• Extra money management power: from the ability to track investments, to additional budgeting functionality to help you save and do more with your money.
• Access to Mint.com’s Savings Engine, which uses a patent-pending algorithm to analyze spending trends and finds ways to save money – on average at least $1,000 on the first visit – by showing you the best checking and savings accounts, optimal credit cards, the best interest rates on CDs and more, all tailored specifically to your financial situation.

From Quicken Online, we’re going to continue to offer the tools you’ve grown to love

• The ability to enter and manage cash purchases or checks that haven’t yet cleared.
• The combined product will support all 14,000 financial institutions currently served by Quicken Online – up from roughly 8,000 currently supported by Mint.com.
• An upgraded iPhone application that includes the popular ATM finder.

It’s a great thing, being in the position that enables you not to worry about price. To purchase items solely based on wanting that particular thing in a unique situation.

Unfortunately few people can support such a habit, including me. This puts most of us in a position of needing to watch how we spend our money.

In attempt to find a free online budgeting tool I searched Google for Online personal finance and found  Quicken’s online finance tool. After playing with it for awhile, there was a need to find something better… fortunately there’s Mint.com.  Here’s a quick comparison of Quicken vs. Mint.com.

Personal Finance Online – Quicken Versus Mint

Set Up

The process of setting up is nearly identical. You have to create an account, specify your bank, and then provide your login information to your bank account.

Transaction Import

For a long time I’ve thought that you get what you put into software. It’s very much the case for these products, but both these sites help save time by automatically categorizing your transactions. Mint.com does a better job, but Quicken allows you to import more than 90 days of transaction history.

Maintainence

In order to take advantage of the “trending” and “budgeting” functionality of these websites, it’s important to take the time properly categorize all transacations… despite the auto-categorization. You can imagine a pie chart with hundreds of categories not being very useful.

Both sites have similair search capability. For example you can search  for a category like grocery, a word in the description, or the name of a restaurant then edit to ensure accurate trending reports.

This was the kicker for me. Mint allows you to edit/categorize  multiple transactions easily, while you can spend hours doing the same thing manually with Quicken.

Budgeting

While there is a way to budget with Quicken, it’s not really apparent how to do so and I didn’t waste time trying to figure it out.

Mint has a great planning tab that sets budgets based on transactional history! Of course you can change those as you please. It also shows you transactions that you might want to set a budget for, but haven’t yet. You can easily “create a budget” of ongoing utility bills… or even for a once occurring debit like a snowboarding pass.

Trending

The ability to crunch data into visual representations is incredibly insightful. Both sites do a good job, but once again Mint comes out on top.

Updating Transactions

As far as I could tell Quicken doesn’t specify how often transactional history gets updated.

Mint is updated upon login and also has a nice little update button so you can always be looking at fresh data.

In Conclusion

Mint’s categorization is far superior, making it easier to see what’s actually happening to your money. The design is more intuitive and in combination with the budgeting tool they absolutely destroy all attempts Quicken has made to translate their product into a free online personal finance service.

PS…

These are my take aways over the last few days… so if you have more knowledge on this topic… feel free to comment.

UPDATE:

Mint.com is going to be acquired by Quicken. Although they say it’s not going to affect constant improvements, we’ll have to see. The whole deal is to be finalized by the end of the year.

Twitter On My Shoulder

After my 6 month break, I’ve come back (with a vengeance) with a few changes from my previous approach to Twitter.

I’m now an exclusive user of TweetDeck. It is probably the only reason I’ve come back from the dead, mostly because it gives me the ability to sort through the infamous noise Twitter can make. Who knew such a small bird could deafen even those who can’t hear.

Creating Groups With Tweet Deck

I started off creating a group using TweetDeck, only of those people I look up to and think I can learn something from. This is where I got the title and motivation for writing this post. You can use Twitter to stand on the shoulders of those who can motivate, inspire, sometimes provide the much needed comic relief, and teach. Basically you have the ability to gain insight from people who have already accomplished any goals you might be working towards.

That last one turned out to be a faker / spammer, unfortunately. She didn’t have a relavant tip at all.

Next I created a group of people who engage me on Twitter (as I’ve found myself with many followers who… in reality, don’t follow me at all). So chances are if you reply to @bengoodsell… I’ll see some of your tweets.

I may or may not be in the process of making a group of women who interest me. (This may or may not be considered as a hint… @bengoodsell)

Relevant Twitter Followers

Following users is an extremely pivotal crossroad in your Twitter  experience. In my case I get many more people to follow and (more importantly) engage in conversation (cause that’s how you learn stuff right?) using what I like to call, the Best Approach Evar! to getting relevant followers…

Things I enjoy:

Rx Bandits latest album Mandala – Follow 100 people who also like (can’t stop listening to this album).

RX Bandits - Mandala

This in an example of my methodology, including some keystrokes for efficiency.

Idaho Scenery – Follow 20 people who have also been to RedFish Lake.

RedFish Lake

Flight Of The Concords – Find & follow a bunch people who think New Zealand humor is funny.

These are a few examples, but really… using Twitter Search… I’ve gotten in the habit a following a bunch of people who are interested in what I had just expressed finding enjoyment in. I figure if they’re a regular user they’ll probably see my last tweet. This will ultimately result in high quality followers who have some type of return of investment from the effort I put into following them.

While I thoroughly enjoyed watching Boise State beat U of O last night, my favorite part was the Blount’s sucker punch (link to video — UPDATE: I’ve had to change to this 3 times, sorry for the low quality ) afterward.

I don’t know exactly what BSU line backer Byron Hout said, but it definitely seemed like he stepped over the line and maybe deserved it.

Either way, he is my first Weener of the Week for bringing that face punch upon himself in the first place… and his South Park like smile right after he said what ended up getting him knocked the-f-out.

Byron Hout Face Punch

No idea should go unwritten. Write & then prioritize the good ones.

If you’re like me & have a great way of going about organizing email, don’t have mobile web (or have slow mobile internets), and have unlimited text messages then this quick & dirty note to self method might especially be for you… as long as you have GMail. 

3 short steps:

Step 1

Go into “Settings” -> “Labs” -> “Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat”.

Step 2

  Create Contact… yourself… & make sure you list your mobile #.

Step 3

SMS chat yourself & then save the number as “Note To Self” 

 
… and your done. This has proven to be very useful when a brain storm’s-a-brewin’.

See video at the bottom for a much better example.

On top of using this tool to pick out random snippets of foreign language, it can save you 10’s… maybe 20’s (8/31/09 UPDATE: over exaggeration) of FireFox Extensions that, depending on which ones you have installed, may slow down your browsing experience. Creating tinyURLs, saving dates to Google Calendar, and easily Digg-ing stuff are a few of my favorites. Below is a list of things you can do with a quick key stroke and typing a few letters…. this is taken from Mozilla Ubiquity Tutorial. Before you go just add the Ubiquity Firefox Extension & try it out while you’re learning. Very exciting, especially for people who rock the Google Apps.

- “add-to-calendar”
Adds an event to your calendar. Currently, only works with Google Calendar, so you’ll need a Google account to use it. Try issuing “add lunch with dan tomorrow”.
- “amazon-search”
Searches Amazon for books matching your words.
- “answers-search”
Searches Answers.com for the given words.
- “ask-search”
Searches Ask.com for the given words.
- “bold”
If you’re in a rich-text-edit area, makes the selected text bold.
- “bugzilla”
Searches Bugzilla for Mozilla bugs matching the given words.
- “calculate”
Calculates the value of a mathematical expression.
Try it out: issue “calc 22/7 – 1″.
- “check-calendar”
Checks what events are on your calendar for a given date.
Currently, only works with Google Calendar, so you’ll need a Google account to use it. Try issuing “check thursday”.
- “close-related-tabs”
Closes all open tabs that have the given word in common.
- “close-tab”
Closes the tab that matches the given name.
- “command-editor”
Takes you to the Ubiquity command editor page.
- “command-list”
Takes you to the page you’re on right now.
- “convert”
Converts a selection to a PDF, to rich text, or to html.
- “define”
Gives the meaning of a word.
Try issuing “define aglet”
- “delete”
Deletes the selected chunk of HTML from the page.
- “digg”
If not yet submitted, submits the page to Digg. Otherwise, it takes you to the story’s Digg page.
by Sandro Della Giustina – licensed as MPL,GPL
View more information at http://www.gialloporpora.netsons.org.
- “ebay-search”
Searches EBay for auctions matching the given words.
- “edit-page”
Puts the web page into a mode where you can edit the contents.
In edit mode, you can edit the page like any document: Select text, delete it, add to it, copy and paste it. Issue ‘bold’, ‘italic’, or ‘underline’ commands to add formatting. Issue the ’save’ command to save your changes so they persist even when you reload the page. Issue ’stop-editing-page’ when you’re done to go back to the normal page viewing mode.
- “email”
Begins composing an email to a person from your contact list.
Currently only works with Google Mail, so you’ll need a GMail account to use it. Try selecting part of a web page (including links, images, etc) and then issuing “email this”. You can also specify the recipient of the email using the word “to” and the name of someone from your contact list. For example, try issuing “email hello to jono” (assuming you have a friend named “jono”).
- “escape-html-entities”
Replaces html entities (<, >, and &) with their escape sequences.
- “flickrSearches”
Flickr for pictures matching your words.
- “get-email-address”
Looks up the email address of a person from your contacts list given their name.
- “google”
Searches Google for your words.
- “help”
Takes you to the Ubiquity main help page.
- “highlight”
Highlights your current selection, like this.
- “imdb”
Searches the Internet Movie Database for your words.
- “italic”
If you’re in a rich-text-edit area, makes the selected text italic.
- “last-email”
Displays your most recent incoming email. Requires a Google Mail account.
- “link-to-wikipedia”
Turns a selected phrase into a link to the matching Wikipedia article.
Can only be used in a rich text-editing field.
- “map”
Turns an address or location name into a Google Map.
Try issuing “map kalamazoo”. You can click on the map in the preview pane to get a larger, interactive map that you can zoom and pan around. You can then click the “insert map in page” (if you’re in an editable text area) to insert the map. So you can, for example, type an address in an email, select it, issue “map”, click on the preview, and then insert the map.
- “map-these”
Maps multiple selected addresses or links onto a single Google Map. (Experimental!)
- “msn-search”
Searches MSN for the given words.
- “redo”
Redoes your latest style/formatting or page-editing changes.
- remove-annotations
Resets any annotation changes you’ve made to this page.
- “save”
Saves edits you’ve made to this page in an annotation.
- “search”
Search using your installed search engines
- “sparkline”
Graphs the current selection, turning it into a sparkline.
by Aza Raskin – licensed as MIT
Select a set of numbers — in a table or otherwise — and use this command to graph them as a sparkline. Don’t worry about non-numbers getting in there. It’ll handle them.
- “stop-editing-page”
If you used the ‘edit page’ command to put the page into editable mode, use this command to end that mode and go back to normal page viewing.
- syntax-highlight
Treats your selection as program source code, guesses its language, and colors it based on syntax.
- “tab”
Switches to the tab that matches the given name.
- “tag”
Adds a tag to describe the current page
by Dietrich Ayala – licensed as MPL/GPL/LGPL
View more information at http://autonome.wordpress.com/.
- “tinyurl”
Replaces the selected URL with a TinyUrl
- “translate”
Translates from one language to another.
You can specify the language to translate to, and the language to translate from. For example, try issuing “translate mother from english to chinese”. If you leave out the the languages, Ubiquity will try to guess what you want. It works on selected text in any web page, but there’s a limit to how much it can translate at once (a couple of paragraphs.)
- “twitter”
Sets your Twitter status to a message of at most 160 characters.
You’ll need a Twitter account, obviously. If you’re not already logged in you’ll be asked to log in.
- “undelete”
Restores the HTML deleted by the delete command.
- underline
If you’re in a rich-text-edit area, underlines the selected text.
- “undo”
Undoes your latest style/formatting or page-editing changes.
- “view-source”
Shows you the source-code of the web page you’re looking at.
- “weather”
Checks the weather for a given location.
Try issuing “weather chicago”. It works with zip-codes, too.
- “wikipedia”
Searches Wikipedia for your words, in a given language.
by Blair McBride – licensed as MPL
View more information at http://theunfocused.net/moz/ubiquity/verbs/.
- “word-count”
Displays the number of words in a selection.
- yahoo-search
Searches Yahoo for pages matching your words.
- “yelp”
Searches Yelp for restaurants matching your words.
You can search for restaurants near a certain location using the near modifier. For example, try “yelp pizza near boston”.
- “youtube”
Searches YouTube for videos matching your words.
- “zoom”
Zooms the Firefox window in or out.

Pretty long video… but worth it.