Archive for February, 2009

Planning on doing any traveling soon? You might want to bypass the big chain hotels and go for something a little more eclectic. The Telegraph highlights 17 curious accommodations around the world, including a bullfighting ring, a cold war-era bunker, an igloo and a converted helicopter.

Printed newspapers have been a seemingly untouchable institution for more than a century…but for how much longer? Silicon Alley Insider did the math and figures that the cost of printing and delivering the New York Times for one year costs more than giving every subscriber a free Amazon Kindle.

It’s too late for 2008, but this is a great time to check out ItsDeductibleOnline.com — a totally free service from TurboTax that allows you to input and save almost any kind of charitable donation you’ve made, and gives you realistic values for non-cash items. It’s a great way to keep tabs on all those donations you make throughout the year…plus, if you do your taxes with TurboTax, you can easily import all the data you’ve entered when you do your returns.

For those of you who’d like a 101 course on the mortgage implosion in order to understand how lending, credit, the subprime market, investment banks and Wall Street are intertwined, media designer Jonathan Jarvis has created “The Crisis of Credit.” This nifty little ten-minute animation does a great job of clearly and engagingly illustrating exactly what happened and why.

The Los Angeles City Council has “unanimously agreed to eliminate free parking for drivers of Toyota Prius, Honda Civic Hybrid, Honda Insight or Ford Escape Hybrid models — a privilege in place for four years — on March 1.”  According to NBC4, the move will generate $300,000 in parking fees; hybrid owners who park at meters during February will be given warnings about the end of free parking.