What’s the deal?…

Groupon

While not the first website to offer rotating daily deals for restaurants, hotels, outdoor activities, and health and wellness fun, Groupon remains the most prominent. Covering the world from Utah to the United Arab Emirates, Groupon promises up to 90 percent off but, in reality, it’s usually closer to 50 percent off. When you purchase a deal, as with most deal sites, you pay up front and receive a voucher to use within a set number of months. Many businesses count on the fact that people will buy on impulse and forget to use the voucher, so keep your deals organized. There are plenty of local deals, but it’s also worth keeping an eye on other cities when planning a vacation. The user interface on the site seems slightly counter-intuitive, but the iPhone and Android apps are clean and easy to navigate. Recently, to try to distinguish themselves from the growing number of competitors, the site introduced Groupon Now. This service offers deals that must be used in the next 24 hours. The number of deals spread out over the world makes this the perfect go-to site to check out savings. Groupon.com.

Living Social

Living Social attempts to carve a niche in the online deals market with more big-name offers. Instead of the mom-and-pop bookstores and community yoga clubs that Groupon often features, Living Social tries to focus on brands such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble. They still hit the local hot spots, but because they don’t flood each day with deals, this seems a much more selective service. The iPhone app separates the offers into Daily Deals and Escapes, an arguably unnecessary distinction, but it’s nice, when you’re looking for a restaurant, to pop into Daily Deals and not worry about the $400 bed and breakfast weekends offered in Escapes. One advantage of Living Social is if you refer three friends to a deal, you receive it free, so there’s an incentive to spread the word. Living Social’s website is more atrocious than Groupon’s. It takes multiple clicks just to switch cities. Can you survive on Groupon without Living Social? Yes. Can the same thing be said for existing solely on Living Social? No. It’s a great service that puts together some nice packages, but it’s a specialty grocer next to Groupon’s supermarket. Livingsocial.com.

Facebook Deals

Whenever the massive social network does something, people take notice. So, last November when Facebook announced they would be getting into the online deals market, people paid attention. Unfortunately, they’ve yet to see anything very impressive. The deals are only available in five cities, the closest to Reno being San Francisco, and they’re easy to forget because Facebook has them hidden on the home page. You can’t even access them through the iPhone app. If you do stumble upon the deals and happen to be in one of the five cities, the deals are just as good as Groupon’s offerings. However, the frequency at which they change seems to be considerably less. If Facebook ever manages to expand their deals to as many cities as Groupon, you can imagine that they’d be a powerful force to reckon with. Unlike any other startup bargain website, Facebook already has the attention of 600 million people. Facebook.com.

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TFLN: Txts Frm Lst Nght…

Distill the Internet into a single site and you wind up at Txts Frm Lst Nght. Crude and sexual, the site shows our society’s true face. The concept is simple: An intoxicated friend texts you something embarrassing at 4 in the morning, you post the text to the Web site, the world laughs at his or her failure, and you go back to sleep happy. Scrolling through the shame of others, it’s hard not to glimpse yourself in their low points. Rock bottom may not look the same as you remember it, no one may have scolded you by saying “just because you dressed up as a brontosaurus doesn’t mean you can poop in my front yard and roar at the neighbors,” but we’ve all had to apologize the next morning for something. Alcohol isn’t the only instigator; pot plays a large part in many texts: “What if cement was really a rainbow color and they just secretly paint it grey so as not to distract drivers.” Acts of kindness and happiness (not relating to sexual conquests) are rare, sporadic enough only to provide bits of hope against the pooping dinosaurs of our lives.

Teaching Method…

After launching the Understanding Evolution website as an educational source for the public in 2004, researchers at Berkeley’s Museum of Paleontology quickly discovered that many people lacked a grounding in the fundamentals of science. For example, some didn’t grasp the distinction between scientific fact and theory, or didn’t fully appreciate the complex workings of the scientific method. To help address that shortcoming, the team created another website, Understanding Science, which launched in January, this time geared toward educators. “We really feel it’s our responsibility to help teachers at a pre-university level emphasize how science works, and not how it’s perceived to work,” project coordinator Judith Scotchmoor ’66 explained.

To that end, the site offers not just teaching tips and lesson plans for classes as early as kindergarten, but also in-depth examples of the scientific method at work. For example, a story on Berkeley geologist Walter Alvarez’s hypothesis that an asteroid impact led to the extinction of the dinosaurs takes pains to define even common words such as “evidence” and “observation,” while guiding readers through a flowchart tracing the circuitous path from discovery to hypothesis to further research and revision. The result differs greatly from the overly simplistic, linear version of the scientific method taught in most classrooms. As explained on the site, the textbook version of science provides a neat view of science “summarized after the fact” but not of “how science is actually done.”

Hulu.com…

Illegal downloading scares me. Am I chicken shit, or did I wise up after watching one of my friends get his pants sued off? Regardless, Web sites offering legal downloads are on the rise, so there’s nothing to fear. Major networks and most cable networks have streaming videos on their sites, but Hulu.com brings them all together. The diversity of television content is impressive, but the movie selection leaves a little to be desired. Where else can you find The Rockford Files nestled next to ExoSquad? Silver Spoons and old Ricki Lake episodes? Hulu also has sports, news and complete episodes of some of the hottest shows, including Heroes, Battlestar Galactica and The Office. The content is ad-supported—it’s called capitalism, get over it—but the quality is good, even if it can show a bit of lag at peak hours. No clue what “hulu” means, but it could translate as “Welcome, scaredy-cats. Enjoy some Doogie Howser, M.D. on us.”

http://www.hulu.com

Hulu.com…

Illegal downloading scares me. Am I chickenshit, or did I just wise up after my friend was sued? Regardless, Web sites offering legal downloads are on the rise, so there’s nothing to fear. Major and most cable networks have streaming videos on their sites, but Hulu brings them all together. The diversity of television content is impressive, but the movie selection leaves a little to be desired. Where else can you find The Rockford Files nestled next to ExoSquad? Hulu also has complete episodes of some of the hottest shows like Heroes and The Office. The content is ad-supported, but the quality is good, even if it can show a bit of lag at peak hours. No clue what “hulu” means, but it could translate as “Welcome, scaredy-cats. Enjoy Doogie Howser, M.D. on us!”

SugarDVD.com…

The popularity of Netflix (and its ability to cater to lazy film-aficionados) was bound to create an adult niche market for an online DVD mail service (for like-minded porn-lovers). Over the years, many have tried and failed, but SugarDVD.com has stood the test of time. Gone are the days of wandering aimlessly down aisles, paying $40 for DVDs, as well as pricey late fees. SugarDVD.com has an extensive selection that you can search by studio, performer, genre, or keyword. The price and delivery time are comparable to Netflix, with discreet blue envelopes replacing a video store’s little black bags. If you can’t wait for the mailman, the site offers Video On Demand, which allows you to view movies by the minute. Which goes to prove, why buy the cow when you can get the milk after 3.7 minutes?

OpenTable.com…

“Where do you want to go to dinner?” bounces around the room like a never-ending game of Pong—and because you bickered so long, your final choice doesn’t have any available tables before 11 p.m. Next time, use OpenTable.com. The international site hosts an online reservation system for over 40 Sacramento restaurants, each with breakdown of price, dress code, parking and other valuable information. Easy to use, the site allows you to search for an eatery by neighborhood, cuisine or reservation time. With the ability to accumulate points which can be turned into gift certificates, and to notify other party members of a reservation via e-mail, OpenTable.com kicks the phone book to the curb. The only thing the site lacks is reader reviews, so you’re only being guaranteed a seat, not a great meal.

Mahalo…

As Mahalo proves, when you add the humanity back into technology, some great things can happen. The results from this new search engine have been compiled by a real person, not a computer program. What the site aims to do is remove the spam, as well as the inaccurate and repetitive results that other engines may provide. It succeeds, but for now Mahalo provides results for only the top 10,000 national search terms. So while Paris Hilton and stem-cell research will be covered, don’t expect local businesses or the cast of Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper to be anywhere in sight. It’s convenient for someone without the skills or time to get into an in-depth search, but anyone who is comfortable with Google probably should just stay there until Mahalo expands its coverage. Also: Sorry, Mahalo is porn-free.

http://www.mahalo.com

Mahalo…

When you add the humanity back into technology some great things can happen, as Mahalo proves. The results from this new search engine have been compiled by a real person, not a computer program. What the site aims to do is remove the spam, and inaccurate and repetitive results that other engines may provide. It succeeds, but Mahalo’s goal is to provide results for only the top 10,000 national search terms. So while Paris Hilton and stem cell research will be covered, don’t expect local businesses or the cast of Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper to be anywhere in sight. It’s convenient for someone without the skills or time to get into an in-depth search, but anyone who is comfortable with Google should probably just stay there until Mahalo expands its coverage. And sorry, Mahalo is porn-free.

http://www.mahalo.com

Mahalo…

When you add the humanity back into technology, some great things can happen, as Mahalo proves. The results from this new search engine have been compiled by a real person, not a computer program. The site aims to remove the spam, as well as the inaccurate and repetitive results that other engines may provide. It succeeds, but currently, Mahalo provides results for only the top 10,000 national search terms. So while Paris Hilton and stem-cell research will be covered, don’t expect local businesses or the cast of Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper to be anywhere in sight. It’s convenient for someone without the skills or time to get into an in-depth search, but anyone comfortable with Google should probably just stay there until Mahalo expands its coverage. And sorry, Mahalo is porn-free.