Michael Moore’s New Flick to Tackle the Global Financial Meltdown

In his last two theatrical documentaries, controversial filmmaker Michael Moore turned an accusing eye toward the health industry (Sicko) and the Bush administration (Fahrenheit 9/11), but he’s back to kick up some more dust with a currently untitled movie that will seek the cause of the financial flustercuck in which the world is suffering. Read more

The Biggest Free Swap Meet You’ll Ever Encounter

This Saturday, SCORE! — a huge open air free market — will be happening in the Brooklyn Yards.  The brain child of MeanRed Productions, FreeNYC, Newmindspace,  and RefugeNYC, SCORE! is thrift store junkie’s dreamland.  The way it works is simple:  You bring a bag of your unwanted junk (books, records, clothing, kitchen appliances, whatever) and in return, you swap it out for other people’s junk that you need or want — for free. Read more

Looking for Health Insurance? Here’s Some Options.

If you’re between the age of 19 and 29, chances are you have found yourself uninsured while transitioning from college to the real world, according to the Commonwealth Fund.  Insurance companies are quick to drop college graduates from their family plans as soon as you get your diploma in hand.  Yet, many of these adults have still not been able to get health insurance because of either unemployment or other economic factors. Read more

5 Daily Ways to Save (Part II)

Everyone’s pinching extra pennies right now.  Whether you’re frugally furnishing your apartment with vintage pieces, stashing for a quick budget staycation or filling up that emergency cash stash, saving a few coins here and there is now a necessity.  Following up on our last Daily Ways to Save, here are five more tips to saving some extra coin.

1. Buy Your Morning Joe on the Block. Resist the urge to buy those pretty little lattes with their tantalizing foam, cream and drizzles of caramel.   Treating yourself to one of these might be ok once in a while but it can easily become a habit.  Stop before the addiction manifests and your wallet feels the crunch.  On your way to work, grab a cup of coffee at your local bodega before hopping on the subway — rarely will it cost more than a buck.  You’ll be supporting local small business and saving some change in the process.  If tea is more your bag, that’s great; carry a couple of teabags with you in your wallet or purse.  You can always score a cup of hot water free of charge at a local cafe, deli or fast food restaurant.

2.  Grab Breakfast – Not Lunch. Waking up early enough to eat breakfast and get out of the house on time for work is not always an easy task.  Some commuters often skip breakfast and hold off for lunch.  But why skip the most important meal of the day?  Doing this can cause you to spend more at lunch, since you’ll be starving by noon.  As someone who works in midtown surrounded by overpriced lunch spots, I ‘ve found that I save quite a bit of money each week by buying breakfast in lieu of lunch.  For instance, the local deli I go to in the mornings during the week sells “eggs all the way” with two eggs, home fries and toast for $2.75 plus tax.   The same deli sells sandwiches during lunch time for around $7.  Throw in a bag of chips or a salad, and you’ve easily topped $10.  If you grab coffee on the way to work and stop by a deli and pick up a breakfast special, you could have a full meal that will stave off hunger until the afternoon for less than $5.  Or pair that breakfast with a brown bag lunch from home and save considerable cash.

3.  Buy Snacks at the Supermarket. It’s very easy to pick up a danish at the cafe or buy a granola bar at the newsstand that you pass everyday on the way to the office.  Instead of spending extra cash picking up these items individually, purchase a box of your favorite snack at the supermarket.  If you don’t have a supermarket savings club card by now, get one.  Savings cards always help you save a little here and there. A  good idea is to keep some of these snacks at the job so that you resist pillaging at home on your days off.

4. Make Simple but Pricey Treats at Home. Most people, at some point in time, have bought a parfait, yogurt cup, or fruit salad and griped about how expensive a simple treat was.  Buying this food in bulk and storing it at the office can cut the costs.  I’m a big fan of DIY yogurt cups.  Instead of picking up overpriced yogurt at the store that can cost as much as $5 for a pack of four, buy a large sized tub of plain yogurt and mix in some fruit with your blender.  You can find in-season fruit for cheap at your local supermarket and make flavored yogurt that will last longer than four days.  If you don’t already have some Tupperware, a quick trip to the Dollar will solve that problem, and you’ll be good to go.

5. Grab a Free Paper. In this day and age of the Internet, many people are opting to read the news online.  (How eco-friendly and thrifty!)  But if you still need the feel of paper, resist the urge to buy a daily and grab a free one instead.  Here in New York, you can easily scope out a corner with a Metro or an amNew York distributor is handing out free copies.  Plus, the Post and the Daily News can usually be had for free in the late afternoon or early evening.

What Does the Credit Card Reform Mean for You?

As you may be aware, Congress just passed a credit card reform bill that helps protect consumers, such as you and I, from the big bad credit companies.   Although this bill has gotten almost unanimous support from law makers, there have been a few who aren’t happy with the new regulations.  Read more

Recession Proof Activities IV: Can You Believe There’s More?

With costs rising so severely in contrast to salaries, it’s even more pertinent to find free and low-cost activities so as to not blow your budget each month.  Years ago, living in Manhattan on a salary that even a Mickey D’s  employee would scoff at, I became pretty adept at entertaining myself for next to nothing.  We’ve covered free, recession-proof activities before, and we’re continuing the series with out latest batch of awesome entertainment that costs less than you pay for your morning coffee.

1. Youtube movies and shows. Following closely behind Hulu, Youtube has licensed old TV shows and movies that you can stream online.  While they’re mainly an oldies set, they’re still goodies.  Favorites include the original Star Trek series and The Tick.

2. Attend free photography seminars.  Photo Manhattan offers a cool little deal each month when they evaluate new instructors. The potential instructor basically has an audition to see how well they teach and interact with a class, and the students who sit in on the class get to hear the lecture for free.  Class topics include things like “Exposure and Manual Mode”, “Photoshop for Beginners” and “Studio and Lighting”.

Date Idea: $25 NYC Ballet Orchestra Tickets

NewYorkology, a website that features good deals on shopping, drinking, dining and sightseeing a la New York City, tipped us off to a really great deal that the NYC Ballet is offering.  For the duration of the 2009 Spring season, 50 orchestra level tickets will be sold at the discounted price of $25 (down from $90).  Tickets will go on sale every Monday morning at 10 a.m. at the Lincoln Center box office or through Telecharge at 212-721-6500.  [Note:  Purchasing through Telecharge will cost you an extra processing fee] Read more

Keep an Eye out for Discounts this Memorial Day Weekend

‘Memorial Day sales’ is one of the top searches on Yahoo! this week, and with this economy there’s no doubt why shoppers are scouring the ‘net for a good deal this holiday weekend. Personally, I’ve been saving my pennies in hopes of buying a Canon PowerShot.  I don’t mind fighting the crowds in order to get this baby at the cheapest price possible.  Luckily you don’t need to have flashbacks of the Christmas Elmo insanity and face the trembling masses in person — you can hide safely at home behind your computer. Read more

Furnish Green: Cool Items, Good Prices, Great Cause

Furnish Green is a cool green furniture venture located in midtown (1261 Broadway between 31st and 32nd).  A furniture showroom by day and partner dance studio by night, they offer vintage furniture at some of the best prices you’ll find in Manhattan.  But along with their superior prices, they also have a conscious:  50% of the sale of donated items goes towards the Nature Conservancy’s Adopt an Acre program. Read more

How To: Watch Hulu on a Big Screen and Ditch Your Cable Bill

When I first made the foray into the weird, wild, and wacky seemingly otherworldy dimension known as the webbernets back in 1998, the online experience mainly consisted of checking e-mail, posting to USENET and messageboards, and browsing a handful of sites. Taking in video content wasn’t hard to come by, but it certainly didn’t have the ease of access that is available today; there was no YouTube and many of us nerds were still rocking 56K modems.

But nowadays you’d actually have to actively not want to see video in order to not find it–it’s everywhere. YouTube knocked down the door, but Hulu took online video to the next level by allowing entertainment-seekers to legally watch network and cable programming with only a minimal number of commercials. Hulu has evolved so much that we recommend that the free service can be used in lieu of paying for pricey cable, but we recognize that laptop displays (which typically fall be between 10 inches and 17 inches depending on if you have a netbook or desktop replacement) can be a bit on the small size. Therefore, we’ll show you how to export the free Hulu content to a big screen, so you can ditch cable altogether.

CHECK OUT A TV OR MONITOR
Flat-screen LCD TVs have become one of the most sought-after electronics products due to their relative light weight, small footprint, and crisp pictures. If you already own one of these tubes, all you need to do to export the Hulu image on your Mac or PC to it, is to buy VGA or HDMI cables. Most flatscreens will have a VGA or HDMI port, but we suggest to check to see which ports you have on your TV before you proceed in order to get the best picture.

VGA AND HDMI DEFINED
All laptops have a VGA cable (which you can find for under $2 here), the defacto external A/V connection for notebooks. It can display a maximum resolution of 640 x 480 pixels, which is on par (if not better than) YouTube video clips. Just for comparison’s sake, DVD resolution is typically 720 x 480, so VGA is of slightly lesser quality. Consider it the “standard-def” of video connections.

HDMI (priced at under $5 here) doesn’t have the across-the-board notebook penetration as VGA, but it’s not uncommon. It’s capable of displaying up to the much cherished 1080p resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels) for the best picture currently available. Consider it the “hi-def” of video connections.

CONNECT THE CABLES AND EXPORT VIDEO TO TV
Using these cables are as simple as connecting one end to your PC and the other to your TV. Power on your computer, and you should receive a prompt to use the TV as an external monitor, do so and sit back and relax as your favorite shows play on the big screen. If not, select Start>Control Panel>Display>Settings. Select the video to show on the external display.

CHANGE TV DISPLAY SETTINGS
By defualt, your televsion is set to recieve A/V signals from your antenna or cable box. Using your remote, change the disply setting to “VGA”, “HDMI, or “PC Input” in order to ready your flat panel for the computer feed.

CHANGE COMPUTER DISPLAY SETTINGS
If you want to close your laptop so it wont look as conspicuous as it sits in your entertainment center, poking around in its power settings will prevent it from going to sleep/shutting off when you lower the top. Simply click Start>Control Panel>Power Settings to view a list of options. Under the heading “When Lid Is Closed” select “Do Nothing.”

There ya go – -30 Rock, House, and other gems are now on your TV and you didn’t have to pay an overpriced cable bill to receive ‘em. But what it you don’t have a flat screen TV? A large monitor is the answer, which can be far more wallet-friendly a purchase than a LCD TV. We’ll tackle that topic in an upcoming post in our continuing series of how to spread multimedia joy through the home on the cheap.

[Ed Note: Mac notebooks use mini-DVI and Displayport. You'd need the appropriate adapters to hook them up to a TV]

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