Spiralfrog.com is a website that offers free music downloads.  It is legal because it is ad-supported, and has agreements to share its revenue with the labels.

The Good:

• Free, legal music downloads

The Bad:

• Digital rights management: Spiralfrog has very restrictive DRM.  The tracks only work with devices that support Windows Media Player DRM, and expire after 60 days if you don’t continue visiting the site.  This means I can play the tracks on my Creative Zen Vision M, but not on my Nokia N810.  Mac users are out of luck.
• Some of the major record labels are not on board with Spiralfrog’s business model, so their selection is not as broad as Amazon.com or iTunes.  I have downloaded Aerosmith, Diana Krall, Norah Jones, Paul Anka, Oscar Peterson, John Coltrane, and many others, but was unable to find Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones.
• The website is a bit clunky.  Sometimes a download fails and you have to try again.  This happens more frequently if you continue browsing the site while your tracks are downloading.  I find it best to download one album at a time and do something else while it downloads.  My advice is to make friends with the “Try Again” button.
• The search feature is not very impressive.  It is very sensitive to misspellngs, and you sometimes have to get creative to find what you are looking for.

Conclusion

If you are on a tight budget and are willing to be a little bit patient, Spiralfrog.com is a good place to legally download free music.  If you have a little cash to spend, I recommend downloading MP3’s from Amazon.com.  Most of their tracks come as standard MP3’s with no DRM protection, so you can play them on any device and burn them to CD’s.

This article was written and posted from my Nokia N810.

© 2009, Jonathan Johnson. All rights reserved.

Have you ever shared your notes with a classmate, or copied someone else’s notes after missing class?  What if you could get paid for doing just that?  If that appeals to you, check out Knetwit, a knowledge-sharing site with a really cool twist.

How does it work?

Here’s how it works: you upload your class notes and study guides to the site, where they can be accessed  and downloaded by other users.  You earn points, called “Koin” for uploading notes, referring friends who join, and every time someone downloads your notes.  Koin can be redeemed at the Knetwit Store for cash or merchandise including iPods, game consoles and TV’s.  You also receive “knowledge points” and “community points” which indicate your standing and credibility, and affect how many Koin you earn for each action.

The site is supported by advertisements, so there is no cost to join.  Presumably, the business model is based on the assumption that the site will make more money from advertisements than it pays out to members.

Who benefits the most?

Freshmen have the most to gain by using this site.  Every year, thousands of freshmen take required general ed courses that are taught by the same professors using the same lesson plans as last year.  Professors who teach the same class year after year often teach and test exactly the same way every time.  This means that notes and study guides created last year aren’t necessarily out of date, but can be tremendously useful to current students.  I now wish I had hung onto my notes from freshman year so I could transcribe and upload them.  I’m now in a specialized masters degree program with a much smaller potential audience for my notes.

My experience with Knetwit

I’ve uploaded notes from one class I took last semester, and the first half of a class I’m taking right now.  That earned me enough Koin that I could cash in for $10 right now if I wanted to.  The money would be sent to my PayPal account.  I’ve decided to try to earn enough points for an Amazon Kindle.

Tips

• Knetwit gives points on a per instance basis.  That means every upload earns you the same number of points regardless of how big it is.  If you have all your notes for the semester in one document, you should split them up by day.
• You get twice as many points for referring friends as you do from uploading notes.  After you join, you will receive a unique referral code you can invite your friends to use.  Obviously, the more users Knetwit has, the more useful it will be, so it makes sense for them to set it up this way.
• Knetwit users can rate the quality of your notes.  This affects how many points you get for each action, so it makes sense to upload good quality notes.

Update: Knetwit has vastly expanded your choice of merchandise for which to trade your koin.  Click here to read more.

If you found this post useful, please consider joining Knetwit through my referral link: http://www.knetwit.com?referred_by=12446

© 2008 – 2009, Jonathan Johnson. All rights reserved.

This post was brought to you by the folks at PartyPop.com

Wedding-Needs.com is an online supplier of invitations for weddings, rehearsal dinners, bridal showers, bat and bar mitzfahs, and other celebratory occasions. They offer a variety of classy themed invitations ranging from traditional to modern to whimsical

As a man, I am clueless about the intricacies of wedding-planning. I am dimly aware that invitations were sent for the ceremony, the reception, and various peripheral events such as bridal showers. I am also aware that we received gifts, for which we sent thank-you notes. To compensate for my inadequacies, I asked Mrs. Fencepost to look at the site with me. She offered some useful insights which are listed below:

Pros:

1. Convenience and Price: Instead of wasting time driving from store to store, you can choose and order your invitations over the internet. Additionally, the price is competitive with what you would pay at a brick-and-mortar wedding supply store.
2. A wide variety of themed products, including dinner place-cards,
3. The site includes pictures, and you can zoom in for a closer look at designs and lettering.
4. For a small fee, Wedding-Needs.com will send you a sample selection.
5. Multiple font options are available.
6. When a product is selected, the site suggests a small selection of related products, such as outer envelopes with pre-printed mailing addresses, or pre-addressed envelopes for thank-you notes.
7. Products are sorted by categories, and navigation is intuitive.

Cons (nitpicky details, really):

1. Some of the products are photographed on a background of a similar color to the product, creating a washed out, unprofessional look.
2. We noticed a typographical error on some of the front-page text

Having never done business with this company, I cannot comment on their customer service or shipping. Overall, however, they appear to offer good products at competitive prices. Mrs. Fencepost said she would have considered ordering our wedding invitations from this site if she had known about it when we were engaged.

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© 2008, Jonathan Johnson. All rights reserved.