This post is part of an ongoing series this month called

This is not a cheap plug – this is something I really am thankful for!

Around the turn of this year, I discovered a very cool digital magazine called In Treehouses by Thom Chambers. There, Thom covers digital publishing, with the advent of new and different ways to provide content and distribute it to others, including (but certainly not limited to): different types of blogs, Twitter, Tumblr, digital magazines, and ebooks on the Kindle. Fascinated by this, I decided to do something that I had wanted to do for a very long time: start a magazine.

I’ve loved magazines since I was a child, but it takes a lot of capital to start one. Instead of going the traditional route – lining up writers, designers, and advertisers – I decided to roll up my sleeves, set a deadline, and start one myself. Next week, I’ll be releasing issue #7 of my little monthly digital magazine, and in the process, I’ve been able to experience some really cool things:

• I’ve gotten influential people on the phone for interviews. This is by far the coolest part of the job. It’s one thing to send somebody you follow an email or a tweet saying you want to chat, but it’s a whole ‘nother beast to say, “Hey, I want to interview you for my magazine.” I’ve never been turned down for an interview request so far, and I’ve loved getting “on the radar” of so many people. It’s been a great networking opportunity!
• I’ve learned the basics of design. HustleLife is by no means a designer’s dream. I’ve seen lots of digital magazines sprout up, and frankly, their design blows mine out of the water. However, even though the design is simple, it’s fascinating to me to learn how to put it all together. I use Scribus, a free desktop publishing tool, to do it, and I’m very proud of the results so far.
• I’ve gotten the opportunity to potentially influence over 100 people. Last month, my subscriber base grew to over 100 people. These aren’t family members trying to support me – they are people who heard about it, saw it, and decided they wanted it every month. I’m very proud of that fact, and it’s very encouraging as I move forward.

Another one of my favorite apps. There are other alternatives out there, but this one takes the cake for me.

I’m a runner. I’ve been one, on and off, since grade school. In high school, I ran cross country for 3 years, and every day, you pulled out your binder, where you filled in your training log. After I quit running, I said “goodbye” to training logs. Picking back up again, I knew the importance of logging my runs, but I had a hard time with it, for one simple reason: I couldn’t understand distance anymore.

When you run every day, you get a feel for how fast you are running. As such, you can figure out how long you need to run to attain a certain distance. When you stop running regularly, you lose that ability. Suddenly, you go out for a run that you think would constitute a 7-minute mile pace, but in reality, you were running an 11-minute mile (for non-runners, this means MUCH SLOWER).

On my old Blackberry, and on my current Android phone, I’ve been using Endomondo, and I absolutely love it. It makes logging my workouts automatic and easy. Endomondo keeps a nice, big timer on the face of my phone, which is great, but it goes a lot deeper. It uses the GPS on my phone to track how far I’ve gone, the calories I’ve burned, and the mile pace that I’m running. I can set goals for myself to run a certain distance at a certain pace, and Endomondo will keep me on track.

I’ve spent most of this year running while carrying my phone, but the Android app carries a special feature that I just discovered recently – if I stop running, it pauses the workout. So if I hit a stoplight, I don’t have to turn on my screen and hit the “pause” button. I can just let it run, and it will stop automatically. Now, I can find an armband to slip it into, and I can just hit “start” and not worry about it until my workout is over.

Automatic workout logging, with more information at my fingertips than ever before = pretty doggone cool.

This is part of an ongoing series of posts this month called The Cool 30.

Some think it’s useless. Some think it’s a waste of time. Some think that there’s nothing worthwhile on it.

I respectfully disagree.

In fact, it’s saved me money. It’s helped me launch a digital magazine. It’s even gotten me featured in a business community (affiliate link there). It’s Twitter.

Twitter is known for being a place where celebrities go to say stupid things that get them in trouble. That’s fine. On the other hand, I use it to quickly communicate with friends, follow some very entertaining people, and network like crazy with people that you wouldn’t otherwise have access to. For example, I was on my honeymoon reading a book called The Art of Nonconformity (aff. link) by Chris Guillebeau. I found a typo, so I pulled out my phone and sent him a tweet to him, just letting him know that he might want to get it corrected. He responded the same day, letting me know they had already caught that one and fixed it for the next release.

Now, if you’re reading Harry Potter and you see a typo, can you just pick up your phone and get in touch with J.K. Rowling to let her know? Nope. Twitter has given me the power to network all over the place – and it’s even had a noticeable impact on this site. Plus, it’s freaking easy to use, and I love getting in touch with my own fans on there as well (so say “hi!”).

It saves me money, connects me with new people, and is really easy to use – pretty cool! Here’s a guide to getting started.

Keeping things in the cloud is a godsend, pure and simple.

Yeah, there are sometimes a few hiccups here and there, but think about this: ten years ago, when your computer crashed, you might have been out of your email for a week or more, depending on your resources/finances. Today, when your computer crashes, you can still grab your email on your phone, or you can hop on another computer and access it through a web browser.

The opposition to cloud-based services is what if the server crashes? In other words, if I keep all of my information on Google’s computers, what happens when their computer goes down?

Well, Google spends a sizable amount of money on their computers, and they keep backups of everything. I’d much rather rely on Google’s state-of-the-art computers, which cost thousands of dollars, rather than on my four-and-a-half year old Toshiba Satellite laptop that I bought for $500 or so when it came out.

The cloud is changing everything that we do, and we don’t even realize it. My favorite? Publishing. This blog is completely run by the cloud. I have backups emailed to me every week, but that’s about it. It is 100% run in the cloud. I’m even writing this in a web browser. Thanks to the cloud, I am publishing the 7th issue of my own digital magazine, an ongoing project that I’ve always wanted to do. My books are stored in the cloud.

We use the cloud for communication. I use Google Voice for my business communication, Facebook to communicate with most of my friends, and Twitter to network with and meet new people in various industries.

The cloud houses most of my entertainment. Whereas I spent my younger years meticulously recording TV shows onto video tapes (remember those?), so that I would never be short of entertainment, I now use Netflix for much of my entertainment, along with Hulu, and I read a number of hilariously entertaining and thoughtful blogs.

I house my thoughts in the cloud with Evernote, I keep my day-to-day life in Google Calendar, and I even used the cloud to complete a correspondence course on direct response copywriting to expand my business. We manage our finances in the cloud with ClearCheckbook, and I can travel to new destinations and enjoy classic moments from movies and television with YouTube. You can even expand your knowledge about almost any subject with Wikipedia and a Google search.

The cloud houses your information, teaches you new stuff, keeps you entertained, and organizes your life. Heck, the cloud even makes me money every month. That is so cool.

This post is part of an ongoing series this month called The Cool 30.

If you lived in Wisconsin in the late ’80s and early-to-mid ’90s, you know what it’s like to be an embarrassed sports fan. A quick rundown of our major sports teams:

• The Green Bay Packers
• The Milwaukee Bucks
• The Milwaukee Brewers

This post is part of an ongoing series this month called The Cool 30.

I have a box of photos under our bed. They’re mostly from high school, when I owned a film camera. I went to pro wrestling shows, I went to sporting events, and I got together with friends. We took plenty of pictures, but there’s nothing quite like taking the film in and getting a batch of pictures that clearly didn’t turn out. Not only did you waste your money, but you wound up not capturing that day that you wanted to remember for the rest of your life.

Then, digital cameras came onto the scene.

When my wife and I were in Disney World, we took photos of fireworks and parades, and all that great stuff. But, taking photos at night is always a pain, because you never know how they are going to turn out. To resolve this, my wife just took a crapload of pictures all the time, and she went through them and deleted the ones that didn’t turn out after we got back to the hotel.

How things have changed. I mean, remember when you only had, like, 30 pictures to take before you had to change your film? And it always came at the wrong time? We went to Florida with a memory card that had enough space for over 1500 pictures! We could take pictures all day and sort it out later.

Printing is cheaper now, too. For a few bucks, we can get tons of photos developed, and we can pick and choose which ones we want. See that picture frame above? We went through our digital wedding photos (provided by the uber-talented Andy Stenz and Andy Stenz Photography), picked out our favorites, cropped them how we wanted them, and spent around $1 to get them printed within an hour at the Walgreens down the road.

Add to that the digital photo capabilities of our phones these days, and you can capture any memory you want as you think of it.

Better pictures. More pictures. Much more convenient. And it saves money. That’s pretty cool.

If you are trying to reach a goal of yours, but feel like you don’t have the time, then it’s time to get more productive. But there are endless blog posts written on productivity – from systems like Getting Things Done, perhaps. But those all generally fall under the category of “work productivity”: trying to get things done that will move you closer to your goals. There’s nothing wrong with them at all, and you definitely need to be productive when you are working.

But there is also the little matter of wasting your personal time. Today’s average web surfer is trying to do a lot of things with a lot of different services. For example, some services that I use most often are:

• Twitter
• Google Reader
• Google Photos (Picasa)
• Evernote
• Facebook
• Gmail

With so many services to manage, I need to work with them as efficiently as possible to keep my time from spiraling out of control. Enter If This Then That.

If This Then That (or IFTTT) is a web service that links these different services together however you want them to, simply and quickly. I first discovered this tool from a post on Lifehacker called, “How to Supercharge All Your Favorite Webapps with ifttt”. There are loads of different uses for this tool, with services like the ones listed above, as well as Foursquare, Dropbox, RSS Feeds, Instagram, Last.fm, and others.

Once you link up the different services you use, you can create “tasks” that tell the services to do something when you take an action. For example, when somebody tags a photo of me on Facebook, that photo is automatically grabbed and uploaded to Google Photos for additional backup. When I click “Share” in Google Reader on a post I like, it will automatically be tweeted. There are seemingly endless possibilities, and the interface is very easy to use.

If you are unsure of where to get started, they have a “recipes” page, with tasks that others have created. Just browsing through those items can get you going. Here are the ones I currently have set up:

• If I am tagged in a Facebook photo, it is uploaded to Google Photos immediately
• If I star an item in Google Reader to read later, it is sent to Evernote as a new note in a notebook called “Links to Review”
• If I mark a tweet as a “favorite” for later viewing, it also is sent to Evernote as a new note in the same notebook (this means that links I save are now stored in one central location from both Google Reader and Twitter)
• If I share an item in Google Reader, a tweet is automatically sent with the link to share with my followers
• If I upload photos or a photo album to Facebook, then the photo(s) are automatically uploaded to Google Picasa

This is just the beginning of how you can use this tool. Other ways include:

• Receiving a text when it’s going to rain
• Sending automatic direct messages to new followers on Twitter (DON’T do this one though – it’s really annoying!)
• Save all Instagram photos to Dropbox
• Put Foursquare check-ins on your Google Calendar
• Sync Instagram photos to a Facebook album
• Receive a text alert when something specific pops up on Craigslist

…and so on. It’s a free tool, and it has eliminated many steps that I used to have to take on a daily basis. Do you use IFTTT? If not, try it out and play around for a bit. If so, what’s your favorite “recipe”? Share in the comments!

It’s the most recent operating system to date

Less bloat

Ubuntu Software Center

Slick, not overbearing animation

Multiple desktop support out of the box

FREE

Mac-like simplicity without Mac-like prices

No viruses

Great support

Breathes new life into old hardware

GNOME-Do

Ubuntu One

(Sorry for the blurry pictures.)

I’m a Disney World man. I love the parks. I love going and hitting up all the rides, basking in the sun, and generally getting lost in the Disney merriment, even if it is manufactured. But my least favorite part about visiting the parks is the transitions – moving from inside to outside and back again. There are lots of great rides that just happen to be indoors. So, any normal person will need to take off their sunglasses before heading in. But I’m a glasses wearer, so that always meant carrying an extra glasses case in my bulging pocket, pulling it out, opening it up, taking off my prescription sunglasses, taking out my regular glasses, folding up my sunglasses, putting them in the case, putting the case in my pocket, unfolding my regular glasses, and putting them on my face.

Can you see why this would get old?

A couple years ago, I tried contact lenses and absolutely loved them. I finally had the freedom to wear regular sunglasses, and just throw them on top of my head or clip them to my shirt collar if I needed to take them off for a second. It was beautiful… for about six months. I learned through an arduous process that my eyes can’t handle contact lenses, and I am doomed to an eternity of regular glasses – at least until I can afford laser eye surgery.

I went back to the eye doctor a couple months ago to get checked out and see if there was any way I could wear contacts. No go. We tried a different brand, and the same things happened. The night I came to terms with my misfortune, I started looking online at the possibility of buying a pair of glasses for cheap, and I discovered Zenni Optical.

Zenni Optical is an online purveyor of eyeglasses – there are plenty of other options, but I liked Zenni Optical for two big reasons:

1. If I considered it to be too much of a risk, I could buy an $8 pair of glasses to try out. Then I wouldn’t lose out so much if they didn’t work.
2. They have models called “Sunshade+”, with magnetic sunglasses to discreetly clip on to your regular glasses. More on that later.

After about an hour of browsing and measuring, I decided to try a Sunshade+ model. They were a little pricier on the site, but far less than your typical mall glasses shop. I dug into my file box, pulled out my old prescription, and entered in the numbers. Less than two weeks later, I had new glasses. Observe.

These glasses are completely frameless, which generally run about $200 or so in a glasses store. My total, with the clip-on shades and shipping, came to $37.85. Oh yeah. And here are a couple shots of the glasses wearing the shades:

The reason I chose the Sunshade+ model is because I can quickly clip the shades on to the glasses with one hand, and take them off and slip them into my pocket, or even a thin case. This allows me much quicker and easier transitions, and it was worth paying extra for it. This is going to come in handy when I’m honeymooning in Hawaii this October! Here are some tips to take advantage of sites like Zenni Optical without risking too much.

Get your prescription, and try to get your pupilliary distance (PD), too.

From what I’ve heard, eye doctors have no right to withhold your PD from you – they just don’t tend to write it on the prescription that you get. I awkwardly measured mine in a mirror, and settled on what turned out to be the average PD for most people. It worked great, and my glasses prescription is spot-on. You don’t need to understand the numbers, the form you fill out will be nice and clear.

Get to know your tape measure, or ruler.

Every little measurement about a pair of glasses on Zenni Optical is provided, and it’s important that you compare those measurements with your current glasses. I chose glasses that were a little bigger than my last pair. If these had frames, they’d probably look too big on my face. This is good information to know.

If you want to minimize risk, go with an $8 pair at Zenni Optical.

There are a lot of places to buy glasses online, but if you are looking to buy for the first time and aren’t very confident in the process, get an $8 pair to try out. Oh, and that price includes the lenses, too.

Get your glasses adjusted at the mall – for free.

You don’t need to tell anybody that you bought them online. I went to the mall for a haircut the other day and decided to drop in to a glasses shop, because my glasses were a little loose on my face. I kindly asked them if they wouldn’t mind just giving me a quick adjustment. They told me to have a seat and they took my glasses. This place actually went far above and beyond, and they took apart my glasses, added a few washers for a tighter fit, put them back together, and cleaned them for me. For free. No questions asked.

If you are considering clip-on sunglasses, go with the Sunshade+ models.

There are lots to choose from. You can buy clip-on sunglasses for any pair, but the Sunshade+ models at Zenni Optical have custom-built shades for each pair. They have tiny magnets in the bridge that allow you to connect them with one hand, quickly and easily. When wearing them, nobody can really tell that they are clipped to my glasses unless they look pretty closely.

Be prepared to wait a little bit, especially if you are outside the U.S.

…and save your confirmation number and receipt! Zenni Optical has a base in California, so it took less than two weeks for my glasses to arrive. But I have heard of customers in other countries having to wait 8-10 weeks for them. If nothing else, brace for the worst, and you’ll be impressed at how quickly they arrive!

The Sunshade+ shades skew light – go darker.

If there is one thing I would change about my glasses, I would go back and get the shades tinted a little darker. I took the default tinting, which works fine, but I would have wanted them a little darker. Also – the shades come with a protective film over both sides of them. Take the time to peel those off before you try on the glasses.

Have fun with it!

Think about how much money you are saving! This is a great time to try out a different style, or even order a couple different pairs. Once you are confident in the process, you can afford to enjoy yourself with it a little bit!

For more info, visit Zenni Optical (NOT an affiliate link!).

Look at the cute li’l sunshine! Awwww….

As I type this, it’s Monday morning, and the beautiful sunlight is streaming through my tiny window. It’s the only taste of sunshine I’ll get today without sitting in a car driving to work at my windowless cubicle. I like to think of moments like this as motivation to keep plugging away at the business. It’ll get there…

Here are some of my favorite stuff from around the Web this past week:

Gettin’ crap done

Yes, the little-mentioned “GCD” techniques. I’m always about looking at different ways to approach my workweek.

• 8 Small Habits That Make My Daily Life Simpler, Easier, and More Effective [The Positivity Blog] – The beauty of tips like these is that they don’t require a complete overhaul of your life. I already took time this morning to declutter some stuff (#4), wrote down my goals for the week (#5), and I spent my Saturday morning doing my week’s worth of grocery shopping (#2). Boom.
• on economy [mnmlist] – When you see the word “economy”, you immediately think of government spending. That’s the curse of being an American. Economy actually refers to how effectively you make the most of stuff – and it goes beyond money. Leo shares a few simple words that encourage economy in every part of your life.
• 9 Simple Tips for Getting Rid of a Bad Habit [The Positivity Blog] – Yup, another one from TPB. Destroy your bad habits by involving others, focusing on one at a time, and letting yourself feel a little bit of pain (news flash: pain is okay sometimes!).
• The Hard Truths About Building Your Own Success [Dumb Little Man] – The beauty of following blogs is that, every once in a while, you’ll come across a great post that will totally hit home with your current situation. This one was mine.

Make your body happy, and make your mind happy

What’s life without happiness? Answer: a big ball of suck. Take care of your health and your happiness with these articles:

• How to Be Kinder: 11 Fine Tips [The Positivity Blog] – TPB is just knocking it out of the park this week, folks. If you don’t think you need to be kinder, chances are you need to. Part of being happy is sharing in the joy of others. Life ain’t just about you, my friend. Follow these tips to be a more pleasant person to be around.
• 7 Superpowers You Act Like You Have But Don’t (And How That Messes You Up) [Dumb Little Man] – After re-reading this one, it may be my favorite of the week. Everybody pretends they have these, but you just don’t think about it. Mind control? Precognition? Time travel? I’m guilty of these. What a creative article!
• Getting By Is Worse Than Failing [Location Independent Professionals] – I do a lot of guest posting at this particular blog, and it is geared towards entrepreneurs, but this is great advice for everybody. Taking those risks and falling down a few times is infinitely more beneficial to you than just “getting by”.
• 7 Life Changing Lessons Learned From Walt Disney [Dumb Little Man] – Want to ensure that I’m going to read your article? Put “Walt Disney” in the title. The guy had an incredible attitude about life and business.

Buying stuff and selling stuff

In other words, the art of personal finance:

• Going Up? [The Simple Dollar] – Ah, the age-old argument of “good debt” versus “bad debt”. This is a great article that quickly summarizes the good and the bad (hint: pretty much anything on a credit card is bad debt, and a house isn’t always good debt, but it can be). This article also shows a startling difference between what you want and what you need.
• 8 Life Landmines That Will Blow Up Your Financial Plans [LiveCheap] – We all know disaster will strike us at some point. This article aims to make us aware of these moments, react to them, and proactively live life to prevent these things from happening (or lessening their blow).
• 10 Things You Should Never Pay For [LiveCheap] – It actually kind of scares me how many people pay for this stuff.
• 7 Ways My Clunker Is Smarter Than a Hybrid [Wise Bread] – News flash: hybrids are “better” cars because marketing campaigns are designed to convince you of that fact. Save your cash.
• Fifteen Great Websites That Saved Me Money in 2010 [The Simple Dollar] – Some of these are obvious (Craigslist), but some not so much (Yard Sale Treasure Map). And I’m heading over to PaperbackSwap today to sign up.
• ClickFiller Finds the Best Possible Amazon Filler to Net You Free Shipping [Lifehacker] – I am a huge fan of Amazon, and their free shipping for most orders over $25 is just the icing on the cake. If your order is close, use this tool to put it over the top.
• Four Atypical Things to Do Before You Consider Buying a House [The Simple Dollar] – Figure out why you’re buying a house is a great tip. A better tip is to save like clockwork for two years to get you used to a mortgage. My favorite tip is to start fixing stuff – because you’ll have to.

“Feed me, Seymour!”

Little Shop of Horrors? Anyone?

• 10 Cheap Shortcuts to Making Cooking Oh-So-Much Easier [Cheap Healthy Good] – It amuses me that people think cooking is a lot of work.
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Seasonal Produce [Cheap Healthy Good] – Since I started buying from a CSA, I’m learning the value of buying seasonal. There are some great tips here.

Nerdy Stuff

Because that’s why this site exists:

• 8 Reasons To Use Google Chrome As Your Primary Browser [Dumb Little Man] – I wrote a while back about my painless switch from Firefox to Chrome, and I still stand by this browser as the one to beat.
• Five Ways to Make Productive Use of Foursquare (and Not Be Annoying) [Lifehacker] – I know a handful of people that are using Foursquare. It’s an intriguing tool, but it’s too easy to be annoying with it.

There you go! Have any links you liked from this week? Share ‘em, or send them to me for next week’s Pile!