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Whenever you buy anything online, it’s always a good idea to do a quick search for coupons or discount codes. You can often easily find 10% off, 20% off, and free shipping. Many times the values are even higher than that.

With many purchases or just large ones, these discounts can add up quickly. Whenever you are checking out and see a box for a promo code, it’s always prudent to take a quick look for some codes before submitting the form.

You can find some great discounts with Adobe coupons. (Although university students can get very cheap education packages from their campus bookstores) If you need to get a copy of Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Acrobat, or any of Adobe’s other products, then you should check it out

You can get discounts with Kohls coupons or Macys ...

Back in December when I reviewed  Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, I did not live in a community dotted with a Starbucks at every block, so I have never been to a Starbucks.  I was able to read the book and see the vision Howard Schultz, the CEO, had of the company.  I saw how he wanted the Starbucks image to exist. I wrote my review of his business techniques in the book here.

Now my commute to work passes three Starbucks Cafes, so I decided to check the place out.  My brain carried the image Schultz painted in his book.  The experiences have been totally different.  Yes the employees were great and the coffee was delicious–but it was the ...

I thought it might be nice to organize the books that Katie and I own or have talked about here on Aridni.  I’ve started to put together the Aridni Library -click here to check it out- there are still some books that need to go in.  And I’d like to get them linked up to relevant posts later on.

So this is a starting point for that process.  I hope it will become a helpful resource for you as it gets developed more and more.  Pretty soon we’re going to need to get a librarian on staff!!

Thanks To Our Sponsor: Pod6r Media Network Blogging pods are about to take on a whole new name.

I’ve moved the new theme for Aridni out of the sandbox and onto the main page.  While this isn’t exactly the final product, I wanted to get it launched as soon as possible.  There will be a couple smaller changes with some color tweaking and minor spacing issues resolved.  As well as some ‘big ticket’ changes.  Primarily with the image on the top left, I’m not liking the weird moon looking shape.

On the right, there is a new feature for Aridni called ‘Bookit!’  With that you will be able to see what books we most recently reviewed and read.

Well, that’s all the news for right now.  Have a good day.

Todd

Richard Branson, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin are ready to start life on Mars.  They have just announced their new partnership ‘Virgil - The Adventure of Many Lifetimes‘

The goal of course is to set up a full time colony on Mars.  If you want to apply, you can take their questionnaire to see if you have what it takes.  It might be wise to have sent them an email yesterday.  Fortunately thanks to another new Google application on the Gmail side of things, you can!

I can’t wait to see what some of the ...

I recently finished reading ‘The Art of Deception - Controlling the Human Element of Security’ which is a book written by Kevin Mitnick. In case you haven’t heard of Mitnick before, he is the most famous social engineer ever.

Social Engineering is basically using the social skills of influence and persuasion to get whatever the the persuader wants. It relies heavily on the reliance and exploitation of basic human ...

During the first meeting, I learned that I was talking to a sort of affiliate marketer.  I also learned that there was a startup fee, as well as a monthly fee for the program.  Once you are in the system, you can make money in two ways.

First, by selling stuff and collecting an affiliate fee.  Secondly, you can recruit others to sell the junk and collect a referral fee.  And it’s only going to cost you a set up fee of $126 and a monthly fee of $50 to keep your website running.  I don’t know about you, but this has bad idea written all over it.  Especially when I got to the second meeting.

This time there were two people involved in selling me this system.  The same person from the previous meeting, and someone higher up the food chain came to talk to me.

They began talking, and half an hour later they were repeating themselves profusely; however, their circumlocutory speech was not the real issue.  They mentioned that setting up your business, ...

Not very long ago, I listened to an audio-lecture on NPR about shopping and investing locally. This was from a man named Michael Shuman, he is the author of the book ‘ The Small-Mart Revolution.’ In this book he talks about the benefits of a locally owned and operated businesses. During his lecture he talked about these issues as well as some of the problems involved in attracting local investors in a fiscally responsible way.

Each community needs to develop its own self reliance and maximize the opportunities presented. This will help them to grow in a sustainable and reliable way.

Michael currently runs the site Smallmart.org and I found this article. About halfway down he has a list of things that will help you appear attractive to local shoppers.   This list includes…

1. Being locally owned - The most needed ...

Earlier this month, a fellow personal finance blogger, The Simple Dollar, wrote an excellent piece about how he and his family was defining themselves by stuff up until two years ago.  They were buying five DVDs every week along with the latest gadgets, golf clubs, and other stuff on whims.

He nearly had a financial meltdown, he says… until he got smart about debt, money, and what’s really important.  He started selling off excess junk that he had accumulated, and seriously watched his spending.

Read how The Simple Dollar made life-changing habits to make his debt shrink instead of grow.  Now he and his wife celebrate ...

I just read an article over at ‘Smart Money‘ about how couples often make similar mistakes in regards to their finances. It brings up many good points and issues.

“Most of us don’t know how to talk about money,” says Mary Claire Allvine, a certified financial planner (CFP) and co-author of “The Family CFO: The Couple’s Business Plan for Love and Money.”

“People tend to be emotional and reactive about money, not strategic,” she says.

When emotions run high, people tend to make fiscal mistakes. Allvine’s solution: Approach family finances as if you were running a business. “If you put a business metaphor into the picture, you’d be surprised how much more methodical people are.”

In this article she talks about 6 common pitfalls that could arise if issues are not properly resolved.

1. Merging ...