MousePotatoPower

I’m not a fan of Microsoft. But then again, I can’t help but use Windows XP.

Now that I’ve been using Firefox for the past year or so, looking at Internet Explorer 7 is just painful. It’s ugly, they re-arranged the menus so that you don’t know where anything is anymore. It’s kind of screwed up, just like Vista. At least Vista looks pretty.

Anyway, Firefox is my web browser of choice for a few reasons.

• It’s free
• Firefox includes a Google search bar, so I can search from anywhere, no more jumping back to Google.com to find anything
• Tabbed browsing, nuff said
• Nearly unlimited extensions to add features and customize
• It’s portable and can be installed on a flash drive or Ipod
• It’s not Microsoft

Download it here and come back to see more Firefox tweaks in the future.

You might as well make money online. My personal checking account doesn’t give me any interest and it hasn’t for over 10 years. My personal savings account isn’t much better.

Last year, I found out about a micro-lending website called Prosper. Prosper is like an e-bay for loans. I signed up as a lender and ponied up $300. 10 months and 7 loans later, I am sitting on $318.71 with no defaulted loans. The math doesn’t quite add up. I know I’m securing interest rates above 14%, but earning $18.71 on $300 only comes up to about 6.25%. Either way, I’m turning a better profit than any bank account I have seen.

As a borrower, you can borrow up to $25,000 per loan, typically at interest rates below what a bank would offer you. As a lender, you must loan at least $50 per borrower. You “win” the loan by bidding the lowest interest rate. I have been able to secure as high as a 17.42% interest rate.

Your mileage may vary. A few caveats that you will want to know:

• Prosper is open to anybody. The typical lender does not fully understand the risks involved with lending and will usually bid too low of an interest rate (based on the borrower’s credit history).
• Low interest rates are good for borrowers.
• Borrowers can sign up without verifying home ownership or even a bank account. To me, this screams high-risk loan.
• The expected annual loss rate that Prosper displays only applies to borrowers with less than 20% DTI (debt to income) ratio. Borrowers with a higher DTI will default on loans at a higher rate.
• Prosper (and micro-lending) is relatively new and unproven. Will you jump on the wave and ride it to potential fortune? Or is this trend headed for disaster?

Sign up by clicking on this referral link by August 31, 2007 and successfully fund a loan within 90 days of signing up to earn $25.

Lifehacker.com

Geek to live, the Lifehacker motto.  Gina Trapani and the crew at Lifehacker.com post multiple times per day, they already have 8 entries for July 13 and it’s only 6:30 am Hawaii Standard Time.

The site is littered with great articles and tutorials that you can use to improve your biological and technological live.

I just read that in 2006, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary added the word mouse potato to its vocabulary. I guess I’m a year late, but it kind of has a ring to it. A day later, I registered the MousePotatoPower.com domain name and decided to start a blog that I’ve been thinking about.

Potatoes are supposed to be healthy, right?

MousePotatoPower is all about using your computer as a tool, not as an idiot box. There’s a lot of senseless things that you can do with a computer, but there are even more worthwhile things that you can do.

Follow along as I try to teach you new things to do. No doubt, I will learn a few new tricks as well.