Eventually, you will spend all 100 of your Listia credits on free Coke Reward Points, but don’t worry.  If you have anything lying around your house you want to get rid of, you can list it on Listia as a free auction.  You get 50 more points for listing your first item.  Then you also get however many points your item sells for.  DVDs with free shipping, for example, tend to go for 200-500 Listia credits.  But you can list anything you own that’s collecting dust around your house.

I guess you could stop at the free 100 points and leave the site, but if you browse around the site a bit, I think you’ll get hooked like I have.  It’s definitely addictive.  There’s a lot more to buy with your Listia credits than just Coke Rewards Points.

To give you an idea of what points are worth, I recently auctioned off one of my Wii games (Bikini Zombie Slayers) for around 600 points and the DS game Ninja Town for 500 points.  A $300 netbook with MacOS installed recently ended for almost 9,000 points.

Besides the stuff other users list, the site also holds their own “Rewards Auctions” where they offer things like TVs, blu-ray players, Nintendo Wii’s, random electronics, and other big ticket items.  They offer several of these a week.  Currently, I’m saving up my points to buy a big ticket item in a future auction, although I did use a couple hundred points to buy a brand new Rubik’s Cube Revolution Titanium Edition.

If you’re interested in the site, you can check it out here.  It’s a very promising site, although currently subject to some user abuse because of their policy of giving free points as soon as you sign up.

Of course, for you “glass half full” types, I guess this is a good time to head to a theme park if you can afford it.  Lines should be shorter than they’ve been in years, although I bet they’ll still be crowded during spring break.

Here’s another positive thing you might not know about.  Anyone can visit Walt Disney World or Disneyland for free on their birthday.  Click here for details.

Bigfoot Links

Bigfoot Wikipedia Page – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigfoot

Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization – http://www.bfro.net/

Bigfoot Encounters – http://www.bigfootencounters.com/

The Shadowlands Bigfoot Page – http://theshadowlands.net/bf.htm

The Skeptic’s Dictionary Bigfoot Entry – http://www.skepdic.com/bigfoot.html

Alliance of Independent Bigfoot Researchers – http://209.85.50.7/~skookum/

Willow Creek-China Flat Museum – http://bigfootcountry.net/home/

Loren Coleman, Cryptozoologist – http://www.lorencoleman.com/

Bigfoot Lives – http://www.bigfoot-lives.com/

The Bigfoot Discovery Project – http://www.bigfootdiscoveryproject.com/

Skeptic World Bigfoot Page – http://www.skepticworld.com/cryptozoology/big-foot.asp

It takes about a minute to fill out the form to sign up for an account and maybe another 30 seconds (depending on the speed of your Internet connection and PC) to install the Dropbox software.  Once installed, a Dropbox icon is added to your System Tray at the bottom of your screen, as well as a folder located in your Windows Documents.  Drag and drop any file into the Dropbox and it will be quickly uploaded to your online account, accessible by logging into the website or installing the shortcut application on another PC.

I would have loved to have something like this when I was in college, as I had to carry a stack of floppy disks with me back then to hold all my papers and other homework assignments. (Yes, this was in the days before cd burners and USB flash drives).  Inevitably, being absent-minded, I would forget a floppy at home that had a paper on it I needed to finish or print out in the computer lab.  Since it was 30 minutes each way to get to campus, that was an extremely inconvenient thing to do and caused me to miss more than one class.

Besides the obvious file storage benefits, you can also upload photos and documents to share with others, as the site can generate a link for direct access to your photo gallery or document.  This can be usefull for sending files to those who can’t receive documents via e-mail or when you have so many photos you want to send to some one, it’s easier to just send a link.

The uses for Dropbox are many and varied and even though I have access to other means of storing files online, such as e-mailing them to my Gmail account, storing them on the webspace that came with my ISP account or simply uploading them to one of the many social networking sites that let you store certain types of files online, Dropbox offers more convenience than any of these alternatives.

The site is free for beta testers and according to their terms of service, beta accounts will remain free even when they go to a paid model.  I’m not sure how much space beta accounts receive, but the terms page mentions free accounts after launch will receive 1 gig of storage space, with premium accounts receiving more space for a fee.  The more gigs of storage you want, the more you pay.  Seems reasonable.

Will people pay for a service like this?  I’m sure some will.  I know many, like myself, probably will not, just because we’re used to getting everything on the web for free.  One gig seems like plenty to me for what I would use the site for.  Hopefully, their business model includes selling advertising to support the free accounts so they don’t go out of business because of all the freeloaders, such as myself.

Also, I believe the media companies are missing out on a huge opportunity when it comes to online file sharing. Most of what people trade online these days are TV shows, the most popular of which are recent (aired within the last 24 hours) shows. The networks would be better off creating their own torrents of these shows complete with commercials and seeding the episodes themselves. I think if there was a legal alternative for downloading a TV show you’ve missed for free, most bit torrent users would take advantage of it.

The other option would be streaming the shows with commercials as Hulu does. While many people prefer downloads at the moment, I think streaming on-demand content may actually be the future. I’d like to see a day when I can watch any TV show ever made, streaming over my cable or Internet connection onto my television on demand.  Whether this will cost a flat monthly rate, a per download fee, or be free and advertiser supported is up to the market to decide.

Hopefully, the TV networks won’t make the same mistake the music industry made and go after their core demographic with lawsuits and alienate them. There will always be pirates. You don’t eliminate piracy through lawsuits. You make it less attractive by providing easily attainable legal alternatives.

Jul 24 – Britain’s six biggest Internet providers have agreed a plan to send warning letters to those suspected of illegal file-sharing.

ISPs had previously argued they were mere conduits and not responsible for content.

But they agreed to the deal after the British government said it would impose legislation if they did not work to curb illegal file-sharing.

Reuters Technology Correspondent Matt Cowan reports.

While I find the concept interesting, I’d be nervous to rent out my hundreds of dollars worth of camping gear, for example, without a significant deposit and some sort of legally binding contract. The site seems to have a much larger potential for scam artist abuse than even auction sites like Ebay. I suppose you could ask for a deposit equal to the value of your items to protect yourself from loss, but this would make it unlikely for anyone to rent from you. Still, it will be interesting to watch Zilok and see if they become the Ebay of peer-to-peer rentals.

The press release received from Zilok is attached below:

Give New Life to Unused Stuff: Zilok.com Makes You Money and
Supports Sustainability with Peer-to-Peer Renting

SAN FRANCISCO, May 19, 2008 – Do you have a tent you’ve used twice or a digital camera gathering dust in a drawer? Do you need a power drill for just one project? In a world where a drill is only used for an average of 12 minutes over its whole lifetime it has become clear that even though we often feel we have too much stuff, we always seem to want and need more. After six months in live beta, Zilok (http://us.zilok.com/), already the World’s largest peer-to-peer renting platform, today announced its full US service launch, and with it a proven green way to make money from the things you have and save money on the things you want and need.

Make money, save money
The bicycles, camping gear, strollers and electronics that gather dust in our cluttered closets and garages are needed right now by people in your area who would love to rent an item for a few days rather than spend much more to buy it themselves.

Keep it local and be a green hero
By simply renting things you aren’t using to people in your area, you cut down on conspicuous consumption and encourage the reuse of everyday household items and electronics. With Zilok you help save on the natural resources needed to produce more stuff.

“Inspired by conservation and green movements in Europe, Zilok is the fun way to tackle over-consumption while expanding everyone’s access to the things they want and need—whether that is a scooter or Wii, a ratchet set or a tuxedo” offered Gary Cige, Cofounder and CEO of Zilok.

How to rent out just about anything on Zilok.com
Posting an item just takes a minute: Type in what it is, where it is and when it is available, upload a picture, set your price and choose payment methods. Before you know it you may receive your first text message or email notifying you that “Someone requested your item.” Not someone from out of state, someone from your actual area.

How to rent just about anything on Zilok.com
Just type in what you are looking for and where you live. Find the item, set the time frame of the rental and confirm the request with the retainer system. Next pickup the item locally and pay the owner directly. It is that easy.

What Zilok Users are Saying
Lionel from New York City: “I needed a twin jog stroller for a weekend, and found one on Zilok in my neighborhood. I saved time and about $200, for something I wouldn’t even know where to store.”
Brianna from Seattle: “We have a scooter we don’t use much but pay insurance for. I listed it on Zilok and told neighbors. The word spread and it became an alternative transportation mode for some people in the community. I made more than $150 over this last couple of months, I’m glad we kept that scooter!”
Tony from San Francisco: “My kayak doesn’t get out of the garage very often. I hate seeing things not being used, and I’m glad other people can enjoy it now it’s on Zilok. The extra money is nice, and I really like the community and the green aspects of it.”

About Zilok.com

Zilok is the online rental marketplace, where anyone can offer just about anything for rent to the community. Zilok’s mission is to support and develop peer-to-peer renting as a new, sustainable and community-driven way of consuming.

Zilok went live in public beta in November 2007 in the United States, France and Belgium, and in Spring 2008 in the Netherlands and in the UK. US offices are based in San Francisco, CA. Zilok.com was awarded Site of the Week by PC Magazine, and elected the best European Startup by the audience of the Plugg Startup Rally 2008. Zilok is a member of the American Rental Association.

Today, most of us couldn’t afford a one-word, high profile domain, but thanks to a new site called Fusu.com, we can buy shares in high dollar domains in order to profit when those domains are eventually sold. Fusu works like the stock market, with domain names replacing traditional stocks. You can sell your shares at any time, and they go up or down in value, just like on the stock market.  Or you can hold on to your shares until the domain you are investing in sells, and then you’ll get a percentage of the sale price, which could potentially be a large profit (or loss).

It’s an interesting concept, but whether it will catch on with domainers or not is hard to predict. I do like the fact that you can make a small deposit to the site via Paypal, which allows those of us with Paypal funds from other online ventures to experiment without giving the site our credit card number or withdrawing funds from a bank account.