1. Mint.com is a highly addictive money management site. You can quickly see where you’re spending, where you can save, and where you can earn higher interest.

Mint is by far the coolest way to track your spending online. It’s is completely free, and it takes about 5 minutes to import your bank accounts, after which it spurts out a clean pie chart of your spending trends. I had no idea until I signed up for Mint that I spend about 20% more than people in SF eating out at restaurants, or that my most frequent merchant is Trader Joes :). There are all kinds of interesting nuggets you would never know about your spending habits! You can see how hundreds of Twitter users are benefiting from Mint.com as well.

It also showed me banks that would give me 2-3% higher interest than I’m currently getting! I don’t know anybody who has the patience to purchase and use Microsoft Money and all those other bland financial software tools, but Mint is sure to attract the masses as they continue to make financial tracking and budgeting fun .

2. Gas Prices from MSN Auto : Type in your zip code and find the cheapest gas locations in your area, the average gas price, and the highest price. It’s also updated every night. The difference between the cheapest and most expensive gas in our zip code in SF is 70 cents! You’d save a good $14 on a full 20 gallon tank of gas.

3. Read reviews on Buzzillions of course :). Chances are you’ve bought something for a great price, but it just didn’t cut it. Eeither it broke, or the quality was so bad it was unusable, or it just didn’t meet your expecatations. Reading reviews from actual owners of the product on Buzzillions can help you get the best bang for the buck. You never know afterall, since even the best brands out there don’t always produce the best products .

As I was browsing through Buzzillions last night, I found a bunch of products made by top brands and was pretty surpised to see how poorly rated some of these were! It goes to show that even if a product is made by a brand you know and trust, they can still be huge disappointments. 

1. Black & Decker 12 Cup Coffee Maker: 2.4 stars/ 5

Although Black & Decker is a well known and trusted brand, this particular coffe maker is a definite bust! Several people said it ended up leaving “a counter top covered in hot coffee,” and that this model is terrible compared to previous models since they’ve “finally cheapened it to the point of not being usable.”

2. Kodak EasyShare M883 Digital Camera: 2.8 stars/ 5

Even Kodak doesn’t always get everything right! Although it looks pretty sleek, the “picture quality is digusting .” Also, don’t plan on taking pictures indoors since the “camera is not usable in low light areas,” and pictures turn out “grainy.”

3. Magellan Crossover GPS Unit: 3.1 stars/ 5

Reading the reviews, this Magellan GPS system has pissed a lot of people off. I mean, if you had to “spend another $150+ to add the software to make it do what it says it does.” A few people weren’t even satsified with the basic necessities of  GPS system as it “responds slowly, plans poorly, has multiple misspelled road names, including freeway names, and is grossly out of date with the maps. ”

If you had to guess the top three pages visited on Buzzillions today, what would you say? Well, fortunately, you don’t have to guess. In fact, you can always check out what our users are reading about and researching by clicking the Sitemap link found at the bottom of every Buzzillions page.

So, today I went to the Sitemap page to get a sense of what’s popular right now. I probably could have guessed the top page, GPS Reviews, without much trouble. It’s summer, people are traveling, they’re hiking, and really, GPS is just cool. The second one, Television Reviews, is fairly predictable as well. Starting February 17, 2009, all television signals will be digital, so it’s understandable that people are starting to research (and buy) their digital TV options.

But number three came right out of left field. The number three most visited page today is the Trojan Elexa Ultra Sensitive Premium Latex Condoms product page! This means that this single product is getting almost as much “play” as the entire GPS or Television category! Let’s see if they can keep it up

The other day Robert Scoble wrote a pretty good post about how some companies like Twitter gets a disproportionate amount of blog coverage compared to other companies like Meebo (who has a significant amount more engagement and traffic than Twitter) and is under represented.

His very realistic theory was that Twitter is a tool most bloggers actively use, thus have a strong bias to cover the company frequently, while Meebo isn’t a tool most technology centric writers use. The disappointing thing about this truth is that readers don’t get a diversity of startup and technology news, since the top bloggers end up covering the same story about every single (often uninteresting) move Twitter makes.

Recently we got coverage on VentureBeat “PowerReviews aims to become the AdSense of product reviews” which highlighted our goal to be the OS for retailers of every size to collect customer reviews. It got a decent amount of pickup, but it was definitely no $999.99 for “I am Rich” iPhone app story.

What do you think about the news, analysis, and coverage of technology in the blogosphere?

What’s next in the food challenge series? We’ve had several Wendy’s challenges. I would go so far as to say we’ve pretty much exhausted the Wendy’s possibilities (that said, I’m sure someone will read this as a challenge and come up with something even worse than the fries and milkshake challenge).

Thank goodness for Taco Bell.

Gautam (aka The Unsung Hero) had come up with the idea of eating 20 Taco Bell original tacos (those are the hardshell crunchy ones - 89¢ each) in an hour during one of our many reminisces over previous food challenges. Unfortunately, he came up with this idea on his last day of work before taking a couple of weeks vacation. Everyone thought this was a great idea but understandingly, did not want to proceed without Gautam (even though he said he would come back from his vacation just to witness this challenge we didn’t really think this would be fair).

So now that Gautam is back and all caught up with work, it’s time to get the ball rolling.

20 Taco Bell tacos don’t sound like a lot. I mean, I order 3 of those suckers every time I eat at Taco Bell (because they taste great at 2 AM and we all know they aren’t that filling). So what’s the big deal? 20? No problem.

But think about it…..

20 tacos in an hour means you have to finish a taco every 3 minutes. For an hour. When was the last time you ate food steadily for an entire hour? We’re not talking a normal dinner with conversation and wine.

Steady eating.

For a whole hour.

20 tacos.

The talk is this is going down this week. So I hear… I’ll keep you posted.

Note: as an aside, I was going through the office working up enthusiasm for the new Taco Bell challenge. Of course that dredged up stories about previous challenges, who had participated, how they went. The one that brought up the mose fries and milkshake in a blender challenge. Mark B was describing how he tested out this challenge ahead of time and how the coldness of the milkshake made all the fat from the fries congeal so that the resulting goop was the consistency of cement. It was so thick it had to be eaten from a spoon. In fact, if you scooped some out then held the spoon upside down, none of it would fall. You would think such a colorful description would deter anyone from trying this challenge again, but nope, instead this long store only stoked the passions of some of our eaters. So there may be rematch… stay tuned.

On Tuesday Google Insights launched, a tool you can use to “See what the world is searching for.” I played around with different keywords to realize that there are so many possibilities with this tool for marketers, advertisers, and any company with a desire to understand search behavior to choose advertising messaging, seasonal planning, follow product/brand trends, and on and on.

A great example on their “How can I use Google Insights for Search?” page, they showed how while “fuel efficiency” is a growing concern for people, “car safety” gets a significant amount of interest which an auto advertiser would want to include in advertising campaigns:

I can think of many ways for Buzzillions to take advantage of this tool from buying keywords, to messaging, and seasonal features in the future..back to school is right around the corner!

My first child never figured out how to get out of her crib.  Ever.  Either she was risk averse and didn’t fancy a nasty fall to the floor below or she wasn’t as clever as other children.  When my sister in law told me about crib tents, I only half listened.  After all, my child was well behaved and sensible.  She stayed in her crib all night.   And so I had the luxury of dismissing crib tents as being vaguely barbaric, in line with those leashes you sometimes see on children in airports.  “It sounds like a cage,” I remember telling a friend.  Fast forward four years, and I’ve got a set of twins on my hands.  One docile, loving, sweet and cautious.  The other, oh, the other.  The other will leap from countertops, throw herself into swimming pools, run with scissors, pocket knives and, if she could get her hands on them, fireworks.   She has, in the last week, smeared yogurt on a cat, stood on glass shelving, put jello into my shoes and, in a particularly impressive Houdini manouver, managed to free herself from her duct taped diaper (which she takes off when dirty).   The first time she got out of her crib and toddled down the hall into my bedroom, I thought, oh how cute and amusing.  The fifth time, it was less adorable.  And so I remembered the crib tent.

Near as I can tell, crib tents are only made by one manufacturer, Tots In Mind, who make the The Cozy Crib Tent II.  I think they have some kind of monopoly, or patent, because they aren’t terribly well made and yet they don’t seem to improve in quality much.  I’m on my third (broken zips seem to be a common problem along with tears in the nylon during installation.  I’ve installed several, all with some degree of tearing, so I know it’s not a fluke.  Here’s the thing though, in general they work.  The tent is made of netting with a structure very like a real tent, with poles that hold the thing up.  Even a tall child can still stand up fully, but can’t (and here is the wonderful part) get out.  That’s the theory anyway.   Remember I’ve been through three of these.  The first, the zipper broke because she managed to wiggle her fingers in a gap at the end of the tent and use that gap to push the zipper open.  The second, she pulled off all the velcro tabs and slipped underneath.  This doesn’t happen with the latest crib tents - The Cozy Crib Tent II which has webbing all around the insides of the crib (see picture).  The third one, with the new wrap around webbing, is working quite well, and strangely enough, she likes it, even helping to zip herself in at night.  Normally I would give a product that broke this routinely two stars, but the thing is, I can’t live without it.  Even if I’ve bought three crib tents, it’s worth her not getting out of her crib and (as she is liable to do) walking down the stairs, out the front door, and hitching a ride to Canada.

We sat at our desk pounding away at our keyboards and managing the online content for Buzzillions. Somehow the Content Team ended up talking about Axe. Yes, Axe shower gels, the deodorants, the body shots. While comparing the smells of these Axe products, my colleague Pete revealed his dismay for Old Spice, because it gives him rashes.

Perplexed, we hopped on to Buzzillions and we researched the product to see if anyone else has that issue. Pete found the product and we read the reviews. Someone else actually had the same issue. Bingo Neat-o! Buzzillions really does empower[s] consumers by providing the purchasers’ experience with legitimate data.

This experience led me to think, “What does empowering the consumer mean?” Empower, (in street terms), means to give an edge to. Empowering consumers, from a sociological perspective, means providing legitimate data for consumers to make educated purchases. Data needs to be managed to ensure quality. Buzzillions now has over 2.3 million reviews. These reviews are managed by the 30+ member Moderation Team led by our fearless leader Lily. They scan the reviews to ensure that the data is coming from legitimate sources, and they follow strict guidelines that ensure useful comments.

In the end process, consumers can draw data from the reviews and make their own conclusion on whether the product is worth their hard earned money. The clean data can help answer many questions that a common consumer has. What type of person is this product made fore? What are some of the cool features? Are there common issues with the product? Should I get a warranty for the item? How good is the quality of the material? Is there a possibility that Old Spice might cause a rash on me? (It did for Pete.)

So Buzzillions is in some way a database for people to research and buy their product in a streamlined process. It offers a way for a community to get useful data to buy products that they will be satisfied with. Since I’ve been informed of the possibility of Old Spice causing rashes, I think I will stick with Axe. It smells really good. Trust me, check it out here.

Bert

So, last time, I choose Peet’s coffee because I knew it was a safe bet from my pre-PowerReviews days of shoveling beans for hours on end. But now that we’ve finished off our fresh coffee supply, it’s time to try something new.

One of our partners, Café Britt sent out a promotional email to their customers last week and generated over 300 reviews in just 4 days. While doing some moderation (i.e. personal research), I noticed that they were getting rave reviews across the board. Now we will be the judges.

Currently in the kitchen:  Costa Rica Dark Roast (currently “Top Rated” on Buzzillions.com with a product rating of 4.9 stars and 381 reviews), Costa Rica Decaffeinated (currently “Top Rated” with 4.9 stars and 104 reviews), and Tres Rios Valdivia (was “Top Rated” last week when I placed the order - 4.9 stars and 381 reviews).

This will be a three way experiment:

1. How effective is Buzzillions for a customer taking a risk on a product she has no prior experience buying online?
2. How well is our “Top Rated” system working?
3. Will Café Britt’s blends be delicious enough to overcome the plastic k-cup’s ease?

In an actual store, you have to decide how to arrange your merchandise. Should items be arranged by type? Or use? Do running shoes go in the shoe section? Or should all the running equipment be kept together? How do most people shop? What helps them find things easier?

These are all questions a store has to think about in order to keep shoppers as happy as possible. However, everyone is a little different and no matter where items are placed, not everyone will be able to find it with the same ease.

The advantage of being an online store is that we can place products wherever we want. We’re not limited to just one aisle in a store; we can put products in as many areas as we think will be useful. So we can put running shoes with shoes and also with other running equipment. We can put hiking clothing with clothing and also with other hiking equipment. You shouldn’t even need to think about where to find something. Wherever it could be, it should be.

No more “it’s in aisle 3 next to the canned tomatoes”.