- Batteries
- Bicycling, Carfree & Simple Living
- Books
- Consumer Information
- Education
- Games
- Investing & Personal Finance
Batteries
- Battery Barn – low prices on Ni-MH batteries, but I would go to Maha for better chargers.
- Maha / Powerex
Bicycling, Carfree & Simple Living
- Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute
- Bicycle Transportation Alliance – Oregon bicycle transportation advocacy group.
- BikePortland.org
- Bikes Belong in Traffic – SFPD Training Video
- California Transit Oriented Developments
- Carfree Cities
- Carfree USA Blog
- Commuter Bicycles
- Nighttime Riding Equipment – why you definitely need a front light and should consider an amber rear reflector. You’ll also need a red rear reflector if your state requires it.
- Oregon E-Cycles – free recycling of computers, monitors and TVs.
- Portland Transport – access and mobility in the Portland/Vancouver region.
- Simple Living Network
- Taoism [Forum] – you might wish to read the What is Tao? article first.
- World Carfree Network
Books
- 1DollarScan – book scanning service ($1/100 pages with a maximum cost of $6 per book). Creates PDFs with searchable text.
- BookFinder.com
- Economics Textbooks
- Edward R. Hamilton, Bookseller
- Freeload Press – free textbooks for students, instructors and lifelong learners.
- Google Book Search – includes the full text of out-of-copyright books.
- In Pictures – free computer books based on pictures, not text.
- LibriVox – free recordings of public domain books.
- Math Books
- Online College Mathematics Textbooks
- Open Text Project – online physics books from a Baylor University professor.
- OpenOffice.org eBook
- Project Gutenberg – free, plain text files of books with expired copyrights.
- Saxon Publishers – math, phonics and spelling books.
- Singapore Math
- Totally Free Math Online Algebra Book – their other math books are available through Freeload Press.
- Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference – free PDF file (170 pages).
- Wikimedia Foundation – encourages the development of open content and provides it to the general public for free without advertising. Projects include textbooks, an encyclopedia and a dictionary.
- Xlibris Self-Publishing
Consumer Information
- Allergic Reactions to Protective Gloves – if you’ve had allergic reactions to nitrile gloves, you’ll need accelerator-free ones.
- AMSA Certified Movers and Van Lines
- AnnualCreditReport.com – obtain free credit reports from each of the three major credit reporting agencies once every 12 months.
- CardWeb – Clark Howard frequently mentions this site for those interested in finding reputable secured credit card offers.
- Clark Howard – Clark’s credit freeze page has online request links, phone numbers and the form letters I put together that his staff reviewed and modified.
- Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering
- Credit/Debit/ATM Cards and Foreign Exchange
- Direct Marketing Association Mailing List Removal
- Do Not Call Registry
- The Dollar Stretcher
- Funeral Consumers Alliance
- Frugal U. – frugal living and money saving tips.
- GetHuman – includes a database that lists how to reach a human being when calling the customer service number at various companies.
- Lightbulb Watt-to-Lumen Conversion Guide
- National Association of the Remodeling Industry
- Network Advertising Initiative – Opt out of cookie tracking.
- Opt Out of Credit Card Offers – visit the Web site or call 888-567-8688.
- Troubleshooter.com – Tom Martino’s Web site.
- US Consumer Gateway – includes the Consumer Sentinel.
- Zenni Optical – inexpensive eyeglasses.
Education
- Accuplacer Exam – see Julia Steiny: Accuplacer Exam Can Kill College Careers.
- CK-12 Foundation – California-based foundation offering free, open-content textbooks.
- Common Core State Standards Initiative – UC Berkeley mathematics professor emeritus Hung-Hsi Wu’s comments; his Fall 2011 American Federation of Teachers American Educator cover story article.
- Connexions – “a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc.”
- Education News
- Firelight Books – teach grade-level standards to high school and junior high school students reading at a 2nd or 3rd grade level.
- Free Education Resources
- FreeMat (Linux/Mac/Windows)- “a free environment for rapid engineering and scientific prototyping and data processing. It is similar to commercial systems such as MATLAB from Mathworks, and IDL from Research Systems, but is Open Source.”
- High School Operations Research – “Mathematics for Decision Making in Industry and Government.”
- K12 Linux Terminal Server Project
- Khan Academy (article) – “2,100 videos and 100 self-paced exercises and assessments covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history.”
- Lewis and Clark Montessori Charter School – co-founded by two of my friends.
- Linux Professional Institute – Best Books for LPI Training suggests two printed books and a PDF file. Note that the current version of the PDF file is available here.
- MIT OpenCourseWare
- Moodle – open source course management system easily installed through the Fantastico scripts which Web hosts such as ASmallOrange offer. Gabriel Gurley offers OpenOffice.org course packages which can be imported into Moodle.
- Online Drawing Applications
- Qimo 4 Kids – a desktop operating system designed for children with pre-installed education games for ages 3 and up.
- Saxon Publishers
- SchoolForge.net – open source software and other free resources.
- Singapore Math – the Model Method (article, monograph) is an effective approach for solving word problems with simple diagrams. A small number of colleges and universities use Elementary Mathematics for Teachers.
- Hung-Hsi Wu – UC Berkeley math professor’s papers on elementary and secondary school math education.
- YouTube – EDU – videos from college and university partners.
Games
- GNUBridge (Java)
- PokerTH (Linux/Mac/Windows) – Texas Hold ‘em poker game.
- Shane’s Chess Information Database – enter games from the beginning or use Edit > Setup Start Board.
- Susan Polgar Foundation Chess Curriculum
- Alexey Root’s Blog – free chess curricula post.
- US Chess Federation
- Wholesale Chess
- Xboard/Winboard (Linux/Windows) – front-end for various chess engines; includes the Fairy-Max engine.
Investing & Personal Finance
Most investors should probably consider one of Vanguard’s Target Retirement or LifeStrategy funds. There are similarities and differences between them. Even some experienced investors use them to avoid making counterproductive adjustments.
- Bogleheads – discussions on personal finance and other topics.
- Deposit Accounts – compares rates from different banks and credit unions.
- Garrett Planning Network – fee-only financial advisors and planners with hourly billing.
- Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance in Your Twenties and Thirties
- Clark Howard’s Investment Guide
- The Mortgage Professor
- National Association of Personal Financial Advisors – fee-only financial planners. Note the difference between a financial planner and investment advisor (article).
- Psychological/Behavioral Investing Pitfalls
- Psychology and Behavioral Finance
- The Retire Early Home Page
- Vanguard – lowest cost mutual fund family; Investors behaving badly: How to avoid your own errors of emotion; Webcast replay and transcript: How emotions can influence your financial decisions.
- What Investors Really Want – behavioral finance book. “We should increase the ratio of smart behavior to stupid behavior, but we do not have computers for brains and we want benefits computers cannot comprehend.”
