Want to grab a couple dollars worth of music from Amazon's MP3 store?
Follow this link and enter the code HITUMBLR to get a $2 credit.

But do it quickly – You must redeem the credit by 11:59 p.m. PST on April 1, 2012.

A couple months ago I tried to find a way to stream video from my PC to my Roku XD.
I had two requirements:
1) It needed to be free
2) It needed to be (relatively) easy to set up

You know what I found? A whole bunch of nothing.
Jump forward to a few days ago, when I accidentally stumbled on Plex (plexapp.com).
Plex has two parts, a server that you run on the computer (Mac or Windows) that you want to stream the video from, and a client (available for iOS, Android, Roku, and others) that you run on the device you want to stream video to.

Setting up the server is pretty painless. Download and run the Plex installer, and then after the Plex interface launches, tell it where to find your media. There are several preset categories (such as Movies, Music, TV Shows) that you can all point to different locations on your computer.

Setting up the Roku is even easier. Go to the Channels menu and add the private channel "plex". Once the channel shows up on your Roku, you just have to launch it, choose the settings option, and then choose the option to scan for Plex servers.

Did you know that answering "yes" when the Subway cashier asks if you want your receipt can earn you a free cookie?

Far too many times I've answered "no", not knowing that I could use the receipt to take a quick 1 minute survey and earn a free cookie.

Learn from my mistake! (or LFMF :-P)

Tired of just hearing the hype about Google Wave and want to see what it's all about?

I'm giving away five (5) invitations to Google Wave to random commenters on this post.

Want a chance at one? Just scroll down to the comment section on this post, say something awesome, and you're good to go.

On Monday, November 30th, I will randomly choose five of the commenters and enter their email addresses in for shiny new invitations from Google (make sure you enter your real email address in the comment form, as that's the address I'll be giving to Google.) I will post the name of the winners here in the comments, and also as a new post.

Google says that the invites aren't immediate, so I can't guarantee when the winners will actually receive them.

Whoooooops!
I thought the original post said that I would announce the winner of the $5 Amazon.com Gift Card on the 15th of this month, but I actually said the 10th! So, I'm late. A bit.

The entrants were all entered into a spreadsheet, and then the random number generator at random.org was used to pick the winning row number. There were only 5 entrants, so the final odds of winning were 20%.

Getting down to it – The winner is….. Erik (unlikelymoose) of unlikelymoose.com!

About four months ago I started to get into the idea of using mind mapping to brainstorm and plan out ideas and projects. At the time, I was looking for a service that was easy to use, fast, would allow me to collaborate with others on a single mind map, and would allow me to access the maps from both work and home.

One of the best that I found was MindMeister. Unfortunately, their free service only allows for something like five mind maps on an account at one time, so I was afraid of outgrowing it.. and eventually just stopped using it.

This morning I got an email from them reminding me that I haven't logged in for about four months and offering me their "sleeper package" – a license code good for 2 free months of their paid features, and 5 additional 2-month licenses for me to give to friends.

So….
I'll give them to any of you, if you want them. 🙂 The first 5 people to leave a comment asking for a promo code will get them.

(I still use mind mapping occasionally, but my setup is a bit different. I use the open source program Freemind, and then use the DropBox service to synchronize the map files (along with a bunch of other stuff) between my laptop and my work PC.)