What Are The Hourly Rates For IT Contractors? 
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The Lifehacker Total Security Guide 
Spotify And Its Rivals: Subscription Music Services In Australia Compared 
The Stupid Things You Do On Facebook (And How To Fix Them) 
How To Kill Time Productively On Your Phone Social groups often have one person who is considered to be the big spender – often they’re the one who earns the most money, and they’ll often end up with the bill at the end of a night out, or getting approached for loans by their friends. There are a lot of reasons why you might end up in this role – earning more, wanting to help, feeling guilty for having more money than your friends. Because IT is a profession that pays better than a lot of other jobs, often it’s the IT person in the bunch who is in this position.Yes, it’s wonderful to be able to do things with your friends, to spoil them and help them when they need it. But it’s not healthy for the relationship or your bank balance if it becomes something you always do - and feel like you have to do. Here’s some of The Simple Dollar’s tips for dealing with the situation:
Recognise that you don’t need to buy stuff to be seen as successful and valuable to others Commit to buying less, and choosing activities that centred around buying things Don’t worry about losing “friends” who expect you to pay all the time talk to your inner circle about itSo have you ever been the one who always pays? How did you solve it?
Photo by adactio.
Defeating Superman Syndrome: How to progress beyond the “need” to be the financial superhero [The Simple Dollar]
The communications regulator, ACMA, has cracked down on ISP Dodo, saying it must comply with industry codes of practice relating to complaints handling and billing, or face penalties. The Ombudsman referred Dodo to ACMA after the small ISP racked up almost double the number of customer complaints made against Telstra BigPond.
Windows only: Freeware application Netlicious is a desktop Del.icio.us client from which you can view and manage all of your Del.cio.us bookmarks. The application is set up very much like a traditional desktop newsreader or email application, with all your tags in the left sidebar, individual bookmarks in a top pane, and a browser preview for bookmarks below that. Netlicious makes viewing or editing your bookmarks a breeze, with a quick search integration and everything else you’d want from a desktop Del.icio.us tool. Netlicious is freeware beta application, Windows only, requires .NET 2.0. Netlicious [via FreewareGenius]
Our pal Merlin Mann over at 43 Folders did a presentation at Macworld several weeks ago called “Living with Data: Attention Sinks and Time Burglars,” and now everyone can hear it. It’s a lengthy talk, but if you take his advice to heart, it’ll save you time and sanity in the long run. Video: Merlin’s New Time & Attention Talk [43 Folders]
Internet start page PageOnce aims to integrate all of your online accounts in one central location. Currently PageOnce can handle and display widgets monitoring everything from your social tools, like Gmail and Facebook, to financial tools, like your phone bill and your bank account. If handing banking passwords over to a start page startup makes your security-side wince, you’re not really alone, but whether or not you’re comfortable with that, the social aspects are still worthwhile. Any way you slice it you’ll have to put some trust in PageOnce when you hand over any login credentials. That said, there’s no question that the idea behind PageOnce—that you can access all of your online accounts from one central location—is a useful one. The site is currently in private beta, but if you’re ready to give it a try you can start an account through a link on the TechCrunch post. PageOnce [via TechCrunch]
Cross-platform, multi-protocol instant messaging application Pidgin is very functional, but by default it’s not what most people would call sexy. But like many great software projects, from Firefox to foobar2000, the looks and extra functionality are there—you just have to know where to find them. Today we’re taking a look at 10 of the best Pidgin plug-ins for taking Pidgin from drab to fab.
Grab a free PDF copy of finance guru Suze Orman’s book Women & Money at Oprah’s web site (link halfway down page) until 6 p.m. PST today. Might make a nice addition to your Valentine’s Day offerings or to-read list. [via]
Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): Make copying tables from web pages to offline office apps easier with Table2Clipboard, a free Firefox extension. The low-key app simply adds a single item to the Edit and right-click context menus, “Copy whole table,” that retains a table’s formatting and makes it far easier to paste and manipulate in Microsoft Word or Excel, OpenOffice.org and other programs. The extension also keeps individually-selected (a.k.a. Control-clicked) cells in place when used. Table2Clipboard is a free download, and works wherever Firefox (including Firefox 3 Beta) does. Table2Clipboard [Firefox Add-ons via gHacks]
Personal finance blogger Ramit Sethi says it only takes him five minutes a week to make sure he’s not being over-charged, intentionally or not, by restaurants and other places where humans swipe his credit cards and enter a deduction amount.By collecting his human-swiped receipts in a folder right on his desktop, he can pull up his online credit card statement once a week and quickly run a “Ctrl-F” check of each total from his receipts. If he can’t find the amount he was supposed to be charged, it likely means someone messed up—or intentionally tried to scam a few bucks off him. It’s a quick and easy way to save yourself a few dollars, as well as add a feeling of security and it’s-all-taken-care-of-ness to your weekend. Got a better way to prevent small over-charges? Share your tip in the comments. Photo by Dan4th. Handling credit-card receipts [I Will Teach You to be Rich]
