• tripadvisor.com - a site where travelers post their opinions and reviews
• emailforeclosures.com - website to find foreclosures
• homesales.gov - another website to find foreclosures
• ingdirect.com - check this out if you are thinking about refinancing

Northshore Agency has just had a class action lawsuit filed against them in New York for making harassing phone calls. The allegations are that they are attempting to collect debts that are not valid. There are legitimate companies in the debt collecting business and it is a necessary enterprise. If you are being wrongly harassed though, record the phone conversations and do not get taken advantage of. Get the harassment on tape and be ready to take legal action if they won't stop. Stand up for you rights and don't get intimidated.

Smart companies are starting to use blogs as a cheap way to do market research. Tripadvisor.com is a particular website, which hotels hate, that travelers can post their feelings on. If you stayed at the nicest hotel with great customer service, you can tell your fellow travelers that. If it was just the opposite, you can tell them that too. It is funny though, that even though this could be used to the advantage of hotel chains, many don't use it. This is totally free market research for them. The oddest thing is that if someone has a bad experience, and it is fixed the first time, the person becomes a more loyal customer to that business. So if these hotels would just listen to their free box of customer complaints, maybe they would create more loyal customers.

Competition is the greatest thing for the consumer. Monopolies cost way too much money for consumers and provide horrible service as well because of the lack of competitors. Clearwire is a great alternative internet provide that offers high speed wireless internet that bounces off of cell phone towers. They have over 2 dozen cities that they currently provide service for. Their customer base is up 160% year over year as well. When you purchase Clearwire, it takes all of about 15 seconds to install as well. Their goal is to cover about half of the United States in the next few years. Clearwire, in the cities that it exists in, provides that key third competitor to help drive prices down. Sprint is also rolling out a service that basically does what Clearwire does, so some cities could even see four competitors which could make internet prices lower in a hurry. (Editor's note: Some users have reported negative experiences with Clearwire.)

Tivo and DVR's have changed the way advertisers think about reaching consumers now. Since you can fast forward through all the commercials on your DVR, the TV companies have to find another way to make money. The major networks are using the internet as a free place to post their shows but they don't allow the viewer to blow past the commercials. The CW, a merger of UPN and the WB, is trying something creative and new as well. Their idea is to have the hosts of their shows mention products within the show. This is already being done in Spain and has sort of made their shows look a lot like infomercials.