My Favorite Websites of Late

Lately, I’ve been collecting some new websites that have seriously helped streamline some of my online activities. Here are just a few of my newfound favorites that I thought I’d share:

Letter Me Later
This is definitely at the top of my list of new online discoveries! For quite some time, I’ve been wishing that I could schedule emails to go out in the future, and this (free!) service does that seamlessly. It syncs up with your existing email address, and you can log in here, create emails (even add attachments if you want), and schedule them to go out any time in the future. And, if you’re the recipient, you have no idea that it’s coming from a third-party; no advertising or branding on the outgoing emails at all!

Online Stopwatch
I’ve mentioned before that I can easily get sucked into online searching and scouring and surfing. Online Stopwatch is one way to set up a time boundary to coral yourself in after your allotted time is up. You go to the website (no logging in required), set the clock to countdown until a set time, and then a buzzer goes off, letting you know that time is up. You just have to make sure that you have your sound turned on, and that when the buzzer rings, you actually log off!

Swagbucks
Most of you know this isn’t anything new, as I’ve been a big Swagbucks advocate for almost two years now. But I figured while we’re on the subject of online resources, it was worth plugging again. If you haven’t used Swagbucks before, it’s basically a search-engine alternative to Google (although its results will be very comparable to Google’s) and you earn points for your various searches, which you can redeem for gift cards or products. In preparation for springtime, I recently just snagged a container gardening book off Amazon using my Swagbucks! Here’s a more in-depth post I did a few months ago that provides more details about my experience using Swagbucks and how to get started using it.

we heart it
A site filled with beautiful images, this is where I’ve been sourcing more and more of the images used on my blog for the past month or so (including the one in this post!). I love the ethereal and subtly vintage feel of this ever-growing collection of images. And while the tags aren’t always well-categorized (which can making finding the “perfect” picture a bit of a challenge), you don’t have to do nearly as much clicking through hoards and hoards of mediocre photos like is often the case on Flickr.

Iowa Public Television Broadcasts Available Online
When I’m doing tasks around the house—whether it’s fixing an involved meal, stitching up some clothes, or organizing unwieldy piles of paper—I like to have something going on in the background, whether it’s an audiobook or a video playing on my laptop. I normally don’t have enough time to commit to a whole movie and I’ve found Netflix’s TV selection to be lacking, so I ended up stumbling across this PBS station’s website that streams many of their programs online for free! There’s a pretty big assortment, ranging from history to health to home-related shows, many under an hour long. So I can get things done, and maybe learn a thing or two at the same time!

Ebates & Mr. Rebates
Finally, two other sites that I think worth mentioning are Ebates and Mr. Rebates, if you do any online shopping regularly. They will give you a kick-back for most of your online purchases if you log into their site and then click to the site where you’re doing your shopping. It’s one extra click, but you can get a small percent of your purchase price back, which adds up in my book. Here’s more detailed information about using these sites and how they work, if you're interested.

Do you have any websites you've been especially enjoying lately that have made life a little bit easier? If so, share them in the comments. I'm continually amazed by all the smart sites there are out there!