Richard J.

SiteJabber followers who value reviews and ratings not of websites but of products will want to bookmark this site, owned by About.com, in turn owned by The New York Times Company. From across the Web ConsumerSearch considers professional and user reviews both, and then analyzes the reviews and ranks the products according to stated criteria. Users can read the reviews, except those restricted to subscribers of the reviewing sites. ConsumerSearch uses reviews to rate the sellers as well.

The main failing of reviews is the danger of bias in a particular review. The huge number of reviews considered here, from so many sources, really eliminates that concern.

If your auto is cooling its heels parked much of the time, you might want to help it pay its way by renting it out. Getaround brings local car owners together with local car-deprived, for an hourly or longer fee that includes insurance. You can register your car with brief information and a photo.

There are many weather pages on the Web, but this is the only one to my knowledge that offers hourly forecasts. Weather.com a. K. a. The Weather Channel has a page that will let you see at a glance the predicted temperatures and weather conditions for the various hours coming up. And tabs will let you check weather for tomorrow, for the next 5 days, for the next 10 days, and even for the next month.

If this is of interest, you'll want to create a bookmark from the following template: www.weather.com/weather/hourbyhour/graph/xxxxx, first substituting your 5-digit zip code for the xxxxx.

You might also want to compare today's weather with that of yesterday. Weather.com has a page for that as well. Use this template: www.weather.com/weather/pastweather/xxxxx, as above substituting your zip code for the xxxxx.

This site lets you choose an eGift card from a large variety of major retailers, browsable by category and searchable. You help save the environment by foregoing an actual card, and there's no physical product to lose. (You or the recipient can reprint the "card" as necessary.) You pay the retailer's regular price.

You could probably buy the electronic card direct, but this is usually easier, and gives you more choice.

Enables quick and thorough comparisons of medical and dental insurance plans, and will sign you up online. Represents close to 200 companies (without raising their prices). Commits to go to bat for you in case of any problem.

It's often convenient to enjoy a meal while awaiting your flight. Use this site's Advanced Search to zero in on your preferences, and consult reviews. Covers airports throughout the world, and a free mobile app is available. Reviews are currently rather sparse, but should proliferate with time. (You could always look to Yelp.com for reviews, but as I've cautioned in my Yelp review, don't rely on Yelp's star ratings, and seek out Yelp's "filtered" reviews.)

For the good number of heavily used programs it supports, this Web app saves me from having to fiddle with original and update downloads, installations, and setups. And I needn't worry about accompanying junk like unwanted toolbars, or wonder whether I have the latest version. I click just once after selecting all the programs or updates I want.

Ninite will succeed where a standard installation may fail, although in some such cases you may have to pursue extra steps.

If you're fed up with the Ticketmaster experience, you might be as delighted as I am with Brown Paper Tickets.

First of all, the per-ticket surcharge is tiny: only 3.5% plus 99 cents -- except that for the many free events, there's no service fee whatever. (You can easily search for free events and others that are heavily discounted.) And five percent of net sales go to a charity of the patron's choosing.

Tickets are refundable, can be resold, and can be sent to your phone. The site provides extensive event information, with maps. There's 24/7 toll-free customer service.

Giveaways are often the cheapest way to advertise and can be useful for getting feedback; and these opportunities can be a boon for consumers. Giveaway of the Day offers free software from well-known companies, that otherwise would cost you. You can sign up on the site for alerts by email or RSS.

As the name suggests, this Web app lets you send free faxes, without a fax machine. There's a heavier-duty paid version, but the free version should be enough for most folks not in business. You can send up to 3 pages in a fax, and up to 2 faxes a day. You get free cover pages also, and there are no ads.

Unfortunately, this site facilitates outgoing faxes only. I'm not aware of a source for free incoming faxes, aside from trials. (eFax still will enable free faxes for its basic customers, but will currently accept only paid subscriptions.)

From the government's Consumer Products Safety Commission, this site provides valuable information on products you own or may be considering buying.

Ebooks are great, but for real books you can't beat Better World Books. I recently was searching without success for an L. A. Thomas Guide map book in the old smaller format. The current editions of these books go for $34.95 plus tax.

I found what I sought here, and my total price for the purchase was $5.03—that's right, five dollars and three cents. This included an optional five cents for "carbon neutral shipping"; shipping is otherwise always free. Described as in "good" condition, I would have called the book's condition "very good"; aside from a few small library stickers on the cover (probably removable), I could hardly distinguish it from a new book off the shelf.

The icing on the cake is the outstandingly helpful and friendly customer service, in sharp contrast to so many customer "service" operations. Hint: Make a note of the customer service number, *******303, which is not easy to find on the website.

This is a deal-of-the-day site like Groupon and Groupon's many imitators. The big plus with ScoutMob is that, unlike nearly all the others, it requires no payment up front. You're not committed in any way. I use Scoutmob's restaurant deals, and I've been pleased with each of the venues.

Since you don't pre-pay, the deals are not for fixed dollar amounts but for percentages off—so they're just as good for singles as for couples and groups. And the discounts aren't piddling; my experience has been 50% off. You can if you like catch the offers with your cell phone.

As counter-intuitive as it may first appear, you can often get a better deal from a so-called middle-man than you would direct from the supplier. That's the secret behind the success of deal-of-the-day sites like Groupon, and it applies as well to magazine brokers. Both kinds of brokers get you a better deal by delivering new customers to the original supplier, albeit at much less profit.

While the provider clients of deal-of-the-day sites may be motivated by the prospect of continuing after-deal business, magazine publishers benefit from the brokers even without it. That's because the cost to the publishers of each additional magazine copy is so low. (In fact, the only significant cost is that of mailing, for which the Postal Service gives them a special rate.) In practice, however, the publishers often do even better, as less careful buyers renew their subscriptions directly and not via the broker. These considerations explain how magazine brokers are able to offer the huge discounts that you'll see.

Magazines.com is the magazine broker I've used, and aside from the bargain prices its service is satisfactory in every way. You can use it to purchase new subscriptions or to extend current subscriptions. If you change your mind about a magazine, magazines.com will provide a full refund for all undelivered issues. And toll-free customer support is available 6 days a week.

Tip: Magazines.com does not want you to renew via the publisher, so unless you tell it not to, it will automatically renew every subscription you order. But telling it not to is easy: just phone the site after you order at its regular number *******946).

Gmail is a top-notch (probably the best) Web-based email service, featuring lightning-quick message retrieval and superior spam filtering, as well as many other useful tools. For example, it allows you to receive your emails elsewhere and can send emails as if coming from another address. If you opt for Basic HTML view, you'll encounter no ads at all. Otherwise you as the Gmail user may see inconspicuous text ads, but your recipients won't see ads in any case. The major downside is the lack of direct customer support; there is however an excellent help section and a forum.

For more, see my extensive review at http://notbarter.com/gmail2_.html.

This phenomenally popular bulletin board serves over fifty million online users in the U.S. alone, and, except for modest fees in designated cities for certain classes of ads, all its services are without charge. Its huge popularity makes Craigslist a top choice when trying to get responses, even when compared with paid services.

Beyond its imperfect documentation, however, Craigslist support is essentially non-existent (understandably so, in view of its enormous popularity and the modest size of its staff). Also on the downside, Craigslist will block an ad for any or no reason, simply on the basis of users' flags.

Currently, Craigslist is plagued by "ghosting," which is the inexplicable failure of a posted ad to actually appear. It's hard to say how many posters this affects, as Craigslist will still confirm a posting even if it's ghosted.

For more, see my writeup at http://notbarter.com/clguide_.html.

I won't touch on Google's search service, since as the most widely used search engine it's already so well-known -- except to say that for IE users the addition of Google's toolbar is a great convenience. (At last look the Firefox version had bothersome problems.)

Google offers a vast array of other products, nearly all free, many providing services unavailable elsewhere. Too many of these are overlooked by folks who could benefit from them.

For one example, Google Voice lets any landline-possessing U.S. resident phone anyplace in the country free, and throws in free voicemail, free transcripts, free call blocking, free call forwarding, free conference calls, and much more. A comprehensive link list endeavoring to cover all official Google services (over 100), is at googleservicesguide.blogspot.com. Google's own link list (prettier but less complete) is at www.google.com/intl/en/about/products.

Google's major downside is the absence of direct customer support for its free services. There are however excellent help sections and forums.

For more, see my thorough writeup at http://notbarter.com/google_.html

If you want to double-check your pharmacist or need to identify some pills that aren't labeled, this government site could fill the bill. You punch in attributes like shape, color, and size, and Pillbox will present you with illustrated matches.

Lets you see how much money a given doctor has received from (named) drug companies. For example, it shows that Dr. Minh Mach in 2009-10 received $41,594 from four such outfits. Although many drug companies do not disclose this information, the data that is available may give you a good idea of a doctor's bias.

Update: Yelp now designates its filtered reviews as "not currently recommended."

Review site Yelp touts its impartiality. The problem is, it filters out some reviews as "untrustworthy," and will not say why. Indeed, the filtering operates without any apparent rhyme or reason. Filtered reviews are accessible via a hard-to-find link but will not affect Yelp's overall rating for that business. Companies have repeatedly accused Yelp of extorting them for ads, promising better review placement.

A good case in point is Yelp's page for UPS (Los Angeles office). You'll see 25 reviews, and will not see 13 more that have been filtered out—all extremely negative, many detailed and specific, each assigning the lowest possible rating to the company. (Those numbers will likely have changed by the time you read this.)

I still recommend Yelp for the multitudinous reviews, but suggest you seek out the "filtered" links and, especially, take Yelp's star ratings with a grain of salt.