#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-980936{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-980936, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-980936{width:620px;height:439px;display:block;}When summers get as hot as this one, it's difficult to imagine what people did before...

At first blush, any attempt at copious Black Friday shopping without cash or credit might sound akin to baking a cake without flour ... and eggs ... and an oven. But for Chicago's Josh Stevens -- the winner of Groupon's contest to survive a year using nothing but the website's discount vouchers...

When Chicago resident, Josh Stevens, launched on an improbable fiscal adventure in May -- to live off nothing but Groupon vouchers for a year -- he had no idea that he'd make it half a year into the experience with wealth that far surpasses his $100,000 grand prize (that is, assuming he makes it a...

Sometimes, the only way to get ahead in this world is to go back -- way back. Just as the Black Friday shopping season has become increasingly frenzied, so have toys become more sophisticated. Electronics and computerized gadgets that didn't exist even a decade ago now rule the roost. Does Santa...

Few indie rockers boast the formidable creativity and credibility of Aimee Mann -- yet Mann deserves high marks not only as a literate, whip-smart artist, but also as a businesswoman who's survived the music industry wreckage. Jerked around by major-label power brokers in the '90s, Mann cast out on...

While our esteemed Julia Scott (a.k.a Bargain Babe) loves a bargain, she also loves a break. And so I'm filling in for her this week: We flipped a coin between the names Bargain Beau and Bargain Bum. And Bargain Beau won out. Thank goodness for two-headed coins. But, hey: There's nothing rigged...

While it seems celebs hardly work for their money, their pre-fame resumes tell dramatically different stories: rife with tales of cleaning toilets, delivering beer and asking sweetly, "Would you like fries with that?" Turns out that America's most glamorous hotshots held down all kinds of...

To say that Billy Glynn expresses controversial, self-styled views for solving America's economic woes is putting it mildly. A self-described "think tank of one," the venture capitalist and entrepreneur is used to raising money by the millions in fields from music technology to molecular science;...

There's an even better chicken joke than the one about a certain fowl crossing the road, and it begins with Jennifer Murtoff of Oak Park, Ill. printing up 150 business cards that identified her as an Urban Chicken Consultant. True, Murtoff grew up something of a farm girl in south central...

Those free iPhone 4 bumpers that solve the problem of allegedly errant antenna reception may not yet be available on the Apple website -- details are coming soon, Apple representatives say -- but if you want to rig up a suitable fix in the meantime, you can do what I did: Use the PixelSkin rubber...