"aol" news and stories

I was just wandering the web when I stumbled across an article on Yahoo Finance about Shortcuts, a new service of AOL. This is a totally paperless, online coupon program linked to store loyalty cards. Shortcuts makes it easy to click, shop, and save; on the products you buy every week.

The way it works is that customers go to the Shortcuts website and link coupons for products to their customer loyalty cards. then when your card is scanned the coupon automatically is applied to your purchase. It's a fantastic idea that makes it easy with no coupon cutting and remembering to bring them with you. There's also the "green" aspect of the program in cutting down on paper use and waste.

So far the service is only offered to Kroger's and affiliate stores customers, but that should change soon. For a growing list of all the partner stores click here.

For three months, AOL polled its readers for their favorite coffee, and last week, they did their final tally, coming up with THE definitive answer in America's favorite coffee. Starbucks? Seattle's Best? Dunkin Donuts? Are you ready to find out who the ultimate javalicious winners is?!?!

Everyone!

Just like Time magazine calling 2006's Person of the Year, "You," AOL says that "after reading through every comment, one thing is clear, all the nominees are winners. Each is someone's favorite." How anticlimactic.

Actually, they do name an all-around winner, and I was pretty surprised by it myself -- Dunkin' Donuts, which also won the Fast Food category. AOL's slideshow also names the winners in other categories. The no. 1 choice in convenience store coffee is Wawa, from bakeries it's Panera.

Sometimes I wonder to myself how some of my friends can even say something like "I couldn't get any work done today. I was on MySpace all day long." On MySpace? All day? What on earth are you looking at on MySpace for eight hours?!?!

Because it doesn't occur to me that they probably think the same thing of me when I say was online looking at recipes all day long.

I could surf and browse recipe databases all day long. In the morning, look for something to make for lunch. In the afternoon, look for something to make for dinner that night. At night while the tv is flickering in the background, look for recipes for the weekend. Yep, I could look at recipes all day long, espceially since there are several large databases of recipes online, the newest of which I came across, the Kitchen Assistant. It is located on the food channel (web channel, not tv) of aol, and has two sections. One section consists of 20,000+ recipes published in magazines like Cooking Light and Southern Living. A second section consists of recipes submitted by users, so it's not quite as robust, but it's growing. Take a peek. You can browse through categories or search if you already have something in mind.