mTurk Review

For those who aren't familiar with mTurking, it is a service hosted by Amazon that allows entities to post odd jobs or tasks they need done on the cheap.  During the initial set up of an account, you can choose between being one of those entities or completing the tasks.  These tasks are called HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks).  Examples of these HITs include transferring information on various business cards to text boxes, transcribing audio files into text, filling out surveys..the list goes on.  It's important to note that HITs equate to various amounts of money.  The business card example pays out $0.02 per HIT at first, then you can move up to $0.05 tasks.  However, surveys can dole out at least $0.50 per HIT.  Conveniently, there is the option to search for HITs by criteria, one being by the amount you can make per each.  I won't go through which ones I recommend on a daily basis, because I'm sure there are plenty of blogs or lists in circulation. :-)

When you select a HIT you're interested in completing, it's imperative that you read the instructions in the HIT summary and click the [Accept HIT] button, which then starts a timer.  The timer is set by the posting entity so it varies.  For surveys, the HIT will ask you to open a link to the actual task and when you're finished, they'll usually give you a completion code to enter in the mTurk page so it's a good idea to open the survey link in a separate tab.

These HITs usually won't credit to your account instantaneously, the posting entity will first check your work then either accept or reject it.  Just do the task to the best of your ability and you should be fine.  Some HITs will take a few minutes to be accepted while some can take days, you just got to be patient.

Overall, I really enjoy mTurking.  There are always HITs to be completed, and each HIT seems to be plentiful, so you don't have to worry about fighting for them.  This is where I've had the best luck and I feel is the best bang-for-the-buck.  Have fun!

Blessing In Disguise?

My coworkers and I were informed last Wednesday that our department is being sold from the State University to a private company.  No one knows what that means to us as employees.  I would like to stay positive and say that we will all still have jobs but it doesn't seem many others share the sentiment.  My plan was to stick with the university and take advantage of the tuition reimbursement, but in a few months that will no longer be the case.  I assume with the Health Care Reform, notoriously deemed "ObamaCare," health insurance companies are reimbursing clinical labs less money to cut their losses.  Just this morning, it was brought to our attention that our hospital was brought down a tier by a major insurance company.  This means that the hospital will receive even less money for patient testing, if that's even possible at this point.  It appears that the way to prosper in the healthcare field is to not work in one of the labs.

With the future unknown, I suppose now is the best time to get the wheels turning on learning a new field - computer science.  After talking to some friends in the industry, they said it's best to start with C++ and Java, so I've been planning on taking free courses online through MIT and Stanford, then move on to free lance work online to build a portfolio to show potential employers.  In addition to free courses, frugality will be monumental  here.

Lately I've been doing much better on not eating away from home, but there is still plenty of room for improvement.  I've been told the best way to save money is to impose an artificial environment of scarcity, so with this paradigm, I made a couple batches of chili this past weekend, which will last until well into next week for lunches.  Making chili is enjoyable because it helps practice cooking, which I could definitely use plenty of, and smells great during the day.  If anyone knows of any other foods that can be made with a crock pot, please let me know!

JingIt Review

I'd say it was in December that I came to the idea of joining GPT (get-paid-to) websites to hopefully earn a few bucks on the side.  My first venture was in the website JingIt, a company which pays you to watch ads either on your computer or your smartphone.  They pay pretty well despite still being in Beta (it's hard to give you a pay range since they don't yet have sizable contracts with advertisers).  In order to sign up for JingIt, you must have a Facebook account and a phone that accepts text messages.  To be verified, they will send you a text on your cell phone.

You receive an updated list of video ads to watch every day, but you might not necessarily receive the same number of videos.  You're more on a day-by-day basis because it's up to the advertisers how often JingIt allows their videos to be viewed.  I think the one thing that is annoying with JingIt is that if you click on anything besides your browser with JingIt up, the video pauses until you click Resume.

When it comes time to get paid, JingIt has two options.  The first is a Visa debit card, which you are charged a one-time fee of $2.00 for a Visa debit card and all your current and future earnings will be on it, or you can spend the money on a music website fee-free, I think.  They claim the Visa card is one of the most responsible cards out there, so that seems pretty decent enough.  When you first start the service, JingIt sets a cap on your weekly earnings at $5.00 but with each referral you bring in, that cap increases by $0.25, but you do not receive any trickle-up earnings from them.

I've received my Visa card with no hassles, and the folks behind JingIt keep their users in the loop by putting up short videos of updates.  Once they're set with the Beta testing and start putting out more ads to watch, I'd recommend this one.