Photo courtesy of Flickr user incandenzafied

Have you been spending money like there’s no recession? Earlier this year I realized I have to get my act together on spending, so I thought I’d share with you five ways to have some fun on the cheap around DC:

1. Take Advantage Of Deal Websites

There are a few sites out there that can cut you deals on things around DC. What’s The Deal DC is a new start-up source of bargains around The District, and is currently offering half off prices for Salon Roi, just in case you just HAVE to get that mani and pedi… Groupon is another site looking to tell you of great deals on stuff. I personally enjoy using Shop It To Me, a website that sends you customized e-mails telling you when certain stores or brands are having sales.

2. See The Neweum Before September

For the rest of August, you can get into the Newseum for only half of the pricey admission cost. Thank WTOP’s celebration of 40 years in DC for the deal.

3. Screen It On The Green

Even though summer is coming to a close the area’s many outdoor film festivals give you a great chance to relax and watch a movie outdoors- all for free. The Crystal City Film Festival goes into September.

4. Keep Track Of Free And Easy Events With Going Out Gurus

I always read The Going Out Guru‘s Free and Easy Events blog posts which they put up weekly, it’s a great way to help plan your social calendar.

5. Dumpster Dive For Your Goods (Well Not Really)

While I am not actually endorsing dumpster diving, I am going to be checking out Freecycle and Craigslist Free Items for the few furniture items I’d like to add to my place. If you are willing to put up with what you get- nothing beats free.

I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about my opinion of what some of my people like to call “old media.” The print edition of the Washington Post is my daily lunch companion and it bugs me when I’m forced to skip reading it. That said, sometimes I wonder at the perspectives of the people who work there.

Today’s a perfect example. In the business section there’s an article by Rob Pegoraro that could have been a good coverage of collaborative bookmarking sites like DIGG and REDDIT. If you’re not familiar with them then you’re likely also not my people. I’m not a fan or a user myself, but I’m aware of their existence and what they are. Rather than write an article about them and their relative strengths and advantages, however, Pegoraro’s article is titled “The News Is There, but You Might Have to Search for It” and opens with “Whatever the traditional definition of “news” might be, it can seem far from what fills the headlines at some of the Web’s more popular news sites. On a Tuesday in presidential primary season, here are some of their top stories:”

You know Rob, it’s funny you should mention that.

Today’s Post print edition has front page stories Results Refocus Democratic Campaign and National Dragnet Is a Click Away, Even in Victory, Clinton Team Is Battling Itself, Coloring Outside Curriculum Lines To Depict the Drop in Arts Education, Russia Pumps Tens of Millions Into Burnishing Image Abroad, and DHS Strains As Goals, Mandates Go Unmet.

If you want to read about how the FBI has broken the law by misusing national security letters and admitted it in front of Congress you’ll have to turn to page two. After all, it’s presidential primary season and there’s internal campaign matters to discuss. Surprisingly the Obama camp says they’re going to win and the Clinton camp says NUH-UH! Or you could look at the paper yesterday, which trumpeted headlines like Clinton Beats Obama in Texas and Ohio. A little less prominent – way down in the articles, in fact – was the fact that this beating in Ohio got Clinton 78 delegates and left Obama with only…. 69. Wow, stunning upset there, eh?

My point isn’t to beat up on the Post, though I have been unimpressed by their primary coverage, but to point out that when it comes to making you “search for” the news, they could give lessons. If you want to write about the collaborative sites you can talk about their underlying “wisdom of crowds” concept and the (well established) ways in which they subvert that concept by showing you what others though before getting your input. You could provide some guidance in how to get started looking at these sites, talk about, say, DIGG’s friends support that lets you see not only what the world in general is looking at but what people you know and/or trust are checking out, and what that might imply for how we consume media individually while finding and judging it collaboratively.

Or I guess you can just bitch about the splinter in their eye while ignoring the 2×4 in yours.

image courtesy of Wader

Welcome to the new Metroblogging DC!

For the last 9 months, our management and design team, in coordination with The Groop in LA, have been redesigning Metroblogging to move away from the old, server-intensive, Movable Type System. You’ve noticed that comments took forever to post, we’d noticed that stories took literal minutes to compile and post on the site, and frankly, no one was more upset about it than we were.Enter the new design. It’s sleek, it’s sexy, and for that, we have The Groop to thank for the overarching look and feel. I’m loving the Art Deco feel they chose for the overall, stuff, but that may just be me.Here’s a couple of the big changes that you, the reader, will notice:

User Registration

Yep, we decided it needed to be done. You will now have to register to comment here. The good news: One account, One password, always the same. We’ll never, ever, ever use the email address for spam or marketing purposes. We won’t even email you unless you want to sign up for our new Announcement Network. The bad news? Well, there’s really no bad news except you have to sign up.

Built-in Coolness

There are a lot of new features that we’ll be showing off and using in the coming weeks. Take a look at the new animated Flickr badge on the right. All you have to do to get your photos in there is to add them to our Flickr groups. We’ll also be deploying some cool new Google Maps integration, as well as some awesome native polling software.

Rate the Posts!

Be sure to use the Ratings feature on each post to tell us what you like and what you don’t like. Just a quick click on the stars at the bottom of the entry will give us a good indication of what you think. This will also effect the Best Of Metroblogging.

Three New Views

If you’ll look here at the top of the page, there are three ways to look at Metroblogging DC: Recent Activity, Most Interesting and Most Active. Each of these will give you a new and unique view of Metroblogging. Recent Activity will show what posts have recently been changed or had comments added to them, Most Interesting works on a special formula that we’ve determined, based on external links, comments and some other special sauce and killer robotics. Most Active will show you where the fire’s at. Give them a try!

New Authors Profiles

Check out the new Authors Section! We’ve done some work there to make sure that you can learn all about those who are writing here regularly.

Give us Your Feedback!

We’d love to hear what you think of the new design, please add your voice in the comments! In addition, if you have questions about specific features not working, drop a comment here and we’ll try to get it cleared up. We’re still trying to get our archives up and running, the move was not kind to our archive. We look forward to the new Metroblogging DC, and hope you do, too.