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Online finds

How to do pretty much anything

(howcast.com)
Email|Print| Text size + By Dennis Fisher
Globe Correspondent / March 10, 2008

Howcast.com

With the economy in the dumper and banks getting all squirrelly about lending money to anyone who actually needs it, everyone seems to be looking for ways to make a little extra cash. Forget scouring your attic for trinkets to sell on eBay. That's for the imagination-challenged. Selling your plasma for money (below) is where the real action is. And lucky for you, a new site called Howcast.com has a killer claymation video that explains the simple process that can earn you a quick $20 or $30.

The video is just one of thousands of short, professionally created clips on the site that explain how to do just about anything you can think of, from faking an illness to miss school to getting rid of a one-night stand. (Having a good lie set up ahead of time apparently helps.) The videos all tell you exactly what you'll need to accomplish the given task and walk you through it step by step. Viewers even have the option of printing out all of the directions, which helps you avoid the awkwardness of surfing the Web while trying to learn how to pop a blister.

Howcast is the brainchild of a trio of Google refugees who wanted to go YouTube one better by putting together professional video content that viewers can actually use. "There really isn't a lot of high-quality instructional video out there and we wanted to do it across a broad spectrum of topics," says Jason Liebman, the company's CEO. The majority of the videos are produced in-house, though some are uploaded by users. But regardless of the source, the videos are uniformly well-done.

So the next time you're headed out on the town, hit Howcast first for tips on how to hold your liquor and pick up a woman in a bar. (Hint: avoiding sugary drinks helps you stay lucid longer. It also helps you not look like a girl, which should help with the picking-up-women part.)

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