Think of it this way: If you were looking for a job, you’d conduct at least part of your search online, no? When shopping for a creative gift, checking out tomorrow’s weather forecast or looking for a used car you’d search online. So why not when looking for a boyfriend or girlfriend?

Meeting mates online is not going mainstream. It is mainstream. Of all the people who got married in the United States in the last year, 1 out of every 6 met online. More than twice as many marriages occurred between people who met on an online dating site than between those who met in bars, clubs and social events combined. And such online dating success spans across demographic groups—targeted niche sites like eHarmony senior online dating have hugely helped singles get back into the dating game later in life.

So, go for it! And start by choosing the online dating site that will work best for you.

There are literally thousands of dating websites to choose from. They break down into roughly two groups: general dating websites, those joined by a relatively large and diverse cross section of people, and niche dating websites, geared towards a specific audience.

We’ll deal with nice dating websites in our next post. Here we’ll look at the general websites. Spot Cool Stuff has tried out dozens of them. Below is our description of the ones we like best. Check out the full reviews or, if you are the impatient sort, skip ahead to our conclusions:

Match.com

How it works

Life on Match.com centers around people’s one-page profile. The two most important parts of each profile: the photos and the free form About me and whom I am looking for section. We suggest spending a little extra time on each of those.

After your profile is up you can either wait to be found by potential suitors or, better, be proactive and start browsing for that special someone yourself. Match lets you search by all the obvious criteria (ie. age and location) and some unexpected ones too. Looking for a tall, Dutch-speaking, Catholic? A vegetarian executive who has horses, likes body piercings and holds liberal politics leanings? Match.com can set you up.

Once you find a good prospect, you can write that person through Match.com’s email system. It’s all anonymous—your email will look like it came from YOURMATCHNAME@MATCHTALK.COM. Some Match.com users will make contact through the site in the morning and meet for a date that same evening. Others choose to go through a days-, weeks- or months-long progression of exchanging emails through Match, then progress to writing through their “normal” email addresses and then start talking on the phone before getting to an in-person meeting. There’s no “right” or “wrong” method. The site accommodates whatever speed you feel most comfortable with.

Who uses it

Match is—easily—the largest and most popular online dating service with more than 20 million users worldwide. You’ll find all sorts here: gay and straight, old and young, those looking for serious commitment and those looking for a fling. As a vague generality, the site is most popular with people seeking to exclusively date but not necessarily to get married. That said, more people have gotten married through Match.com than through any other website.

Why we like the website

The unmatched (pun!) size of Match.com’s user base is the site’s huge advantage—the more singles to choose from the more likely you’ll find ones of interest to you.

Not only that, Match has a near 50/50 split between men and women users. Most dating websites skew heavily female.

Finally, we think Match is the most user-friendly among all the dating website.

Price

US$35 per month (or the rough equivalent in your local currency) if you sign up for their month-by-month plan. However, we strongly suggest signing up for their six month plan for $17/month. You’ll probably want more than a month’s worth of time on Match and the six month plan comes with a guarantee—if you haven’t found some one by the end of that time you’ll get another six months for free.

Not incidentally, Spot Cool Stuff has arranged for our users to get a 7 day free trial on Match.com. Alternatively, if you are prepared to sign up today we can save you 20%.

If You Go Onto Match.com . . .

• Instead of writing an email through Match, users have the option of expressing their interest in someone through a wink. Winking at a profile results in Match sending that person an email saying that they’ve been winked at. And it almost never results in an in-person connection. If you find a potential match, forget winking and express your interest in a personalized message.

• Match.com lets you save a search and then get a daily (or weekly, your choice) email of the new profiles that match your criteria. Take advantage of this feature—new people are constantly joining Match. We suggest saving two searches—a specific one with your dream person and a broader one with only your must-have criteria.

• Be sure to fill out as much of your profile as you feel comfortable doing. The more you fill out the more likely others will find you.

eHarmony

How it works

People new to online dating and who have heard of Match.com and eHarmony assume those two sites are pretty much the same. They are not.

Match.com is very open ended—you decide what you write about in your profile, you decide what singles on the site to contact and what you’ll discuss when you do.

eHarmony employs a much more guided (or regimented, depending on your point of view) system. It starts with you filling out a very lengthy questionnaire about yourself and the traits you value in a partner. How quickly do you catch onto new things on a scale of 1 to 7? Plan on dedicating at least 45 minutes and two aspirin to this questionnaire. After you finish you’ll be rewarded with a list of potential partners based on your questionnaire results.

We were, initially, extremely skeptical of this eHarmony matching system. No longer. From our own experience, and from talking with many other eHarmony users, there’s clearly something to eHarmony’s personality profile matching. It really does work. And it is the biggest advantage eHarmony has over Match.com.

Online daters on Match.com tend to seek out the same sorts of people there that they do in in-person social situations. But what if you are single because you are naturally attracted to people incompatible with you? The eHarmony system is excellent at presenting you with singles who maybe aren’t the sort you’d normally interact with, but who there’s reason to believe, could be the perfect partner for you. How cool is that?!

Once you’ve found a potential partner on eHarmony you’d like to contact, the site leads you through a “guided communication” process. This process involves you and your potential match sending each other your answers to eHarmony’s pre-written questions, “revealing” to each other your lists of Must Haves and Can’t Stands and getting advice from eHarmony’s founder, Dr. Neil Clark Warren, based on your personality profiles. Every step along the way is totally voluntary; you can drop out of it and pursue communication with another potential match at any time.

Here’s an example of how the eHarmony guided communication process looks:

Some people really like this “guided communication” process. They feel it breaks the ice and quickly reveals potential compatibility—or incompatibility—without having to dive right into that messy in-person dating thing. Once people go through the eHarmony system and then meet in person they already have a sort of foundation of understanding.

Others (Spot Cool Stuff among them) find value in that messy in-person dating thing and feel that eHarmony’s structured communication process is downright unromantic. If you feel this way don’t be put off from joining. eHarmony offers matches the option of “fast tracking” their potential relationship and skipping all those steps Jessie and Jordan go through in our above example.

Who Uses It

Compared to Match.com, users of eHarmony tend to be a bit older and significantly more inclined towards marriage and long-term relationships. eHarmony operates in the U.S.A, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Currently eHarmony is only for heterosexuals. The founder of eHarmony launched a separate same-sex dating website called Compatible Partners, but it as popular as eHarmony and lacks some of eHarmony’s functionality. For gay and lesbian singles interested in a personality matching dating website we’d suggest Chemistry.com.

Why we like the website

As mentioned above, a personality-matching website tends to steer you towards people who might click with but who you, for whatever reason, wouldn’t choose to contact on your own. Easily, the two largest and best personality-matching dating websites are eHarmony and Chemistry. Spot Cool Stuff debated which those two to feature in this post. Chemestry has the more user-friendly design, a less structured communications process and (it seems) a younger user based. eHarmony has the more comprehensive personality questionnaire and it’s users tend to be more marriage-focused.

Price

The cost per month for eHarmony’s Compatibility Matching System drops significantly as you sign up for longer period of time. One month is $60 (in USD, or the equivalent in your local currency), 3 months for $120 ($40/month), 6 months for $180 ($30/month) or 1 year for $240 ($20/month).

If You Go Join eHarmony . . .

• A lot of your experience with eHarmony will depend on your answers to their personality test when you first join. Set aside a good chunk of quiet time (45 mins to 1 hour) to answer those questions as accurately as you can.

It’s Just Lunch

How it works

Unlike all the other online dating sites that made our cut as the internet’s best, you have no personal profile on It’s Just Lunch. Instead, after you sign up you meet privately with a member of the IJL staff to discuss the sort of person you are looking for. IJL then matches you up for a lunch date (or for drinks after work). IJL works as the intermediary arranging the time and place. All you need do is show up.

Easy.

Who uses it

Virtually every It’s Just Lunch client is an upper-mid level urban professional—account managers, sales people, computer programmers, business consultants and the like.

Check the IJL website to see if they operate in your urban area. Generally, It’s Just Lunch has an office in all the major large U.S. cities, some mid-sized ones and a smattering of other urban centers around the world including Singapore, Toronto and several locations in Australia (Canberra, Byron Bay, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and the Gold Coast). At the time of writing, the only European cities with IJL are in Ireland: Belfast, Dublin, Cork and Galway.

Why we like the website

It offers the least time-consuming, most personalized service of any of the websites mentioned in this review. If you are a busy, upper income professional, looking for a similarly busy, upper income professional, I’d Just Lunch is just perfect.

Price

There’s no such thing as a free lunch. And ones arranged through It’s Just Lunch are especially expensive. Exactly how expensive depends on your location and how many dates you sign up for. To be set up on 14 dates IJL generally charges around $1,500.

If You Join It’s Just Lunch . . .

• Be as brutally honest and detailed as you can during your entry interview. We suggest putting together a list of qualities you are looking for divided into Must Have, Nice To Have and In My Dream World categories. Write the list in advance so you don’t forget any of your criteria during your interview and to be certain that you and your IJL account rep are on the same page (literally).

Lavalife

How it works

Lavalife is two dating sites in one: When you register you choose which to part to join: relationship or intimacy. You can join both but that requires filling out two profiles, with two different user names, two sets of photos, etc.

If you are the sort who would sign up for a relationship—that is, if you seek someone to date monogamously for some period of time longer than, say, a weekend—then Lavalife is not the best online dating site for you. You’d be much, much better off on Match.com.

However, Lavalife is perhaps the best site we know of for people looking for a fling. All you do is write a short profile description (it has to be more than 100 characters long, and many people don’t go much beyond that), select among a list of rather adult list of activities you are interesting in “exploring” and then off you go. Unlike with the winks on Match.com, people on Lavalife do seem to hook up through sending each other smiles. The site also has a good instant messenger system.

The people who have the most success on Lavalife—and we don’t think this will come as a shock to you—are those who post the most alluring photos of themselves.

Who uses it

Users on Lavalife tend to skew younger (eg. under 32) and the majority are looking for a physical encounter, not a committed relationship. Lavalife operates in the United States, Canada (both in English and French) and Australia.

Why we like the website

Though not Spot Cool Stuff proverbial up for tea, we like how Lavalife makes no apologies for exactly what it is. The site is also relatively user friendly.

Price

There are two packages: $30 for one month or (the better value) $57 for three months. No need to decide right away—you get a week of full functionality free through Spot Cool Stuff.

If You Join Lavalife . . .

• Almost all the profile descriptions on Lavalife are exceptionally bland. Put a little extra time into yours, insert a bit of wit, surprise with a spark of creativity and you’ll really stand out from the crowd.

Zoosk, OK Cupid & Free Dating Websites

In our original version of this review we didn’t include any free dating websites. And we got a lot of comments—some of which are published below—bemoaning that fact. Other supported our choice.

The reasons no free dating websites made our “best of” list are fivefold:

First, sub-par useability. With the exception of OK Cupid, none of the free dating websites we tried out (and we tried out a bunch) had a very friendly user interface.

Second, relatively small active user base. No free site had as many actively engaged people to choose from as does Match or eHarmony (or Chemistry or some of the other pay sites, for that matter). Also, singles on free websites tend to be predominantly female—though we suppose that’s no a downside for those seeking single women.

Third, safety. The overwhelming, vast majority of people on dating websites (like the overwhelming, vast majority of people everywhere) are good and decent. Of the very few people who post spoof profiles or are on dating websites for some nefarious purpose, most are on free websites—because they don’t want to leave the identifying information of a credit card.

Fourth, signing up for a free website tends to result in being sent lots of spam. Because those sites have to make their money somehow.

But our fifth reason is by far the largest: Users of pay websites tend to be more active and more committed to online dating than those on free sites. Many people on free dating sites post their profile and are never heard from again. People who are paying for a site tend to take the time to use it.

With all that said, the two best free dating websites we found were Zoosk and OK Cupid.

Zoosk has a communications process similar to Match.com, and attracts a similar (though less-well-off) demographic.

OK Cupid is a personality test driven site, à la eHarmony or Chemistry.com. Unlike most other free dating websites, OK Cupid is largely free of ads.

And the Best Online Dating Website Is . .

. . . whichever of the above four sites fits your circumstances best.

Match.com will be the best website for the plurality of people reading these words. If you’ve studied this entire article and still aren’t sure which site to join, then Match should almost certainly be your choice. Match has the largest—and most diverse—group of users. It is also the best value among the dating sites and comes with six-month success guarantee.

That said, you may well be one of those for whom Match.com is not optimal:

eHarmony is the best online dating site if you seek a relationship that will lead to marriage. eHarmony users are, generally speaking, looking for longer term relationships than are the users of the other three sites reviewed here. We are also fans of eHarmony’s Compatibility Matching System. Some people are put off by eHarmony’s regimented communication rules. If you are one of those, consider Chemistry.com instead.

It’s Just Lunch is expensive but well worthwhile if you live in one of the urban areas they serve and if you are looking to date upper-mid level executive types. IJL is also the least time consuming of the online dating sites reviewed here—they arrange all your dates for you.

Lavalife is the site for you if you are looking for a fling. Simple as that.

A Final Thought . . .

Years ago, one of us here at Spot Cool Stuff (who will remain anonymous) went out on an online-arranged date with a woman we’ll call Jane. All the email interaction with Jane was great. So we agreed to meet for lunch, at which point Jane was promptly revealed to be planet’s most apathetic person.

Our conversation started badly and deteriorated from there. You know you are in for a painful first date when “What’s your favorite food?” is one of the discussion topics. And when it generates no discussion:

SCS: So . . . um . . . what’s your favorite food?

JANE: Food’s okay.

SCS: I mean, what kinds of food do you like?

JANE: I wouldn’t eat if I didn’t have to.

SCS: Well, what do you tend to cook for yourself at home?

JANE: You know, stuff.

SCS: Stuff?

JANE: Yeah, like when I’m bored. Then I’ll cook things, mostly.

Things mostly?! There was a great temptation, resisted, to ask about the non-things Jane was eating. Instead, we trudged through 40 minutes of conversation along the lines of the above snippet and then bolted from the lunch restaurant as quickly as possible.

Almost every veteran of online dating has bad date stories. And almost every one has met good people too, people who have gone on to at least become friends. Many, many people form intimate relationships through online dating. And many form marriages. For some, it doesn’t work at all.

There is some extent to which online dating is a skill, an activity that can be done better with practice. But there’s also an extent that it is random.

Whatever online dating site you decide to use, we urge you to go for it! And to keep at it.

Please, feel free to share your online dating experiences in our comments section. Or to ask questions.

Good luck. We wish you romance in your future.

MATCH USA & CANADA / UK & INT’L | eHARMONY | IT’S JUST LUNCH | LAVALIFE

updated: 10 Dec 2011

Turns out, that old iPhone is worth some money. There are dozens of websites through which you can sell old electronics. And not only iPhones, but MP3 players, calculators, gaming consoles, computers—both desk and laptop—external disk drives, cameras and camera lenses, printers, eBook readers, DVD players and more.

Once bought, your item will either be refurbished or recycled. So it’s a win-win. You get money for something you won’t use anymore anyway. And the planet gets one less toxic piece of a landfill.

After researching all the used electronics buying services we could find, Spot Cool Stuff found four that we can especially recommend. Here they are, in order of preference:

Note: The prices listed below are for a working 32GB Apple iPhone 3GS with a few small-ish scratches on the front and many more in back. Prices seem to fluctuate quite a bit. All the websites reviewed here will pay for your shipping costs but are based in the United States. In fact, for all but one you must be in the US to sell them your gadgets.

Gazelle

Gazelle didn’t offer us the absolute highest price for our used iPhone. Yet we rank them highest amongst the used electronics buyers we contacted. What gives?

Turns out, once you start looking at the fine print, Gazelle offers three advantages to the competitors:

1) Price certainty. Every other site we looked at made a distinction between a used iPhone that was in “good” shape versus one that was “fair.” The difference seemed very subjective and nitpicky yet the price difference could be substantial. Gazelle was the only site to offer one price for basically all iPhones—broken or “flawless” ones being the only exception.

2) Shipping ease. Gazelle, like most other used electronics buyers, offers free shipping. But Gazelle is the only to give an option of FedEx (which is faster) or the U.S. postal service (which might be more convenient). Gazelle is also the only site we found that will ship free packaging in which to send your gadget (though, obviously, that takes longer than using your own box).

3) Customer service. Gazelle’s is superlative. The company is excellent about sending updates throughout the sales process.

Add to that a 5% bonus if you choose to accept your payment in the form of an Amazon gift card, and a huge database of electronics Gazelle will purchase, and you have a Spot Cool Stuff favorite cool website.

Price offered: $141 (or $148.05 if paid via an Amazon.com gift card)
Pay methods: PayPal, check, Amazon gift card (with 5% bonus)
Pays within: 1 week

GO TO THE SITE |

eBay InstantSale

On eBay you can sell old electronics to the general public through an auction (in the same way you can sell on old vase or baseball cards and the like). Or you can sell via eBay’s InstantSale site, on which eBay connects you with the third party willing to pay the most for whatever old gadget you are trying to sell.

When shopping around our old 32GB iPhone 3GS, it was through InstantSale that we got the highest offer: $149. But there was a catch. To get that price our iPhone has to be in good condition, good being described as “minor scratches without scuffs and/or dents.” If our iPhone is deemed to only be in fair condition the offered price plummets to $72. And the only difference between a “good” and “fair” condition iPhone is whether those scratches were “minor” or not. That seems very difficult to judge in advance. How do you know what nicks qualify as a dent?

To use InstantSale you must have both an eBay ID and a PayPal account.

Price offered for “good” condition / for “fair” condition: $149.25 / $72
Pay methods: PayPal
Pays within: 5 business days

GO TO THE SITE |

NextWorth

Our offer from NextWorth almost matched that from InstantSale (above). But once again there’s a fine line between what counts as “good” condition and what counts as “fair.” NextWorth’s “fair” condition offer, while much higher than InstantSale’s, was lower than Gazelle’s.

NextWorth also took longer to pay than any other website: 10 business days (eg. 2 weeks). But there’s a way around that. The website will let you trade your gadget in person—and get paid instantly—at a participating Target retail store.

Price offered for “good” condition / for “fair” condition: $145 / $125
Pay methods: PayPal account, Target gift card
Pays within: 10 business days

GO TO THE SITE |

YouRenew

YouRenew had one of the lowest offers for our old iPhone. But the site has an advantage over the other three included in this review: It is the only one to accept items from outside of the United States. (Though customers have to pay for international shipping themselves). We also like YouRenew’s strong environmental commitment. For every product you sell through YouRenew you can choose to give towards domestic renewable energy production or towards the cost of planting a new tree.

Though Spot Cool Stuff isn’t in a position to independently variety this, YouRenew also seems to have the strongest eco-friendly bent of the websites in this review.

Price offered for “good” condition / for “fair” condition: $115 / $107
Pay methods: PayPal, check
Pays within: “a few days”

GO TO THE SITE |

Have you sold a used gadget through a website? Share your experience in comment, below:

Word clouds (also sometimes called tag clouds or weighted clouds) are visual representations text data that display frequently used words or phrases. The larger the word or phrase in a word cloud that word appears in the source.

Some websites use world clouds as a means to show what content they have. Some news outlets use world clouds to analyze a speech or political debate. And now you can make your own word cloud using this cool website: Wordle.

There are three ways to create Wordle word clouds.

The first is to type (or cut & paste) the text you want word clouded (if that’s the verb) into a field on the website. For instance, here’s a word cloud of the most common answers found in New York Times crossword puzzles:

Second, you can word cloud the text on an existing web page. Turn an RSS feed into a word cloud, too. Here’s what the site came up when we submitted the feed from our technology review blog:

(Immediately it is clear that we’ve been writing about the recently released iPhone).

Third (and somewhat randomly) you can enter a del.icio.us user name to see their tags word clouded. (We would have liked to see the option of word clouding some one’s tweets instead.)

Once you create a word cloud with Wordle, you’ll have several options for altering the fonts and colors. You can also have Wordle automatically remove common words and orientate the text horizontally, vertically, both or “any which way.” One thing you can’t do is select where a word appears within the cloud—we wish there were a way to drag words to a particular location.

Wordle is great fun to play around with. And the price for using the site is right: free.

GO TO THE SITE | JOIN US ON TWITTER / FACEBOOK

Related posts:
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Design Inspiration from Colour Lovers
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Is owning a home economically wise?

What animals can you have sex with in Lebanon?

There are lots of ways to answer popular questions such as those. Among them, our favorite might be in the form of an infographic. Infographics mix words with graphic designs to depict a data set in a fun, compelling, visual manner. And there’s no better place on the web to find infographics than the cool website Visula.ly.

Several sites, including Spot Cool Stuff, will occasionally publish infographics. But Visua.ly publishes virtually nothing but infographics.

Visual.ly partners with content providers such as CNN and The Wall Street Journal to produce infographics. What’s really cool is that anyone can upload their own infographic for world to see. And, after Visual.ly Labs opens, the website will even help you create your own infographics.

Of those infographics currently on the website, it isn’t surprising that many deal with web-related issues, like the Class of 2011 Social Media Yearbook. Other infographics are topical, like this one about Saudi women (sort-of) gaining the vote. Still others are informative—Why Startups Fail, for instance. Our favorites, though, combine information with a strong sense of humor. Check out this flow chart for making a horror movie.

We are still waiting on the infographic that explains the qualities that make for a good infographic. If anyone ever makes such a thing, Visual.ly is where you’ll find it.

GO TO THE SITE | iPHONE APPs | JOIN US ON TWITTER / FACEBOOK |

Some infographics on Spot Cool Stuff:
What Are Websites Made Of?
Mac vs PC Users
Infographic: How a Father’s Music Influences His Kids

Click to see full size on Visual.ly:

26% of httparchive’s websites contain errors.

Nearly 7 trillion (!) of online data will be created in the next five years.

58% of the top 10,000 websites use Google Analytics.

Those are some facts about the internet uncovered by Broadband Choices, a UK-based comparison search engine of broadband deals, who compiled their findings in an infographic. Check it out below:

JOIN US ON TWITTER / FACEBOOK |

Click to open full graphic in new window:

Below that you’ll find another tag that isn’t so usual, one that contains a unique nine digit code.

Using that code you can go to the internet and see exactly where the sheep live that provided the merino wool for that specific garment!

Read the rest of this cool travel clothing review

Awkward Family Photos: The Website

AFP, as fans have nicknamed itt, is one of those websites in the spirit of Cake Wrecks and “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks that partly celebrate, partly poke-fun at those odd, often unexplainable, quirky slices of life.

Terribly tacky portraits, inappropriate posses, embarrassing birthday parties, uncomfortable (to look at) scenes of pregnancy and vexing vacation shots all grace the posts of the Awkward Family Photos blog.

With the proliferation of digital cameras and their miniaturization into all manner of gadgets, you’d think that most of the awkward family photos would be recent. Instead, the majority look as if they were taken in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Maybe that’s an advantage of old-fashion film—every photograph got printed out and relatively few were thrown away.

The active comment sections on Awkward Family Photos is one of the best features of the site—they can make even the less-than-awkward photos funny. But our favorite AFP posts are the ones with photos that seem ordinary at first and then suddenly become funny as you notice new details. The photo below is a good example. Can you see it?

If you like AFP you’ll probably also wan to visit their companion site, the “other” AFP, Awkward Family Pets.

GO TO THE SITE |

Awkward Family Photos: The Book

Most websites don’t translate well to the coffee table, but the Awkward Family Photos book manages to pull it off. The book doesn’t have the funny comments that the website does, but it does include humorous captions and the occasional background story from the photographer. Plus, having the book out on display as a conversation piece can give you something to talk about when the in-laws come over, thus potentially defusing your own personal family awkward moment.

LEARN MORE & BUY

Awkward Family Photos: The Board Game

The Awkward Family Photos Board Game makes looking at the humorous pictures from the website an interactive group activity. The bulk of the game involves players answering questions about various photos. For example: “What do you think happened right after this photo was taken?” or “What question would you like to ask the person in this photo?” The questions are more for discussion than part of a serious competition. That might turn off cuttroat gamers, but it is great for families and ice-breaking group events. The rules, such as they are, take almost no time to learn and the activity of playing appeals across a large span of ages and demographics. And all that makes playing The Awkward Family Photos Board Game and activity that your family should find to be much more fun and awkward.

LEARN MORE & BUY

GO TO THE WEBSITE / THE BOOK / THE GAME  |  JOIN US ON TWITTER / FACEBOOK

Related posts & pages:
Best Cameras for Travel
5 Cool Photoblogs
Hazelmail: Send Your (Awkward Family) Photos As Postcards
Digital Camera Reviews

How do we know that? And what can you do about it? The answer to both those questions is the same—Stuff Your Rucksack.

SYR (as we aren’t sure anyone calls it) is a cool website that matches non profits lacking basic supplies with travelers willing to bring them.

The website is easy to use. On Stuff Your Rucksack’s interactive map you search for organizations near where you plan to travel. Every organization has a page that describes who they are, what their mission is, what supplies they lack and their contact information. If you are able and willing to help you then arrange your visit directly with the organization.

What’s so stellar about the Stuff Your Rucksack program is that cuts out any middlemen. 100% of what you give goes directly to those in need. (The SYR website itself is supported by sponsors).

Even better: So often travelers want to help but aren’t sure how. They lack the time to commit to long term volunteering or the expert skills to make an appreciable difference. With Stuff Your Rucksack, all you need is empty luggage space and a willingness to make good use of it.

Below is a video report of one visit arranged via SYR. Spot Cool Stuff has also interviewed several other travelers who have participated in Stuff Your Rucksack. Every one raved about their experience, describing it as one of their trip highlights.

So while bringing supplies to those in need helps them, you may find that the one who benefits most is you.

GO TO THE SITE | JOIN US ON TWITTER / FACEBOOK |

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