[Source: Misconception Junction]

Written by lifehacker

You might think that you have to wait in line, buy only what’s offered to you, subject yourself to advertisements, and generally go through you day accepting nuisances because that’s just how the world works. But just like on your computer, there are easter eggs hiding out in the real world just waiting to let you unlock the bonus levels of life. Here are our top 10 favorites.

10. Get Free Money

As far as cheat codes go, picking up some extra coins was always a pretty sweet deal. You might be able to do the same in real life by searching unclaimed money sites likeMissing Money and TreasuryDirect. Not everyone has free cash with their name on it (like me, sadly), but it only takes a few minutes to check to quickly become a little bit richer.

9. Eat for Free On Your Birthday

When it’s your birthday, you shouldn’t have to pay for food. That’s how I feel, anyway, and a lot of restaurants agree. If you join their rewards programs, you can pick up tons of free goodies. Sometimes it doesn’t even matter if it’s your actual birthday, but rather just your birth month. Either way, there’s plenty of free food with your name on it.

8. Find Your Car Easily by Using Yourself to Amplify Your Keyless Entry Remote’s Signal

When you can’t find your car in a parking lot, pressing the lock button a few times will generally make it beep and honk so you can track it down quickly—but this only works if your car is in range. Putting the keyless entry remote in your mouth and pressing the lock button can help extend the range. Some Reddit users suggest that you just need to put it under your chin and it works because the signal resonates in your skull.

7. Open an Airplane Lavatory Door from the Outside

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Those airline bathroom doors? You can unlock them from the outside. All you have to do is flip up the lavatory sign on the door and slide open the lock. You don’t want to be doing this to unwitting strangers, of course, but this could be useful in case of emergency (or just to play a cruel joke on a friend).

6. Order Secret Items at Fast Food Restaurants

Just because it’s not on the menu doesn’t mean you can’t have it. There are plenty of secret menu items at plenty of chains. Starbucks has a tiny-sized coffee for light drinkers. Chipotle will make practically anything that can be accomplished with their available ingredients—like quesadillas. Wendy’s will make you a "meat cube" burger, knowing as the Grand Slam, that consists of four heart attack-rendering beef patties. In and Out, on the other hand, offers a grilled cheese that is essentially a hamburger-less hamburger (but somehow really tasty). And if you’re torn between being a carnivore and vegetarianism, Fatburger will make you "The Hypocrite"—a veggie burger topped with bacon. You don’t have to order what’s presented to you. If there’s something you want, ask for it. You might just get it.

5. Get Shopping Discounts by Pretending to Be (or Actually Being) a Tourist or Student

Several retail stores give you discounts for being a tourist. You don’t necessarily have to actually be one, but just say you are. At most you’ll have to provide some sort of out-of-state identification (which you can always say you left at the hotel if you’re unable to provide it). Being (or pretending to be) a tourist can save you around 10 to 11% off your purchases, so it’s always worth asking if the store you’re at provides that kind of discount.

Getting student discounts forever is also pretty easy (and likely more useful than when you’re actually a student and don’t need them as much as you do when paying off loans). For online verification, you can generally just Photoshop the date on your ID. If you need to send an unofficial class schedule and make it look official, it’s not that hard to spoof an email address. Alternatively, pay some college kid a few bucks to get the discount for you or enlist a student you know. You have plenty of options, so these discounts are pretty easy to come by if you’re okay with bending the rules.

4. Go Directly to Voicemail When Making a Phone Call

Do you ever have a phone call to make that would be a lot easier if you could just talk to an answering machine? Rather than leaving it to chance, or trying to call when you think the other person won’t answer, just use slydial. All you do is call 267-SLYDIAL, enter the phone number you want to call, and you’ll get sent directly to voicemail so you can leave a message.

3. Get Discounts Without Giving Up Personal Information

Discount cards can be great, but you’re essentially selling your personal information to the store in exchange for a few cents off a head of lettuce. How can you avoid this and still get the discount? There are a couple of effective ways. First, companies can often look up your information via your phone number and we recently learned that you can just tell them that your number is 867-5309—a number that’s almost always in the system. Alternatively, you can just say you left your card at home and ask the cashier if they’ll use their own card. If there’s a rewards system in place, they’ll often be happy to do this. Finally, you can always just say you want to sign up for a card, let them scan it, and then say you’ll bring back or mail in the signup form when you’re done. Of course, you won’t actually do that.

2. Don’t Wait on Hold

Calling customer service is not something most people look forward to, and that’s often exacerbated by traversing phone trees and waiting on hold. If you’re just trying to get a human, doing nothing can trick the system into thinking you have a rotary phone(assuming it’s not a voice-based system). If it is, just talk incomprehensibly until the computer gives up on trying to understand you and sends you to an actual person. Or just use GetHuman. If you want to avoid the hold wait, try LucyPhone. In some cases they can even help you avoid navigating through the phone trees, too.

1. Skip Television, DVD/Blu-ray, and YouTube Advertisements

When you’re watching TV, DVD movies, or content online, ads can be annoying, but you can skip them all! Obviously the advent of the DVR made this especially possibly, even when watching live-ish television, but there are easier ways. If you have a TiVO, you canenable a 30-second skip button to make passing through ads especially easy. If you’re using Windows Media Center, you can set it up to skip ads all together. Several other DVRs and HTPC softwares include ad-skipping options as well. For your disc-based content, there is, of course, the stop stop play trailer- and ad-skipping trick. Finally, if you’re on YouTube, just reload the page to skip the ad.

Bonus: Mr. Potter…

Written by podjam.tv

Twitter has changed the way people communicate and share information online.  Spreading information, conversations with people from all over the world,  creating change and spreading good cheer 140 characters at a time sums up what one can experience on the social media platform.

The statistics are quite staggering, can you  just imagine the number of tweets sent per day? According to Kissmetrics, there have been 177 million Tweets sent on March 2011. 50 million, the average number of Tweets people sent per day, one year ago. (You can check out some other stats HERE.)

Everyday there are still more and more people joining Twitter and would usually get discouraged because they are either overwhelmed and quiet confused as to how things work.  For those who have been active since Twitter started to become popular knows the experience, and believe us, the experience keeps on evolving.

Since our primary aim here at PodJamTv is to inspire people to have a better and fulfilling experience online, we have decided to list down tips that we hope can help you get your feet wet and start tweeting like a pro.

Personal Branding

1. Don’t be Vague – Write your bio. This will allow other Twitter users to get to know who you are at a glance.  They will see what you interested in and that will allow for better engagement and sharing.   It is also good practice to use your own name for SEO purposes.

2. Identify yourself properly - Have a recent picture if you are using a personal account and a logo if you are using Twitter for business. A good practice, is to have a close up picture rather than something that is far away.

3. Express Your Personality - Add a Twitter Background  as this allows you to give people who want to follow you additional information about what you like and who you are.

Following

1.  Don’t just Click on the Follow button – Make sure to check out the bios of each of the people following you, this will eliminate the chance of you following spammers.

2.  Organize your follower – Create lists as it aids in organization of followers based on interests, location, profession.  This will help you divide your followers into buckets so that you can pay attention to the message that you want to share with them.

3.  10% Rule in following - If you are new on Twitter and would like to follow a lot of people, please remember the 10% rule.  You can only follow 2,000 initial and then if you reach your limit you can follow up to  10% more based on the number of people following you.

Content Sharing Strategy

1.  Using Twitter Clients is good – For those new on Twitter, there are a lot of Twitter clients available to you for sharing and engaging.  Using the different clients other than the web can help you optimize your time on the social media platform.  There are clients to help you schedule your tweets, and there are some that will help you automatically shorten your links.  Try to make sure that you use no more than 120 characters per tweet  to leave room for Retweets.

2.  Use the 60 / 40 Rule -  When sharing content remember the 60 / 40 ratio.  60% information and Retweets and 40% conversation.  You want to make sure that you balance your engagement.  Twitter is great for learning but also you need to build relationship with the people you will talk with 24/7.

3. Be consistent and have variety -  You don’t want to bore the people that follow you.  It is good practice to tweet a variety of content that will keep your followers informed and entertained.  You can share music, photos, recommendation, etc.  But aside from sharing good content you also need to be committed to giving enough time to be on the social site.  Relationship building takes time.  If you want people to interact with you, you need to be present.

DM Etiquette

1.  No one likes a spammer -  Don’t spam your followers with too many sales pitches and requests to join your Mafia family.

2.  Better to welcome people on stream -  Some people send auto DMs to their new followers, but we feel that you should rather take the time to welcome your new followers on stream, that makes you more human to them.

3.  Be creative in using the DM function -  Instead of spamming people you can use this function as your personal communication tool when sending messages as a one on one conversation with the people you tweet with on a regular basis.  You can also engage people you want to interview for blog posts or as a way to make appointments real time.

Twitter Etiquette:

1.   Be Real – One needs to consider that your online personality should just be the extension of your offline self.  You don’t need to pretend to be someone you are not. Just be yourself.

2.   Be a good listener – You want to be able to build relationship on Twitter,  you would also find it a more enjoyable experience if you are engaging and sharing experiences with people from all over the world and you can only accomplish that if you know how to listen. Don’t just broadcast.

3.   Be respectful – Don’t bully anyone on Twitter, this is not tolerated on the social networking platform.  Just like in real life, we need to show respect to be respected.  Remember the five simple words, thank you, please and you’re welcome as they are words that are so simple and yet powerful enough to brighten anyone’s day.

There you go.  These sums up our Twitter tips for those who are contemplating on joining Twitter.  We hope that after going through our list, you will find your experience more enjoyable.  And for those of you who have been on Twitter for as long as we have, maybe you  could share some of the tips with us and our readers, we would love to hear from you.

Bonus:  If Comedians These Told Video Game Jokes They Would Sound Like This…..