Mint can be a powerful tool when it comes to monitoring your finances. The service helps you track how much money you’re spending and on what, and alerts you when bills are due and when you might finally pay off your credit card.

While most Mint users know the basics, how to use the service to better manage their finances, there are a few features in Mint you might not be aware of. They might even to improve your bottom line.

Here are some of our favorite underutilized Mint features.

1. Tags

A lot of people use categories in Mint for expenses, but not everyone takes advantage of Mint’s tagging feature. Use tags in conjunction with categories for further organizing your expenses.

For instance, if you own two cars, you could tag each one to determine how much each automobile ends up costing you each year. Tagging all of your expenses with something like “Hawaii Trip” can help you see how much that vacation really cost, when everything is said and done. And tagging things like daycare expenses can come in handy when doing your taxes at the end of the year.

2. SMS Reminders

Mint has some pretty awesome apps for iPhone and Android, but if you don’t have a smartphone, you don’t have to miss out on the fun. Mint sends out weekly summaries via SMS for those who own Windows Phones or other handsets.

3. Built for Two

Weekly summaries aren’t limited to just one email address. If you share expenses with a spouse, partner or roommate, you can have a weekly summery sent to both of you by selecting the option from your Mint profile.

4. Track Your Net Worth

Mint isn’t just about liquid assets. The app can also track the value of things, such as major appliances, collectibles and cars, and add that number to your overall net worth. Mint also integrates with Zillow to track the value of your home.

5. Set Reminders

Always forget to pay that one bill? Mint lets you set up reminders for specific bills, so you never miss a payment.

6. Set Some Goals

If you have a financial goal, Mint can help you get there. For instance, say you’re trying to save for a new car or get out of debt. You can track payments going into a specific account you’ve designated to meet that goal.

7. Mobile Safety

Using Mint on your smartphone can be super convenient, but what if your phone is lost or stolen? In the event you and your phone part ways, you can disconnect your phone from your account, preventing others from accessing your financial information.

8. Split Up Transactions

You may choose to split a single transaction into multiple categories. For instance, if you go to Target and buy $ 100 worth of groceries and a $ 30 pair of shoes, you can file the $ 30 under clothing expenses and the $ 100 under your grocery categories, rather than lumping the two together.

9. Track Cash

Not just for credit transactions, you can also enter cash transaction into Mint and track those payments as well.

10. Port to Excel

If you need to track and document some of your information outside of Mint, download a CSV file and import that information into Excel.

What tips do you have for using Mint? Let us know some of your own tricks and unique ideas in the comments.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Oriol Lladó

A new play on Lorem Ipsum — that is, placeholder text for publishing and design — is getting the interwebz all hot and bothered.

Fifty Shades Generator is a website that automatically generates filler text inspired by the popular erotic novel, Fifty Shades of Grey. Users simply click on the site’s “Generate more” button, and a paragraph of naughty text pops up on the screen.

“Slobbering like Augustus Gloop at Willy Wonka’s chocolate river” and “trembling like a short nun at a penguin shoot” are among the generator’s more family-friendly phrases. And believe us — those were difficult to find.

The site’s creators call on struggling authors to use the generator to enliven their books.

“Spice up your otherwise lacklustre novel with graphic sex scenes guaranteed to get your readers hot under the collar, and slightly sick in their mouths.”

Other creative dummy text generators include Bacon Ipsum and Gangsta Lorem Upsum. Check out the gallery below for more.

Image courtesy of Amazon

Students in MIT’s Robust Robotics program have defied the laws of airplanes.

They have created a robotic airplane that can fly at high speeds, through obstacles, using only on-board sensors. And it’s doing all that without benefit of GPS. The students set out to create “autonomous plane navigation in confined spaces,” and that’s exactly what they did.

Using a laser rangefinder, the plane calculates 15 different variables while in flight — keeping it from crashing into things.

The MIT researchers completed a serious of flight tests around pillars in the parking garage under their labs. The plane worked like a charm — gliding and threading, almost blindly, around the structures.

The structure has significant real-world implications. It could be used for military purposes, replacing current U.S. drones that are remotely-piloted as opposed to autonomously-piloted. Other applications include land surveys and meteorological data collection.

The MIT group wants to now set its sights on building algorithms that will allow the plane to map out its flight environment on the go.

“There are definitely significant challenges to be solved,” says Adam Bry, one of the plane’s designers. “But I think that it’s certainly possible.”

Computer failure happens. The loss of important data can hobble your productivity, your business and leave a hole in your digital memory.

While many now conduct their work and play on far-flung servers (we store our messages in Gmail and keep our family photos on Facebook), there are likely critical files on your PC or smartphone that would not be recoverable in the event of hardware failure.

Seagate and Harris Interactive conducted a survey of 2,205 U.S. adults — 90% of whom feel their digital content is valuable. Yet, 30% of women surveyed do not back up their files at all. That compares with 19% of men who never back up. Only 10% of adults surveyed back up their files daily.

And despite the prevalence of cloud backup services like DropBox and Carbonite, only 8% of respondents utilize them, favoring external hard drives and USB flash drives instead.

Thumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto, amphotora

Digg founder Kevin Rose was arguably one of the most successful Web 2.0 entrepreneurs — that is, until the launch of Digg 4.0 in August 2010. Many longtime users of the news aggregator instantly hated the relaunch since it made the service more like Twitter and diluted much of the flavor of the service by offering official channels for publishers.

About six months after the launch of Digg v4, Rose left the company he created. He went on to found Milk, which was focused on creating mobile apps. Digg and its team was soon snapped up by Google.

Rose hasn’t publicly addressed what happened internally at Digg with version 4.0 — that is until now. Rose started an AMA (ask me anything) on Reddit yesterday, and the page was promptly littered with questions about Digg, his work at Google and his (now defunct) popular podcast, Diggnation. A few users even commented on the irony that Rose was choosing to speak out on Reddit, a traditional Digg competitor.

Rose took a while to respond, probably because he decided to use a webcam to record a series of video responses, viewable in the gallery above. In the videos Digg talks about decisions he made a Digg, the new version, his new position at Google, and — yes — the circumstances that led to the Digg 4.0 fiasco.

Outside of the videos, Rose addressed a few minor questions. Among them: His current beer of choice is Almanac; he uses an iPhone, a MacBook Air and an Android tablet; and yes, he’s tried Google Glass. He also responds to a user, and apparent a Digg developer, who criticizes Rose’s some of Rose’s comments.

What do you think of what Rose has to say? Sound off in the comments.

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Quick Pitch: A personalized second screen social experience for sports fans.

Genius Idea: Second screen usage while watching TV is high, while sports and social media are a natural pairing, so SportStream cuts out the noise.

Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trailblazers owner Paul Allen is clearly a huge sports fan — and as co-founder of a little company called Microsoft, he’s got major tech bonafides. So his Vulcan Capital investment firm pouring $ 3.5 million into a social sports app makes some sense.

But with a slew of similar products coming out over the past year or so, why would Allen’s big bet on the iPad app SportStream pay off?

Co-founders Will Hunsinger and Bob Morgan say SportStream’s elegant user interface, play-by-play updates and sortable feeds of tweets from friends, fans, athletes and media are among the qualities that will help their app stand out in an increasingly crowded field.

Hunsinger and Morgan are both longtime sports fans with years of experience working in technology. They told Mashable in an interview that they were inspired to create SportStream after juggling Twitter, text messages and other digital ways to chat with far-flung friends and family while watching games.

“It’s been interesting over the past few years to look at the intersection of this inherently social thing like sports with social media, but there hasn’t really been a super cohesive way to do things,” Morgan says.

SportStream, which is free and now available in the App Store, was launched Thursday. It was spun out of Hunsinger’s last company, the content discovery app Everi, which was also funded by Vulcan Capital. Hunsinger and Morgan say SportStream took just over six months to go from initial idea to launch.

SportStream will send you push notifications to let you know when Facebook and Twitter friends are watching a game and following along with the app.

Once you open it on your own device, you can tweak your feed to include combinations of friends, major sportswriters, media outlets relevant to a certain contest and more. Predict winners and/or broadcast who you’re rooting for to invite banter with other users.

You can restrict your conversation to just close friends, or open it up to general users within the app. Apart from the social element, live play-by-play will keep you updated on what you’re watching and invite you to check out box scores and other stat trackers. You can also post to Twitter and Facebook from within the app, and receive game preview and recap articles as desired.

According to the research firm Forrester, 85% of tablet owners use their devices while watching TV, so the market is ripe for some to capture techie sports fans’ attention. SportStream certainly appears to be a robust offering for iPad aficionados, but time will tell whether it can rise above the crowd and make Paul Allen’s $ 3.5 million bet pay off.

Will you check out SportStream, or do you already have a favorite social sports app? Let us know in the comments.

Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

Thumbnail image courtesy Stuck in Customs, Flickr.

An anti-porn group is opposing a series of porn-related suffixes that could potentially be added to the Internet’s top-level domains, including .porn, .sex and .adult.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which assigns top-level domains to sites worldwide, announced on Wednesday a list of domains that have been applied for that could be added to the existing list that includes “.com” and “.gov.” But the Morality in Media organization is petitioning to reject the request to introduce the porn-related domains, arguing that it will encourage more pornography on the web.

Morality in Media wants supporters to ask President Obama and Congress to also oppose the domains. Since last night, 1,000 people have already signed the petition.

“America is already suffering an untreated pandemic of harm from pornography and we need less, not more, pornography,” Morality in Media said in a press release.

ICANN approved adult website domain .xxx in 2011, following years of opposition from the U.S. government. The ICM Registry, which sponsors the .xxx top-level domain for the adult community, is also behind the request for .porn, .sex and .adult.

“The U.S. Government opposed the creation of .xxx domain for 10 years, but unfortunately lost that battle,” Dawn Hawkins, executive director of Morality in Media, told Mashable. “Not only does the creation of these new ‘porn’ domains mean there will be more and ever-deviant pornography available on the Internet, it also means that ICM Registry stands to make millions more from all the companies and brands that do not want their brands associated with pornography.”

ICANN also revealed a list of company-related domain requests, such as .Apple and .Google, to more generic ones, including .lol, .pizza and .poker.

Google applied for more than 100 domains, including .lol, .youtube, .map, .car, .cloud, .dad, .mom, .dot and .fun. Meanwhile, Amazon put in 70 applications, such as .Amazon, .app, .author, .coupon, .book and .shop.

Do you think the porn-related suffixes would help make the .com domain more porn-free or are separate domains for porn unnecessary? Let us know your opinion in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DNY59