The Gadgetress ~ TV, mobile and Internet: Covering technology's monthly bill

Archive for the 'Free+Win+Deals' Tag

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »

1 PC, multiple users, plus headlines that will save you money

October 18th, 2008, 8:07 am by

Deals and freebiesSince I can’t get to every story out there, I compile a list of money-saving stories to give you something to read on the weekends. I’ve been tracking money-saving tech headlines for a few months now and in the past week, there have been a ton. Most are just common sense tips, which we probably could all be reminded about. 

This week’s collection:

NComputing’s solution lets multiple users share a single PC and save money and electricity (The Nation) Looks at NComputing, in Redwood City, is pitching a PC subscription plan. Multiple people share one one computer through a virtualization process.  Each person, however, must have their own keyboard, mouse and monitor. But all are connected to the same PC. 

Six money-saving secrets to help stretch your tech budget (ZDNet) Buy refurbished hardware, get educational discounts, watch out for hidden costs — not a bad post.

Money-Saving Office Tech (Forbes) — Focuses on free and discounted software for wrting, spreadsheets and other office-type activities.

How to save money and stay tech-savvy in tight times (Austin American Statesmen) Mentions comparison shopping, cheap/free software and cutting back on some monthly tech expenses.

Money-saving tips for home-based entrepreneurs (The Street) – Do-it-yourself, outsource and barter.

78 Ways for Your Small Business to Save Money in this Economy (CRM) Categorizes tips into advertising, overhead, office items, insurance, travel and technology.

Save Money, Fire Your PR Agency (SitePoint) As the author points out, “…for many web 2.0 startups, PR is a luxury, not a necessity.”

Save money on groceries (ABC News) Not very techie, but several tips for the grocery-shopping crowd.

This week’s Gadgetress posts you may have missed:

Posted in: Uncategorized • • • • | Comments Off

Avery giving away royalty-free art

October 9th, 2008, 9:30 am by

If you’re constantly hunting for art for your Web site — and stealing it from random sites  – here’s a chance to get 20 pieces of stock art for free. The catch is you’ll have to buy certain products from Avery Dennison, the Brea-based paper products company that makes self-stick labels, business cards, binders and millions of other office products.

Avery teamed up with iStockphoto, the huge stock-art site that charges just between $1 to $20 for the right to use the image almost anywhere (mostly, you can’t resell the image).   

While you do get 20 pieces of stock art for free, you only get to choose those 20 pieces from a specially chosen list of 60. Unfortunately, to get access to iStock’s collection of 1.3 million images, you’ll have to join the club and pay for them. However, the Avery partnership does offer an initial 20 percent discount on the first purchase of 50 credits — just use the code “AVERYNEWS.” More details at www.avery.com/istocknews

Images from Avery and iStock’s site.

More free stuff:

  • My own list of free tech stuff online
  • Avoid overdraft fees with free mobile-phone service
  • Make your Facebook profile scream with free tool
  • Test a $700 switch from D-Link for free
  • Stump the PC Club: Organize DVDs, media with free database software

    • Posted in: Uncategorized • • • • • | Comments Off

    Alt+Save Weekend: Save money, win stuff this week

    September 28th, 2008, 8:14 am by

    Deals and freebies

    Welcome to the weekly deals report…

    * Apple giveaway: Dotster is giving more stuff away. But it’s much better than a year’s worth of doman registration, which is only worth about $8.75/year. The freebie this time is four $500 Apple gift cards. That’s enough to buy the biggest iPod Touch and 100 songs.

    There are two ways for a chance to win: Buy a domain from the company or mail in an entry. The latter requires mailing in a 3×5-inch card hand-written with your name, address and phone number and “Dotster Apple Gift Card Giveaway.” Mail it by Oct. 29. Here are the rules.

    * Free museum admission: If you bank at Bank of America, you can get free admission to a bunch of museums on the first Friday’s of the month. In Orange County, only two museums are participating but they are pretty good ones: The Discovery Science Center and the Laguna Art Museum. Los Angeles includes LACMA, while San Diego includes the Birch Aquarium at Scripps. Just bring any Bank of America card to get inside. Details at www.bankofamerica.com/museums

    * Help Google help people contest: Google’s Project 10 to the 100: Submit an idea that can change the world. Semifinalists’ ideas will be voted on. Google has committed $10 million to implement ideas. Submit by Oct. 20, 2008. (One snarky take on the contest: “Google’s charity, At your expense” at Information Week.)

    Headlines that can save you money: Read the rest of this entry »

    Posted in: Uncategorized • • • • • • • • • | Comments Off

    Digital TV giveaway for free HDTV and more

    September 20th, 2008, 8:29 am by

    Rabbit Ears Pioneers contestThe Consumer Electronics Association’s “Rabbit Ears Pioneers” contest just picked a two friends as semifinalists, but the contest is still going on for a chance to win a modern-day home entertainment center, complete with an HDTV, Blu-ray disc DVD player and a surround-sound system.

    The contest is asking friends to write an essay about another friend who has proven to be truly in need of bringing her TV to the digital age. 

    “If we can put a man on the moon, we can certainly put a decent working television set into a Queens apartment,” wrote Cara Lustik in the essay she submitted to the contest. Her entry received the highest overall rating for creativity and originality by an independent judging panel comprised of electronics industry experts. 

    Lustik and her friend Tracey Huffman each win a GE digital TV converter box and RCA digital reception antenna and both are entered for a chance to win the grand prize.

    The contest, of course, is to market the upcoming Feb. 17 deadline when major TV networks drop analog broadcasts and begin broadcasting in digital all the time. After Feb. 17, viewers who rely on an analog TV and antenna to get a clear picture won’t be able to watch TV the same way — unless they buy a digital converter box or subscribe to a paid TV service. (For more on this, read my “Guide to the Digital TV transition.”) 

    To enter, track down someone who watches TV with an old-fashioned rabbit-ears antenna. Snap a photo and send in a short essay (no more than 200 words) describing why this “pioneer” enjoys TV this way. More details at www.antennaweb.org.

    Headlines that will save you money:

    Posted in: Uncategorized • • • • • • • | 2 Comments »

    Alt+Save weekends: Money-saving headlines and contests

    September 13th, 2008, 12:13 pm by

    Deals and freebies

    For those of you checking out this blog because it purports to save  money, time and the earth through tech, I’m still trying to offer that service. But I’ve been distracted recently with an  experiment to cover more local cable and Internet services, cell phones and some all around cool gadgets. This blog is always evolving in order to report on useful tech for Orange County readers and beyond.  Since saving money and time continues to be useful, I’ll keep the Alt+Save idea for now and post wrapups on weekends. At least until this blog evolves again. Enjoy: 

    Headlines that can save you money

    Contests

    Posted in: Uncategorized • • • • • • | Comments Off

    My own list of free tech stuff online

    August 30th, 2008, 6:00 am by

    Alt+Save: Deals and freebiesInspired by Kiplinger, which recently updated its list of favorite free stuff, I’ve decided to compile a list of my own of where you can find a good deal on technology online. So, in no particular order:

    Free 411 service: Kiplinger mentions 1-800-FREE-411. I personally prefer Goog-411 (1-800-GOOG-411) because it’s ad-free and it’ll text the number to your cell phone so you don’t have to memorize it. I also wrote about this in May (“Free and cheap 411 alternatives“) and offered 2-second reviews of Jingle Networks (1-800-Free411), Microsoft’s TellMe (1-800-555-TELL or 1-800-CALL-411, and AT&T 1-800-YELLOWPAGES (1-800-YELLOWPages).

    Free shipping: Kiplinger only mentions a few sites, such as Amazon, which offers free shipping for orders over $25. (If you’re a frequent Amazon customer, you probably know about the $80 Amazon Prime, which includes free 2-day shipping all the time.) There are a ton of deals sites that track free shipping offers, among other things. But one site, FreeShippingOn.com, keeps this on one convenient place. It’s part of the Deal Locker family of sites, which I wrote about in May (“Deal Locker guarantees (some) coupon codes“).

    Find a LawyerFree legal advice: If you don’t know the first thing about getting a lawyer, Avvo.com is a good place to start. Plus you can submit a question and see if any of Avvo’s hundreds of active lawyers respond. The site also has reviews of lawyers. I interviewed the CEO in July (“Get legal questions answered for free by REAL lawyers“).

    Free Wi-Fi: As I have in the past, Kiplinger’s mentions WiFiFreeSpot.com, which lists places nationwide with free Wi-Fi. I also like Panera Bread and Starbucks, the latter which offers 2 hours of free Wi-Fi daily to active users of its rewards card.  Read more about it at “Free Wi-Fi at Starbucks — with restrictions.”

    Free software every dayFree software: Kiplinger mentions OpenOffice.org, which is a great (and free) alternative to Microsoft Word. For something different every day, I try to visit GiveawayoftheDay.com to check out what software is up for grabs. These are full-versions, not limited trials. I’ve spotted DVD-rippers, spreadsheet creators and anti-virus products. The catch is that you have to download and install the software by midnight or else the free code needed during registration expires. I mentioned this site in June at “Free software every day…” along with other daily freebie sites offering discounted Mac software, such as MacZot.com, Softpedia.com and Mac Update Promo (mupromo.com).

    W3 SchoolsFree web training: While on maternity leave, I spent time learning more about web development at W3 Schools, whose motto is “The best things in life are free.” All the courses are free and delve into subjects like JavaScript, SQL and .net. Other sites that offer free or cheap online training include Lynda.com and WebdevelopersNotes.com.

    Amazon Web ServicesFree online storage: Another crowded spot on the Web. For simple things, I just use my free Gmail account to store files, since I get a whopping 7 GBs! But for business use, my household uses Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), which isn’t free but super cheap because it only charges for what you use (15-cents per GB, plus transfer fees). More importantly, it’s reliable.

    Free music: Tons of stuff available if you know where to find it. But sites I’ve downloaded from lately include Paste Magazine’s (don’t miss its 100 Free Tracks for Summer 2008), C/Net’s Music site (with 111,052 free MP3′s), DayTrotter.com (with 1,200+ free downloads), ArtistServer.com (with 8,222 songs) and PureVolume.com (intersperses free songs within albums, which are free to listen to if you’re a registered user). Also try NoiseTrade.com, Ruckus.com, Amazon, and iTunes (has a Free Single of the week). I’ve been meaning to write separately about this so stay tuned (and feel free to send me your favorites to include).

    Free design tools:

    • Fonts galore are available for free at 1001free fonts.com, but watch out for the annoying little search feature that takes you to not-so-free fonts.com site.
    • Photo tweaking: While Photoshop Elements is a bargain at around $100 compared to the original’s $650 price tag, the free Photoshop Express is good enough for newbie designers. Like the original, you can tweak photos, add touches of color and resize photos.
    • Free stock art: Sites like iStock charge just a few dollars for cool art and photos for web sites and beyond. But if you want it for free, there is SXC (stock.xchng) and EveryStockPhoto.com, a ‘search engine’ for free photos online.

    Have a favorite of your own? Please share by commenting below!

    Past Alt+Save posts:

    Posted in: Uncategorized • • • • • • • | 4 Comments »

    Avoid overdraft fees with free mobile-phone service

    August 20th, 2008, 11:20 am by

    Intuit’s Quicken Beam money-checking toolFinally, something free from Intuit, the Mountain View software company that takes my money every tax season.

    Intuit launched Quicken Beam, a text-messaging service to help people keep track of how much money is left in the bank. The company is pitching this to people who tend to get overdrawn. With overdraft fees upwards of $20, this free little tool could really help avoid overspending (though text-messaging fees apply).

    It works on any cell phone or mobile device (iPhones too) because it relies on text messaging. After you register various bank and credit card accounts (yup, you do have to hand over this private information), you dial 636363 to get your checking-account balance and then type in “BAL” or other abbreviation. That’s it! No data entry, no log-in screen, no web browser needed. More details on how to use the service HERE.

    You can also set up alerts in case the balance drops below a certain point or credit-card spending gets out of whack.

    Of course, this is not totally new. Bank of America offers a mobile service to check balances,  but you’ll need a phone with a web browser.  Wells Fargo has a text service. AT&T offers a banking service free to its customers. I’m sure there are others. The Quicken Beam service is just one option that is free, text-based and not limited to one financial institution.

    While researching the service, I also discovered Intuit Labs, which is the company’s test ground for new products and services. It’s a personable site with links to actual people. Quicken Beam was developed by Kristen Berman, who apparently can’t get enough of her cell phone. But other apps available include View My Paycheck, QuickBooks for the iPhone and QuickBooks Jingle Generator. Now, how about a service that will help me pay less taxes?

     Recent mobile headlines:

    Posted in: Cell phones • news • • • • • • • • • • | 1 Comment »

    Make your Facebook profile scream with free tool

    August 14th, 2008, 4:29 pm by

    SRS Labs’ PhotogramFor those trying to clutter up their MySpace or Facebook page, Santa Ana’s SRS Labs just released a free widget that adds sound to any photo.

    The SRS Photogram is pure decoration, but I got a kick out of the dozens of noises available, which include 1 scream, 4 different yells and 8 types of laughter.

    Photogram software also will send your widget straight to your Facebook or MySpace account. Unfortunately, it doesn’t provide the embed code to easily add it to a blog or Web site. (Hence, you can’t hear the morse code beeps I added to my widget.)

    But this being an SRS Labs’ product, the sound effects are “enriched with SRS audio processing,” so they’re supposed to sound better than a flat file. With my good headphones on, they did sound pretty good (but everything sounds good with the Sennheiser HD 433 headphones I use).

    Check it out yourself HERE.

    Posted in: Uncategorized • • • • • • • | Comments Off

    « Previous Entries
    Next Entries »
    SEO Powered by Platinum SEO from Techblissonline