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Deals Listing for Black Friday and Other Holiday Deals

Author Thomas | 24.11.2009 | Category Accessories, Freebies

It’s taken only a few years for Black Friday and Cyber Monday to become a big deal. This year, perhaps more than others, it’s very big. We’ve listed below some Black Friday and Holiday Deals listings to help you out this holiday.

Amazon.com

• Amazon posts dozens and dozens of online specials, and for sure, they’ll be updated hourly on the big shopping days, below is the link to their special deals page.
• You can start now on the deals, or after Thanksgiving.  Amazon shows for how much longer or how much stock is left of the items.

Amazon Black Friday and After Thanksgiving Deals

LLG & Company

• Handstands CD/DVD Binders & Insert Pages
• Old Town Photo Albums
• Journals
• Discounts for bulk purchases
• Free shipping on orders over $25 (gift wrap available)

LLG & Company Black Friday and Deals Page

Rustic River Leather

• Refillable Leather Journals
• Gift journals
• Free shipping on orders $25 or more
• 10% off large orders (see site for details)
• Sports Logs (golf logs, hunting logs, fly fishing log journals)

Rustic River Leather Black Friday and Holiday Deals Page

REI

• Ski Equipment
• Coats, hats, etc.

REI Winter Sale & Clearance Page

Walmart

• Walmart is offering instore deals

Walmart instore deals link (enter you zip code once on the site for store deals)

• Online deals include TVs, cameras, toys, and a whole lot of other items

Walmart online deals page

NewEgg

• TV’s Laptops
• Contests

NewEgg Deal page

Target

• All sorts of home items
• Deals change on the page
• Free shipping on lots of items

Target deals page (2 day sale)

Enjoy!

Android 1.6 Donut Rollout and Features

Author Thomas | 01.10.2009 | Category Electronics, Software

Android, the operating system that powers the G1, MyTouch 3G, and other smart phones is now rolling out.  Although the update is in the beginning stages, the roll out seems to be better managed compared to the Cupcake update (delays, delays, and more delays).

This update dubbed 1.6 and inspiring owners of the Android phones to go out and purchase donuts in celebration has a lot going for it, and really helps mature the OS, and especially the Marketplace (App Store) interface.

Although tagged as a “minor” update, there are some pretty awesome features that have been added to the phone.

• Updates to the quick search box
• Camera updates
• The Android Marketplace gets a great face lift
• Virtual Private Network ability
• Indicator for battery usage
• Text-to-speech engine that will blow your mind

More highlights from the Android Dev Page.

T-mobile announcement page.

Google Wave to be Released

Author Thomas | 29.09.2009 | Category Software, Web

Google Wave is set for release tomorrow to 100,000 lucky testers.

Like 100,000 Golden Tickets awaiting to be sent to the lucky winners who will find in their email inboxes tomorrow an invitation to the revolutionary new service/product.

Google Wave will combine in-a-sense, email, instant messaging, blogging, sharing, etc.  Email will work much more like a conversation.

A ten minute demo of wave from the developer tool:

From the Developer Conference (the long video):

Hopefully, we’ll all get one of the Golden Ticket invites to start testing, exploring, and enjoying Google Wave.

EA Active Nintendo Wii Game Review

Author Thomas | 04.06.2009 | Category Video Games

EA Sports Active is a lot of fun to play.  We awaited the game with anticipation with a lot of other people, and we’re not disappointed.  Of course there are a few things we wish were different, which are noted below, but overall, EA Active is a fantastic game to help you get in shape and tone your muscles.

Game Basics - The game comes with a resistance band (minimal assembly required just FYI), a leg holster for the nunchuck and the game.   The Nunchuck is placed in the leg wrap and it lets the game know how well you’re running, squatting, etc. You a provided a personal training who unlike the Wii Fit, is a real person you can see with video and will give you great feedback telling you to pick up the pace if you fall behind.  The game is also compatible with the Wii Balance Board.

Below are a few video demos of the EA Sports Active for the Nintendo Wii.

Obviously, if you want games to play with the Wii balance board, you need the board. The board comes with the Wii Fit game which has Aerobics, Yoga, Balance Games, and Strength Training.

Active Video Game Highlights:

Personal Trainer – The game offers you a personal training.  Video of a real person demonstrates how to perform each exercise.  Your trainer will tell you if you’re doing things right or if you need to adjust.  He or she will also offer encouragement to help keep you going.

Exercises – The great thing about the game are all the different exercises that can be combined into a workout.  The resistance band is great for increasing the difficulty of the exercises.  You can fold over the band to shorten it and make the workout more difficult.  The tennis challenge is one of my favorites.

Workouts – The game provides a 30 day challenge with varying exercises each day.  The game will alternate exercises that target different areas of your body.  If you’re not up for a certain exercise in your workout, you can de-select and skip the exercise.

Varying Difficulty - At each workout, you can choose the level of difficulty.  Your selection is made for all exercises in the workout, and is great if you’re not feeling up to a big workout, but would still like to get up and going a bit.

Tracking Progress – The game will track your progress over time as well as the calories burned through each workout.

Two Player with Friends - You can play the game side by side with someone.  Make sure to have an extra nunchuck on hand.  You can also purchase an extra resistance band and leg wrap separately on Amazon: EA Sports Active Multiplayer Pack

Improvement Points:

The game does have a few limitations that are unfortunate, but don’t affect the overall play.

Character Choice – It’d be nice if there were more variety when designing your on screen persona.

Music Choice – The music is not bad, but it’s not great.  It would be cool if you choose music from the SD card.

Love the game, and we’ve been using it every day since we got it.

EA Sports Active is available at Amazon.com.

Cardio Games for the Wii and Wii Balance Board

Author Thomas | 26.03.2009 | Category Software

We were very excited to get a Wii and Wii Balance board last year, but have been waiting for more cardio exercise games to come out for the Wii.  We’ve logged quite a few hours on the Wii Fit but are looking forward to some variety in the Balance Board Compatible Games.

Fortunately, there are now some pretty exciting games coming out soon that we’ve highlighted below.

Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout is a good game on the economical side of things.  If you’ve been using the Wii Fit, this game looks to be an enhancement of the same concept.  The game is compatible with the Wii Blanace board which is a big plus.  We’ve been waiting for some good exercise games to compliment the Wii Fit game.

EA Sports Active looks to be a very promising game.  Not yet released as of this writing, but you can catch a glimpse with the video demo.

What looks neat about this game is that you have more than just the Wii Remote and Nunchuck to toss into your television.  Seriously though, the game comes with an elastic stretch band and a leg wrap.  The Nunchuck is placed in the leg wrap and it lets the game know how well you’re running, squatting, etc.  Pretty neat idea.  The game is listed higher than the Gold’s Gym game, but with all the options and accessories, it looks to be quite good.

Below is the video demo of the EA Sports Active for the Nintendo Wii.  The Tennis exercises look pretty cool.

Obviously, if you want games to play with the Wii balance board, you need the board.  The board comes with the Wii Fit game which has Aerobics, Yoga, Balance Games, and Strength Training.  The game tracks how often you come back to use it and will give you praise if you come back often, and will also give that little nudge of guilt if you haven’t exercised in a while.  The Yoga exercises are pretty good.  We’re looking forward to more Yoga titles coming to the Wii and Wii Balance Board.

And of course, if you don’t own the Wii, you’ll need to get one.  We had a “fun” time trying to find a Wii to purchase last year.  We tried lots of different stores, tried meeting people in parking lots, etc. The best way, and the way we got the Wii, was by putting our cell phone number into the Wii listing page on Amazon.  Amazon.com then sent us a text message when the Wii was in stock.  Bingo!  We got the Wii!

ShelfReliance CanSolidator Pantry Review

Author Thomas | 02.03.2009 | Category Home & Garden

CanSolidator Pantry Dimensions: Height: 11″ Width: 20″ Depth: 16.5″ Capacity: 40 Cans

The ShelfReliance CanSolidator Pantry is a great way to store food cans.  But who would want to store food cans?  Katrina, Hugo, Tornadoes, Earthquakes, Downsizing…ring any bells?  Storing food is a smart idea in preparation for difficult times.  It’s also just a good idea to have some food on hand for those crazy cooking moods you might get in.  You many just need something that comes in a can.

The CanSolidator can help you stay stocked with food because it makes it easy to see where you’re running low.  We recently purchased a CanSolidator and were amazed when we went to fill it just how low we were on a certain food type.  It was hard to see previously because our cans were stacked one on top of the other.  We purchased the CanSolidator Pantry, but will probably upgrade to the Pantry Plus soon because our shelves are wide and can fit more.

The product is a Food Rotation System or FRS for short.  Using First in First out or FIFO, cans are placed in the CanSolidator at the top level and then rotate down to the bottom level.  You remove cans from the bottom, thus using the oldest cans first.

A few thoughts and observations when we pulled it out of the box:

• Assembly is required.  It’s not a big deal, but you have to put the pieces together to fit the width of cans you want to put in there.
• Holds three full-sized cans and one medium can.  We weren’t able to fit 4 large soup cans in there, but we could fit 3 large cans and one medium cream of mushroom soup can.
• Deep than expected.  The CanSolidator was deeper than we expected, but the “Pantry” fit in our Pantry just fine.  We also measured for the CanSolidator Cupboard and it would fit in our cupboards.  It looks like they were built to standard sizes.
• Holds only 4 types of cans.  The Pantry model holds 40 cans but only 4 different types of cans (10 of each).  So, after we set it up, we thought, “Hmmm.  We need another one.”
• Better in earthquakes and other natural disasters.  We noticed as we were moving our cans around prior to putting them in the CanSolidator, that our cans on the shelf can be knocked off very easily.  Once we put them in the CanSolidator, it was hard to get them to just fall out.  This is an advantage because if you think of any natural disasters that might shake your house a little bit, your stacked cans would fall over, break, or otherwise be compromised.  The big problem is that it’s in the natural disasters when you might need your cans the most!  Shaking the CanSolidator, we saw that the cans weren’t going to go anywhere.  The very top cans if filled up to the edge might fall, but not very much more than that.
• Space utilization.  It seems that we could fit more cans on our shelf if they were simply stacked instead of in the CanSolidator, but we like the CanSolidator because it helps us to better manage food cans, it looks so much better on the shelf than a bunch of stacked cans, and it’s cool.
• Stackable.  The CanSolidator is stackable.  In fact, the Pantry can be split into two separate units.
• Expandable.  The rotation system can be exapanded with more peices or hooked together with additional Cansolidators.
• Helps to monitor food storage levels.  We really like that we can see at a quick glance if we’re running low on food storage items.
• Helps rotate through food stock.  The CanSolidator helps us use the oldest cans first.  If you think about it, stacking cans usually hides the oldest cans in the back and bottom of the pile.

Video Demo from LLG & Company of the CanSolidator Pantry

Overall, we really like the CanSolidator Pantry, and will be getting more soon.