Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

How to Get the Best Deals with All Your Online Shopping [Deal Week]

Online shopping can quickly become overwhelming during the holiday season. Here's how to stay organized, focused, and keep on top of all the great deals when shopping online.

Deal Monitoring Browser Extensions

How to Get the Best Deals with All Your Online Shopping It's easy enough to check deal sites, like DealNews and Dealzon, for the best price, but it's just as easy to forget. Browser extensions PriceBlink and Invisible Hand both handle this problem by suggesting a lower price for any item you're shopping for if it finds one. There are subtle differences between the two extensions, but for the most part they're the same. Notably, PriceBlink will also provide related coupons and mail-in rebates, even when they apply globally to any store, and Invisible Hand will suggest low prices during a Google search. You'll be served equally well by either extensions, but many users have their preferences (we're pretty split here at Lifehacker) so we're offering you both.

PriceBlink • Invisible Hand

Coupons, Coupons, Coupons

How to Get the Best Deals with All Your Online Shopping Before you buy anything, check for a coupon. Even if you don't have one, you can generally find one online through a number of web sites. While there are a bunch of options, RetailMeNot is particularly easy to use. You just search for the store you're looking for and it'll display a bunch of coupon codes. RetailMeNot also displays success rates for each coupon so you can see how it worked for others. If you don't want to have to visit the site each time you're going to buy something, RetailMeNot also has a browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox, letting you check for relevant coupons while shopping on a specific site.

Monitor Your Daily Deals

How to Get the Best Deals with All Your Online Shopping In addition to your basic coupon searches, you should keep an eye on group coupon sites like Groupon and LivingSocial. Many have plans to offer their best deals during the holiday shopping season and you may be able to save quite a bit of money by keeping a watchful eye.

Daily deal sites like Woot! are also great to watch, as you can often find an item you're looking for at a huge discount (especially if someone on your gift list wants a refurbished flat screen television or a Roomba). Check daily to be sure you don't miss out on anything good. If you want to make things even easier, you can install the Woot! Watcher browser extension for Chrome or Firefox.

Stay Organized with Wish Lists

How to Get the Best Deals with All Your Online Shopping Keeping track of all your online shopping can be a lot of work, so it's best if you keep everything nicely organized. A shopping list on a piece of paper, or with a great to-do app, will work just fine, but you can make things a lot simpler with wish lists. Amazon's Wishlist is a great choice because you can add products outside of Amazon and organize multiple lists. With browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, as well as a wish list bookmarklet for other browsers, you can browse to any product page and quickly add a product to any of your lists. When you've got everything organized you can tackle all your buying quickly by going down your wish list.

Amazon Wish List | Chrome • Firefox • Safari

Got any great tips for getting the best deals for online shopping? Let's hear 'em in the comments!

Nielsen: 31 percent of kids want an iPad, other stuff

Hey look, a chart with the iPad on top. Aren't statistics fun? And yet, this chart may not mean quite what you think it does. The Nielsen Company presented a cadre of individuals with a list of nice, shiny gadgets and let them cross off anything and everything they'd like to buy in the next six months, and 31 percent of kids 6-12 picked the iPad as one of them. That doesn't mean these youngsters wanted the iPad any more than a game console, mind you, it just means more of them picked the tablet than any other single game console on the list. Also, it turns out that the iPad was the only tablet PC available, so it could well ave served as a proxy vote for other slates -- Galaxy Tab, anyone? The survey results also don't factor in ownership, so if the Xbox 360's low on the buy list, it could be because respondents already have one... but we suppose this is the definitive proof we've been searching for that e-readers are on the outs in the 12-and-under crowd. Jeff Bezos is crying over his evening oatmeal right now. After the break, see what the same chart looks like for teenagers and adults. (Hint: they aren't all that hot on handhelds.)

Continue reading Nielsen: 31 percent of kids want an iPad, other stuff

Nielsen: 31 percent of kids want an iPad, other stuff originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Nov 2010 00:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Data Visualization, Visualized [Chart]

We love nice charts and data visualization. That's why we like this meta-chart: Data visualization, visualized. Design, user interface, information, data journalism, communication and visual communication, merging. [Ffunction]

Want To See What Your iPad Videos Look Like Projected at 100 Inches? [Video]

I'll happily watch a TV show on the iPad by myself, but once you start trying to share that screen things get crowded. MicroVision's SHOWWX+ pico projector, designed specifically for iOS devices, projects their videos at 100 glorious inches.

The SHOWWX+ laser projector is 50% brighter than its predecessor, throwing video at 15 lumens with a 5,000:1 contrast ratio for 2 hours with a built-in battery. It's designed specifically for iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches, so it has a dock connector and can project all your Netflix goodies without any DRM hang-ups.

Because it's a laser projector, the SHOWWX+ has "infinite focus," as MicroVision calls it, allowing the image to be projected crisply on curved surfaces, or when the device isn't perfectly perpendicular to the surface it's projecting on. Its native resolution is 848 x 480, not quite HD, and it includes composite cables in the box for non iOS devices. But pair this thing with some AirPlay speakers and your iPad theater just got a lot more compelling. Available now for $450. [MicroVision via Wired]

Acer reveals 4.8-inch Android smartphone with 1024x480 screen resolution

Acer may be calling this "100 percent smartphone. 100 percent tablet," but something just doesn't add up there. That being said, we have to agree that a 1024x480 screen resolution on a 4.8-inch smartphone is downright drool-worthy. Clocking in at just a smidgen smaller than Dell's Streak, this here phone (no finalized name has been bestowed quite yet) was just revealed at Acer's Global press event in New York City. It was only shown briefly, demonstrating an unknown version of Android and the "evolution of Acer UI." Specs wise, there's a two megapixel front-facing camera, eight megapixel rear camera (with LED flash), 720p video recording, a six-axis Gyroscope + accelerometer package and LED edge lighting. Per usual, Acer's keeping a lid on any pricing estimates, but it'll be shipping out to gape-jawed customers everywhere in April 2011.

Update: We've got the full PR after the break, which informs us of the atypical 21:9 aspect ratio in use here as well as its "full metal body." Curiously enough, it's also rocking a curved back (is that a trend we spot?), Bluetooth 3.0, 802.11n WiFi, HSDPA support, a 1GHz Snapdragon processor and an HDMI output. Delicious, all the way around.

Gallery: Acer reveals 4.8-inch Android smartphone in NYC