deals

I'll admit it -- I'm obsessed with the Sunday ads. Each morning, I run to the paper, open it up, take out the electronics ads and go find a secluded place in my house to see what kind of deals are available at my favorite stores. It's one of my favorite past times.

So, with that in mind, how would you like if I gave you some deals every Sunday? This is something I just thought up today while I was reading it and thought it would be a nice summary of what deals you can get for the week. I'm going to try it out for the next few weeks and I'd appreciate any comments or feedback you may have. Hey, even better, post some of your own deals you found in the comments.

I don't know about you, but I really can't stand buying something on a Saturday for full price and seeing it offered at a 20 percent discount the next day. There's something terribly disconcerting about the fact that I just spent more money than I had to in order to buy a new device. Let's put an end to this every Sunday and see what kind of deals are available in brick and mortars as well as online.

So, without further ado, here are some of the best deals I've found in my area for some of the most popular electronics stores. As I said above: if you would like to add some, please share.… Read more

Today's oh-so-sweet $200 price cut on the iPhone had a nice little side effect. Those refurbished 8GB iPhones sold exclusively through Apple's special deals section that were on sale for $499 last month have been given the price cut treatment, as well, although only by $50 this time around, bringing the grand total down to $349 for an (almost) brand new iPhone. If you're looking to save $50 on an iPhone to spend on some music to fill it up using the new iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, this is a pretty sweet deal while supplies last. Keep … Read more

Featured on this week's Real Deal podcast: Synchronizing two computers. If you want to know how to keep yourself sane if you regularly use more than one PC, tune into this show for a rundown of my tips on how to keep files, bookmarks, and e-mail synchronized over the Web.

Products mentioned:

If you want to join the ongoing discussion, come on over to the Real Deal forums.

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Featured on this week's Real Deal podcast: Social network overload. Tom Merritt and I try to figure out to to manage the overwhelming social obligations of participating in more than one social network. What do you do when you're buried in friend requests from Facebook, don't have time to keep your Twitter pals updated on what you're up to, and then to top that off, start getting invitations from friends to participate in other social platforms? And how do you handle multiple "friend" requests from people you don't know?

Hear me and Tom … Read more

NB: The original title of this post, "Google To Acquire Controlling Stake in Microsoft," never made it past the draft stages.

Expect an onslaught of emo jokes: Satire publication The Onion will be providing audio, video, and print content to social-networking site MySpace through a partnership announced on Tuesday night. There is now a branded Onion page on MySpace, with article and blog content as well as audio podcasts; additionally, content from the publication's online video hub, the Onion News Network, is now available on the MySpaceTV portal.

The press release issued by the New York-based Onion (… Read more

Featured on this week's Real Deal podcast: Twitter alternatives. Since our episode on Twitter back in May, a lot has changed in the world of nanoblogs. Twitter is not the only fruit. There's Jaiku and Pownce, both good competitors to Twitter. There's Facebook, which already has a "status" feature. And there are services like Profilactic and Twitterfeed for aggregating your status feeds (Jaiku is also a good aggregator). In just 15 minutes, Tom and I run through the options.

Here's the stream:

If you want to join the ongoing discussion, come on over to … Read more

Actually, the deal is brought to you by Buy.com. In an apparent bid to clear out its stock of older products, the site is selling the 1GB SanDisk Sansa C140 for the bargain price of $29.99--with free shipping. The C150 is a fine option for first-time MP3 player buyers, and at this price, you really can't go wrong. If you've been waiting to introduce someone to digital audio, now's the time. Note that there's a limit of two per customer.

On our weekly Real Deal podcast yesterday, Tom and I covered Microsoft Office replacements. It turns out Tom is a day-to-day user of Open Office. I'm impressed. I know a lot of people who talk up the benefits of the free suite, but few people who've actually committed to it.

I mostly still use Office. When I want to collaborate with someone on a document I'll use Google Docs and Spreadsheets. I've dabbled in Zoho and ThinkFree, and other interesting online office apps like EditGrid (spreadsheet) but nothing has torn me away from Microsoft's suite … Read more

Summertime means vacations. Time away from home base can also mean missing your favorite shows and/or home team slogging its way through the summer baseball schedule.

Just in time for all of this, Buy.com is having a 4th of July summer sale on the Slingbox Pro. If you've got a laptop or a smart phone, this trapezoid-shaped set-top box will allow you to catch all your own home TV channels from wherever you happen to be.

The Pro model is the most feature-packed of all the Slingbox family, and usually retails for $250. A $90 discount isn'… Read more