Happy Thanksgiving 2011

Have a warm and satisfying Thanksgiving holiday

We’ll be back tomorrow with something special for Black Friday...

BlackBerry Picking On Cyber Monday

Cyber Monday is the new traditional time to find great online special offers, much the same as Black Friday has become that tradition for bricks and mortar stores. With that in mind, let’s have a look a one very special product line this year. It’s the BlackBerry device from Research in Motion.

BlackBerry has long been the choice of business users for mobile voice and data connectivity. RIM has made it their mission to support corporate IT services with the performance and security needed for serious business use in the field. But, how affordable are the popular BlackBerry models?

Make no mistake about it, BlackBerry devices are expensive technology. That doesn’t mean you have to pay a bundle for the model of your choice. In fact, shop now and you can get 19 different BlackBerry phones free when you order them with new wireless service. The others range in price from $9.99 to $149.99. Not bad for devices that retail for up to $600.

Just what is available at no charge for as long as these special offers last? How about the new BlackBerry Torch? Yes, it’s free when you order it with AT&T wireless service. The Torch offers the BlackBerry OS6 operating system on a combination touchscreen interface plus a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard. You also get an impressive 5 Megapixel digital camera with flash, continuous auto-focus, digital zoom, face detection integrated GPS location tagging and video capture. The full touch screen features a full HTML Web browser with pinch-to-soom and tabbed browsing. By the way, the BlackBerry Torch is available in black, red or white.

The BlackBerry Tour is a popular smartphone for Verizon Wireless users. it’s an international 3G phone with 3.2 Megapixel digital camera, GPS support for VZ Navigator Global navigation services. Yes, this phone runs on both the 800 & 1900 CDMA bands for Verizon and GSM 850, 900, 1800, and 1900 for overseas. Your worldwide tour will be more enjoyable with the BlackBerry Tour, especially since you got it free.

The BlackBerry Curve has been so popular that it is available on most cellular networks. That includes AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon and NEXTEL. There are various models, so check out the details to make sure you get the features you want in a Curve phone. Some have WiFi and/or 3G for fast downloads. Color choices include the classic black, graphite gray, violet/purple, red, white, titanium and fuchsia.

The BlackBerry Storm2 is available free on the Verizon Wireless network. It has a brilliant 3.25 inch display, WiFi, 3G in 150 countries, a full HTML Web browser and a 3.2 Megapixel digital camera. Yes, that’s right. It’s free while you can get it.

Are you a bold person? By that I mean a fan of the BlackBerry Bold. It’s another free BlackBerry model for the AT&T wireless network. You’ll get free access to more than 20,000 AT&T WiFi hotspots nationwide with this very smartphone. It also features international connectivity for data in 185 countries and voice roaming in over 215 countries.

Which BlackBerry you pick is a personal matter. What’s important is that you get your choice at the best deal... preferably free of charge. That means you need to do your shopping now while the best deals are online. Check out the complete selection of BlackBerry phone models right now and get free shipping along with your free phone.

Cash In Old Gadgets To Buy New Gadgets

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are almost upon us. Just look at all the new smartphones and other electronic gadgets that are going on sale, if they aren’t already. Exciting, isn’t it? Yet we know that times are uncertain and that we should really think about how we are going to pay for those shiny new things. Here’s an idea: Get your old stuff to pay for your new stuff!

Sounds a bit fanciful, but it can work. How? It’s because we all collect... make that hoard... electronics and photography gear of all types. Never mind that we aren’t using this gear anymore. We just have it around. It’s too good to throw away and too much hassle to sell, so there it sits. What we don’t consider is that there is a veritable savings account worth of value in all that unused equipment. There’s your cash source to buy the new, new gadgets this holiday season. Now, if there was only a way to tap it.

You’re in luck! There is a fast and easy way to convert your unwanted gadgets to cash. It’s an online service provided by Gazelle, a leader in recycling high technology gear. What they do is make you an offer based on the current market value of your items. If you elect to sell, you get a free postage paid mailer that you pack up and drop off at the shipper. At the other end, Gazelle will evaluate each item for operation and condition. Once checked out, they send you a check. Now when you get that bill for the new flat screen HDTV or video game, you’ve got the funds to cover it. It’s recycling at its best.

This process actually works all year long, but it’s particularly valuable right now. That’s because we tend to buy big time for ourselves and others through December 24, with the heartburn of credit card bills coming due in January or February. There’s no time to waste.

Start scouring the house and even those desk drawers at work. Look in the bottom drawers, especially. That’s where unused gadgets go to hibernate indefinitely. Get a big bag or box and start filling it with cell phones, video games, laptop computers, movies, MP3 players, digital cameras, PDAs, gaming consoles, GPS devices, camcorders, desktop computers, LCD monitors, calculators, camera lenses, satellite radios, external drives, streaming media, home audio equipment, projectors and Blu-Ray players. I’ll bet you’ve got anywhere between a modest box to half-a-room full.

The next step is to get price offers for each item. Consider it a game that pays. Perhaps you can engage family members or co-workers to help evaluate a massive tech collection, especially if they think they might benefit from the proceeds. Find your item through a search on the Gazelle site. Find the exact model you have and then check the radio buttons for functionality, condition and available accessories. Click the “Calculate” button and you’ll see how much they’ll pay you. I just tried a Nikon camera lens and saw I could sell it for $90. If you think that price is fair and want to cash-in, click the orange “Add to Box” button to lock in the offer. Then move on to the next item.

Procrastination is not to your advantage. Technology, like milk and most everything else, loses value over time. Chances are that you’ll get a better offer today than you will in a week or a month from now as your unused gear just gets more and more obsolete. Word to the wise!

Once you have evaluated your collection and see the now substantial total offer, all you need is that pre-paid shipping box. You get that by clicking on the “Checkout” button. When your container arrives, pack each item carefully using recycled newspaper or other soft packing material and sent it in. Congratulations, the hard work is done! Now it’s just a matter of waiting for the moola.

Can it get any easier? Not unless someone came over, ransacked your place while you watched TV, and peeled off a roll of bills on their way out. This is the next best thing. It takes minimal effort compared to running ads, dealing with people at the door or dragging everything through the auction process. When you’re done, you have cash in hand, the satisfaction of recycling things you don’t need anymore, plus all that extra shelf and drawer space you’ll need for your new acquisitions.

Are you motivated to start the process? Gather your gear and get recycling offers for your gadgets now. Those big sales are about to start!

It’s Free Phones Time For The Holidays

We’re right on the cusp of the official start to the holiday season, with a mad dash through the stores beginning the day after Thanksgiving. Before you get caught up in the hoopla and wind up spending a bundle on smartphones you fall in love with, why not take a breath and see if you can get those same phones for free?

How do you do that? What you need is a specialized search engine. It’s designed to find only those cell phones that are free to you when you order them with new service. You’ll find that search engine at Cell Phone Plan Finder.



Are there really more than a few obsolete phone models being given away? Hey, you be the judge. At this writing I count 23 wireless phones of all makes and models available at no charge. The majority of these are smartphones and the rest are current technology cell phones. Let’s take a look at these offerings.

The first two on the list are the BlackBerry Curve and BlackBerry Bold for AT&T. If you like that carrier, you can also get the Motorola BACKFLIP with MOTOBLUR, the Samsung Eternity II, The Samsung Strive in black and purple, and the Samsung Rugby II, to name a few.

If Verizon is more your choice, you’ll be able to pick up the BlackBerry Storm2, BlackBerry Tour, LG Ally, Motorola DEVOUR and Verizon Wireless Salute.

How about T-Mobile? Yes, you can get the Motorola Cliq XT with MOTOBLUR, the Nokia 2720 or Samsung T249, all for free.

Sprint has the Samsung M240 in silver or the Samsung M360 as their free offering.

Oh, you didn’t see the “FREE” sign on these phones when you took your whirlwind tour of the cell phone and big box stores? That’s because you have to know where to shop to get the really good deals. I’d suggest that you take few minutes right now to check out the free cell phones available at Cell Phone Plan Finder.

Is that all the phones that are available at a huge discount? No, just the free ones. There are dozens more available at deep discounts to their retail prices and even the special offers you find in the newspaper. Why not check out the phone available for your favorite carrier or browse the complete selection at Cell Phone Plan Finder.

MegaPath’s Black Friday Strategy

Black Friday will soon be upon us. This is the day after Thanksgiving that marks the traditional start to the Christmas shopping season. It’s a day that retailers brace for and depend on. For as Black Friday goes, so goes the profitability of the year.

The name Black Friday is generally attributed to the accounting practice of using red ink to show losses and black ink to show profits. Many retailers struggle all year long just to pay the bills and keep the lights on. Black Friday represents, at least symbolically, the change of the company’s fortunes from red ink to black ink. That’s how important the holiday shopping season is every year. It can be the difference between profit and loss, survival of the business or bankruptcy.

Since Black Friday and its online equivalent called Cyber Monday (The Monday after Black Friday) kickoff the most stressful and highest sales volume month of the year, it behooves retail businesses to have robust processes in place ahead of time. That includes the ability to process credit card transactions rapidly and securely. Lose your connection to the credit card processing companies, even for an hour, and you risk a stampede of irate customers out your front door and directly to your competitor. It’s even worse online. If your site is down or slow or you can’t accept credit card payments, your competitors are just a click away.

With this in mind, MegaPath is asking retailers, “Are You Prepared For Black Friday?” Even with predictions that consumers will be spending slightly less this year than last, there will still be a torrent of sales activity this shopping season. In fact, it might be argued that with less spending each customer becomes more valuable. Anything you can do to give that customer a pleasant shopping experience will work to your advantage.

MegaPath is a major competitive telecommunications carrier and leader in managed IP services. They serve the retail sector with high speed network connections specifically designed to support secure payment transactions. They call their service a “Payment Processor Extranet.” As the name implies, this is a specialized form of connectivity unlike simple Internet broadband. MegaPath’s Payment Processor Extranet connects to your retail site-to-site MPLS VPN service to securely carry credit card and other payment information from your point of sale locations to credit, debit gift and private label card payment and check payment processors. You choose which processors you work with and can and or change them at any time. MegaPath provides a fully redundant proactively monitored communications network to the processors to ensure that your transactions will get through.

For gas stations, convenience stores and other retailers not connected in a MPLS network, MegaPath offers “StoreConnect,” an IPSec encrypted service that works over a wide variety of broadband connections including DSL, cable, wireless and T1 lines. Like the Payment Processor Extranet, this service gives smaller retailers access to the leading payment processors for fast, secure and reliable transactions.

One of the most important processes involved in payment transactions is PCI or Payment Card Industry security. This standard involves a firewalled secure network protected by encryption and strong access control. MegaPath’s retail solutions are designed from the ground up to be PCI compliant.

So, what’s it going to be this year? Will you depend on slow dial-up access from your POS terminals that will likely keep your customers waiting and irritated as they stand in line? Or will you make the transaction process as transparent to your customers as possible with fast and reliable broadband connectivity? If you choose to make your transactions fast, efficient, reliable and secure, there’s no time to waste. Get more information about MegaPath and other retail connectivity solutions and be ready to make the most from the Black Friday weekend and the entire holiday shopping season.