deals

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

The same people who brought you the Biitles have reduced prices on some of their other inside-joke T-shirts for the technocrat.

Some of NerdyShirts.com's normally $20 shirts are on sale for $5 and $6, making it a $15 to $14 deal.

I guess you can never have enough hexadecimal code shirts, right?

Still, the Digg shirt is pretty cool.

What: Nerdy T-shirts for $5 How much: $5 Shipping: Starts at $5.75 depending on method Where: Nerdyshirts.com When: Through unknown date

On our weekly Real Deal podcast today, Tom and I covered online photo sharing. It's not so much a comparison of the dozens of good photo sites we know of, but rather an overview of the issues for people confused about the whole space. Topics covered: Various services. How to pick a site. Privacy and copyrights. Online editing. And listener questions.

See also our Newbie's Guide to Flickr.

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

Tom and I discussed blogging ethics on our weekly podcast today. You can watch our studio session (actually, just me) in the viewer below. Or, listen in to the professionally-recorded audio:

… Read more