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Last Chance to Qualify for iPod Giveaway

by Flexo on July 31, 2009

in Giveaways

If you are interested in winning one of two iPods, today is the last day you can qualify. We’re celebrating Consumerism Commentary’s sixth anniversary by hosting a “scavenger hunt.” Four clues have been scattered throughout the website and media throughout the past couple of weeks.

The details for the scavenger hunt are here. If you are interested in having your name included in the random selection for one of the iPods, make sure you send the four clues you find, in the order that makes the most sense, to fourclues at this domain name.

As a further hint, you can find the four clues in the first post about the giveaway, the RSS feed, an episode of the Consumerism Commentary Podcast, and the most recent email newsletter. The last newsletter was sent last Sunday, so if you haven’t joined you might need an extra hint: the clue is the middle five letters of the fourth word in the title of this article about the Cash for Clunkers Program being suspended.

Good luck!

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Anniversary Giveaway: Enter to Win Free iPod If You Find All Four Clues

by Flexo on July 16, 2009

in Administration, Giveaways

Today is the sixth anniversary of Consumerism Commentary! Long-time readers know that this blog was one of the first of its kind to focus on personal finance and money-related topics. Thanks to the readers, we are still going strong. I have learned much about money, especially from visitors and commenters, throughout the past few years. Although I started Consumerism Commentary as a public way to hold myself accountable for my own financial decisions and share articles of interest from around the internet, the website has grown significantly and has a life of its own.

To celebrate Consumerism Commentary’s sixth anniversary (have you read our first posts from July 2003 or browsed the archives?) we are giving away two iPods: one iPod Touch and one iPod Classic. There will be two winners, and each winner has a choice of either model. In order to be considered, we will have an electronic scavenger hunt.

Starting within the next few days, four clues will be hidden around Consumerism Commentary. In order to find the clues, you will need to experience a variety of media related to Consumerism Commentary. Once you find all four clues, email your answer to fourclues at this domain name (consumerismcommentary.com). In order to win you must live in the United States and in a state where such contests are not prohibited. Not everyone who finds all clues will win, however. The names of the two winners will be randomly selected among all the correct entries. Please only submit one entry per person, and if you find any clues, don’t share them.

I imagine that if you play your chances of winning are pretty good, but that ultimately depends on how many entries we receive.

The contest will end on July 31, 2009, but all clues will be available by Sunday, July 19.

I’ll start you off with a hint towards one clue: Fourth sentence, third word, second letter through fifth letter. Good luck! If you want to win, I suggest subscribing to Consumerism Commentary in as many forms possible and listening closely.

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Just Like Apple’s MobileMe, But Free

by Smithee on July 9, 2008

in Software

For the purposes of this article, the term “iPhone” includes “iPod Touch”, and I’m assuming that your operating systems are up to date.

Along with new firmware for existing iPhone owners, and the new iPhone 3G itself, Apple is releasing this week a new service called “MobileMe”, succinctly described as “Exchange for the rest of us.” In short, it automatically syncs your contacts, calendar, e-mail and photos between your home computer and/or work computer and/or iPhone. It stores these items in a 20 GB cloud of data and is smart enough to push updates to you from any of these categories, wherever you are, as long as you have an Internet connection or cell phone signal.

mobilemeIt sounds wonderful. Unfortunately, it costs $99 (US) a year for one person or $149 for a Family Pack. Calendars and contacts don’t take up much hard drive space, but between e-mail attachments and photos, it wouldn’t be that hard to bump up against the 20 GB ceiling, and it’s $49 for another 20 GB (or $99 for another 40 GB). As of this writing, a 500 GB hard drive goes for around $100. I will admit that managed data storage should be more expensive than buying yourself a hard drive, but twelve times as expensive?

I think we should hold off on signing up for MobileMe for a little while, because if the goal is automatic syncing of your contacts, calendar, e-mail and photos, I predict Google and Yahoo! are going to make this possible for free (and probably with “unlimited” data storage) in the near future. Taking each one in turn:

E-mail

If you use GMail (and I believe everybody should, even if your e-mail address is at a different domain), your e-mail is already syncing with GMail on your iPhone. Having it automatically pushed to your phone isn’t happening, yet, but it will be possible for all applications to take advantage of the “cloud computing” scenario that Apple designed for the iPhone. Do you suspect that Google won’t make a GMail app for the iPhone with push e-mail?

Contacts

With the update to OS X 10.5.3, you can already sync your contacts between your iCal (and by extension, the iPhone) and Google. See previous comment about future push scenarios, but for the time being, it would be a weird kind of emergency needed to make a lack of push technology a serious problem in this arena.

Calendar

I actually originate my calendar with Google Calendar, and subscribe to it in iCal, and by extension, my iPhone. See previous comment about future push scenarios, but Google already has a nicely iPhone-formatted version of the Calendar that loads in the Web browser.

Photos

This is probably the first thing that made me second-guess my temptation to subscribe to MobileMe, mainly because I love my Flickr account. It’s got a long history, and all my friends are there, etc. I can already e-mail photos from my iPhone to Flickr using a customized e-mail address, so that could hardly be simpler. Even so, it appears that Flickr has every intention of making their site as friendly as possible for the iPhone.

Now, I’m merely speculating that Google will come out with native iPhone apps that mimic most of the functionality of MobileMe, but look at Google’s track record. They try everything, and succeed at most of them. My plan as described may not be as elegant as a MobileMe account, but I think it’ll be just as easy, and it’ll cost 100% less.

This is only a prediction. Don’t blame me if I’m wrong. But unless you know something I don’t about Google’s plans, it’d still be smart to wait a month or so and see what they have to offer.

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