Verizon Wireless - Transfer your contact list to your new phone for FREE!

I just got a new Motorola KRZR K1m phone. I wanted to transfer all of my contacts on my old phone (Chocolate) to my new KRZR. What's the cheapest and easiest way? I found a way that is free and you dont need any cables. At a Verizon Wireless store, they will charge you $10.

1. Go to verizonwireless.com and sign up for a my account.
   
   
2. On your existing phone, follow the 4 steps in the image above. It will prompt you to accept a $1.99 monthly charge. Go ahead and accept it, because if you created a Verizon Wireless my account (step 1), they will NOT charge you. I know its scary to accept it, but just check your monthly statement to make sure they are not charging you. That's it. So from now on, your contacts will be backed up daily.
   
   
3. On your new phone, follow the same 4 steps (in the above picture) and it will prompt you to download your backed up contacts.

Check out https://www.getbackupnow.com/ for more details.

My 3 Most Favorite Cars

Can you guess what they are?

A)



B)



C)

Amazon Unbox on Tivo

Amazon Unbox is a cool and easy way to download movies directly to your Tivo. You must have a Tivo connected to your home network. If your Tivo is only connected using a phone line then this wont work. You need it connected to your home network, so that it can download the movie from the internet.

A couple of months ago, when Amazon launched this service for Tivo, they offered a free $15 credit which I took full advantage of. All I had to do was to register my Tivo with Amazon and I was all set. 5-10 minutes after you purchase a movie rental, I would see a blue light on my Tivo signifying that it was downloading

Pros:

• Flexible - You can either go online to rent or use your Tivo to rent. You can also keep your movie on your Tivo for 30 days after you rent it just as long as you dont start playing it. If you start playing the movie, it will automatically expire in 24 hours.
• Easy - You dont need to stick a dvd into your dvd player. You just play the movie straight from your Now Playing list in Tivo. I feel right at home using my Tivo to watch movies.
• Instant - No need to wait a couple of days for my DVD rental to arrive in the mail. I can watch a movie I rented on the same day.
• Video Quality - Video quality is really good. I cant tell the difference between the unbox video vs. a DVD.
• Specials - Sometimes they'll have rentals for only 99 cents. I've rented 3 movies already and still have $9 left out of my $15 credit.

Cons:

• Download - The download takes a couple of hours. So I would recommend either downloading the night before or in the morning. You cannot play the movie until the entire movie has downloaded.
• No Surround Sound - Though sound quality is still good.
• Selection - The selection is not that great. I found myself clicking "next" many times to find something to rent. They dont have too many new releases.
• New Releases - Newly released movies will have a rental price of $14.99 instead of the regular $3.99

Overall, I'm really impressed with the service. Both Amazon and Tivo did a great job integrating their services as well as keeping inline with making the rental process smooth and easy as both companies are known for. I think $3.99 per rental is a little too steep for me so Im not sure if I will continue to rent after my $15 credit is used up. If they lower their prices to $2.99, I'd probably use it once in a while. If they lower it to $1.99, I'd probably use it all the time without a doubt.

All the Deals You Ever Wanted on One Page

Ever wonder where I find all of my deals and bargains on the internet? We'll look no further. I created a coldfusion page which pulls in all the current deals from my favorite bargain sites (slickdeals.net, stealdeals.net, techbargains.com, fatwallet.com). Here was my thought process in the creation of this page.

1. Single Page - I visited these multiple bargain sites not daily, but hourly because I was afraid of missing a good deal. These sites are updated quite frequently. So I thought to myself, wouldnt it be cool if I could just view all the deals on one single page?
   
   
2. Layout - Since I was trying to fit as many deals as possible on the page and to try to minimize scrolling, I felt that a 3 column layout would be perfect. 2 columns would result in a lot of downward scrolling and 4 columns would be too squishy.



3. Content - Again, to save space I only included the title of the deal. A lot of the bargain sites may include pictures and descriptions, but that just meant a lot more scrolling and page navigation. I just want to see the headline which is descriptive enough. If I want more details, then I would click on it.



4. Readability - This is probably the most important aspect of the site. Scanning through a page with just text is efficient but it has to be easy on the eyes. I compared all the web friendly Font families and just picked the one that seemed easiest to read. I chose the smallest font size I could get away with which was 11. I chose dark text over a light background which was the overall consensus that this combination was the best for readability. Someone even did a study whereby they found that green text over a yellow background was the overall best combination to use in terms of readability. But I didnt choose those colors because it looks ugly.



5. Date - Since these sites get updated frequently, I would visit this page multiple times per day. Therefore, I needed a way to let me know which deals are today's deals. I needed to have a cutoff point where I could distinguish between today's deals vs. past deals, so that when the next day comes, I can just scan today's deals since I already scanned yesterday's deals. Confusing? Dont worry, you'll know exactly what Im talking about once I get you hooked on this page. Anyways, instead of adding a date next to each item, I just bolded the deals that have today's date. Although currently, stealdeals does not have this feature because it does not have date in their current feed. I emailed them and they said they will put that on their to do list. Also, stealdeals feeds are not automatically generated. therefore, the feed might not be as up to date as their website.

Ever since I created the page, I never visit the actual sites anymore. I love it because its so efficient. So what are you waiting for? Check out the deals! *Warning...can cause severe addiction.