Published June 16th, 2008
in Money Saving Tips.
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$399 - $199 = -$160
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This is a perfect example of how marketing works magics with numbers. You probably heard that Apple is releasing a new version of their popular phone. The support for 3G and built in GPS are the major upgrades. The cool part is that the phone will cost you $200 less, if you trust the PR nerds from Apple.
Don’t get fooled by this marketing trick. If you calculate the true cost to own of 3G and 2G iPhone, you will find that the “cheaper” new version will end up being $160 more expensive over the period of 2 year contract, now mandatory with the phone purchase. This of course doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy one. 
Source: iPhone 3G’s True Price Compared at Gizmodo (via Digg)
Published May 30th, 2008
in Money Saving Tips.
Amit Agarwal at Digital Inspiration shares a very simple hack that allows you to read a few popular magazines for free in digital format. The titles include Popular Mechanics, US News, Car and Driver, Macworld, Readers Digest, Penthouse, Playboy and a few more names.
The hack is based on the fact that Zinio Labs allows iPhone owners to browse these magazines for free from their phones. The ordinary folks without iPhone can enjoy the same privilege if they convince Zinio they are using the phone. How is that possible? In fact pretty simple. Switch the browser user agent settings and make Zinio web server think you are running a different browser brand/version than it really is, a trick very similar to referrer spoofing used for free access to the WSJ.
Follow the steps below to get the user agent configured, then open zinio.com/iphone in your browser and enjoy your free magazines!
Using Safari browser
Since all Apple developers are geeks they built in this functionality right into the web browser. Here are the steps you need to follow if you want to change the user agent in Safari:
- Go to Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced and check the option that says “Show Develop menu in menu bar.”
- Open the “Develop” option in the browser menu bar and choose “Mobile Safari 1.1.3 - iPhone” as the user agent.
Using Firefox configuration
Firefox have hidden the user agent behind advanced configuration settings. Here are the steps:
- Type “about:config” in the browser URL and click enter
- Right mouse click on the list and select New -> String in the menu
- Enter “general.useragent.override” for the preference name and “Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3″ for the value
Reset the property after you are done reading (this setting is global and will affect other websites).
Using Firefox plugin
A little bit more user friendly solution involves this plugin. After you install it in your browser, open the plugin options and define a custom user agent with these settings:
- Description: iPhone
- User Agent: Mobile Safari 1.1.3 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en)
- App Name: AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko)
- App Version: Version/3.0
- Platform: Mobile/1A542a Safari/419.3
Switch to this user agent whenever you want to read the magazines.
Using Internet Explorer
Changing user agent string in Internet Explorer requires fiddling with Windows registry which I generally don’t recommend. If you feel challenged, this MSDN article has all the details on how this can be done.
Source: How to Read Popular Magazines on your Desktop for Free at Digital Inspiration
Published May 24th, 2008
in Money Saving Tips.
Did you know that if you go to Amazon’s Todays Deals page, login to your account, and scroll down to the section titled “Yan’s Quick Picks” (that of course would be your name) the merchandise offered there is priced at a 5% discount off the ongoing sale price?
Amazon builds this list daily based on your past activity. Things you have purchased in the past are used as the basis when this list is compiled. You can see what kind of stuff gets there by visiting the “recommendations” page (click on the “recommendations” link on the top of the Amazon home page when you are logged in).
The neat thing about the Quick Picks is that they can be easily influenced by simply claiming an ownership of a similar item to the one you want to buy. For example if I wanted Sony PSP I would go to the PSP 2GB Memory Stick product page, scrolled down to “Rate This Item” and clicked on “I own it” check box. If after doing so you go to the “recommendations” page you will notice quite a few PSP related products including this PSP 2000 Console.
Some of these items will be making their way to your Quick Picks page the next day and going forward. To help Amazon decide what to add there you may want to remove the items you don’t need by marking them as “Not Interested”. The first time around this procedure took me a while since Amazon logged quite a bit of my past activity. You can speed things us by using the “Fix this” link which tunes up the criteria used for the recommendations.
I followed the steps above and surely enough the Sony PSP showed up the next day in my Quick Picks. The price was $161.49 which is 5% or $8.50 off the on going sale price ($169.99). Is 8 bucks worth a day wait for you? It is for me and I wish I knew about this trick before I bough my Sony camcorder this past holiday season. 5% on a pricey item like that comes to pretty good savings.
There are a few things that you need to remember before you try this out. You are required to make at least one purchase at Amazon before you start seeing anything in your Quick Picks list. Only one Quick Pick can be redeemed per day. Once you add the item to your shopping cart you have 60 minutes to complete the checkout process before the savings expire. You can find other restriction at this page but these above are the most important ones.
Published May 10th, 2008
in Money Saving Tips.
I have long speculated the idea of riding a bicycle to work. Not only it saves money, it is also an excellent way to force yourself to exercise in the morning. I can’t stand the boredom of a treadmill and morning ride to work looks like an appealing alternative.
Some of my friends do use bikes but I have not done so for several reasons. One of them is the distance. My office is around 14 miles from my house which is a little too far for a bike ride. At some point I considered driving half way, dropping the car, and then riding the second half, but that never worked out. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving my car on a shopping parking lot, and there was no other alternatives.
I recently stumbled upon this inexpensive hybrid electric bike which seem to address some of my concerns. It looks like a regular bike but has a 450Watt rear rack mounted electric motor powered by a rechargeable battery which gives it a boost as you ride. The battery can be detached so you can charge it in the office, or you can get a spare one to swap batteries between home and work.
The guys at TreeHugger have recently reviewed this model and the only significant complain was the weight of the lead-acid battery (yeah, it is an entry level bike) and the fact that it will only last a year (this fact was mentioned in the manual).
If you use this bike for a commute that is 20 miles or less, you could definitely arrive at the office without breaking a sweat. I was pleased by the power of the motor. It was easy to achieve speeds of 25 mph while pedaling lightly.
I hope at this speed I can get to work in about half an hour and still not need a shower to recover from the ride. What do you think, should I get it? Also, if you have a “sit whole day at the desk” kind of work like myself, tell me how you manage to balance it with exercise and stay fit?
Published April 28th, 2008
in Money Saving Tips.
Update 10/26: This offer has expired and the card is no longer available
As gas prices approach $4 per gallon in our area I am scrambling looking for for new ways to save at the pump. Replacing my Honda Accord with something more fuel efficient is not yet an option and hypermiling while sounds interesting is not very practical taking into account my hectic lifestyle. So what other options do I have?
Cash rewards credit cards can offer an easy solution. I have used the Discover Gas Card for a couple of years collecting 5% with each filled gas tank until Discover limited the amount of gas purchases they reward each year to $1200. My current strategy is to put all my gas expenses on the Chase Freedom Plus which pays 3% (or more if you collect $200 in rewards before you redeem). Lately however my friend tipped my to this interesting promotion from BP which will allow me to triple my gas savings for the next 60 days.
As long as you are comfortable with BP as your gas supplier, you have an option to save 10% on gas for the next 60 days and 5% thereafter if you use BP Visa card at the pump. In addition the card offers 4% on travel and dining and 2% on everything else during the promotional period. The percentages are halved after that. The cash rewards are unlimited and can be redeemed in $25 amounts as BP Gas cards, a checks, or you can send them to an environmental charity.
This is so far the best gas rewards offer I am able to find. Alternatively, Chase PerfectCard looks pretty attractive. It doesn’t limit you to the gas from any single provider but as the price for the convenience you only get 6% for 90 days and 3% thereafter.
How do you save on gas? Do you use any cash rewards credit cards? Which one is your favorite? Please share your tips.
