Friedbeef’s Tech

Yes, Christmas will be upon us soon. You can almost feel the spirit of giving, caring and sharing in the air as the day draws near. For many of us, it would also be the time to start buying lovely gifts for our friends and loved ones, and with the amount of online shopping and product sites out there, you might be saying to yourself - “where do I even begin”?

Here are a few tips to start you off:

Tip # 1: Read aggregated product reviews with Wize.com

For me, Wize.com is right up there as one of the best online resources for product reviews. It’s strength comes from it’s ability to aggregate user and expert reviews from all the major review sites such as CNet, PC World into a single location, making it a true one stop center for comprehensive reviews of any gift you are scoping out.

Tip #2: Find a gift which looks the same, but cheaper - with Like.com

From the makers of Riya, the famous photo storage site with face recognition, comes Like.com, a truly amazing search engine which features product recognition from photos.

Here’s a quick run down of key features.

• The ability to search by image as well as text. Upload an image of something you like, and Like.com will search it’s database for a product that looks like your image. With that you can
  • Find color and design variants of the item you desire;
  • Find clothing, shoes and accessories similar to those worn by your favorite celebrities
  • Find similar looking items within your price range

Try Like.com, and both your wallet and your girlfriend will love you.

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Video audio files come in so many formats nowadays that I’ve literally lost count. MP3, AVI, WMV, OGG, MP4, 3GP - the list goes on and on. While most players support the bulk of file formats, there will always be the odd file which isn’t compatible. For example, Microsoft Zune’s don’t play OGG music files and Ipods don’t play WMV files.

Here’s how you get around this by converting your files into something your player can digest.

1. Zamzar Online File Conversion

Zamar is an online facility where you upload your input file, let Zamzar convert it, then download it in your desired format.

What I liked about Zamzar was it’s batch processing capabilities where you could add multiple files to a queue and Zamzar would process them all (100mb limit). Going beyond traditional media conversion, It also translates office documents, for example handling conversions such as Excel to CSV, and Word Documents to PDF formats.

2. Media - Convert Online File Conversion

Media Convert is a a lot like Zamzar (supporting media and office documents) except it does not support batch file processing. It does however, allow a conversion of a file which is already online. Just enter the URL, and Media-Convert will download the file, convert it, and offer it up to you in your desired format.

Remember the free music sources I listed here? Now you can grab them in whatever file format you want.

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In our last post we covered tips concerning the picking and purchasing of domain names for speculative purposes. In this post, we will cover the process of reselling the domains for a profit.

Let me state once again that domain speculation is one of those online money making activities you can try for fun, but the risk is high, and success rate is relatively low, so don’t expect to quit your day job anytime soon.

6. Decide on a price

Just like most other online sales - there is no real market price for your domains. Everything runs on the most basic ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ premise. Of course if you feel your domain names are sought after, you can hold out for better prices.

To help you decide on a price, you can use:

• Past sales - Take a look what people are selling their domains for.
• Free Appraisals - Take a free appraisal. This may not be terribly reliable, but would at least give you a rough indication of what to expect. Try Leapfish as an example.
• Professional Appraisals - Some sites offer professional consultation, which is more expensive, but important when dealing with big money names. Try Sedo for professional help.

7. Park or Develop

What do you do with the site while waiting for a buyer? You can either put some content up, or simply park it. Parking your domain will create an instant page of advertising listing where are generated based on the domain name. For example, a shampoo related domain name would have shampoo ads on it.

Domain Parking accomplishes 2 things. It lets you:

1. Earn some minor income on the side while waiting to resell your name
2. Gauge whether you should even sell it in the first place! Some names are popular enough that they pay for themselves via advertising (when people click on the ads).

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