The Game O Love

I love contests. Some of you may know about Overstock.com and some of you may never have heard of it. Overstock can be a great place to find some nice deals on clothes, electronics, furniture, books and more. I even found some boots on there I wouldn’t mind having that I couldn’t find anywhere else.

With Valentine’s Day coming up, now is the time to start thinking about what you will be getting for that special someone. If I was to pick something, it would probably be a large screen TV. Not really sure which one, that’s a hard choice. Of course that may require a better TV stand than the one we have.

Overstock.com’s “Game O Love” contest could win you a gift for your boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, or wife. This Game O Love contest begins tomorrow on January 25 and lasts until February 11, 2008. Tell your sweetheart to register, too!

Go check out this contest and try to win gifts for that special someone! I’m going to try win! And, even if you don’t win, it doesn’t hurt to keep your eye out for some deals on Overstock to save money on these holidays that force us to go out and buy something for loved ones!

Choose the Right Web Host for You

Finding out which provider is better for what you want can be hard until you’ve done some research. That can be very time consuming, right? I know I spent a lot of time thinking about switching from GoDaddy to another provider and wasn’t sure if I wanted to go with HostRocket because I didn’t really have issues with GoDaddy, just that I wanted more.

I just found out about Web Hosting Choice, which seems to help with your web hosting choice. I did notice that they recommend Host Gator, throughout the site. Makes me feel like it’s an advertisement, but I don’t know if it really is.

I love the Quick Web Host Search box on the front page. Enter in the maximum monthly cost, maximum setup fee, minimum disk space and bandwidth that you are looking for. Click Search for Hosts and browse the results of the available web hosting providers.

Most of my searches resulted in mostly just Host Gator hosting plans. I’m sure it’s because they have a variety of plans at affordable prices.

The site also has a great Learning Center to help you learn what you need to know about web hosting. For example, what is PHP or Perl? There is also a page that talks about scams that you may run into when looking for a web host. One of the scams is about providers offering unlimited bandwidth/space. My provider actually does offer me unlimited bandwidth (which, yes, I’m sure there is a limit at some point, but it doesn’t mean it’s a scam, in my opinion).

I like that it lets me select specific features that I may be looking for, example: ASP. Or select a specific web hosting provider and see the plans each one offers. Warning: the directory of providers is very long! This must have taken Web Hosting Choice a long time to build.

If I need to look for another web hosting provider, I will most likely check out Web Hosting Choice in the future, because it could save a lot of time! I only wish I knew about it when I was looking earlier last year.

Check them out if you’re looking for a new place to host your website. Hopefully it will help you in your search.

Sponsored by Web Hosting Choice

Portable DVD Players on Wize

In my opinion, a portable DVD player is one of those products you need to do research on before actually making a final purchase. They can be cheap or they can be expensive. It’s hard to know if one will be worth the purchase unless you actually use one and know from experience if it is exactly what you’re looking for or just going to be returned in a few days.

We have one that was purchased before we went to Virginia Beach for vacation. It was to keep our almost four-year-old son entertained on such a long trip. Not a very good experience. He kept pushing the buttons, popping out the disc. It was hard enough to reach behind and try to figure out which button was the correct button to play a video instead of going through some menu.

I think if we had seen reviews from other people who have had experience with different brands, we may have a different portable DVD player.

Wize has a WizeRank system that shows you a nice big rank for each product that people have left reviews for. It takes user reviews and expert reviews and creates a WizeRank to help you decide if it will be a good purchase. Of course it also depends on what you’re looking for.

For portable DVD players though, it looks like a Toshiba would be a good buy as it has a WizeRank of 91, which isn’t surprising as Toshiba makes really good products.  It also shows that users love it.

Compared to other websites that give you reviews of products, Wize shows you one score that is calculated to help you find a product with better reviews. A good way to find out which product you shouldn’t buy as well, if you look for the lowest WizeRank.

Compared to Amazon’s reviews, Wize is a lot easier to tell which product is a better choice.

Bid and Donate to Charity

I don’t know about anyone else, but it’s fun bidding on auctions. Usually you get the item for cheaper than you would at a store. At least I try to, otherwise I might as well buy it at the regular price from a store.

I just learned about Bidaroo.com today. It’s a new charity auction site where everything is 80-90% below retail.  That sounds like a great deal! And, at least 25% of net proceeds are donated to charity. That’s very generous.

My favorite part is that shipping is free! I always hate buying something online, not even considering the cost of shipping until it’s calculated at the end and I realize I’m spending more than I want to.

I haven’t bid on anything yet, because my shopping is usually done right after Christmas. But, once some birthdays come around, I’ll have to see what is available for bidding on. The $2,000 Best Buy Gift Card at Bidaroo’s price of $200 is very tempting though.

Check them out and see what you think and then leave a comment here. Anyone else heard of Bidaroo or have experience bidding and/or winning an item there?

Sponsored by Bidaroo

A Wii for Christmas

We got a Wii for Christmas before they started being available on Amazon for the original prices than what’s available on eBay. Oh well, all that matters is that we have one!

Besides being fun, we wanted one so we could get our almost four-year-old off the Xbox 360. He just likes moving things around on the screen and playing like we do, but there really aren’t many kid friendly games for the Xbox. But, if he’s going to play any games, it’s going to be ones that keep him active, such as the Sports on the Wii. He’s very good at the boxing!  Instead of learning what buttons to push, he only needs to move the controllers.

I’m still getting used to not using many buttons to play, but it’s fun. I can’t wait to get the old Mario games and the classic controller so I can play my favorite games again.

I like that you can set a PIN for some things on the Wii, but what about for just about everything? That’s another reason we wanted him to stop messing with the Xbox, because he’d go in and change all the settings. Unfortunately he can easily delete the Miis on the Wii if he wants to.

I love the Wii because it has Wifi built-in. Since I have the Wifi Max Dongle hooked up to my computer for my Nintendo DS, it also works with anything else that needs a wireless Internet connection, such as the Wii. We did run into a problem when downloading the updates though. Changing the Dongle’s settings to channel 11 sped up the downloading.  I think channel 1 is also recommended.

For anyone wondering about the graphics on the Wii: it is not noticeable. You have too much fun playing to notice anything. I also don’t really care about graphics when playing games though. Having fun is what matters.

Things I like:

• Small (Can be stored anywhere.)
• Easy to use (Doesn’t have a lot of features like the Xbox 360 to get lost in.)
• Better parental control than Xbox 360 (Four-year-old is smart enough to go into someone else’s profile to get out of the parental control restrictions.)

Things I don’t like:

• Sensor bar (Four-year-old likes to move it.)
• Long download wait time (For updates, news, shop, etc.)
• Nunchuk (I just don’t like it.)
• Exiting the game before ejecting the disc. (Other systems do not require this. The Wii asks you to insert the disc.)
• No profiles (I like having profiles so I know what saved games are mine and no one else can delete them.)

If you have a family with kids, the Wii really is the best video game system to have.