Walmart & Best Buy Holiday sales feature price drops on iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S!

So, this Friday is Friday the 13th.

The Annual Apple ‘Back To School’ Promotion

Something for the learners & learned amongst us!

Apple have announced that to celebrate that magical time of year- the beginning of the school year- their annual Back To School promotion will be starting as soon as tomorrow.

The promotion offers students who purchase a Mac a $100 iTunes/App store gift voucher, and for those students who purchase an iPad or an iPhone, they will be offered a $50 gift voucher.

Sweet deal!

What’s sweeter? This promotion is added on top of the usual student discount of $200 off a new Mac.

To be eligible you must be a college student, parents buying for college students, teachers (including homeschool), school administrators & Staff.

Happy learning guys. Also, we apologize for calling the beginning of the school year magical.

Image courtesy of top10films.co.uk

AT&T discontinuing HTC First!?

The Facebook phone, otherwise known as the HTC First, is not doing so well, guys. First released just over a month ago on April 12th, the phone is the first Android device to have Facebook’s interface- Facebook Home- preloaded.

The phone, once in critic’s and customer’s hands, was given overall generally positive reviews, especially for a low-end phone. The downsides were also duly noted by all, in particular a less than stellar camera with limited functionality, and the fact that your phone and therefore life was now taken over by Facebook. The phone actually encourages 25% more time on Facebook. eek.

Now, the end seems just a little nigh for the HTC First. On May 13th AT&T started selling the phone at a discount. Instead of paying $99 for the phone on a two year contract- now it’s just $0.99. If you wanted to pay for the phone off contract, you’re looking at a $100 price cut from $450 to $350. Take that anyone who bought the phone on the 12th!

The price cut is apparently due to poor sales, with less than 15,000 phones being sold since the phone’s launch and less than 1 million people downloading the Facebook Home interface for their Android phones.

Although this has yet to be confirmed, according to the guys at website BGR.com (who have secret AT&T sources, d’uh), AT&T has made the decision to discontinue the phone altogether, selling off as many units as they can before sending any unsold inventory back to HTC.

I’m fighting back tears, here.

But, it’s ok guys, really it is. It’s not the end of the line for Facebook Home! The Android interface is still available to download, and both the App and the joint App + device marriage will, after a bit of tweaking, be back. And better, maybe. And available on iOS at… well… some point. If we want it.

Until then, you can just  click on that little blue F whenever you want to, and spend that 25% of your time like, dancing instead. Yay!

Image courtesy of BGR.com

Stop Wasting Money Every Month (on Your Cell Phone Bill)!

Something tells me you are wasting money every month.  Not a lot, but I bet after you read this you could save anywhere from $5 to $20 a month on your cell phone bill.

It turns out most people are eligible for a discount with their mobile phone service provider, and they don’t even know it.  For example, any student from the University of California is entitled to a 10% discount with AT&T and possibly even more with the other carriers!  A simple 10% discount is very easy to find, and sometimes you can get a discount of up to 25%!  It all depends on your email address.  Do you have an edu email address?  Maybe you just started working at a new company and you have an email address with them?

It is pain-free and very easy to check for and add a discount to your service plan.  You can do it in about 5 minutes.  You don’t need to visit a store or even make any calls.  All that you need to do is check your email address for the discount and then login to your wireless account.

For AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile, the process is amazingly simple.  All you need to do is go to their website and type in your email address (the one with your school, employer, or other organization).  If your email address doesn’t provide you with a discount, look to see if you have another email you could use.  For example, if you used your employer and there was no discount, try using your school, or other organization.

Here are the links to check your discounts (some of them tell you the discount percentage right away, while others require you to login to your account or pretend to start a new account first).  Start saving money today!

AT&T Wireless : https://www.wireless.att.com/business/authenticate/

Verizon Wireless : http://www.verizonwireless.com/employee-discounts-email-authentication.shtml

Sprint: http://sprint.p.delivery.net/m/p/nxt/dev/wdyw.asp

T-Mobile : https://my.t-mobile.com:443/Corporate/Default.aspx