Go browsing for bargains
The online retail industry has deflated a bit, but there still are plenty of rebates, discount codes and coupons out there. To help you find them, a crop of Web sites has sprung up.
Of the ones we've tried, simply designed sites like Almost Shoplifting (www.almostshoplifting.com) and 1,000 Free Coupons (www.1000freecoupons.com) do this best, listing discounts and coupons right on their home pages. Coupon Paradise (www.couponparadise.com) takes the concept a step further, letting you click through to individual sites to get discounts automatically.
Special-interest sites (for instance, www.boredmom.com/coupons.html) focus it more narrowly, spotlighting deals on particular categories.
Bringing back the crank call
Motorola Inc.'s FreeCharge is an innovation the company hopes will lend a new meaning to the term "crank call."
In a throwback to the days of the hand-cranked telephone, Motorola's new windup charger for cell phones, above, will provide power for four to five minutes of talk with about 45 seconds of cranking. It will cost about $65 when it hits retailers in March.
Scanner offers quality, ease
While many of us can get a solid scan of a color slide or negative strip from our flatbed scanners, Pacific Image Electronics has been offering much better standalone negative and slide scanners for less than other manufacturers.
Its latest entry, the PF1800 AFL, is easier to use than previous models. The $299 unit works with computers running Mac OS 8.6 or higher or Windows 98 or higher.
For most photo enthusiasts, the 1,800 dots-per-inch scanning resolution is more than enough to digitize transparencies for presentation on the Web or for storage.
Caller ID gets a voice
There's hope for those of us who aren't always by the phone but want to know who's calling when it rings.
Panasonic's new Cordless Answering System KX-TG268ON features a 2.4 Ghz cordless handset, a digital answering machine, a crystal clear speakerphone and an intercom/pager (which allows you to hail whomever absconded with the handset).
With every incoming call, the unit's robotic text-to-speech voice announces the caller's name as listed in the phone directory, last name first.
The $250 phone supports Call Waiting Caller ID as well, so you can decide whether it's worth ditching your current talking partner for a new incoming call.
The phone collects a list of up to 50 callers, remembering their numbers and the time they called.
Its directory stores an additional 90 entries and you can even program the phone to ring with a distinctive tone for VIPs of your choosing.
Both the base unit and handset have LCD displays and speakerphones, with microphones good enough to pick up voices clearly from across a room.
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