Priceline and BetterBidding

The Web, and the information it renders accessible, have a near-infinite amount of applications, the greatest of which is facilitating cheapness - er, frugality. With just an Internet connection and a little savvy, your run-of-the-mill cheapskate can grow into the uber-miser (the miser meister?). Today, I am going to give a quick lesson on one of my favorite methods to save a bundle.

I am big fan of traveling. There is not much I would rather do than pack up and go on an impromptu trip with the wife. Unfortunately, one of my least favorite things is paying for said vacation. Enter priceline.com. Priceline has been around since the time of the Stegosaurus, so you have probably heard of it. In addition to more traditional methods of booking hotels, flights, etc., they also have their signature model. Let's take a look at this model with regard to hotels.

In the Priceline model, you select the city you would like to go to, the dates when you want to go, the section of the city you would like to stay in, and the level of hotel (up to 5 stars) that you would like to stay at. Then, you enter the price you would be willing to pay for a room meeting the aforementioned parameters and enter your credit card info. If Priceline accepts your bid, your card is automatically charged and the hotel where you will be staying is revealed. If your bid is not accepted, you have to wait 24 hours to bid again or change your search parameters. This is to prevent you from starting your bid at $1 and incrementing by $1 until you find the sweet spot.

Pretty simple. But, how does one know that he or she is getting the best deal? It KILLS me to think that I got a good deal and to later find out that someone else got a better one - kills me.
OK, so we need some help.

Enter BetterBidding.com. BetterBidding is a simple discussion board where you can search for a city and find see what others were able to bid successfully for hotel rooms. It has three real uses: 1) to attempt to predetermine what the mystery hotel is, 2) to find out what others were able to successfully (and unsuccessfully) bid for a room, and 3) to brag about the deal that you got so that others can attempt to replicate it.

Give it a try. Go to betterbidding.com and search for some city. Check out the posts and you will get a better idea of what I mean.

Now that we have a rough idea of the range of successful bids and the possible hotels we could be dealt, we are in a better position to make a bid on a room. I usually try to adjust for day of week, season, and these days, for the sagging economy.

Recently, I was able to get the Sheraton Centre in downtown Toronto for $50USD/night (usually over $200) and the Hyatt in Buffalo for $40USD/night. Not bad.

In conclusion, I believe that some guy said that "variety is the spice of life." Rubbish. Competition is the essence of life and what better way to compete than to save a bunch of money and get to brag about it all in one fell swoop? I highly recommend that you attempt this method if you're going on a trip and you don't care at which specific hotel you stay. Obviously, this wouldn't be preferable for traveling to a conference where you want to stay at the hotel where the conference is being held.

Good luck, and let me know if you are able to score any good deals!

--Chris

NOTE: If you know of other innovative ways to cheap out, I would love to hear about them - really, please contact me ASAP. I could be wasting money as we speak!

Borrowing CD's

Good morning, everyone. I now fully awake and blogging from the balcony again. I saw an interesting ad on the way to the shore on Saturday. There was a little CD store with a sign offering "CD test-drives." You could, for $4, "borrow" a CD for 15 days and then either purchase it or return it.

Now, here is why this is interesting. I believe physical media to be dead, or at least on its deathbed awaiting its inevitable fate. I hate the idea of having put a physical disc into a media player to listen to music or watch a DVD. I find it to be the definition of primitive. So, what does one do if one runs a business predicated on an antiquated technology? Let people borrow CD's, take them home, and rip them to digital form for less than the cost of buying the album on iTunes.

Sure, this isn't what is explicitly advertised - but I'm pretty sure the intent is painfully obvious. Right, it's not legal - and I'm not condoning or endorsing it with this post. I am just saying that I understand the thinking behind it, it's clever, and it's interesting.

If we compare this model to other methods of obtaining music, it seems to do pretty well when graphed on the risk-to-reward Cartesian plane, mainly because there is about zero chance you will receive a pre-litigation letter from the RIAA.

Anyway, just thought you might find this interesting. (Again, I'm not endorsing this model so don't comment about how I am a jerk - well, to clarify, you can call me a jerk, but not for this reason.)

--Chris

Smcfancontrol

I have a first-generation Macbook Pro (2006) and it has always run pretty hot. The underside gets pretty warm and the thin strip of casing between the keys and the display could cook a strip of bacon.

This hasn't been a huge inconvenience for me until recently, when I had to start running Second Life on my laptop for a work project. The problem with SL is that it is extremely graphics intensive, so the laptop reaches temperatures comparable to a solar flare. One of my friends told me about smcfancontrol, an application for the Mac that lets you control its fan speed. So, you can actually increase the fan speed to cool your computer faster, if need be.

Now, I am not usually a fan of overriding hardware controls, but in this case there definitely seems to be something wrong with how the fans are tuned. I usually only override fan speed when I'm running SL and the temp gets up around 70C.

One of the cooler things, I think, about SMC is that it displays the current internal temperature of your Mac, along with the current fan speed, in the menu bar. So, you can actually see what's going on inside your Mac.

Anyway, if you have a Mac that tends to run hot, this app might be of use. However, I make no claims of knowing the effect of using such a tool on your warranty. :)

I'm back (again)

I figured, given that it's been almost a year since I have updated my blog (!), that I should update it before some sort of Blogger inactivity script shuts down my account. I'm getting ready to teach a course on how technology affects privacy and reputation ("Privacy in a Networked World").

While working on my syllabus, I came across a great quote in the book that I am using ("The Future of Reputation" by Daniel J. Solove). This quote is from Perry Barlow's Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. I love it:

"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of the Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave me alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. "

Here's the full text: http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html

I think that is one of the more powerful pieces of writing I have seen in a while. I can't wait for the class to read it.

Anyway, good to see you again, and I will really try to keep the blog updated.

--Chris

Retrieving Your Lost Office Product Key

Someone asked me recently what to do if you have a copy of Office installed on an old, ready-to-be-decommissioned computer and want to move the software to your new box. Problem: you have lost the installation product key.

Interesting question. This has never really been an issue for me at work because we have a volume license (and therefore, all copies use the same key), but I could see how this could be a problem for a home user. So, I did a little research...

Let me start out by saying that if you own an "OEM" copy of Office (one that came with your computer), the license is tied to the hardware - you cannot install it on another machine. But, if you bought a boxed copy of Office, you are entitled to install it on another machine, provided you remove it from the old one.

OK, so we're established that you're allowed to move the license to a new box. Now what? We've lost the product key and won't be able to install it. You have two avenues from this point:

1) Contact MS and ask them for a new product key

2) Use a software package to retrieve the original product key from your old computer

The former case is pretty self-explanatory. For the latter case, you could check out Magical Jelly Bean (yes, it's really called that). MJB is an open-source package that will retrieve your original key for you.

Note: I assume that using such software does not violate any software laws, but I have no idea as to the degree of legality of this program. Just a friendly disclaimer... :)

Anyway, hope you find this info useful.

--Chris

P.S. Thanks to the other Chris for telling me about MJB.

Link Evaluator Plug-In

I had an email forwarded to me recently pointing out an add-on for Firefox called Link Evaluator. I installed it and was really pleased with it. It allows you to do a quick spot-check of all of the links on any given page to check for broken links. You just navigate to a page, right-click on the body, and select "Evaluate Links." You'll then see every link on the page turn either green (good) or red (broken). That's it. Simple concept, useful tool.

Obviously, this wouldn't optimal for large-scale link checking, but for a few pages here and there, it is a nice addition to the toolbox.

--Chris

Google Alerts

I think I may be a little behind the early-adopter curve on this, but I just started using Google Alerts. Alerts basically monitors a given Google query and emails you when there are new pages about that topic. For example, if you want to know as soon as Google indexes a new chili recipe, you could set up an alert for "chili recipe" and you would get an email whenever Google finds a new one. Super easy.

You can even set the frequency with which you receive alerts - daily, weekly, real-time. And, you can choose to receive your emails in HTML or plain-text.

I'm ashamed to admit that I can be a little techno-narcissistic and *blush* tend to Google my own name regularly to see if anyone is referencing my blog or has written anything interesting about me. Google Alerts automates this for me! OK, enough about that...

Anyway, if you're doing research on some topic, this could be a great tool to learn about the latest sources for information on said topic.

--Chris