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Nobody gives away a free physical thing. There’s always a catch. So up front: you have to pay shipping. Other than that, it’s open season.

* $100 max per household

* You pay shipping

* Limit of $100,000 in giveaways for the day

* Starts 9AM MST January 7th, 2010

* Ends 11PM MST January 7th, 2010 (or when we hit $100k, whichever comes first)

* Rainchecks for popular items will be allowed
There really are no catches, but there are a few rules for fairness’ and logistic’s sake:

* $100 max per person (cheating kills kittens)
* You pay shipping
* Limit of $100,000 in giveaways for the day
* Starts 9AM MST January 7th, 2010
* Ends 11PM MST January 7th, 2010 (or when we hit $100k, whichever comes first)
* Rainchecks for popular items will be allowed
* There is no special code to type in. But you get only one order on Free Day, so spend it well!
* Only one $100 credit per household. We ask that you respect this limit and don’t try to abuse this gift.
* There is no minimum or maximum order. You can spend more than $100, the balance of which will be charged to your method of payment.
* Only Credit Card and Paypal orders will be eligible for the $100 credit. We don’t want to have people tying up inventory with POs, wire transfers, checks in the mail, or lost faxes.
* You will see whether or not your order qualifies for a credit in the checkout process.
* Free Day does not apply to our distributors. Sorry!
* Gift Cards cannot be bought on Free Day.
* Any returns from Free Day will be exchanged for the same item.
* Every order isn’t going to ship on Free Day, or for a few days after. We’ve got extra tape guns on hand, but please be patient and give us some time to catch up!
* We are ratcheting up inventory for Free Day, but backorders (a.k.a. rainchecks) are allowed on most items (some items we simply can’t get anymore). We’ll get you your goodies just as soon as we can get them back in stock.”

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Ever appropriate for the cost consciousness of a near post-recession America, and a greener one at that, is the Advanced Wireless Appliance Manager. This device can monitor up to 8 different household appliances wirelessly. It indicates how much energy is being expended as well as how much it is going to cost to operate.

Yahoo! announced plans today at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to spread its tentacles deeper into the Internet-connected TV market, inking new deals with TV, media player and processor manufacturers, as well as releasing its widget development kit and signing on with new content partners.

When we looked at the rebirth of the Web TV last year, we had one major reservation – would people really buy a new TV just for the widgets? “Probably not,” we said. This year, Yahoo! is bringing the Internet into our other devices, so we don’t have to.

Sponsor

Yahoo! is stepping it up in the Internet-connected TV game, which is an area we saw boom at last year’s CES. This year we’re seeing much of the same. Skype announced its entrance into the Internet-connected TV market on Tuesday, while Samsung announced today that it will offer the Napster widget on its TVs.

According to the press release, new deals with MIPS, Sigma Designs and ViewSonic will enable Yahoo! Widgets to be embedded not only in Internet-connected TVs, but in a number of other devices, such as media players, “Blu-ray players, network players, AV receivers, and cable/IPTV set-top boxes.” This is a big move because, while we may not want to replace our widescreen TV, we might be in the market for a Blu-ray player.

Today’s announcement also highlighted deals with a number of new content providers, including Showtime, CNBC, Napster, The Weather Channel and more. But do we really need The Weather Channel widget when we can have just The Weather Channel, itself? Maybe. Maybe not. But the company’s release of its widget development kit to the general public might open the doors to some interesting new widgets.

Cory Pforzheimer, a spokesperson for Yahoo!, told us earlier today that keeping the WDK private was an issue of working together with TV manufacturers and software developers.

“TV manufacturers weren’t really used to updating after they sent out their units. There’s no such thing as a beta on a TV,” he said. “The last thing Samsung wants is calls when someone’s Facebook widget doesn’t work.”

The combination of affordability and potential for innovation here could be just enough to bring the Web back to the TV through the side door.

Discuss

HTC today launched the Smart which, ironically enough, is a dumbphone. You wouldn’t expect a plain Jane dumbphone from HTC, though, and Smart certainly looks to be a little more than your average voice-and-text machine.

The device, which will be available this Spring in Europe and Asia, features HTC’s Sense user experience running atop the Qualcomm Brew Mobile Platform, not Android or Windows Mobile as with other HTC Sense devices. The idea is to bring an afforable smartphone experience to the masses, as the press release attests to:

HTC Smart begins with a friendly, compact touch design and integrates an intuitive user experience that is centered around HTC Sense, an HTC design philosophy that puts people at the center by focusing on three core areas: Make It Mine, Stay Close and Discover the Unexpected. HTC Smart enables personal customization of each person’s own phone experience. It also provides a quick and easy way to see what friends are up to via various social networks as well as quickly communicating over the phone, through text messaging or e-mail.

No word on whether or not U.S. consumers will ever have the opportunity to, um, Get Smart.

More on HTC’s Smart product page.

There really are no catches, but there are a few rules for fairness’ and logistic’s sake:

* $100 max per person (cheating kills kittens)
* You pay shipping
* Limit of $100,000 in giveaways for the day
* Starts 9AM MST January 7th, 2010
* Ends 11PM MST January 7th, 2010 (or when we hit $100k, whichever comes first)
* Rainchecks for popular items will be allowed
* There is no special code to type in. But you get only one order on Free Day, so spend it well!
* Only one $100 credit per household. We ask that you respect this limit and don’t try to abuse this gift.
* There is no minimum or maximum order. You can spend more than $100, the balance of which will be charged to your method of payment.
* Only Credit Card and Paypal orders will be eligible for the $100 credit. We don’t want to have people tying up inventory with POs, wire transfers, checks in the mail, or lost faxes.
* You will see whether or not your order qualifies for a credit in the checkout process.
* Free Day does not apply to our distributors. Sorry!
* Gift Cards cannot be bought on Free Day.
* Any returns from Free Day will be exchanged for the same item.
* Every order isn’t going to ship on Free Day, or for a few days after. We’ve got extra tape guns on hand, but please be patient and give us some time to catch up!
* We are ratcheting up inventory for Free Day, but backorders (a.k.a. rainchecks) are allowed on most items (some items we simply can’t get anymore). We’ll get you your goodies just as soon as we can get them back in stock.”

Related posts:

1. Sparkfun Down, Sparkfun Down 2010 Nobody gives away a free physical thing. There’s always a…
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3. Sparkfun Irc, Sparkfun Irc 2010 This is an excellent lesson in internet marketing, both what…

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Surprise, surprise…. Fast food restaurants might be lying to your face.

According to the Los Angeles Times health blog, Booster Shots:

Researchers from Tufts University took commercially prepared foods — both prepackaged and from restaurants — and analyzed them in a bomb calorimeter. The measured energy values of 10 frozen meals purchased from supermarkets averaged 8% more than originally stated, and foods from 29 restaurants (both fast-food and sit-down venues) were on average 18% more than reported.

The most egregious offender? Denny’s, whose dry toast is advertised to contain 92 calories but actually packs a diet-busting 283 calories! If they can’t even get the numbers on toast right, just imagine the true caloric content of one of their Grand Slamwiches.

So if your New Year’s resolution includes getting back in shape, help yourself out by resolving to stop eating fast food and frozen meals all together.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Food Fraud: High Schoolers Use DNA Tests to Expose Fake Caviar
Discoblog: Fiber-Filled, Antioxidant-Packed Ice Cream—Brilliant? Sacrilegious? Nasty?
Discoblog: Heart-Stopping Cinematic Excitement: Guess How Much Fat Is in Movie Popcorn?

Image: flickr / fotographix.ca

Alienware no longer means “bulky gaming PC.” Dell’s new Alienware has an 11 inch display and looks like a netbook!

• 6 1/2 hours of battery life (battery mode)
• 2 hours of “intense gaming”
• 3D mark scores in 6-7k range
• 50FPS Crysis, 30FPS CoD on High Settings
• Under $1000 (later this year, we believe)

AT CES DELL UNVEILS FIRST “ALL POWERFUL” ULTRA MOBILE GAMING SYSTEM

· The Alienware M11x, the most powerful 11-inch gaming laptop in the universe — as easy to carry as it is powerful, making high-performance gaming accessible to all.

Alienware M11x
· The Alienware M11x demonstrates the graphics power of a 15-inch laptop in an 11-inch form factor
· Play all of your games and media, whether at home or away, at HD 720p resolution
· With the Alienware M11x, gamers can enjoy the feel of the gaming without compromise anywhere they go.

he promotion is an excellent idea, however if they can’t execute it, then they may wind up generating more resentment than customer loyalty.
There really are no catches, but there are a few rules for fairness’ and logistic’s sake:

* $100 max per person (cheating kills kittens)
* You pay shipping
* Limit of $100,000 in giveaways for the day
* Starts 9AM MST January 7th, 2010
* Ends 11PM MST January 7th, 2010 (or when we hit $100k, whichever comes first)
* Rainchecks for popular items will be allowed
* There is no special code to type in. But you get only one order on Free Day, so spend it well!
* Only one $100 credit per household. We ask that you respect this limit and don’t try to abuse this gift.
* There is no minimum or maximum order. You can spend more than $100, the balance of which will be charged to your method of payment.
* Only Credit Card and Paypal orders will be eligible for the $100 credit. We don’t want to have people tying up inventory with POs, wire transfers, checks in the mail, or lost faxes.
* You will see whether or not your order qualifies for a credit in the checkout process.
* Free Day does not apply to our distributors. Sorry!
* Gift Cards cannot be bought on Free Day.
* Any returns from Free Day will be exchanged for the same item.
* Every order isn’t going to ship on Free Day, or for a few days after. We’ve got extra tape guns on hand, but please be patient and give us some time to catch up!
* We are ratcheting up inventory for Free Day, but backorders (a.k.a. rainchecks) are allowed on most items (some items we simply can’t get anymore). We’ll get you your goodies just as soon as we can get them back in stock.”

Related posts:

1. Sparkfun Twitter, Sparkfun Twitter 2010 There really are no catches, but there are a few…
2. Sparkfun Down, Sparkfun Down 2010 Nobody gives away a free physical thing. There’s always a…
3. Sparkfun Irc, Sparkfun Irc 2010 This is an excellent lesson in internet marketing, both what…

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Yesterday I blogged about Mike Konzcal’s query as to whether banks should be allowed to identify customers with dementia and target them for tricky fees and other hidden charges.  I answered that it’s wrong, but it might actually be hard to craft legislation that prevented it.  But of course, this actually assumes that targeting customers with dementia would work.  Today, an employee of a major bank emails:

About Andrew’s post on ripping off old, demented, credit card customers I’d like to point out that this would be not so much evil as really REALLY stupid.  Since credit card debt is unsecured, the credit losses on this scam would be enormous and would definitely lose  a lot of money.  Nevermind the moral aspect of this, the financials for such a program would fail miserably and anyone suggesting such a program would be scorned not just for being an immoral jerk but for having zero business sense.

I’d say it would also be evil, but yes, probably really stupid too.  Which invites the question:  what if we turn it around?  Should banks be allowed–nay, encouraged–to use such a quiz to pick out customers they no longer care to do business with?  After all, we’d be protecting potentially demented customers from hurting themselves.

Of course, we’d also be potentially preventing non-demented customers from getting credit–given my work schedule, I not infrequently forget which day of the week it is, and when you’re retired, one day can easily shade into another. 

Too, the AARP would freak out the way they do when anyone suggests that maybe people over seventy should face a little extra scrutiny over their driving abilities–which is why a few years ago, I got hit by a fairly clearly demented 80-year old man in a Target parking lot.   He still had a driver’s license and car insurance even though the cops told me he’d had two accidents in the same parking lot over the last few months.  But (as in my case) there were never any witnesses, and he always accused the other driver of fault, so the accidents always got judged no fault, and he kept his ability to drive even though his wife, his insurance company, and his township all clearly knew that he shouldn’t be behind the wheel.

There would complaints from consumer activists, and angry articles about “credit discrimination” against the elderly, featuring spry eighty year olds with no obvious mental disease or defect.  Left-leaning bloggers would complain that banks were protecting their profits at the expense of old people who had paid their bills all their lives, and showed no sign of imminent default–all the complaints that have been leveled at banks that cut the credit lines of people they judged likely to run up debts and/or default.

Yet this is the logic of paternalism:  you discommode a large number of people in order to save other people, possibly a smaller number of other people, from financial distress.  Methinks, however, that many people who like government paternalism would view it differently if it were done spontaneously by banks out of profit motive.

Remember the HTC Touch.B, the slick Touch2 lookalike that surfaced last month? The one running that nifty, minimalist interface over Qualcomm’s BREW operating system? Well, it looks like it’s finally ready for primetime with a brand-new (if not the most accurate) moniker.

The HTC Smart is gunning for the budget-minded phone nerd, and for a lower-end phone, it brings a decent amount of oomph to the table. WiFi is noticeably absent, as is video recording, but Bluetooth 2.0 and 3G support isn’t too shabby. The original Zune-esque interface, which was noticeably slow last time we saw it, has been replaced by HTC’s now classic Sense UI. This could be a bit of an issue – if the spec sheet leaked back in December was accurate, then the Smart’s 300 MHz processor is slower than its earlier variant. How fluidly the Smart will handle the Sense UI and all its eye candy is still up in the air, but we’re hoping for the best. The whole package is rounded out with a 2.8-inch QVG display, 256 MB of onboard memory, and a 3 MP fixed focus camera with flash.

Full press release can be found after the jump, if you’re in to that sort of thing.

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 7 /PRNewswire/ — Consumer Electronics Show (CES) — HTC Corporation, a global smartphone designer, today unveiled HTC Smart(TM), a new type of smartphone that creates a new category of easy-to-use, connected smartphones that are accessible by people all over the world. The HTC Smart will be available this spring across Europe and Asia.

Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies

Four hundred years ago tonight, a man from Pisa, Italy took a newly-made telescope with a magnifying power of 33X, pointed it at one of the brighter lights in the sky, and changed mankind forever.

The man, of course, was Galileo, and the light he observed on January 7, 1610 was Jupiter. He spotted “three fixed stars” that were invisible to the eye near the planet, and a fourth a few days later.

Here is how he drew this, 400 years ago:

He noted the stars moved around Jupiter as they followed it across the sky, and so was the first to figure out that other planets had moons like our own. It wasn’t an easy observation; his telescope was still small, the field of view narrow (so not all the moons were visible at the same time), and the moons faint next to Jupiter’s brilliant glare. But Galileo persisted, and figured it out. We call these four the Galilean moons in his honor: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.

Here’s how we see them today:

The image above [click to embiggen] is from the New Horizons spacecraft as it shot past Jupiter in early 2007, showing all four moons. Each is scaled to show its true relative size to the others. It’s impossible not to wonder what Galileo would have thought, knowing that just shy of 400 years after he made his first observations, we would fling our robotic proxies out into the solar system and get close up views of the objects he discovered.

Think of it! For all of time before, Jupiter was just a light in the sky. And then, forever after that night forty decades ago, it was a world, surrounded by more worlds.

[See more pictures of Jupiter and its moons in a gallery over at 80 Beats.]

Galileo went on to observe craters on the Moon, spots on the Sun, and the phases of Venus. It was that last that may have been his crowning achievement, because the way Venus showed phases meant it could not possibly orbit the Earth, and that it must orbit the Sun. The geocentric theory had held sway for over a thousand years, but Galileo proved it was wrong almost overnight. Of course, the Church wasn’t thrilled with this, though I suspect they might have rolled with it if Galileo hadn’t been such an arrogant jerk and published a manuscript insulting the Pope, a man who used to be his friend and supporter.

If there is a lesson in there, I leave it to my readers to suss it out.

Now, all these years later, a lot of legends exist over the man. He didn’t invent the telescope, he wasn’t the first to point it at the sky, and he wasn’t even the first to publish his drawings. But he was a merciless self-promoter, and because of that we do remember him now (again, any lessons learned here are up to you). And it’s not entirely unfair to do so; he was a tireless observer, a wonderful artist, a great inventor (he may not have been the first to build a telescope, but he made his far better than its predecessors) and a brilliant scientist who, even if he hadn’t done so much for astronomy, would still be remembered today for his other work.

Tonight, just after sunset, Jupiter will be a glowing white beacon in the southwest. I have a Galileoscope, an inexpensive telescope created as part of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, an effort to get as many people on Earth to look up as possible. I think perhaps it would be fitting if I brave the subzero temperature outside, maybe for just a few minutes, and take a look at the mighty planet. Tonight’s display is better than Galileo himself had it: all four moons will be perfectly arrayed, two on each side of Jupiter’s face.

I’m not a very religious man, nor am I a very spiritual man. But I know there will still be a sense of connection, a sense of wonder that I will have tonight that I will share with a man long dead, but whose life and achievements still echo through time.

A roundup of economic news from around the Web.

• Bubbles: The Economist this week looks at bubbles. ” Investors tempted to take comfort from the fact that asset prices are still below their peaks would do well to remember that they may yet fall back a very long way. The Japanese stock market still trades at a quarter of the high it reached 20 years ago. The NASDAQ trades at half the level it reached during dotcom mania. Today the prices of many assets are being held up by unsustainable fiscal and monetary stimulus. Something has to give.”
• Damaged Retirement: On the Tax Policy Center’s TaxVox blog, Howard Gleckman looks at the extent of damage the market crash had on retirement security. ” In a new paper, TPC’s Eric Toder, along with the Urban Institute’s Karen Smith and Barbara Butrica, look at how investors would fare under three post-crash market scenarios. And what they found may surprise you a bit. Under one, your portfolio gets back to where it would have been, absent the crash, by 2017. That would take large, but not unprecedented, stock gains over the next decade. If equities merely revert to their historic annual returns from the market’s December 2008 level, you’ll permanently remain far behind where you would have been if there had been no collapse. And if stocks respond as they did in the decade after the 1970s crash—well, you don’t want to know.”
• Housing and Recovery: Dan Gross of Slate says that the economy will recover no matter what happens to the housing market. ” People! Wake up! It may be difficult to imagine, but we’re going to have to have this recovery and expansion without housing. In fact, we already are… We’ve shown that we don’t need housing to produce growth. The U.S. economy has staged an extremely dramatic turnaround, from contracting at an annual rate of 6.4 percent to growing at a 2.2 percent rate in the third quarter. Macroeconomic Advisers says fourth-quarter growth is tracking at a 4.9 percent annual rate. If that proves true, the economy’s growth rate will have risen 11.3 percent in a nine-month period—an astonishing shift. And all this growth has occurred as house prices continued to fall and consumer lending declined. With apologies to Larry Kudlow, it’s the greatest story never told!”

Compiled by Phil Izzo

See the latest products at quality home expo in Hoffman Estates

The Home Improvement and Remodeling Expo will take place from Jan. 22-24, 2010, at Prairie Stone(TM) Sports & Wellness Center, 5050 Sedge Blvd., Hoffman Estates.

This popular bi-annual show features more than 200 local and national exhibitors in a 40,000 sq. ft. exhibitor space.

The public is welcome, and admission is free.

“The event provides a creative home improvement and remodeling marketplace that gives businesses and potential customers a place to meet face-to-face and discuss options and products in a friendly and positive environment,” said Allen Deutscher, partner with Brilliant Event Planning, Inc., the producer of the expo.

“Always held during the 3rd week of January, the expo appeals to homeowners eager to start on spring projects.”

All vendors’ products range in price from basic to high-end. Most are environmentally friendly.

A partial list of the wide range of products includes:

• basement finishing
• home theater, audio and intelligence
• hardwood, bamboo and tile flooring and carpet
• solar energy, tankless water heaters and other green home products
• interior designers and planners
• granite, marble and quartz countertops
• custom kitchens and cabinets
• opulent bathrooms
• several different windows, siding and roofing options
• building supplies and products
• Tastefully Simple and Homemade Gourmet
• jewelry, crafts and purses
• landscaping, ponds, fountains, patios, gazebos
• sunrooms, hot tubs, saunas
• housewares
• maintenance

What makes a Brilliant Event Planning, Inc., expo a success is its emphasis on quality and involvement for both exhibitors and expo visitors.

To that end, there will be cooking shows, drawings for free products and services demonstrations, do-it-yourself interactive exhibits, ask the experts, pruning classes, live entertainment, good food, kids’ activities, free promotional goods, and live radio and television broadcasts.

“Expect to have fun while gathering new ideas and getting inspiration for turning your house into your dream home,” said Martin Andras, partner, Brilliant Event Planning.

Admission and parking are free.

For more information, call Brilliant Event Planning at 630-468-2237.

Web site: homeshowevent.com/HSE_Flash.html

Prairie Stone Sports and Wellness Center’s phone number is 847-285-5400.

I just got a chance to play with the big-screened, touchscreened Skiff Reader, which is targeted at periodicals. It’s incredibly thin, incredibly light, and they’ve even got a color screen prototype—Kindle and Nook should be scared.

I should add first that this is not a final version—they haven’t announced pricing or availability yet—but it feels very finished and I suspect any delay in getting the Skiff to market will be due to the store not being quite ready. The color version is the exact same form factor, and while it’s pretty deep in the prototype stage, it was impressive. Color was minimally pixelated and pretty clear, if obviously nowhere near as sharp as an LCD (or paper, for that matter). I don’t have any info on its release date or price, unfortunately.

Once you hold it, you’re struck by how thin and light it is. Just a hair over 0.25 inches thick, it’s also super light and feels good in the hand—it’s solid despite it’s airy heft. The screen feels huge compared to the Kindle or Nook, because it is—its 11.5-inch touchscreen is huge, significantly bigger than even the Kindle DX (at 9.7 inches). The size is actually a little awkward for reading books (it’s wider and taller than even a big hardcover book) but it’s excellent for newspapers. The touchscreen works well, responding to both taps and swipes easily, and the refresh rate is pretty good (meaning, it’s still e-ink, but it’s not slower than existing readers). It can also handle 12fps animation, which is pretty primitive compared to LCD but just fine for little ads or whatever.

The layout is where it really shines—it feels more like a newspaper than any other reader I’ve tried. The layouts are designed by the periodicals themselves, so instead of looking like a bare PDF of text, it feels like there’s thought put into the design. To navigate through a newspaper, you can navigate to a section with the “scrubber bar,” a scroll bar on the bottom of the screen that displays each consecutive section’s name as you swipe through it. It’s great; you can go right to the arts section, sports section, whatever, and it feels totally natural. You can also swipe on each article to go to the next page, or swipe up and down to change font size. Highlighting and annotating both work well, and Skiff plans to automatically upload your highlights and notes to the cloud for access later.

Magazines don’t fare as well as newspapers; it feels like nobody really knows how to digitize magazines. On the Skiff, magazine reading is pretty awkward—you flip through full page scans, then tap a page to zoom in, at which point you have to slowly and uncomfortably pan through the zoomed page, with the e-ink refreshing every time you move. It’s not a good solution, but like I said, this isn’t a final release and hopefully they’ll have worked it out by then.

Books look fine, although clearly the Skiff is designed for newspapers; there’s about an inch of blank space on all sides when you read a book, because 11.5 inches of text is a lot to stare at. Other than that slightly unfulfilled feeling when you see unused space, book-reading should be no problem.

The other problem I see is the store. The Kindle and Nook but waltzed into this world with massive and well-known stores behind them, and the Skiff is creating one from scratch. They’ve got a lot of publishers behind them, but the store right now is pretty bare. Of course, since it’s not out yet, this may all be a moot point—but I wonder if their scrappy little store can compete with Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

The Overdrive is Sprint’s WiMax dream, in a little box. And mine too, I confess: Real broadband that I can shove in my pocket and take anywhere, a teleporting Wi-Fi hotspot.

WiMax is pretty quick at its best, but speed depends almost proportionately on signal—in Las Vegas, at 100 percent, we were getting around 3.5Mbps downstream and close to 1Mbps up, but at 40 percent, we got 1.57Mbps downstream and around 0.3Mbps up, and more than a couple dropped connections. Latency stayed around 155ms. When it was at full strength, it feels a whole lot like real broadband.

Battery life actually got to around 4 hours of near constant usage by one person, with occasional people jumping on.

While it physically could fit into your pocket, it doesn’t exactly slip in there like the credit card-sized MiFi—there’s a definite not-happy-to-see-anything-cause-I’ve-got-a-brick-in-my-pants bulge. But the thumbnail of a screen that fades into the OverDrive’s glossy surface fixes the MiFi’s biggest problem—you can actually see what the hell’s going on just by looking at the brick, vital info like: Battery level, signal strength, data used and your wireless password. That said, the web interface is nice—animated, interactive and fast.

We’ll be hitting it hard while we’re in Vegas for a more thorough review soon—like versus Clear’s hotspot. Anything you want us to try on it?