Productive Organizer

I got to know a very interesting “map” from Barry Ritholtz at the Big Picture. ITs interesting way of representing how the main players in the Web2.0 world come together.

What if I tell you that you have a way to tell your favorite shop that you are a value buyer?

Mom’s have been using coupons for a long time. We even heard stories of a family of 5 being fed with $50 using coupons.

Coupons used to exist as scrimps of paper cut out from newspapers offering discounts on specific products sold by shops. It is quite similar to running a sale everyday.

I used to wonder why would they do that. Only after economic classes in junior high did I understand the reason.

The economics of coupons

What those shops is practicing is to target as many customers of different purchasing power to bug from them. Prices are usually priced above the cost price.

To attract potential buyers who are more price elastic ( meaning those shoppers looking for value) they introduce coupons. Coupons do not always result in lower prices so only shoppers who match their spending and look to buy that cheap prices bothers to evaluate.

With coupons, the retailers is able to capture both the inelastic shoppers and the price sensitive ones.

Coupons – Web 2.0 style

Consumer trends have change vastly from the days where coupons are furnish only to bricks and mortar shops. Nowadays, online shopping have become very popular and couponing have evolved as well.

Sites like http://www/CouponChief.com provide a directory where retail shops such as Target or HP can list their coupons.

Shoppers can key in coupon codes at the retailers online Shopping Cart to seek discounted prices or print out  the coupons to bring it to the shop.

Tips for being more savvy with Coupons

Not all coupons result in cheaper price

Some coupons offer discounts only against normal retail sale price. You will need to compare the price you get when you use coupons vs if you don’t use. It might not be worth while to use coupons

Coupons on smaller quantities might be more worth it

Most people think that buying in bulk is more value for money but when it comes to coupon payment, it might be more prevalent that smaller quantities offer the better discount.

Join a coupon forum or group

You might not have the time to research how best to make use of the coupons or where offers the most value for money when it comes to coupon payment but a group that pools brains and intelligence together will yield a much better result.

Conclusion

In this tough economic times, we need to watch our pennies well and even if we do not have cash problems, it helps to live a frugal lifestyle. Do take a look at sites like Coupon Chief which makes coupon discovery much easier for you.

To be truly appreciative of the great Retina display on the iPhone 4 you need a great game.

And Epic games, the creator of the Unreal 3 Game, have tried to replicate their game engine on the iOS platform.

Epic Citadel is the result of their efforts and this may be how future first person action and strategy games look on the platform.

Don’t just take my word for it, though. Either download the demo yourself ,or if you can’t run it on your device, check out our coverage in the video above. The game engine is truly amazing on the iPhone 4, especially with the Retina Display. And if this is the future of gaming in iOS, … Nintendo and Sony had better step up their game.

This is a great web application for any web developer! CSS 3.0 Maker allows you to leverage on the CSS transformations and design that you are able to perform to create fast template for your website.

One of the problems I had as a designer is to marry how I want the object to look, with what is the actual code that needs to be done to create it.

This tool does it design your object, then provides the codes which you can put into your existing CSS stylesheet.

Some features:

• That it provides clear compatibility information for Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Chrome (no IE, of course). You can see exactly which browser versions support your bleeding-edge CSS.
• That it’s visual and real-time.
• That it provides code that works across as many browsers as possible, including browser-specific syntax (think -moz-border-radius for Firefox).
• The wood paneling! It makes me feel like I’m in a sauna.

Check out CSS Maker 3.0 today!

ARM a9 dual-core 1GHz processor

Android 2.2 with Flash

10.1 Inch Screen

3,500mAh battery targeted to deliver 8 hours of 1080p video playback

microHDMI with 1080p out

Accelerometer

1024 X 600 capacitive touch screen

16GB of internal storage.

$500, if and when the unit is released.

Now we know that iPad doesn’t come with a stylus, as Steve Jobs just don’t think a stylus would work.

But can your iPAD really replace the desktop drawing softwares like Corel Draw?

Here is a demo of a USD 8.00 application that shows this guy doing that at the iOSDevCamp.

I am no art student but the pictures that he is able to sketch are pretty stunning! This goes to show that Tablet can really handle a lot of the things we can only do on a desktop:

1. Excel, Spreadsheet editing
2. Powerpoint Editing
3. Drawing
4. Server Administration

This would probably mean that desktop sales in the future will fall to a terminal amount as the lines of smartphone, tablet and desktop continues to blur

[Hattip MacStories]

Great news today for me as I am an avid follower of Ars Technica, a technology commentary site.

As a user of google reader, I was somewhat disappointed that their news article was cut off and require you to go to their actual site. I read a lot of articles so this could really slow me down.

But these few days I notice that I am able to view more details on each of Ars Technica post.

Happy Days!

This is a thought provoking question to ask. I got to know this application over from Lifehacker which introduces an application for ROOTed phones that will block ads from displaying on your Android device.

The question is why does the developer include advertisements in the first place? I have written here that not all international developers are able to list their apps as paid version and thus go the ad support route.

This is so that they can monetize the application.

Incentive to innovate and maintain the application

Why is this important? The developers are spending their time to support, maintain and improve the application.

And while we shouldn’t be jealous that they are earning from it, we should be enabling them to have this incentive to continue to innovate and improve.

So what do you guys think? This is probably a good application but this places the developer at a very big disadvantage.

Barnes and Noble really sparked off this price war with the eBook Reader and Amazon and the rest are currently engaged in a race to the bottom Nash Equilibrium scenario.

I have stated that my value point where I will buy one of these readers is when it reaches SGD 150. That will be around USD 100.

I don’t really need 3G, although the Kindle at USD189 looks more value compare to a 50 dollar cheaper device. But think I will still get the WIFI only one.

From Engadget:

The new handheld — slated to be released on August 27th — is 21 percent smaller and 15 percent lighter than the previous model, has a 20 percent faster refresh rate on its E Ink (yep, still E Ink) screen, and will now come in two colors (graphite, like its big brother the DX, and the original white).

In addition to the color changes, there will be two radio configurations available: a $139 WiFi only version, and a $189 3G version (utilizing AT&T’s network, just like the last model). The screen will remain the same 6-inch size as the last two Kindles, though the company claims page turns are faster and contrast is improved. The internal storage on the device has been cranked to 4GB, and the battery life is now rated at a month with no wireless, and 10 days with wireless switched on.

The company also announced plans for a UK-localized version at £109 and £149, respectively, as well as a UK e-book store.

Along with the big changes, there have been minor tweaks as well — the keyboard and five-way controls have been streamlined and altered slightly. The rocker is now more compact and flush with the device, and the side buttons have been modified in length to emphasize the forward paddles, while the back buttons have been downsized. Software wise, there are some interesting new features, the most notable being the inclusion of an “experimental” Webkit-based browser.

So will you get one of these eBook Reader now?

There is a new software discovery this morning. bookACab allows you to easily book a cab via the CityCab and Comfort SMS booking system.

This could be a useful app to have around but we do not know how well it works. iPhone has a similar application but I hear there are complaints about its stability as of this moment.

Alternatively, you can also make a booking via the traditional way of calling for the cabs. Quick dial any cab company without knowing their phone numbers

[Download the App here >>]