Cohenville

To me it was the Darth Vader Passat commercial

From upplggd.com:

If our grumbling dishwasher is any indication, kitchen appliances—like any of your at-home tech—aren’t built to last forever. But exactly how long do they last? You’ll have to ask the National Association of Home Builders, who’ve been collecting data on the life of common home components. Read on for the real-life figures, in years, for the life of everything from security systems and air conditioners to gas ranges and refrigerators.

http://www.unplggd.com/unplggd/the-life-expectancy-of-your-home-tech-129421

Jellyfish is a good way to get comparison prices on all sorts of products.  Of course, I use pricegrabber and frugal for that, so why would I need another site?  First, Jellyfish gives cash back on some purchases.  But that’s not the cool part – they have something called “Smack Shopping” which is quite innovative.  You can get more details at an Information Week article, but basically it’s a form of reverse auction, which consists of sellers competing for buyers by offering increasing discounts. For participants, the event involves a web page that features a product and a steadily improving discount that starts at 0% and rises toward 100%.

eBizMBA had a post on great sites to find deals.  These sites have comparison shopping, great deals, and coupons.  They were ranked into a top 20 by a combination of Inbound Links, Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank, and U.S. traffic data from Compete and Quantcast.

Source: eBizMBA

Good post at ProgrammableWeb.com on a new site - mpire.com. They’ve used APIs from providers like Amazon, Shopping.com, eBay, Yahoo! Shopping and others, taken that data and analyzed about 10 trillion transactions, then provide shoppers not just the usual comparison search but also tools like historical price trends so you can see them over time. Somewhat akin to what Farecast does for travel.

Source: ProgrammableWeb

I have been preparing to purchase a nice HDTV for my basement, but I was curious what size is right given the size and layout of my room. Amazon had a good article discussing just this. Once I know the size, how do I know what type of TV to get. It differs based on size and cost (obviously), but the set up of the room may effect things as well. About.com has a good post discussing some of those issues. And finally another good article from an HDTV forum based in England.

Need to know where the closest Starbucks is and you don’t have a computer nearby? Now you can find out just my text messaging your ZIP code to MYSBUX (697289) – in a minute you’ll receive a reply listing three of the nearest Starbucks!

Source: Lifehacker

Lifehacker had a good post today about Suprise.com – a website that provided recommendations for gift giving based on personality traits. I haven’t gone through all of the sections yet, but it’s at the very least a good start – I sure never know what to buy anyone. The list of hobbies and traits is very long, so you’re bound to find something.

From Lifehacker

This interesting new site called PriceProtectr will help protect you from the drops in price that always seem to occur after you buy your new TV or entertainment center. Many of the big electronics stores (Best Buy, Circuit City) offer price protection – if something you purchase drops in price in the next 30 days you get a refund for the change. But how do you know when this happens? This site will let you know when it happens!