I don’t talk a ton about marketing, but I know a lot of my readers are also bloggers or affiliate marketers and this Flash Drive sponsored post happens to be technology related, too, so I think most of you will like it. Flashdealer.com is a site that deals in all kinds of custom flash drives and I mean really custom like the fire extinguisher shown on the right. Every time I go to an event, I don’t mind taking home some of the freebies like the t-shirts and caps, but I love the free flash drives. No matter what size a free flash drive is, it’s always useful and it’s free. You can’t beat that. That said, it makes sense that a company would want to give the things away at trade shows. When you get someone to take (and often use) an item with your logo on it, you are essentially purchasing persistent individual advertising. The person takes that item home, uses it over and over, maybe passes it on or lends it to a colleague, and if it’s cool enough, they might even show it off to others.
Here’s where the affordable part comes in. I headed over to the site expecting to find high costs associated with having custom promo stuff made, especially when it’s custom flash drives. Instead, what I found surprised me. In one example, I found custom flash drives for as little as $3.95 per unit. The configuration options show them ranging from 64MB to 8GB which is not a lot of space, really, but for a promo item, it’s OK. You can also get them preloaded with ads or your company materials, etc. I’m not sure what the ordering minimum is, but you’ll usually want upwards of 100 when ordering promo items, anyway. I’m also not sure about the quality of the drives, but I’m guessing it’s not too bad with clients like Mercedes, Hyatt, Sears, etc.
Finally, I’d feel like I was leaving something out if I didn’t mention that they also offer custom MP3 player flash drives (around $19/each) and on a sister site, there’s a whole bunch of promo item choices, although I like the flash drive idea better than all the other promo stuff. All in all, it looks like they make some pretty cool drives for not a lot of money, so if you’re in the market, take a look.
Guess what time it is. As always, I’m starting with the Twitter suggestions. Don’t forget, if you want a link to your Twitter account, just follow me on Twitter and tweet the following:
@joetech I want a free link in your Bookmark Friday post : http://www.joetech.com/suggests/bmftw
Michael Jackson – I wanted to start with this link as I sit here listening to some old MJ tracks and remembering how I feel every time I hear them.
IWearYourShirt.com – This is actually a great idea. Of course, if he sold only a few days and got no press or buzz, it would be a horrible investment. As it stands, though, the investment just might be worth it. I’d probably buy a December day if I had the budget set aside for it. We’ll see.
Feedly – Feedly came out of nowhere, making my Google Reader feeds just so much more awesome. My feeds total about 1,000 articles a day, so this will help me greatly in sifting through them.
IZEAFest – This is a fun annual event that I’d love to end up at this October. If you’re going, comment below.
Google Voice – Google Voice wants to give you a viable option to your cell phone and they’re opening up the phone number land rush soon. They have a million numbers reserved, so sign up for an invite.
DSLR Remote for iPhone – This is an awesome app for any one with a DSLR and an iPhone. Just be sure your camera supports Live View before buying the Pro version. Oops.
This is something I didn’t know even existed until I was already agreeing to review it. The idea is that you set it up to connect all your cell phones to it when you come in and then you just have one central phone in the house to make and receive all your calls. I really is a little more elegant than it sounds at first.
Why would you want this?
I’ll be honest… At first, it sounded cool. Then it sounded really unnecessary. After trying it out, I landed on a middle ground somewhere between pretty cool and unnecessary. So why would you want one? Anyone could have their own reasons for wanting to consolidate phone calls into a home phone. For me, it would be to have all my wife and my mutual friends be able to reach either of us via either number. It’s also useful if you want to drop your cell phone on the charger and use a set of wireless home phones while your cell charges. Maybe you have a home business with several cell phones on a group plan. You could set this up to answer any of the lines from one centralized system.
How does i set up and use it?
First, I need to clarify something I wasn’t initially sure about. This doesn’t need an existing home phone. Actually, it doesn’t really support one, either. The model I tested is the ITC-BT. For about ten bucks more, they offer the ITC-BTTN model. The core (and perhaps only) difference is that the BTTN includes an extra RJ45 connection for connecting it to an existing home phone line.
Although the instructions were all crammed onto one sheet and in multiple languages, they were pretty complete. You plug in the gateway to the wall and you connect it to a home phone via a standard RJ45 phone cable. I just used an old phone I had sitting around in my office for satellite call testing. Once it’s all connected and turned on, you connect the phones to it. Make sure your bluetooth is enabled on all your cell phones and you’re ready to connect. Note that you don’t have to connect them at the same time if the other cell phone’s owner happens to get home way later, for example. The buttons on the top of the gateway are for the three cell phone lines you can connect to it. To connect a cell phone, all I had to do was hold down one of these buttons to ready the line for pairing. Then I went into my phone’s bluetooth settings and found the gateway and paired it. I then did that for a second cell phone and used the third to test. Once the cell phones are all paired, it can be hung on the wall or set on a desk or counter top.
Using it is pretty simple. Inbound calls are answered just like you’d expect to answer a home phone. The phone rings and you pick it up. Simple, right? Making calls is almost as easy. To make a call, I just had to pick up the home phone and dial. It automatically connects to the cell phone paired with the first spot on the gateway. You can “flash” over to the next line in the order to use it instead. When you move the cell phone out of range of the gateway, it unpairs from the gateway and will re-pair when it is in range again. So in theory, you could leave it set up all the time near your phone chargers and just plug your cell into the charger when you get home.
From what I understand from the documentation, you can also set it up to pass on caller ID information if your base phone has a digital display and wasn’t made in the 80’s like my test phone. The one thing I would miss greatly with a system like this always in place is my contact list. If you have a newer home phone system, however, some have contact list functionality that would resolve this problem.
Conclusions
For around $89, it’s not going to break the bank. I don’t have a lot to compare pricing on, but that seems decent. The real question is of need. If the functionality the XLink provides is worth the price tag, it’s a worthwhile device. The setup and use is about as easy as you could expect for it. It doesn’t feel very sturdy, but it’s meant to be sitting in one spot the whole time, so that shouldn’t matter. If I had the need, I’d buy one.
Michael Jackson has been with me, musically, my whole life. As a child, I listened to his songs on the radio and watched as he transformed into the “King of Pop”. I remember every media-covered event of his life and career, good or bad. His life was a legacy of firsts and his music will undoubtedly live on forever. To some, Michael Jackson will be the greatest musician they’ve ever heard. Today, Tweetdeck made that familiar little chirping noise to indicate that an update was posted from an account I follow. It was @CNNbrk, announcing that Michael Jackson had just been rushed to the hospital in cardiac arrest. I retweeted the news with a link to the story. Shortly after, people began to speculate and the word had already begun buzzing about the news. Then TMZ announced his death (I’m told they announced it before he actually died). Then other sources slowly began to confirm his death until it was finally confirmed moments ago by an L.A. county coroner. Here’s the timeline of reports from @CNNbrk:
As all this happened, the internet buzz about the story quickly built up to monumental proportions. The celebrity gossip new site, TMZ reported that social media sites were crawling at a snails pace and that Jackson’s death brought the internet to a grinding halt. A little curious myself, I decided to see how many tweets were floating around Twitter about the horrible news.
I headed over to Twitter’s search page and searched “Michael Jackson” Then I watched as the number of new tweets just grew and grew. After about 20 minutes, there had already been over 50,000 new tweets and as I type this, it just broke 60,000. We are in an information era. These social media sites are quickly becoming the fastest source of breaking news. One thing this tells us for sure is that Michael Jackson’s death has been a shock to the world and the world has been and is still letting their voice be heard.
Samsung keeps sending me phones I like. I’m still not 100% on board with their OS, but every phone they send is better an better. Recently, they sent out the Samsung Impression. Right out of the box, I turned it on to see the AMOLED screen and I was not let down. However, a phone is much more than it’s fancy-pants screen, so I reviewed the whole thing for you.
Seriously… Drool-worthy
When I pulled the phone out, before I even turned it on, I felt I was in for a treat. The form factor is nicely a bit small, but not too small, and the smoothed edges all over the place just look very clean and sleek. I turned the phone on and it instantly became the first phone I’ve reviewed that I made a point to show off to everyone in the office. What I was showing off was the AMOLED display. It’s a bit like experiencing HD for the first time. You don’t think there could be that much difference until you see it in person. After seeing for yourself, it’s clear that the technology is worthy of its praise. Like HD television, I won’t say that I’ll never own another product without this technology, but it’s certainly a selling point.
Other physical features
Other than the display, one of the most notable physical features of the Impression is the slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The phone has a software keyboard, too, but a physical keyboard is much easier to type on if done well and this one is done pretty well. The buttons are the right size and it just feels right. On the bottom of the phone’s face are the Send, End, and Back buttons we’re all used to by now. It also has the volume buttons and camera shutter that most have as well as the ports to charge or dock the phone or plug in headphones.
Like most of Samsung’s smart phones, this one is equipped with a decent camera that weighs in at 3.0 megapixels. The phone is very comfortable to hold and carry and the camera quality is great, as usual for Samsung. The design of the phone, over all, is great. I love how they put it together.
Software and ease of use
As I said at the start of the review, a phone should be more than it’s external appearance. I’ve also stated that I’m not a huge fan of the OS. I like to customize my phone with my choice of thousands of applications, and I haven’t seen that so much here. I do like the icon tray that can be hidden and everything seems very stable and clean, though. One thing I noticed right away is that the touch screen on the Impression was much more responsive than on other phones from varying brands. This was a big point-earner for me. If you’re going to be touching the screen as 90% of the operation of the phone, it should be smooth and responsive. The software was largely the same full suite of applications that Samsung normally provides, along with feature-rich camera functionality, which is another thing I look forward to in Samsung phones.
Conclusions
While I’m still not completely on board with the OS, the Impression is by far the best phone I’ve reviewed in a while. For the money, it’s a great smart phone that promises to provide a better looking picture than any of your friends’ phones while taking crisp photos and video, giving you a full keyboard and responsive touch interface and looking pretty good to boot.
I don’t talk a ton about marketing, but I know a lot of my readers are also bloggers or affiliate marketers and this Flash Drive sponsored post happens to be technology related, too, so I think most of you will like it. Flashdealer.com is a site that deals in all kinds of custom flash drives and I mean really custom like the fire extinguisher shown on the right. Every time I go to an event, I don’t mind taking home some of the freebies like the t-shirts and caps, but I love the free flash drives. No matter what size a free flash drive is, it’s always useful and it’s free. You can’t beat that. That said, it makes sense that a company would want to give the things away at trade shows. When you get someone to take (and often use) an item with your logo on it, you are essentially purchasing persistent individual advertising. The person takes that item home, uses it over and over, maybe passes it on or lends it to a colleague, and if it’s cool enough, they might even show it off to others.
