Archive for July, 2006
I’m in Tucson, AZ now, and its been raining every night. The Rillito River is overflowing, and it’s a site to see. If it gets any higher, we’ll need more towels (obligatory plug).
I can’t wait to get back to Dallas tomorrow and continue with our new features we have planned for DealTaker.
A lot of people have been requesting the Old Homepage, and we are going to continue to keep that around as an ‘advanced view’, as well as clean it up a bit, and give registered users the option of choosing one of the other as their default. In addition, we’re continually working on the searching. Right now it says ‘entire site’ where it really means, ‘all deal areas’, but hopefully Thursday or Friday of this week, we’ll have that cleaned up. Also, the PriceTaker data is undergoing a cleanup and we’re adding more and more stores worth of data too!
Have a great day everyone!
July 31st, 2006
Sorry it’s been a little while since I blogged. We’re on vacation before the new school year starts (in just a few weeks). Well last night we went to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie at El Capitan theater in Hollywood, CA. It was quite an adventure. Before the show there was an organ player which descended into the floor. After the movie, we got to see a bunch of the props too. Then we went shopping; My kids made out like pirates themselves.. they got a Chess Set , and plenty of other stuff too!.
Here’s a pic of one of my boys with the Dead Mans Chest:
and one of the Toe necklace from the movie:
July 25th, 2006
Well, I’ve been riding my bike into the office, but with an anticipated high of 103, I figured I’d drive in. Its funny though, I think I sweat as much walking from my car to the building as I do on my Huffy bike.
Sorry to cut the blog short today, we’re getting ready to release our new homepage and some other things, so I need to get back to work.
July 20th, 2006
I read an article in Food Arts magazine this morning, and they brought up an interesting subject about Creative Consumption. The concept is that consumers are becoming pickier about what they buy, and want their products customized for them. It’s similar to Dell, where shoppers don’t necessarily pick a pre-cusomized computer, now they get to pick & choose what they want in it. Same goes for cars, the ’options’ book on most new cars is usually huge. When I think about it, I realize that it’s happening in other areas too. The Kitchenaid Artisan is a good example, as it comes in about 20 color choices. With so many choices on so many products, there’s a version of every product for everyone.
It’s an interesting concept, but I wonder how much cost this ads to the products. As consumers are we still getting the best prices when there’s so much customization going on? If the kitchenaids only came in white, and the Dells in pre-configured models, would we be able to save more money? Or are we happy paying a little more for things, just so we get the color we want, or the extra little feature that we may never even use? I’d like to hear your opinions on this, please comment!
Have a great day everyone!
July 19th, 2006
PriceTaker is now up & running, and loaded with millions of products. Everything from DVD’s & Ipods to Vacuums and Tools. While the site is live, and working, we still have some great plans for additional features, and we’ll be adding more and more stores to the databases.
July 18th, 2006
Well, Saturday we finally got it all set up. We got a Playstation 2 an ilo 26″ lcd TV for the kids to put in the playroom. I am really not into most of the games, but we got Wheel of Fortune, and it’s really quite good. Me & Abbey took over the playstation for about 30 minutes to play. Needless to say, I kicked her butt 
This week my kids don’t have any camps or anything, so they’re at home, so hopefully this will entertain them enough so they don’t drive my wife crazy.
I’m still loving the slingbox! I don’t know if it’s more fun watching the tv shows, or showing off to my friends how cool it is.
Today I’m going to fix the DealTaker Deals & Coupons Emailer, so hopefully it will work better for users with some weird email programs.
Have a great day everyone.
July 17th, 2006
I hope everyone is having a great weekend, and getting all the fun in the sun you can, before the summer is over.
If you’re not yet familiar with XML Feeds, it’s just a way for companies like us to provide our data so users like you can suck it in to various programs and present it as you wish. For 2 years now, we’ve provided our Deals Data Feed, and have had lots of users add it to their my-yahoo pages, and Firefox browsers, as well as other formats too. Well, we’re currently working on adding the ability to get our Coupons, as well as separate feeds for each of our Categories in the Deals forum into XML format too! Hopefully we’ll have this released within a week.
Another exclusive update for all our blog users is that we’ll soon have all the Amazon products in our PriceTaker price search engine. With the addition of their millions of products you should see even better results when searching for products. I’ll fill you in next week when we have more information on this.
Have a great rest of the weekend!
July 15th, 2006
I bought a SlingBox from a $150 Deal at Amazon (now it’s at Buy.com). And I gotta say, it’s one of the coolest things ever. Not since my Tivo have I seen such a cool gadget.
If you know me, you know I love my Reality TV shows. So now, I can watch TV from my office computer, but also, because I have this cool phone which uses windows mobile, I can even watch TV on it. I can watch anything I want, I can change channels and watch live TV, or watch anything I’ve Tivo’d.
I think it’s going to be real handy when I travel, so I can have my laptop hooked up through Wi-Fi, or even through my sprint EV-DO cellphone, and be able to watch all my regular shows.
Okay enough blogging for today, I need to go watch TV
July 14th, 2006
As a special treat for the blog viewers, here’s a sneak peek of our new logo.
We’ll be updating our DealTaker site with the logo and a new updated look in the coming weeks!
July 13th, 2006
Well, here’s where you can ask me anything you want to know. About me, about DealTaker, or about anything else.
Here’s a quickie update on the DealTaker sites though:
- DealTaker - we just rolled out the ability to view all the deals by category, and now we’re feverishly working on a new homepage and look to make the site even easier for new users & old alike.
- CouponTaker - it’s finally ready! Have a look at all the Coupons. There’s even more to come!
- PriceTaker - Our Newest site, PriceTaker is now working, so check out the savings. Just enter the product you want, and you’ll know the best prices and where to buy it.
- We’re on the verge of sending out a new newsletter with some great new information, the latest Deals and some great shopping tips. Be sure you’re registered at DealTaker and have the ability to get email from admins selected! (in My Controls | Email Settings).
- We have another 5 or so great features we’re working on to be rolled out before the end of October. While they’re still under heavy development, and I can’t give you a peek yet, it’s going to be a holiday season we’ll hopefully never forget!
As you can probably tell, I’m so excited at all the new things we’re working on, I just can’t wait until it’s all out there for everyone to see!
I’ll be back to post again soon!
Neal.
July 12th, 2006
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