Archive for August, 2006
Just some random thoughts of the day:
Hopefully our loyal visitors have found the new images on our homepage next to the products to be a useful tool in your bargain hunting.
It’s only late-August, but people are already starting to talk about the upcomming holiday season. Usually, I enjoy warm places, but wow, with such a hot summer here in TX, planning a vacation in a cool location doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.
Over the next 2-3 months we’re going to be very busy, working on some great new features, and continuing our redesign, by adding some new look & features to our forums, as well as other things, so I’ll try to blog as items get complete, but it may be a bit less frequent.
Be sure to check out http://www.dealtaker.com often, so you don’t miss our on some great new contests & other stuff we’ll have going on!
August 24th, 2006
If you browse wirelessly through a PDA or phone browser, then the new Mobile Dealtaker is for you. You can do most of the same things as you can online, (Get Deals, PM, Forums, etc). If you use a mobile device it should be recognized automatically, or just click the Mobile Version link on the bottom of any DealTaker page. Here’s what it looks like:
Funny that the last post was about ViaTalk. They are running a promotion through Friday where you buy 1 year of their service for $199, and you get a year free!
If you haven’t been to PriceTaker lately, we’re constantly adding more products & stores to the mix. Currently we’ve got: 10,932,425 products from 404,072 manufacturers at 637 stores.
We’re still making some more great new enhancements for you, so please keep checking back often!
August 16th, 2006
So, we’ve been trying out several IP Phone services here at the office, and it’s still not as simple as they make it seem. Our configuration is kinda unique though. So we have a server running asterisk, a PBX software that allows us to have fancy stuff like messages & separate extentions & stuff. If you’ve called us in the past 6 mos or so, you’ve heard it. We also have some IP Phones, and phone contraptions which allow you to connect any normal phone (cordless, etc)
Well, that’s just one part of it. That allows us to converse with eachother, so we can call eachother using extiontions, and talk as long as we want just using the internet. To talk to the world, we signed up with a few services. First we tried Stanaphone, which works pretty well, but they charge for every minute of outbound calling. Then we signed up with Telasip (about $15/mo for a personal account), which works very well, but only allows one incomming/outgoing call at a time. Finally we are currently trying viatalk(about the same as telasip, sometimes it’s 2 for 1 though), which we like too, and allows 2 outgoing calls at once.
So besides trying to set it up with our asterisk server, our problems are with faxing. For incomming faxes we can use http://k7.net/ which is free 
, but outgoing calls is the issue. Both Stanaphone and Telasip work great for outgoing faxes, but viatalk charges $10/mo extra for it. So now we’ve got it set up fairly weird:
Outbound calls - ViaTalk (then fallback to telasip, then stanaphone)
Outbound Fax - telasip then fallback to Stanaphone
Incomming calls - Stanaphone, or any of them really, but we use the main stanaphone #.
So if you’re thinking of doing VIOP, the advice I have is to check out your needs versus the ones out there. The quality of voice is surprisingly good on them all, so it’s basically the extra features, and stability which are important.
Have a good one, everyone!
August 10th, 2006
Well, this is the last weekend for my kids before school starts on Wednesday. I was such a good daddy, I brought my oldest to the office about a month ago, and we setup http://www.kidzdeals.com/ for him, and I brought the other kids yesterday & then today, and they setup some web sites with pictures. . It’s gonna be quiet around the house with them all at school, but we’re already excited about their Fall break in October.
We updated the Advanced page with the new look & feel too, and are working now on the mobile version, which will hopefully be done next week. Also, we’re about to have a new Contest and give away more backpacks and probably a dvd player too. Be sure to check the deals forums & check your email notification for more details to be out soon.
Have a great weekend everyone!
August 4th, 2006
Well, we arrived back in Dallas yesterday and boy was our house hot. I don’t think the AC got it down to a reasonable temperature until about midnight.
As soon as I got home, I checked DealTaker, and couldn’t resist ordering another computer for the kids playroom. For $404, it’s a Dimension Pentium 4 with 1 gb ram, 17″ LCD monitor & more. Check it out here.
On the DealTaker front, we’re still fixing some bugs & stuff from the recent upgrade, and we’re happy to announce that we now have Newegg listed in our stores section, which a lot of folks have been requesting recently. In addition we are finishing a new page so you can see all the coupons which will expire soon, so you can’t say “Oh, I can’t believe I missed it” anymore. Click here for a preview. We’ll add a link on our current coupons page on DealTaker soon.
Keep watching here for more updates soon!
August 2nd, 2006