Black Friday.

DealTaker has long been a go to destination for Black Friday information and I think that’s because of the enthusiasm everyone here has for this time of year. There’s a real hubub when a new ad comes in. We all get excited and everyone from the content team, to the merchants, marketing and the developers get chatty when a new ad comes in.

We’ve done some things this year to help make the Black Friday information easier to find. First of all, check out our new and improved 2009 Black Friday Ads page. There’s always a lot of information coming from lots of different directions so we’ve done our best on that page to keep it organized and easy to find. On the left hand side is a list of all the stores that we had ads for last year. As the ads come in a check mark will show up next to it. Click on the store name and you’ll find all of the ad info (including product lists and ad scans when available).

On the main page you’ll also notice that we’re aggregating all of the Black Friday coupons that come in from merchants as well.

This week is always a busy week as tons of new ads come in, so check back regularly for all the most up to date info. And know that when a new ad comes in your trusty DealTaker staff is just as excited as you are!

I hope the result of adding more stores is that people who come to DealTaker will better be able to find what they are looking for with our increased variety of merchants.  Moving in to the holiday season, I hope everyone will be able to find exactly what they want, at the price they want, starting right here at DealTaker.com!

Well, we heard you, DealTakers! We are proud to announce that DealTaker.com now has a printable Grocery Coupons page! From here you’ll be able to search among a huge collection of grocery coupons. Just find and check the ones you want, then print them up from the convenience of home!

Best of all it’s free.

Now you can save even more money with DealTaker than you did before!

FIRST BLACK FRIDAY AD OF THE YEAR NOW ON DEALTAKER.COM

Premier Coupon & Deal Site Features Most-Anticipated Sales of the Year Well Ahead of Schedule

PLANO, Texas—October 7, 2009—DealTaker.com today announced the official start of the holiday bargain shopping season with the first Black Friday ad now at www.DealTaker.com/blackfriday.html.

“It’s a great day for bargain hunters everywhere,” said Kevin Strawbridge, President of DealTaker.com.  “With pent up demand at an all-time high and retailers eager for consumer dollars, sales will abound and organization will be the key to sorting through myriad opportunities.  Perusing the ads well ahead of Thanksgiving makes it easier for deal takers to optimize their time and money, and for retailers to ensure traffic to their stores,” Strawbridge said.

There are 50 days before November 27 which could be the biggest shopping day of the year.  To prepare, consumers can quickly and easily find the most up-to-date Black Friday deals, coupons and sales at DealTaker.com.  The popular site also features a countdown calendar, a handy downloadable Black Friday Organizer ® exclusively available at DealTaker and a searchable list of free shipping codes for consumers who also take advantage of the online deals every day and on Cyber Monday.

Besides sales from nearly 2,000 merchant partners, more than 225,000 DealTaker.com members actively post deals, ads, coupons and offers on DealTaker.com every day, saving consumers millions of dollars over the past 5 years.  Historically, members have posted Black Friday ads directly to the Black Friday forums.  But some retailers have balked at members trying to help each other.  Already, one major retailer has made a pre-emptive strike with a cease-and-desist letter, insisting DealTaker.com police the forums and remove ads that members post.

About DealTaker.com

DealTaker.com is the premier destination for consumers looking to spend less and get more.  A free coupon site for members to share and take deals, DealTaker.com makes it easy to save on merchandise and services including food, travel, electronics, home furnishings, jewelry and pet supplies, among others.  Founded in Plano, Texas in 2004, DealTaker.com works with more than 1,900 stores, nearly 19,000 followers on Twitter and more than 225,000 deal-sharing members to provide over 8,000 active coupons and deals every day.

# # #

Contact:  Jeanine Connolly

DealTakerPR@gmail.com

214 – 636 – 3900

Truth is, there is no way to completely avoid getting sick.  Germs and bacteria that make you sick are everywhere…on every surface and in the air.   In my many years of working with kids, from the infant years all the way up to 21, I’ve had to attend a great deal of classes on general health and wellness.  I’ve worked in daycares, preschools and group homes and these classes weren’t for those who had weak stomachs.  They didn’t do the sugar coat song and dance about washing hands and using a tissue when we sneeze.  The people who conducted these classes went to public places and homes to get samples of the bacteria and germs that are on everyday surfaces.  The results were mind blowing.  Most of us lost our appetite by the time lunch hit.

Stop what you’re doing now and look at your hands.  They look clean, right?  Well, you’d be surprised to know that your hands probably have more germs and bacteria on them than a toilet seat.  How many things have you touched today?  A doorknob, money, your cell phone, steering wheel, computer keyboard, remote, the faucet in a public restroom, etc.  Did you know that your work station has 400 times more bacteria than the floor of a public restroom?  No, you don’t have to rush to the nearest restroom and wash your hands.  Grab some hand sanitizer and use it.  If you don’t have any nearby, get some.  It will kill 99.9% of the germs on your hands.

How many of you use sponges to do dishes or wipe the counters?  If you are one of those sponge addicts, be aware that every surface that has come in contact with that sponge is a bacteria infested minefield.  I’m not saying to give up the sponges that you faithfully use everyday.  I’m merely suggesting that you disinfect your sponge.  Toss in the dishwasher or, after wetting it, put it in the microwave for 2 minutes.  This will kill 99% of the bacteria.

Clorox and Lysol should be a staple in your home (and office).   Whether it’s the bottled spray cleaners or the convenient wipes, stock up!  Think of the last time you cleaned your house.  It looked wonderful when you were done and smelled fresh.  More than  likely there were at least a dozen areas in your home that were dirtier than a public restroom toilet (not sure why toilets always come up, but it gets the point across).  Don’t be alarmed.  80% of those that do housework forget about cleaning these surfaces.  If you’re worried about time, it only takes about 5 minutes to fix the problem.  Grab a Lysol or Clorox wipe (or dampen a cloth with either of the cleaners) and wipe anything that you, or your family, have frequent contact with.  This includes remote controls, phones (cell phones and landlines), all door knobs, faucets, computer keyboards, gaming equipment, banisters, etc.

Carry hand sanitizer in your purse, backpack or pocket and use it!   Some of the most bacteria and germ infested public areas and surfaces are restrooms (think of the door you have to touch to exit…how many people didn’t wash their hands upon leaving…), shopping cart handles, handling money, schools, fast food restaurant counters, the bottom of your purse (yes ladies, it’s true), the ATM, workplace desktops (don’t make me mention the toilet seat again), playgrounds, health clubs, etc.  There are hundreds more!  You can’t wipe off every surface you come in contact with out in public (a simple trip to the grocery store would take several days), but you can slather your hands with hand sanitizer.

With awareness and a little bit of effort, you can decrease your chances of getting the cold or flu as well as the severity.  Since taking all of those classes I will admit I’ve become slightly obsessive about sanitizing and disinfecting.  I still get sick usually twice a year and a few times I’m hit with symptoms.  However, that’s an improvement.  There was a time in my life where I was always getting sick with sinus infections, strep throat and bronchitis.  Now, I take precautions, I faithfully take vitamins everyday and if I feel like I’m getting sick, I hit up my supply of EmergenC.

With all that being said, stay healthy and stock up on vitamins, sanitizers, cleaners and more!

Where I lived,  there weren’t too many places to shop and serious bargain hunting required me to travel to the malls in the larger cities.  I knew precisely which stores to hit and what time of year to hit them.  It was a science…a well planned out calculation of codes, numbers, dates and lists.  To go or not to go.  To buy or not to buy.  Should I grab it now or wait?  It was a game of chance.  It was a shoppers Russian roulette.  In the end, I save.  I win.  And, to those who would listen, I would brag.

Down the road something changed.  People woke up and realized that the area I lived in was a heavy tourist attraction in the Summer and Fall.  The tourists wanted something more than chain restaurants to eat at, a pretty lake to look at, overpriced lake house rentals and the usual New Hampshire souvenirs.  They wanted to shop.  It was then that the Tilton Factory Outlets was born; a huge shoppers paradise that offered nothing but outlet stores…and lots of them.  It was like taking all of the stores at the mall on the best day to shop for deals and putting them into one place.  It was a bargain hunters haven for year round deals.

I remember my first visit there and the amazement of how large this outlet plaza was.  I got out of the car, sucked in my breath and just stood there with my mouth hanging down to the ground.  Time stood still.  My eyeballs shifted from one end of the outlet to the other.  Where do I start?  There must have been at least 50 stores.  Breath in.  Breath out.  I shivered at the excitement.  People starred at me.  Is she okay?  Yes.  I was having a moment.  It was better than…okay, you get the picture.

The trend quickly spread and outlet malls and plazas were popping up everywhere.  The malls were a thing of the past.  I no longer needed to cling to that fine science.  It became simple.  I could get great deals all the time at the outlets.  Conversations shifted too.  It was no longer cool to brag about how much you paid for something.  People were no longer impressed.  They didn’t care.  They shifted their attention to those that bragged about how much money they saved.  I could finally, with enthusiasm and no fake smiles, participate in these conversations.

With time, and a large dose of modern technology, came the ease of online shopping and retailers got the hint that people wanted to save money and get the some killer deals online that were offered in the stores.  We love the sales and the online clearance pages, but how about those year round deals that didn’t require the hit or miss threat?  They listened.  Over the past couple of years more and more of the online retail stores are now offering outlet pages…a bargain shoppers dream!

What does that mean for you?  It means you can get amazing deals year round on just about everything while saving up to 95%!  Which stores have outlet selections?  A lot of them do.  Don’t have the time to click on your favorite stores and find out?  Well, we’ve done that for you.  DealTaker has over 1800 stores and searching for the stores that have outlet pages takes time, but so far, we’ve found 100 of them for you!  It’s an ongoing project, but we are determined to find them all!  And, we will.  So, while we’re searching, why not check out what we have so far.  Happy shopping my friends.

So one of the things you do when you launch a new product is a logo – check – and a tag line.  Uh Oh, no tag line.  Now tag lines can sometimes make or break you so I wanted the tag line for newatnoon to really stick with you and reflect what the site is.   Now whether this reflects my warped sense of humor or not remains to be seen, but all I could think about was “a nooner”.  Seriously, you can’t voice that sort of thing outloud in the office, so I kept it to myself (this took a great deal of effort on my part).  The problem is “nooner” was the only thing I could think about.  I was totally stumped, sort of like a tag-line block.

Finally, and I can’t tell how relived I was, someone else from the office mentioned it first.  After that all bets were off.  “Newatnoon – putting a twist on a nooner”.   Trust me it got weirder from there, but you get the idea.   Come to find out that once the cat was out of the bag, everyone was thinking the same thing about “nooner” .

As I sit here writing this post the whole team is still throwing around ideas for taglines and how could we possibly fit “nooner” into the tagline.   We haven’t come up with a tag line yet, so if you have any ideas let us know.   After all, who wants a boring “nooner”?

My phone history has been this…first phone Samsung SGH-R225 nice phone but a bit on the crappy side. Then I upgraded to the Motorola V600 at the same time I also had a Nextel Motorola i850 for work. Then I became a faithful fan of Windows Mobile and have been using it ever since. The Windows Mobile phones I’ve owned, first to last, are T-Mobile SDA, T-Mobile MDA, T-Mobile Wing, and finally the T-Mobile Shadow I.

Finally, T-Mobile has come out with a couple of phones that have piqued my interest, the T-Mobile TouchPro2 and T-Mobile MyTouch3G. Right now it is turning out to be a tough decision because I’ve been a hardcore Windows Mobile user for 3 or 4 years now and this Android phone is making me waver in that. They are both great phones with some pretty amazing features. Next Wednesday is when the TouchPro2 releases and I can’t wait to stop by one of the T-Mobile retail stores so I can put both of the phones through their paces. Hopefully I find at least one feature that sets one of the phones apart from the other because otherwise this is going to be a very tough decision.

It’s easy. First, go to DealTaker.com and then click the “Stores/Coupons” button in the top navigation bar.

Then select the store that you want to get alerts from. For this example, we’ll use Kohl’s.

Once there, you’ll see a list of coupons for the store. The last coupon allows you to sign up to be alerted when new coupons are posted. If you are already a member of DealTaker (and logged in!) all you’ll have to do is click the “Sign me up!” button and they will be delivered to the email address that you originally signed up to DealTaker with.

If you are not a member of DealTaker, just enter your email address into the box and new coupons will be delivered straight to your inbox!

Also if you are planning a trip and would like to run all or part of it by me, just send me a PM.

I view around 700 travel emails and hundreds of sites weekly, so most of the time I have the info readily available.

I try to keep up with the “hot spots,” areas that are promoting tourism heavily with the use of discount packages, Deals and Free add-ons:

• Right at the moment the hot spots appear to be San Diego & Chicago for the states.  But the entire country is full of Free Night Deals.
• Mexico gave out some big discounts as they tried to recover from being tagged as the center of the Swine flu.   They are still offering some specials & freebies but I don’t see the types of deals that would move it back up the Hot Spot scale.
• The Caribbean has led the pack with All-Inclusive stays.  They are generally less expensive than piecing a vacation together and sometimes include not only all meals but alcohol and activities.
• I was looking around at Bed & Breakfasts in Europe and found some very reasonable rates at top rated B&B’s
• I wish that the taxes and fees on the flights abroad were less.  $300 in extra charges kills even the greatest flight deal.  So I wade through all of the oysters and every so often find a pearl which I tweet as fast as I can before they sell out.

Speaking of tweeting – you can follow me @Siddeley and I will do my best to keep you updated on anything travel related, but especially of course, the deals.

This is just the beginning for the travel program at Dealtaker.com – We are striving to bring you the best content with the clearest information.  Please send your ideas and thoughts our way.

Have You Been There?