(yellol)

Skype has got some serious competition now, as of this week. Released in public beta, VoxOx has great potential. Loaded with features like call encryption, the service gains some big momentum in that area. Possibly the best feature of all would be the free phone number. Yeah, you heard that, a phone number with no strings attached. The only downside is that you can’t pick your phone number, but I suppose that I shouldn’t be complaining since it is free. To top that, you get two hours of free calling (120 points)! Along with cheap calling rates, you can “earn” minutes by referring users over to VoxOx, an extra two hours for every new user. There are also rumors that they’ll have an ad system, where users can earn points by viewing advertisements.

All of this is pretty sweet stuff, but in the end it comes down to quality. Can VoxOx match Skype’s relatively high-end call quality? And to answer myself, it would be yes. During some test calls I made, VoxOx has solid quality, whether I called landlines or mobile phones going sixty miles an hour  down the freeway. The only time quality lagged was against some poor VOIP services I put it against, but it was completely the fault of the other provider and definitely not VoxOx.

If you’re still reading this and not already signing up, stop waiting and get to it! To sign up, just click here! By the way, if you want to get me two free hours of calling time, enter your email in the comment section and I’ll email you an invite as soon as possible! I remember favors…

iriver has some worthy, feature-packed PMPs in its product line. The only problem has been the pricing of its products. As of today, iriver is lowering the prices of its priciest models: the SPINN, the E100, and the Lplayer. I included a small list of the price drops below.

E100 & Lplayer: $69.99 for 4GB (-40 USD)

E100 & Lplayer: $99.99 for 8GB (-40 USD)

SPINN: $189.99 for 4GB (-60 USD)

SPINN: $229.99 for 8GB (-50 USD)

The 4GB SPINN probably has the best value at the moment, but I’m sure Amazon or some other e-tailers will be able to throw on extra discounts, in time for the holidays! Visits iriver for more detailed specs and other holiday promos.

I’m sure some readers read our previous post about Giveaway of the Day. Game Giveaway of the Day is a division of the same site that, you guessed it, has game giveaways. They usually aren’t the most exciting games but once again, it’s free. The selection isn’t terrible either and some games are actually quite fun and it can save you quite a few bills as it adds up. So check it out here!

I’ve written a previous post about Woot! a while back. To sum it up, it’s a great site that sells one product a day, at a low price. So what am I getting to today? Well, I’m sure there’s that morning that you forgot to check Woot!, only to visit in the afternoon to see a ridiculously cheap product sold out.

That won’t ever happen again with wootSnoop. It is an application that alerts you of Woot! items the moment they are available! It also features a price comparison that allows you to compare the same item with other online retailers. The software is available in Windows, OS X, and Linux!

It’s free, so give wootSnoop a go! Screenshot below.

Now might be a great time to change your default search engine! Scour is a “dynamic” search engine that scours the internet…duh! It combines the results of Google, Yahoo!, and MSN! The results are quite accurate and although Google is still the dominant search engine, Scour is getting there. What keeps it on the top is user input. You can review and give votes to results. You might wonder why people would spend the extra time. It’s what makes Scour the best; you get paid to search, vote, and review!

Sure, it’s a little off-balanced and getting a $100 Visa gift card will take a while, but if you use Scour as your default search engine and spend a little extra “review” time, it’s not as hard as it looks! An extra $100 Visa gift card in your wallet can really come in handy sometimes! So check out Scour and I hope you enjoy it!

This is just a quick tip. I was monitoring Hoopstick and I realized that the prices are generally much cheaper towards the late afternoon. If it’s a popular item, there is a chance it may be sold out, so it’s basically a small gamble. Give to Hoopstick.com and see if you can make the right “stick”!

Hoopstick is very similar to Woot! However, it is a little more interesting. It changes its price tag every 15 seconds based on the demand. Like today’s earphones on sale, they dropped from $15 to $5. Unfortunately, they currently only have sales on weekends. Consider yourself lucky? Give Hoopstick a go!

Yugster is very similar to Woot! However, they offer more “extra” deals and those “mystery packages” are quite interesting. If you register (which is for free), they allow members to see sneak previews of tomorrow’s offer! This site is definitely one of the better shopping sites on the internet and a worthy competitor of Amazon’s deals. Today’s offer is shown below! Click here to go to Yugster!

“One Day, One Deal” Woot! is a great site that offers one deal every day! They offer some great discounts on their daily products. However, I recommend that you should check it very early in the morning as the good discounts are usually sold out in as quick as an hour! Not every discount is that great though so do some price comparisions before purchasing anything. But of course, I’m sure you always compare prices… Even if you aren’t interested in purchasing products, check out the product descriptions. You’ll be in for a surprise. Woot! has some great side deals worth checking out as well, so give them a try. Visit their website here.