General

Get Planet Earth on Blu-ray for $49.99

Want to really show off that new Blu-ray player? Get yourself the BBC documentary series Planet Earth, which Best Buy has on sale for $49.99. I first caught it when it aired on the Discovery Channel, and it didn't take long before I decided I had to own it.

The series' 11 episodes take you to oceans, jungles, deserts, rainforests, and other remote parts of the planet, where you'll see incredible environments and wildlife. You don't have to be a nature buff to enjoy this; you just need a heartbeat.

I paid about $70 to buy … Read more

We'll miss Russell Shaw

One of our tech journalism colleagues, Russell Shaw, passed away on Friday, March 14. He was on a reporting trip in San Jose, traveling from his home base of Portland, Ore. I knew Russell first as a blogger at ZDNet, where he covered broadband, VoIP, smartphones, and other topics.

Russell was very prolific and knowledgeable, and wrote about a broad range of subjects. In addition to technology, he covered everything from rock concerts and hotel management to politics and entertainment. He was a contributor to Huffington Post and the author of several books, including Caution! Music & Video Downloading: Your Guide to Legal, Safe, and Trouble-Free Downloads … Read more

Presidential election insight via data visualization

Dow Jones Insight is applying text analysis to thousands of documents to measure trends, such as favorability and issue coverage of the presidential candidates over time. In the first example below, Dow Jones Insight parsed 26,435 documents, including English language newspapers, magazine, transcripts from broadcasts and news wire services.

Dow Jones is pitching the service as a generalized tool for analyzing the impact of media coverage, and targeting corporations, as well as political candidates, who need competitive insight. Other services, such as Nielsen BuzzMetrics and BuzzLogic, provide similar kinds of media analysis based on parsing a variety of document … Read more

Rebate deals: Good or bad?

Last month's post about refurbished gear generated lots of great feedback, so today I'd like to open the floor to an even more controversial topic: rebates.

I know from reading various post comments that many of you have strong feelings about this. A few of you have even accused me of "promoting scams," which I suppose is understandable if you've been burned by a rebate deal in the past. (For the record, I'm not affiliated in any way with any company, so the only thing I'm promoting is my fondness for cheap stuff.)… Read more

Own your own cable modem for $19.99 (after rebate)

Most cable companies charge at least $3 per month for your modem, which adds up to $36 per year. But there's no law that says you have to lease their modem; BYO and you can pocket that cash instead.

You'll start recouping your investment around month seven with the D-Link DCM-202 cable modem, currently on sale for $19.99, shipped, after a $20 mail-in rebate.

Before you buy, you should call your cable company to make sure they support the DCM-202. But judging by the roughly 400 Newegg buyers who rated this modem 5 out of 5, compatibility … Read more

Refurbished gear: Good or bad?

From time to time I'll post deals on refurbished/recertified items, which are sold at a discount because they didn't meet a manufacturer's quality standards or were returned (for one reason or another) and can't be sold as new. What do you think of these deals? Have you had good luck buying refurb gear, or did you end up regretting it? I'd love to hear your stories--and so would your fellow Cheapskate readers.

I'll kick things off with one of my own. Last year, Mrs. Cheapskate needed an LCD TV with a built-in DVD … Read more