Truyo

Filed under: Gadling's Daily Deal

Here are the hottest gear deals for today, Monday December 14th 2009. Remember, these deals are often valid for just one day, so act fast before they are gone.

Today's first deal is for another price drop on the Ultimate Ears Metro.fi 200 noise isolating headphones. These high quality earbuds normally retail for $80, but are currently on sale through buy.com for just $19.99, with free shipping. Click here for this deal.

Over at Sierra Snowboard, you'll find over 90 different backpacks on sale for just $9.99. The assortment is bound to have something for everyone. Click here for this deal.

Next up is the GoGroove "hybrid" iPod/iPhone solar charging case/speaker. Pretty wacky looking gadget, but essentially you are getting a solar/AC/USB charger with a built in speaker. Yours for $29.99. Click here for this deal.

And finally in today's lineup, if you'd like a stocking stuffer for a kid, that can also help bring you some peace and quiet, then check out the Kidz Gear headphones. They are designed to fit children 2 and up. Click here for this deal.

Daily gear deals - $20 noise isolating headphones, $10 backpacks and more originally appeared on Gadling on Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Computers, Breaking News

You can't beat free online e-mail. You want a different e-mail address for every day of the week? You got it. Need separate accounts for those sites you just know are going to spam you like there's no tomorrow? No problem.

No problem, that is, until those sites go down, which is exactly what happened to Microsoft yesterday. Most users of the company's Windows Live suite of tools, which includes the free online e-mail client Hotmail, were unable to access the site for much of the day, leaving them with no way to look at all of their spam.

The outage was total, leaving the service's 260 million subscribers with nothing but a "Service Unavailable" message when they attempted to view the site.

Today, we're happy to report, things seem to be back up and working correctly -- if a bit slowly. Spam ahoy.

From CNET News.com

Related Links:

• Microsoft Office Served Up On the Web
• Gmail Overhaul On the Way?
• The Hitman Spam Scam

Hotmail and Other Windows Live Services Suffer Outage originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 27 Feb 2008 09:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Enterprise, Developer, iPhone

Developers are learning that iPhone users want sophistication and features in their apps, not watered-down functionality. A report in GigaOM shows that not only are companies finding that slimmer isn't better when it comes to apps, but that one company is actually changing their business model based on what they found out about how iPhone users were using their app.

Travel search service Kayak based its first iPhone offering on the assumption that a mobile user would most likely use the app if her flight had been canceled and she needed a replacement reservation. As a result, the initial app didn't have features like flexible date search.

While the Kayak app [free, iTunes link] was very successful for the company, with over 600,000 downloads since February now accounting for 5% of Kayak's search volume, users demanded the full functionality that they found on the company's website.

Kayak went back to the drawing board and recently released version 2.0 of the app, with some major improvements. However, since Kayak is a search engine, iPhone users still end up being pushed to other travel websites, which means that they have to put up with tiny renditions of full pages and non-loading Flash sites. This "concierge" model obviously needed some work for the iPhone client.

The growing movement towards iPhones and other handheld devices becoming laptop replacements has forced a change in Kayak's business model. In 2010, Kayak will introduce an iPhone-friendly wallet system that will give users the chance to book travel from their devices. That wallet will save credit card, frequent flier, and flight preference information. Kayak will use the wallet to enter data into travel provider sites, and then send the users an alert when the booking has been completed. This change, forced by the growing use of iPhones, will most likely be reflected on the main Kayak website as well.

Do you know of any other companies that have had to change their business model because of the success of the iPhone? We'd like to know -- please leave a comment below.

TUAWKayak's business model upended by iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Read More... [Source: The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)]

If you were looking for just one more reason to ditch Sprint then this could be it. A CDMA-flavored Palm Pixi just cleared the FCC -- yes, another one -- and we can say with confidence it's not coming to Sprint this time around. Better yet, Palm's model P121EWW matches up with that P121 code we saw leaked a while back for Big Red (Sprint's model is P120EWW), and this sucker got tested for 802.11b/g WiFi. Looks like that Sprint ad touting the Pixi's non-existent WiFi was more than just wishful thinking. With webOS-powered Palm gear already confirmed on Verizon for "early next year," are you really going to make the jump to a WiFi-less Pixi on Sprint knowing what's on the way? And more importantly, can we expect another terrifying series of ads targeting Sprint this time instead of AT&T?

Palm Pixi clears FCC with Verizon frequencies and WiFi in tow originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 13 Dec 2009 12:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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