There’s No Such Thing As A Free Lunch….. Or Is There ? 

If I had been asked the question just under two years ago, I would probably have just laughed or muttered something about not being born yesterday.

In recounting what has happened since, I should make it clear from the outset that I am not attempting to influence or convert anyone, just giving an honest picture of what was achievable for me and the real “cost”. 

As often happens with these things, I discovered the free gift scene totally by accident.  Christmas 2006 was rapidly approaching and I was trying to get hold of a cheap Xbox 360 console to use as a media centre.   One of the first listings I came across on eBay was offering information on how to get the console totally free; I didn’t exactly have money burning a hole in my pocket and am always up for a challenge, so decided to find out if there was a catch, expecting to get an e-book on bankrupt stock or police auctions.

Instead, I was about to enter the world of affiliate (referral) marketing.   I am sure there are volumes on the subject, some of which are no doubt labelled pyramid schemes, but for those who want a bit of detail on the specific business model employed in this instance, you might want to take a look at a short video podcast put together by the BBC’s Newsnight program or maybe my own guide how to get free stuff online.

All I had to do to get my free console was sign-up to an affiliate site, take out a free DVD rental trial and refer a few friends.  How difficult could that be?

I am a regular online shopper and knew the DVD rental company LOVEFiLM (the equivalent of Blockbuster or Netflix in US and Canada) from a recent national TV campaign, so had no problems with that part of the process. To be fair, the service they provide is actually pretty good!

The harder part was getting referrals…..and I needed 12 of those (who would each have to take up their own offer) to get the Xbox 360 console. Luckily, after running out of family and friends who were either willing to believe what I was saying or just gave in to my constant nagging, I stumbled upon eXceem forums.  They have a buzzing community of like minded freebie hunters who gave me confidence that I would get me gifts and provided tips on how to achieve that.   I have since discovered similar sites such as Anything4Free.com

To the cynics’ amazement, my Xbox 360 arrived on 2^nd December 2006 along with a second generation iPod Nano that I had also earnt…and a freebie addict was born.  I would be embarrassed to say how many other gadgets, gifts and cash have passed through my hands since!

I mentioned the real “cost” in my preamble. That has not been a financial one, far from it, you can get out as much as you put in…..and there’s where the problem lies; getting referrals can start to take up every waking hour, your whole life spent thinking about, talking about and implementing new “methods”.  Well, that is, if you are not checking your accounts for new sign-ups, waiting for account verification or delivery of your free stuff.  Getting your affiliate links out there will also almost invariably require an element of spamming and I am not proud of some of the tactics I have employed along the way.  In fact,  I could devote another who article and more to “methods”, the choice of free sites out there and how to avoid getting your affiliate account cancelled (termed “put on hold”).

Fortunately, things changed for the better when I set up my first ever websites, Simplyfreeiphone and Gadgets4nowt - my background is certainly not web coding or design but I love a challenge (did I say that before!) and now have them both ranking extremely well.   I obviously have to update the content and keep working on links but overall, it’s a fairly easy ride these days.  With the evolution of the affiliate sites themselves, I no longer get my free stuff in the form of goods, most now offer custom orders in the shape of bank transfers at £17 ($35) per referral.   My sites bring me in an average of 3 completed referrals a day, so there’s good money to be had. 

All that’s left is to decide where do I go from here?  I guess I could push some new keywords and increase traffic to my sites through rankings but there is a limit to people looking for a free games console or iPods.  Can the sites be taken in another direction or should I sell them?

The iPod Touch is both a portable media player as well as a mobile platform with Wi Fi connectivity. The iPod Touch was marketed as well as designed by the company known as Apple Inc. it was on September 5 in the year 2007 when the product was launched. The launching was done through an event which was known as The Beat Goes On. One of the differences between the iPod Touch and the other products of the iPod line is that a Multi Touch graphical user interface has been added to the iPod Touch. The free iPod Touch is available with thirty two GB of flash memory, as well as with sixteen GB of flash memory, and eight GB of flash memory. The Apple web browser known as Safari is included in the product, and the iTunes Store can also be accessed through the wireless capability of the player. Nowadays there are a number of web sites on the internet which offer free iPods through their promotional schemes.

 Just like the iPhone, the iPod Touch also has the multi touch interface. There is a physical home button located just beneath the touch screen which can be pressed to reach the main screen. There are a number of buttons listed in the home screen, which can be used to open the applications which are available. The iTunes, Videos, Music, You Tube, Settings, Calculator, Contacts, Calendar, Clock and Photos applications are included in the iPod Touch by default. Models of the iPod Touch which were released later also consisted of Maps, Mail, Weather, Notes, and Stocks. The earlier models can also be added with these applications if the user wants by purchasing a software upgrade. The user can add direct links to web sites he wants to visit on the home screen

If your lounge is home to more entertainment equipment than just a TV and DVD player, it’s likely you also have a bunch of remote controls cluttering up the coffee table.

There are plenty of cheap universal remotes available, but Logitech’s Harmony devices take things much further. The Harmony One can replace up to 15 remotes and, like many others in the range, is configured using an online database so there’s no need to hunt down codes and enter them into the remote control manually.

Simply hook it up to a PC, pick your devices from a list and wait for the codes to be copied to the remote.
You can also create macros to send multiple commands with one press of a button.

For example if you want to watch a DVD, the Harmony One can, in one sweep, turn the TV on, set it to the correct channel, switch on the surround sound speakers and select the appropriate input, and then power up the DVD player – all with a single touch of a button. The device is well designed, with a 2.2in touch-sensitive screen providing access to device-specific controls.

Taking the fashion world by storm the beer belt is this year’s must have fashion accessory! Made of stylish black webbing with a chunky silver belt buckle, that’s got a grip strong enough to even hold in my belly! Beer belt has a bottle opener attached to the other end that can be used to open bottle caps not wine corks…… oooh imagine being skewered down there by a corkscrew. That would be very painful.

With life’s most wanted commodity attached to the other end of your belt your ready to conquer the earth. The urge to open your cold one might have you looking like a fumbling, dirty old man but once you get the hang of it you’ll be cracking caps off bottles like the belt was an extra limb. Just don’t forget you don’t need to show everyone your leopard skin boxers to use your belt to its full bottle opening potential. How embarrassing would that be?

Boring nights in front of another failing celebrity-less reality TV program are finally over. The TV-off remote control is an ingenious learning device that will drive your friends mad. Simply press the button and the TV-B-Gone will switch off 99% of televisions and virtually anything with an infrared port. There are over 400 off sequences preprogrammed on this handy device. It will keep scanning until it finds the correct off frequency. It is mainly used for TVs, but equally effective on LCDs, DVDs and similar devices.

The fun is endless! Imagine you’re at the pub, a penalty is about to be taken…you press the button…the TV switches off. TV-B-Gone works best when used under 7 metres from the television set, although in optimum conditions can work over twice that distance!

Ladies, imagine the carnage in the pub when your husband has dragged you out for the afternoon and you end up watching the footie. A sneaky prod of your remote and off goes the footie and on comes the Corrie omnibus. TV off remote can be used in an array of location only limited by your imagination. No more boring school videos, no more soaps, no more sport, no more of any of the type of television viewing that makes your skin crawl, just constant sneaky chaos. Genius we think you’ll agree. Tv-off remote works on Plasmas, lcd’s, projectors and normal televisions. In fact this modern day electronic Robin Hood will control most devices that have an infra red port.

If you’ve had enough of the television this is definitely the gadget of choice for you.

The Turboflame Arc Lighter is the first designer household lighter to combine cutting-edge technology with contemporary living style. A beautiful, all-metal lighter, the Turboflame is available in three impressive styles, chrome, brushed steel or titanium, and is fitted with four rubber inserts for extra grip.
Effortlessly elegant and wonderfully versatile, the Arc will make light work of a host of household tasks, from caramelising a crème brûlée to lighting tea lights in aromatherapy burners. In addition, it won’t leave any unsightly black carbon traces on your elegant table candles either.The Arc roars with a 1300°c pinpoint jet-like flame that easily gets into the smallest of spaces, and lights in any direction, even upside down.

The Arc is easy to use with an advanced soft-touch ignition system and an adjustable flame controlled by a small screw on the base. You can easily see when the lighter runs low on gas thanks to a small sight glass near the base of the lighter. The Turboflame Arc is a must have gadget that won’t let you down, it fulfils it’s task as a lighter perfectly and looks stunning when not in use. In addition, you’ll be pleased to know all mechanical parts are covered by a 5 year manufacturers warranty.

Technical specifications

• Turboflame Arc Lighter
• 1300°c razor sharp flame
• Adjustable flame length
• Light in any direction, even upside down
• Four black rubber inserts for extra grip and comfort
• Available in three styles, titanium, brushed steel and chrome
• 5 year manufacturer warranty
• Full instructions included
• Dimensions: H 11.1cm x W 3.4cm x D 1.3cm

SanDisk has teamed up with SK Telecom, the largest mobile operator in Korea, to develop a platform for mobile television and personal video recording.

Mobile subscribers will soon be able to view and record paid-for mobile TV content using technology and services from SK Telecom and SanDisk’s TrustedFlash-enabled memory cards.

Copyright and technical issues mean that almost all mobile TV services can be provided only via a streaming service, which is highly dependant on network coverage and bandwidth availability.

SanDisk has helped to alleviate some of these issues with its TrustedFlash range, which includes security technology for storing personal and private data.

The system securely preloads, downloads and side-loads premium content on Flash memory cards in mobile phones and other consumer electronics products.

Dr Se-Hyun Oh, president of SK Telecom, said: “SanDisk and SK Telecom can allow mobile TV users more freedom to enjoy the purchased content, and allow mobile TV operators to adopt a variety of pricing and business models.”

The new system enables mobile network operators to offer premium mobile TV services that can be securely recorded on TrustedFlash-enabled memory cards, while protecting against unauthorised transfer or distribution.

Storing the content on a removable memory card allows subscribers to bring paid mobile TV content with them when upgrading handsets, or port it to other devices such as a personal media player or PC.

“By offering new technology embedded in our products, SanDisk and SK Telecom are offering new capabilities to mobile network operators that enable them to provide more value to subscribers,” said Farshid Sabet, vice president and general manager of SanDisk’s Mobile Network Operators division.

Both companies said that the system can also be used for content distribution such as games, movies and electronic books.

The Neuros OSD is a media streaming device that offers a range of ways to view, stream and distribute music and video around the home.

It device is designed to sit between a television and a source device such as a Sky or cable box, video recorder or Freeview box, using the two cables supplied. This allows it to act as a ‘pass-through’ so you can enjoy uninterrupted television when it’s not in use.

Click a button on the supplied remote control, though, and the OSD’s [www.neurostechnology.com] screen is overlaid onto the television picture. To view digital music, video or photos through the television you can connect a USB storage device or a memory card directly into the OSD’s sockets, or connect it to a wired network to stream directly from the computer’s hard disk.

Perhaps the most useful weapon in the OSD’s arsenal is its ability to record content either directly to a storage device or across the network to a hard disk. Innovatively, it allows the user to record directly in a format suitable for an iPod or Sony PSP, as well as being able to manually configure settings for other devices.

An IR Blaster is also included the box, which can be placed alongside the infra-red receiver on any device to allow the user to remotely change channels and control the source from the computer to help schedule recordings.

This is an impressive array of capabilities, the potential of which makes the OSD one of the most versatile media streamers yet released. Unfortunately it isn’t without its drawbacks.

Being open source, the Neuros is constantly being refined and improved with firmware updates and plug-ins to allow users to customise the interface or stream and view Youtube content on the fly, for instance. For this reason it’s difficult to judge the potential of the product but in its current guise we came across some fairly major problems, something particularly serious for the less tech-savvy consumer.

To begin with it’s not particularly easy to use, in large part down to the convoluted interface and an unresponsive remote control. We also had some issues when setting up the network access, although these were eventually cleared up, and we were disappointed by the lack of control the user has over media files during selection and playback.

Vista compatible: Yes

The VMP-008 music player, from new distributor Veho (we reviewed the company’s VFS-001 film scanner recently) is an impressively tiny device that includes 1GB of storage space.

That’s unremarkable in the context of the latest 160GB iPod, but this device is so small that you could swallow it and hardly feel it.

In fact, the player is shaped like a small lozenge and has no obvious buttons.

Instead there are two touch-sensitive pads on one side. These control both volume and playback (you hold them down for volume and brush them to change track back or forth).

It includes a standard 3.5mm headphone jack (and a pair of OK earphones), on a wire that doubles as a way to hang the player around your neck (it’s designed for runners and sports players).

Sound quality is very good, with plenty of life both in the treble and bass ranges. Our only qualm is that there’s no random or shuffle mode, so with no screen you’re limited to listening to the tracks in the order they were copied. Other than that, £50 for the smallest portable music player we’ve ever seen is a good deal.

Vista compatibility: Yes

Many of us are used to typing away on computer keyboards, but there are still times when it’s better to take notes by hand.

Here at Computeractive we’ve all got old notepads full of scribbled notes, as do many students, teachers and others. So we were intrigued by Apcom’s Digiscribble, which is described as a mobile digital notetaker.

Digiscribble works like an ordinary pen, allowing the user to write notes by hand just as they would normally. It also includes a tiny transmitter that allows it to communicate with its base unit, a small sensor that clips onto your notepad (though the annoyingly small clips mean it’ll have to be a pretty thin pad).

The pen records the movements of your hand as you write and then transmits that information to the base unit. This stores the information in its memory until you plug it into a USB port on your PC, and it then transfers the information to the computer.

It’s a nice idea, but the Digiscribble’s effectiveness very much depends on which version of Windows the computer is running. If it is running Windows 2000 or Windows XP, the Digiscribble merely records an image of what you’ve written on the page, rather than recording it as text that can be edited. This means there’s no easy way of organising or editing the actual text of the notes – it merely provides a picture of each page.

The Digiscribble does include a trial version of an optical character recognition program called Myscript, which can attempt to turn that handwriting into an editable text file. Sadly this only works for 30 days: it’s then necessary to pay another $50 (£25) to get the full version.

That said, Vista Home Premium users (or anyone using a business edition of Vista) can use Vista’s built-in tablet PC software to actually record the handwriting as text and enter it straight into programs such as the Windows Journal (also included in Vista). In this mode, the Digiscribble works quite well.

The Digiscribble worked well with Vista once installed, but we had to struggle to get the device set up properly in the first place. The Quick Start guide provided with it is entirely inadequate and the electronic manual on the CD wasn’t much better: it took an hour or so of trial and error before we were able to start using the Digiscribble properly.

The Digiscribble could certainly be useful for many people – especially those who have Vista on their PCs – but Apcom really needs to make it a lot more user friendly before it can be recommended to anyone who isn’t already familiar with tablet PC technology.

Vista compatible: Yes

Saving energy has two good purposes: not only does it reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emited from power stations, but it also saves you money.

To do the job properly, though, you need to know how much energy each appliance in your home uses, which is a job for which Wattson is designed.

Wattson is a smart energy meter, with some useful extra features that separate it from most of the competition.

There are three main components: a sensor that clamps around one of the mains electricity cables coming into your domestic meter, a transmitter that attaches to the sensor and a display unit to be positioned anywhere within transmission range.

With its retro white and black acrylic case, the display unit has a faint hint of the kind of box electronics hobbyists used to use for home-grown projects, which adds a nostalgic touch to the product.

There’s no obvious display or meter on the box. Instead, a row of five pink digits (which can show letters and numbers) is displayed through the Wattson’s white acrylic top, showing either the current power use in watts or kilowatts or, with a quick flick of the unit, your electricity costs for the year if you were to continue running the home with exactly the same energy use. This is unlikely - energy use changes with days and with seasons - so the cost display is not hugely useful.

A bank of red and blue lights underneath the display also changes colour, depending on the power consumption. From blue to purple to red, you can see at a glance how energy hungry your home is.

The display unit uses rechargeable batteries so it can be carried around the house, and so it’s possible to unplug appliances in turn to check how the energy use changes as different things are in use. It can also be connected to a PC using the supplied USB cable and by downloading the Holmes software (see the name connection?) from the DIY Kyoto website, you can plot energy use over days, weeks or months to make a graph of savings. The main problems is that you’ll need to like the look of Wattson as a design installation as well as an energy meter to justify its relatively high price.

Once upon a time, the idea of watching videos through a spectacle-like device was a thing for science fiction. As we progress, realisations of human imagination come to be, one after the other. Vuzix is a company famous for creating wearable screens, one of which is the iWear AV920 model. 

Vuzix AV920 features a 62-inch virtual big screen. It reportedly works on almost any audio/video device with video out connectivity, even the video ipod. The company touts iWear AV920 as the “best mobile experience yet” what with its high resolution visuals. Usable for five hours before the lithium-ion battery runs out, what better way to spend time idly during the Holidays

As of late, there are rumours circulating that Vizux would be releasing a revamped version of the iWear AV920. One of the rumoured upgrades would be the ability to create a chain of interconnected AV920s for gaming on a single console. Whether the upgrades are true or not, we could only wait and see.