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In my “spare time” I coded up something that I thought would be of interest for all the TechConsumer readers out there; we are calling it TechConsumer Price Drops (see widget in the sidebar). Basically, our server continually tracks the change in prices at Amazon.com to find the products that have had a significant price drop recently, like a PC-free cordless Skype phone (25% price drop), a Garmin GPS unit (15% price drop), or a Pioneer 1080p upscaling DVD player (13% price drop).

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Backing up your computer is something you don’t want to think about; you wish it would just happen. With that perspective, I thought I’d bring up the online backup service offered by Mozy. I use it for both my laptop and desktop and now think of backups only when I desperately need to restore something (which can happen more often than you think).

Mozy has a free version, which allows you to backup two gigabytes of data. It requires no credit card and is quick and easy to install. And it’s no different than the version you pay for in terms of features and options. The only difference is that if you do pay $5 per month, your backup has no size limit (if you are interested in the Mozy Unlimited version, when signing up, use promo code TECHCONSUMER to get 10% off an annual subscription or TECHCONSUMER2 to get 10% off a biannual subscription).

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Back in November, I asked for help in deciding between HD DVD and Blu-ray. I ended up choosing HD DVD via an amazing Amazon deal: HD DVD player and 10 HD DVDs for $174. (That deal is now over, but now there’s an even better deal: HD DVD player and 7 movies for only $132.)

But it wasn’t just the price being nearly half of any Blu-ray equivalent (check out Amazon’s Blu-ray page, where every player is well above $300 with not nearly as many included movies), it was other little things. For instance, HD DVD is region free. This means that any movies bought in Europe or the U.S. can work on any player bought anywhere as well. The same isn’t true for Blu-ray.

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While this holiday season has been met with record online shopping, remember that many retailers (even the online ones) don’t necessarily offer their best prices leading up to Christmas. I personally did much of my Christmas shopping via Amazon. And today being the day after Christmas, I thought I’d check the current prices on all those presents I bought and shipped. Here’s what I found:

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The Economist, via numbers from Comscore, tells us that since the beginning of November online spending is up by 18% compared with 2006. And Thursday December 6th was the “biggest online spending day yet” with sales of $803m, which made for a weekly online sales record of $4.6 billion (see chart below). Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal today explains that traditional retailers are making a final big push before Christmas (why would they ever not make a big push at this time?).

The articles cites a study/survey, which shows that approximately 71% of shoppers were done shopping as of December 23rd while past holiday seasons have had more like 85% of shoppers done by the 23rd. Part of the article reminded me of my own situation:

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Have you ever stopped and wondered about how PayPal makes their money? Let’s review: With PayPal Personal you can send and receive money electronically to and from other PayPal accounts for free. You can also transfer money to and from your regular bank account at no charge. Sign me up!

The other account type is PayPal Premier. With this this type of account PayPal charges a fee, $0.30 plus 2.9% of each and every dollar received. So why would anyone sign up for a PayPal Premier account when they can have a PayPal Personal account which can send and receive funds for free? This is where they have done something clever. It’s actually kind of boring, really, which is why few people have noticed the fact that since buying PayPal, eBay has nearly doubled it’s revenue for each auction that uses PayPal.

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It wasn’t too many years ago that people wondered whether or not anyone would really buy things over the Internet. If you are still wondering, then you just might be an idiot. There should no longer be any question. Let me share two stories to illustrate why online shopping is here to stay.

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We pretty much know which users seem to get stories to the front page, but that is only half of the Digg experience. The other half is the dry, witty, insightful, or interesting comments about the submitted stories.

If you’re fast, or submit a ton of stories, or know how to uncover that hidden gem in a sea of web pages, you can get a story to the front page. But what does it take to garner a lot of diggs on one of your comments? In my personal observation, I’ve noticed several factors that will get your comment dugg, or buried, faster than you can say “all your base are belong to us.”

Note that the following guide applies to any social network or blog that allows voting on comments, but Digg is the quintessential example of how this works.

Comments that get dugg:

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