Microsoft Bing Cashback and how it will benefit (your wallet).

Microsoft has been trying desperately to cut into Google's piece of the search engine pie. They overhauled their previous Live Search engine, and are now calling it Bing. As a Google junkie, I find the Bing search to be not even close to the quality of search that Google gives, but they do have one added perk.

They are paying people to use their search engine, and buy stuff with several different vendors.

Here's how it works..

You go to bing.com/cashback and sign up for an account. You link the account to your paypal account, or your bank account. I chose to let them paypal me the money. Every purchase that you make using the website will give you a certain percentage of "cashback", which is money deposited into your account 90 days after the transaction is over.

They make you wait 90 days to stop people from returning items, then collecting the cash.

Over the Holidays the cashback was 15% or more in many stores. I bought a Nintendo Wii for 15% cashback, and saved quite a bit over normal store prices.

Forums such as slickdeals.net usually post more secret deals. If you do a search using specific keywords on bing, an ad will come up for a certain store. If you click the ad, you will get even more cashback. Enter CASHBACKR..

Cashbackr is a pretty good website. They track what the percentage is right to the last second, and what the trends are. eBay is a very large Bing Cashback sponsor, and there was a a time near christmas where you could get 20% cashback on ANY item that you used "Buy it Now" with on eBay.

This could add up to some serious bucks. Cashbackr does a great job of tracking special keywords that you need to search on bing to get the highest amount of cashback.

Right now as I type this, the highest cashback on ebay is 8%, and the top keyword is "silver roll". This will change at any moment. Cashbackr can even email you when the cashback goes over a certain percentage, so you can start shopping like mad.

My experience with Bing cashback has been a pretty good one. I netted about 150 dollars this past holiday season. I even used it on buying some expensive wheel bearings for my car on eBay, and got 15 percent back.

My only gripe is that it takes 90 days to get the cash back, but I understand why they do this. If you just think of it as a mail in rebate, then you will feel better about it also.

Cheers,
Justin

Praise (And Savings) for a $10 shower head. Oxygenics.

I happen to own a duplex here in West Seneca, NY. I never really paid too much attention to the green movement for saving water. Luckily, water here is very cheap. For 2 units, I pay around $40 per quarter ($160 per year)..

A trip to Arizona introduced me to Oxygenics shower heads. Out west, water is costly. The hotel that we stayed at had a great high pressure shower head. It was such a great shower that I actually took a look at the brand on the side of the shower heat. I then took a look at the company website.

Oxygenics is a company that has some huge clients. Arizona State University, the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, and plenty more. These are places that require a good feeling shower, and require water savings.

Oxygenics has a savings calculator on thier website where you plug in values for your old shower, and the new one. They figured that I would save about $80 per year with just one shower. Imagine owning a 500 room hotel. The savings gets insane.

I got home and ordered 1 on ebay from an Oxygenics vendor (about $11 each). We have been enjoying the shower for about a year.

Then I got a complaint from our tenant upstairs. They were constantly running out of hot water. I checked their 30 gallon water heater. It is small, but should be OK for 2 people. I then ordered an oxygenics shower head for them, and the complaint went away.

I would estimate that we cut their water usage for the shower right in half. I'll have to wait for the water bill to confirm, but they have no problem running out of hot water.

The problem here is not really saving water, it is saving HOT water. Natural gas is very expensive. The shower head does an excellent job of saving both, and saving dollars every day.

Check out keyword "oxygenics" on ebay, or the Oxygenics web site.

My favorite Job Career website, and search engine.

With the recession in full swing, and unemployment numbers skyrocketing, I figured that this would be a pretty useful post. This is a real world review of ways to locate a job online, and apply to it. Now actually getting a call back, and landing the job is up to you, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.

I used to spend hours per day looking at all the stupid job sites. Monster, Careerbuilder, Yahoo Jobs. Most of these sites are filled with ads, sponsorships, and junk scam jobs. I would get nothing but scam callers during the day offering me "jobs". If you aren't sure what I mean, then just put your resume in "public" mode on Monster, and wait back and let the phone calls come in.

Right now, I am using a service called Indeed.

Indeed works a lot like Google, and that is a huge compliment. I would say that Indeed is the Google of job search websites. It pulls the data from EVERY job website, and gives you direct links to the job in most cases.

The website appears to be very simple, but it is extremely powerful. You answer what you want, and where you want it. The advanced search is very powerful.

Once you get a good search result, you can have indeed exclude all jobs from employment agencies. Then you can have it only show you jobs based on a certain salary. Furthermore, you can drill it down between the type of job that you are looking for (Full Time, Part time, Contract). That is a great way to pick maybe 10 good jobs out of a search of 5000, without spending all day looking at garbage jobs.

Now, once you get a good search going, you can save your search through My Indeed. It is very hard to stay motivated, so you can have Indeed email you job search results as often as you want.

Here is my absolute favorite feature of the website. If you open an account with Indeed (Free of course), then you can set a block button on any job search result that comes up in your search. You can block jobs from a certain company, jobs posted on a certain job board, or certain job titles. This is an awesome feature, even with a great search you will get some junk jobs mixed in there, or some weird job sites that you do not want to see. I have a huge ban list, and right now, I get mostly quality search results.

Right now, one of my main searches is

computer "A+" in location FL
or computer "A+" in location AZ

You are telling the engine to search for computer and the exact phrase A+ (A computer certification) in the job data, then only give you the results for the state you want.

If you are searching in your local area, just punch in your zip code, and tell it to search within 25 miles of your house.

It is a very great website, and it has saved me tons of time.

If this post has been of any use to you, please click the links and visit our site sponsors.

Thanks, and good luck.

Buy Verizon Fios Service through a 3rd Party and Save Money (Discounted Rate).

The signs are posted all over my neighborhood. "Verizon Fios is being installed here". I was pretty excited to get the service, now it is finally here.

So right now I'm eligible for Fiber Optic Internet and Television direct to my home. Sounds great. They even offer me $150 dollars to pay the Time Warner cable termination fee. Even better.

The service is amazing, just a little pricey. I suppose you don't pay Chevrolet money for a BMW, you get what you pay for.

I'll stick with my Time Warner, I like to watch Sabres hockey games in HD, and local Canadian channels.

Anyways, here's a deal to buy the Fios service through a reseller.

The service is http://www.dslextreme.com.

If you listen to any of Leo Laporte the TechGuy Podcasts out of California, you will know the sponsor very well. They seem to have decent ratings, but I have never tried their service.

Here is the deal they are offering. It comes out to be about 10 bucks per month cheaper than buying through Verizon, and maybe you save on extra fees. There is a 1 year commitment.

Busch Gardens Tampa Bay, and Seaworld Orlando Discount Tickets.

This is a good link for anyone planning a trip to any of the Busch Properties this summer or fall.

I bought this link on eBay, from a coupon hunter.

It is a link to print out your tickets at home for use at the gate. You buy the tickets directly from Busch, its not a weird ticket vendor. I think the link was for friends of people affiliated with Busch.

http://commerce.4adventure.com/eStore/scripts/skins/PAW/Promotion.aspx?companycode=P@WAccessVGLLCEmployees


Discount Tickets are available for

SeaWorld Orlando
SeaWorld San Diego
SeaWorld San Antonio
Busch Gardens Tampa Bay
Busch Gardens Williamsburg
Sesame Place
Aquatica
Adventure Island
Water Country USA

We ended up buying 2 length of stay tickets for Busch Gardens Tampa, and SeaWorld for $82.95 per person. A savings of about $20 per ticket..

The deals on that link seem to be changing, they are getting cheaper as we get to the end of summer, and in to fall.

Click my Google ad's if you found this information useful..

Google Voice + Gizmo = Free Calls, and Free Number.

I've been waiting for this one for quite a long time. Would you like the ability to make unlimited calls anywhere for free?

By using a combination of two free services, and your high speed internet, you can make calls for nothing. This works great for me, as I can keep a cheap cell phone plan, and I can pick my area code that I want to be calling from.

I signed up for the Google Voice Beta about 9 months ago. I finally got approved for it this past week. Google Voice is a service that offers you a free telephone number for life. If someone calls your google voice number, you can have it ring any number of your other lines at once.

I have it set to ring my cell phone, and my girlfriends at the same time. Google also offers call screening and a voice mail box.

The best part about it, is that we could pick our phone number. I chose a 480 area code, with a Scottsdale, AZ extension. We live in New York, but having an AZ line will be beneficial on the job hunt.

Google Voice is at www.google.com/voice

The second free service is Gizmo5. You can get a free account and install their software at www.gizmo5.com

Google Voice will dial any phone, and use your phones airtime to make the call, but they do not offer phone calls for free. Gizmo allows you to answer incoming calls, and talk for free.

If you add your Gizmo SIP number to google voice, Google will call your Gizmo line, and connect you to any number. Basically you can talk for free for nothing.

Even the caller ID works great. It shows my Arizona number.

I have been using this FAQ that spells out all the details.
http://nyquil.org/archives/1218-Unlimited-Free-Calls-Using-Google-Voice-and-Gizmo.html

For talking, I am using a $9 Xact plastic USB phone. It works great. I suppose you could use a headset, or get an adapter to use a regular house phone.

The sound quality is better than my Sprint PCS cell phone. I have a 10mbps Time Warner roadrunner connection herer.

Could Redbox put the bite on Blockbuster, and others?

Over the past year, Redbox vending machines have been cropping up in my neighborhood.

They started in local grocery stores, now they have moved to Walmart.

The pitch is $1 per movie, per day. Automatically billed to your credit card, return it whenever you want to. You can rent from any redbox, and return to any redbox in the country.

You rent directly from an electronic kiosk. You can even reserve movies online, and have them waiting in the Redbox when you arrive.

It is a perfect fit for a down economy. People are staying home more, and $1 DVD's provide a great value in entertainment.

Personally, I have thrown out my Blockbuster and Hollywood Video membership card, and stopped ordering On-Demand movies from Time Warner cable. I spend $0 with these 3 companies.

The days of the video store are growing darker and darker.. Its pretty hard to justify charging $4.29 movie rental fee on a DVD that will end up for sale at Walmart for under $10 in a few months.

Kudos to Redbox, I'll keep supporting them, actually giving them my money.

Here is a site dedicated to Redbox promotion codes. I haven't used any of them. I just pay the $1 per day plus tax, and am glad to do so. Redbox is currently running some free movie nights on Monday. Dig up a promo code on this site, or just pay the buck like I do if you want to support their efforts.

Inside Redbox