No, it’s not mine. Instead, the Big Box Of Awesomeness is over at Drew’s Blog. This is a box of swag that he wants everyone to guess what’s inside. Now, I think so far we’ve figured out an Izea cup holder and obviously a tshirt (since we can see that). However, I have a hint for you. I know something else that is that box. Want to know what it is?
This is a Magic Frame. You can put 40 4×6 photos into it and be able to switch them in and out at will. Now, Drew is having a contest to see if people can guess what is in his box. You now know one thing — Go enter!!!!
If you aren’t lucky enough to have vision insurance or have vision insurance that will only pay up to a certain amount for your contact lenses, you should definitely check out LensShopper. Now, my vision insurance will pay up to $250 a year for contact lenses. That sounds like a lot, but if you wear contacts, you know it isn’t. That only pays for a couple of months of contacts, and then I pay out of pocket for the rest. My last order of contacts I stilled owed money on after they took the insurance off. That is where LensShopper comes into play. Their lenses are a ton cheaper than what I normally pay for my contacts! They even have even better deals if you order in bulk! I love that it tells me how long the delivery time is and whether or not the contacts are even in stock. Nothing is more annoying than ordering contacts, and then after you place your order, you find out their are backordered. I love that they even make it easy to find the best deals on their site by listing the best deals for each kind of contacts. If you just want to search out your contacts, you can choose to search by manufacturer, lens type, and even popular lenses.
Now, I personsally use the Focus Night & Day contacts. I found on their site that I can get a box for $40.95 (if I order bulk) and get free shipping! I love free shipping! That is a darn good deal for my contacts! I would save almost $40 off my normal order of 6 boxes! I can’t complain about savings like that! If you need contacts, you need to definitely check out LensShopper for all your contact needs!
The school that Madison is going to next year collects Box Tops. If you don’t know what Box Tops is, let me explain. There are a ton of items that you can buy that have the image to the left on the box. You collect these for your local schools, and they get 10 cents for every one you turn in. Now, that doesn’t sound like a lot, but when if you can get a bunch of people together, it adds up quickly. Now, the school’s goal is to earn $750 from Box Tops. Last year, they made $536, and I would love for them to meet their goal for this year (even though Madison is not even enrolled yet. I understand that any extra money to the school with benefit her). Now, there are several ways we can do this for our local schools.
First, you need to log into the Box Tops site and create an account. You enter your state and your school or if you don’t know that, just enter your zip code. I personally entered the school and state. From there, you are able to see how your local school is going. Now, how do you increase that number? Well, you can collect box tops with that logo on it. They also have a Marketplace. Now, until recently, I did not know about the Marketplace. This works so awesome too! There is a list of stores that will give a percentage of whatever you buy from them back to the school. There are stores like Avon, Gap, Kohls, Best Buy, Leap Frog, Target, and Walmart (this is just a couple of them — the whole listing is on the site). All you have to do is log into the Box Tops Site, click on marketplace, then click on the store you want to shop it. That’s it. Once you checkout, the percentage you purchased will then be applied to your school. If you are Christmas shopping online anyway, why not help out your local school (and if you don’t want to help any of them out, I’ll tell you the school we are sending our money too, and you can use them).
Did you know that Box Tops has donated more than $250 million to schools nationwide since 1996? Would you like to help raise that number? Then start collecting Box Tops and use their Marketplace to do your online shopping! To help you get started, I am giving away a $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble (thank you Barnes & Noble for your support of such a great program!). What do you have to do?
Each one of these things will give you one entry:
1. Leave a comment on this post. I want to know why you want this $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble!
2. Twitter about this contest. Please leave me your username so I can verify.
3. Stumble this post. If you don’t know what Stumble Upon is, please read Lori’s post at Blogging Cents. She explains it extremely well.
4. Add this post to other social media sites like Digg, Kirtsy, Blogging Zoom, Reddit, Propeller, Etc.
For 5 additional entries,
1. Blog about this on your blog. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
2. Add this to any forums you belong too. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
3. Subscribe to this blog using either my email or RSS feed
4. Add my badge to your sidebar:
This contest will end November 26th at 8:00 pm CST and is for US residents. Good Luck!
Amazon, if I could, I would seriously make out with you right now. Yes, I said it. Whoever came up with frustration free packaging is a genius. They deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. I also have to give a shout out to 37 Signals and Remarkable Parents for letting me know about this.
Now, you can see from this picture how the packaging is different. The one of the right is what it looks like now. The one on the left is the new packaging. I find it weird that a lot of bloggers find this wrong. However, as a mother of a 4 year old and a 1 year old I find this genius. I remember when Madison turned one. It took 6, yes I said 6, adults over an hour to open her toys. Now, that is crazy. I remember my fingers hurting from the twisty tie things and just the waste and the mess. How would you like to get just a brown box, and all you have to do is open it? Sounds much better, doesn’t it? How many of you have had kids whining “do you have it out yet??!!??”? I know I have that here. They don’t have the attention span while you find a screwdriver and everything else you need to get some of these toys out of their packaging. Heck, I remember cutting my arms on the clamshell packaging when you are trying not to saw the entire top of the packaging off. Plus, this new packaging is so much better for the enviroment. I would love to be able to recycle that box (where I live, the more the community recycles the less we pay for our garbage to get picked up). Now, this packaging is done right at the factory too, and only effects Amazon. You will still find normal packaging at your favorite brick and mortar store.
The main argument against this is that the kids can’t see what they are getting. My response to that is what is worse — they have to actually open the box or have the toy stuck in packaging so the kids can see it but can’t play with it because it will take me 20 minutes to get it out?
I am interested — what are your thoughts on this? If you can’t tell, I give Amazon two thumbs up on this move!
I have been writing a lot about Dragon NaturallySpeaking Software lately. I absolutely love how it saves me time writing posts. If you see the post before this one, it is almost 700 words. I used the software and with editing (mainly because I decided to reword things), it took less than 10 minutes. This software is a bloggers dream. Life is so much easier when I can write a 700 word post in the little bit of time I catch here and there during the day. The best thing is that I am not the only one who thinks so:
Drew of the BenSpark has put together a great little video demonstrating Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Drew has been blogging for quite some time and he might just be one of the best mobile bloggers that I know. He is probably more famous for his picture a day work as he is an excellent photographer. But I can’t help be amazed at how much content he creates and the high level of quality in that content.
He’s definitely a blogger that employs best practices when he finds them. And based on this video, it looks like he might see some potential in Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Now I am not trying to put an endorsement in Drew’s mouth. Time will tell, but I do think he is off to an excellent start.
You’ll notice in his video, that the sound quality of his video is excellent. That’s actually an important aspect for Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I don’t mean that you need good video quality or sound quality in a video to make Dragon NaturallySpeaking work. However you do need a good microphone, and it should be a noise canceling microphone at that. The better the sound quality, and the better able your microphone is to remove other background noises, the better your system will be able to recognize the words that you say as fast as you say them and transcribe them accurately.
Now Dragon NaturallySpeaking comes with a noise cancellation microphone that works very well when you buy it out of the box. Drew is working with a download version that does not come with a microphone, and so he had to supply his own.
As I write this article, I am using a wireless headset microphone from Logitech. I’ve been using Dragon NaturallySpeaking for almost two years now, but I’ve just recently untethered myself from Dragon NaturallySpeaking and started using a wireless headset microphone with noise cancellation capabilities. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 does have the capability of working with Bluetooth wireless microphones, but my particular microphone runs on 2.4 GHz wireless technology. Now if you live in a household or work in an office environment where there are a number of systems or phones or microwaves, you may experience some interference with this particular headset. In that case, you will probably be better served with either a Bluetooth headset or a headset that is capable of being plugged directly into your computer through the microphone plug or through USB. I don’t have that issue, and so I do get excellent quality with little to no interference at all.
So if you take an interest in Dragon NaturallySpeaking and want to try it for yourself, I highly recommend that you get a boxed version of the software which you can order from Nuance online. You can even get a good deal on a Bluetooth wireless headset and a bundled option from Nuance. If you’re looking for entry level pricing, you can start using the software and get a headset microphone for as little as $99.
To put that in context, I’ve taken three typing classes over the years to boost my typing speed and spent essentially three semesters practicing at typing. It wasn’t the only thing that I studied, but I spent a lot of time building up my typing skill. With Dragon NaturallySpeaking, you can invest $99, invest an hour installing the software (I’m being very conservative with that time estimate) and as little as 10 minutes training the software to recognize your voice before you can be off and running typing at 150 words per minute!
That is pretty amazing, and well worth the value of $99. Not to mention if you spend a little extra and get a wireless headset microphone, you can pace around your room or your office, you can exercise, or do a number of different things other than sit at a computer desk staring at your computer all day long. $99 basically gives you your freedom,and who wouldn’t want to type at 150 WPM for $99?
Best regards,
Brett Bumeter
www.softduit.com
My name is Brett Bumeter, and I wrote the article above and 4 1/2 minutes. The article is about 659 words long, and that translates into 144 words per minute. Add in two minutes for editing, and that’s still 100 words per minute!
$99 basically gives you your freedom,and who wouldn’t want to 
Box Tops & A $50 Giveaway Too!
Wednesday, November 12th, 2008First, you need to log into the Box Tops site and create an account. You enter your state and your school or if you don’t know that, just enter your zip code. I personally entered the school and state. From there, you are able to see how your local school is going. Now, how do you increase that number? Well, you can collect box tops with that logo on it. They also have a Marketplace. Now, until recently, I did not know about the Marketplace. This works so awesome too! There is a list of stores that will give a percentage of whatever you buy from them back to the school. There are stores like Avon, Gap, Kohls, Best Buy, Leap Frog, Target, and Walmart (this is just a couple of them — the whole listing is on the site). All you have to do is log into the Box Tops Site, click on marketplace, then click on the store you want to shop it. That’s it. Once you checkout, the percentage you purchased will then be applied to your school. If you are Christmas shopping online anyway, why not help out your local school (and if you don’t want to help any of them out, I’ll tell you the school we are sending our money too, and you can use them).
Did you know that Box Tops has donated more than $250 million to schools nationwide since 1996? Would you like to help raise that number? Then start collecting Box Tops and use their Marketplace to do your online shopping! To help you get started, I am giving away a $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble (thank you Barnes & Noble for your support of such a great program!). What do you have to do?
Each one of these things will give you one entry:
1. Leave a comment on this post. I want to know why you want this $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble!
2. Twitter about this contest. Please leave me your username so I can verify.
3. Stumble this post. If you don’t know what Stumble Upon is, please read Lori’s post at Blogging Cents. She explains it extremely well.
4. Add this post to other social media sites like Digg, Kirtsy, Blogging Zoom, Reddit, Propeller, Etc.
For 5 additional entries,
1. Blog about this on your blog. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
2. Add this to any forums you belong too. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
3. Subscribe to this blog using either my email or RSS feed
4. Add my badge to your sidebar:
This contest will end November 26th at 8:00 pm CST and is for US residents. Good Luck!
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