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Read The Wonder of Tech in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer!
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Whether you’re bravely navigating the crowds in the stores on Black Friday or bravely surfing shopping websites from the comforts of your couch, tech can greatly enhance your shopping experience.
Bricks and Mortar Shopping Tools
One of the frustrations of shopping at stores is discovering later that your purchase could have been much cheaper online. When you’re out and about, use your smartphone as a scanner to compare prices using the RedLaser app. Open the app, point your camera at a product’s bar code to get price comparisons from major websites. Some big box stores, such as Best Buy, may match a competitor’s online price, giving you the best of online shopping and instant gratification. RedLaser is available free for iPhone and Android
TGI Black Friday is another smartphone app that gives you access to fantastic deals when you’re at the stores. This app lets you search by products and stores, and displays the deals by the newest ads as well as by the most popular deals. TGI Black Friday is available free for iPhone and Android.
You may think of foursquare as an app where you race others to become mayor of a store, but foursquare also offers great deals from partner merchants. Make sure you check into foursquare as you navigate your Black Friday deals to make sure you don’t miss out on any specials. Foursquare is available free in the iTunes App Store iPhone and the Android Market Android.
If you’re headed to the mall tomorrow, check out the Fast Mall app which will help you navigate from store to store quickly. The app shows you the fastest way to get places and you can choose whether you use stairs, escalators or elevators to move between floors. The app even has a handy feature showing you where the closest restrooms are. The app covers malls throughout the US and 31 other countries. You can download mall maps ahead of time if Internet coverage isn’t available when you’re at the mall. Fast Mall is free for iPhone and Android.
Internet Shopping at Home
If you choose to avoid the stresses of in-store shopping to take advantage of buying online, many Internet tools will help you find the best deal.
Invisible Hand is an Add-on to Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer browsers that runs in the background and then pops up when you shop online to let you know about better deals at other sites. Find out more about Invisible Hand here: Invisible Hand – For Economical Online Shopping!.
RetailMeNot is an online coupon site with links to over 130,000 sites. Users submit online coupons and vote whether a coupon worked for them. Coupons aren’t guaranteed to work, but you can see from the success rates which coupons are most likely to be successful for you. Check out the site’s Black Friday section for the best deals.
Rather-Be-Shopping is a coupon site with coupons certified to be successful by Kyle, the owner of the site who verifies each coupon. In addition to listing coupons on the site, Rather-Be-Shopping will email you any time a new coupon is listed from your favorite store. If your favorite store isn’t listed, just let Kyle know and he will add it to his site. I’ve never met Kyle, but you have to respect a guy whose life mission is to save you money! Check out the site’s Black Friday section for coupons from stores such as Walmart, Kmart, Target and Macy’s.
What tech tools are you using for your Black Friday shopping? Do you have any websites or apps that you would recommend? Let us know in the Comments section below!
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Wishing all Wonder of Tech readers a safe and peaceful Thanksgiving Day!
Shopping Mall Image by sparkleice
Autumn Image by Stephen Huron
There’s no Thanksgiving or Black Friday here in Canada (which is probably why I’m the first to comment…), but you’ve included apps in this post that I expect will come in handy on other occasions. Happy Holidays Carolyn!
Hi Ruth, I thought Canada had Thanksgiving in October, but I could be mistaken. You would know much better than I would!
I spent three Thanksgiving holidays in England where they don’t celebrate it at all. We in the US seem to stop almost everything to celebrate Thanksgiving and then make up for it the next day with all the scurrying about Black Friday! We forget that for the rest of the world this is a normal week.
I hope you do find these tech tools handy year ’round Ruth! 🙂
Carolyn, aloha. What an incredible image that is. Absolutely spectacular. It makes me want to keep looking at it over and over. Heck, I will keep visiting your blog just to see this great image.
My only tech tool I will use is Invisible Hand for which I kindly thank you for the introduction.
Best wishes to you and your family for a wonderful Thanksgiving. May your blessings be bountiful.
Carolyn, thank you for enriching my life; I am so grateful you are a part of it. Aloha. Janet
Hi Janet. I’m so happy you like that picture! I wanted to find a beautiful picture of Autumn and was very fortunate to find the one above by Stephen Huron. Often when I’m searching for pictures I find truly stunning ones but they don’t relate to tech so I don’t put them on my blog. Maybe I should include them anyway.
Janet, you are a treasure and I am very thankful that we connected in the blog world. Thank you for the kind words and I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving Day! 🙂
Carolyn, while I know most of yur iamges do need to be tied to the post topic, every once in a while do throw in a spectacular one like this.
If you are showing us something then obviously you need the appropriate tech item, however, if you are telling us something, do dazzle us with images.
You can always say, “while this image has nothing to do with ________, I like it because” or “while this image has nothing to do with _____, it is so spectacular I had to share it with you.” My 2 cents.
Great idea, Janet. Thanks, as always, for your wonderful inspiration! 🙂
Hi Carolyn,
These are great tools and will add to my arsenal of finding great deals. That fall photo is absolutely beautiful.
I wish you a very best Turkey Day!
Hi Ryan, I’m so glad you will be using these tools for your Black Friday shopping!
Thank you for your good wishes. I hope you have a fantastic Thanksgiving as well! 🙂
Like Ruth and Canada, we have no Thanks Giving or Black Friday in Norway. But, I have actually seen some stores (online computer stores) that are “celebrating” Black Friday. So, just like Halloween (we didn’t have Halloween either, but now we do), we’ll probably end up with Black Friday in every store in a few years 🙂
Very interesting tools. I’ll probably end up buying something online today. And so far it seems that the Thirsty Affiliate offer is the one I’m looking at (I read about it at Traffic Generation Cafe).
Hi Jens, That’s interesting that Black Friday has made it to Norway. I am hoping Thanksgiving becomes more pervasive than Black Friday, though.
You’re right, Ana has some great deals for bloggers on her site. Anyone who is interested in some discounted blogging tools can check out her site: http://www.trafficgenerationcafe.com/internet-marketing-black-friday/ I hope you enjoy Thirsty Affiliate.
A more recent tradition in the US is Cyber Monday with big online deals for those who didn’t get what they wanted on Black Friday. So look on Monday for big online deals if Norway follows the US in this tradition too!
Great post! Thank you for the list of great tools! Happy Thanksgiving!
Hi Amelia, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! I’m glad you like this list and I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!
We don’t really have Black Friday in the UK, but Amazon did some special offers that lasted an hour or so. I missed a Sat Nav on offer. I did some online shopping and bought new clothes specially for the presentation of the photo contest! My friend came with me yesterday as I went for a blood test at the hospital and we looked at where the photographs will be displayed. There are huge white spaces on the walls like an art gallery so I think it will work well. My friend is annoyed he didn’t enter now! His email bounced and it was the last day for entries, but so did mine. I preserved and got my entries in the next day! I don’t give up easily!
Hi Mike, Check back with Amazon for Cyber Monday. They may have another super Sat Nav deal.
Your amazing photos should look great on a white background. I’m glad you persevered and were able to enter the contest, not just because you deserve to win, but because of all of those people who get to see your photos at the hospital. 🙂
Black Friday is nothing especial in my country but I have got some really exciting offers in hostgator and godaddy. They are giving away 50% discounts on their hosting and domain. This is a really exciting news for me.
Hi Mohsin, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! I’m glad you’re able to take advantage of Black Friday deals even though Black Friday isn’t s big think in your country. Everybody loves to save!
Great tools carolyn. Hope you had a wonderful ThanksGiving and shopped a lot during the black friday sales.
I had written a small review on a wonderful site which i used extensively during the past 2 days – http://www.livingrichwithcoupons.com. Hope your readers will find it useful.
Hi Praveen, I did have a wonderful Thanksgiving and I hope you did too!
Thanks for sharing the Living Rich with Coupons site and your very thorough review of the site. It looks like a great find for savings!
Easy now, don’t make it too easy. We have to support our local businesses as well, right?
I hear ya though; I would rather gargle bees than go shopping and especially on Black Friday.
Thanks for sharing and hope you and your family had a great Thanksgiving.
Those are so cool Carolyn! Thanks for sharing these with us and I’m using some you recommended earlier for my online shopping. I only ventured out once on Friday but it wasn’t to do any serious shopping. I prefer to do the majority of mine online for the holidays.
Hope everyone had fun!
~Adrienne