Want to join the social? Are you poor? Then head over to Woot RIGHT NOW to pick up a 30GB refurbished Zune for $99.99 + $5 shipping. It won’t be as cool as a new iPod Nano or even a broken record player from the thrift store, but at least it will have 30GB of storage and could be brown. Sale Page → Read More
With the announcement of the new fleet of Zune’s the price of the aged version begins to fall. A lot. The player is still great and will receive all the fancy new functionality in the form of a software update that includes syncing via Wi-Fi. Woot just released a special hush-hush deal in which they are selling a limited number of factory refurbished units for only $100, that means you get the whole shebang including box and accessories. We don’t know what devilish tactics Woot had to use to get their hands on these, but it is probably better that we don’t even ask. Woot: Zune $100 → Read More
We don’t normally tip you off on Woot deals, but this one was too good to pass up. iPods die at the most inopportune times and it really burns my biscuits because it’s happened to me too many times. Anyways, it’s Two for Tuesdays and up for grabs is a pair of Nyko iBoost Rechargeable Battery Packs for $19.99. As Borat would say: “That is quite a good deal and I think you should visit the site and purchase those items.” Woot → Read More
We’ve all seen this before. Passionate users want more or different functionality for a given product, and they build it themselves rather than wait. Sometimes it is done purely for passion, other times there’s a profit motive. But the result is often a kick in the pants to the original startup. How the company responds says a lot about their commitment to their users. A good example from 2006 was a user-created mashup (a hack really) of Pandora and Last.fm that was quickly embraced and supported by both companies. The product is still alive and doing well. Two examples we’ve seen this year are LinkedInABox and WootAgent. WootAgent WootAgent is still in private beta. It’s a small download (for Windows machines only at the moment) that hardcore Woot junkies will want to use If you don’t know what Woot is: It’s an ecommerce site that launched in 2004, that has a single thing for sale every day. There is a limited quantity for sale, and when that’s been bought, nothing is for sale until the next day. Shipping is always $5, and occasionally they sell “Random Crap” that can be a useless item or something incredible like a new LCD display for $20. The Random Crap sales often sell out within minutes. The problem with Woot is that people often forget to check the site, and they miss good deals. WootAgent sits in the system tray and automatically pops up when a new Woot is available, a Woot is running out, and a Woot is sold out (see screen shot). For anyone other than loyal Woot users it will be annoying, but for those that care, it’s awesome. LinkedInABox LinkedInABox is a javascript widget that users can place on a website (See TechCrunch France editor Ouriel Ohayon’s personal blog to view the widget, located in the right sidebar). The widget shows the basic information included in your LinkedIn profile, and is a really nice addition to a professional blog or other website. Frankly, this is something LinkedIn should have done themselves, and I hope that they embrace this product. I’ll be looking for other examples of user generated products and features that enhance a much loved core product, and profiling good examples here. → Read More
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