TechAddress

SavvyAuntie Helps the Favorite Aunt Give the Best Gifts this Holiday Season

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 18:30:40 +0000

SavvyAuntie has been one of my favorite sites for a while, helping me find the perfect gifts for my friends’ and family’s children and giving me helpful advice as well. Now the site is stepping up its game with the release of its Savvy Holiday Gift Ideas guide.

SavvyAuntie is saving the day for all of the aunts, godmothers, and other women who love kids (and who also love sending them home after visiting). The Savvy Holiday Gift Ideas Guide keeps the cool aunt in the loop on what gifts are hot for kids right now, making sure to keep up that cool aunt image no matter what.

The guide also helps keep to a budget by letting shoppers sort by price (this will come in handy as we all tighten our belts a bit this Holiday season). You can also filter your results further. once you’ve found your price range your can add filters for age, gift category, the child’s favorite color, the child’s personality and more.

Members will also be able to rate gifts, leave comments, and generally help each other shop. You can also save a gift to your favorites to go back and decide on purchase later, which is a handy feature for the cautious shopper. Another handy feature for cautious shoppers is the “Ask a Parent” section, which lets you confirm whether the gift is a good idea or not according to parents.

I think the SavvyAuntie site is helpful for more than just aunts, friends and godmothers. It can also help the clueless uncle or father out there who doesn’t know quite what to buy. It’s hard to keep up with what is cool and hip as kids grow up, and the fact that SavvyAuntie CEO Melanie Notkin hand picks the gifts for the site ensures that someone always has your back when it’s time to buy gifts.

It may not even be Halloween yet, but Christmas is coming up fast. SavvyAuntie is working on giving early shoppers a head start, and on helping you not only pick the right gift, but find it at the right price for your budget. In a year where it’s wiser to give one or two great gifts instead of a large stack of wrong ones, SavvyAuntie is giving you a place to find out what those perfect gifts are.

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35+ Online Shopping Cart Solutions for Your Business

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 18:32:30 +0000

Source:Mashable!

The Internet radio and on-demand streaming music service Last.fm is host to over 5 million songs spanning numerous independent and big-name studios and publishers. So today’s unveiling of a partnership with LyricFind to insert some 800,000 lyrics among Last.fm’s song catalog isn’t a full sweep. Yet it includes many popular artists old and new, from The Beatles to Pearl Jam to Radiohead, enough to satisfy plenty of listeners.

The presentation of lyrics on Last.fm is similar to how you would find such material formatted in places elsewhere on the Web; center aligned and easy to read. But there are some inconsistencies to be found insofar as text spacing is concerned. (Take a look at examples #1 and #2.)

Another concern for listeners may be the position given to lyrics relative to other features. For instance, if you visit an artist’s main page on Last.fm, you’ll find biographical information, a music player, followed by recommended material as well as sections home to videos, albums, top tracks, and the comment roll. A link for lyrics isn’t evident. Neither is it visible with a specific album page in view. Users are required to drill down to an individual song page to see a lyrical preview (if it exists). One more click will bring you to the full transcript.

Despite this structural makeup, Last.fm’s deal with LyricFind - launched for U.S.- and Canada-based listeners first, to be followed by more places “in the near future” - is worthwhile if only to give visitors an impression of a complete experience. The site has worked to do so with audio and video. Lyrics simply help to finish the picture.

For the time being, Last.fm does not display advertising beside each full lyric, but just as with real estate elsewhere in its archives, it will invite advertisers and sponsors to make themselves seen alongside text provided to users. This will involve “the ability to skin the entire page.”

Source:Mashable!

With the shape of the economy and ever changing gas prices, online shopping may end up growing even faster than some have predicted. If your business hasn’t added an online shopping cart yet, why not? The technology has been around for years now, and there are solutions for just about every skill level: you can do it yourself, outsource the work, pay companies for hosting, or even turn a WordPress blog into a simple shopping cart using plugins. Here are over 35 shopping cart solutions for your business.

Does your company already use a shopping cart solution? Tell us about your experience with it in the comments.

Hosted Carts

AAcart.com - Offers three levels of pricing plans that come with hosting included. Also offers customized solutions and design.

eCrater.com - A free online store builder that also allows you to enter your products into their marketplace for free, while also entering them into the Google Product Search.

Etsy.com - An online store builder and marketplace that restricts itself to products that you make. This include all sorts of arts & crafts, buttons, clothes and so on.

GoEmerchant.com - GoEmerchant offers both fully hosted options and the ability to just add buttons to your already existing site.

Merchandizer.com - Merchandizer offers hosted packages from extremely basic all the way up to your own fully dedicated hosting. Also offers design and logo services if you need them.

NetworkSolutions.com - The well-known domain registration company also offers online storefront hosting and setup.

SmallBusiness.Yahoo.com - While Yahoo offers you the ability to use their shopping cart on a site you build yourself, their wizard powered store is by far their most popular product. It offers you pre-built templates for the look, but uses their own brand of HTML, which makes hiring a designer for a unique look almost a necessity.

StoreFront.net - Focuses on customized solutions that vary by store size, hosting needs and so on.

Stores.eBay.com - eBay stopped being just an auction site a long time ago and offers you the chance to set up your own storefront on their popular site.

Free Self-Hosted Carts

CubeCart - CubeCart offers version 3 of their software for free, but charges for version 4 after a free 30 day trial. Offers bulk upload, inventory management, shipping modules and everything else you would expect from a fully operational online store.

Ecommerce Shopping Cart Software - A fairly new free shopping cart that puts a heavy emphasis on not having to know how to code, run databases or anything else.

IdeaCart - A free cart still in its Alpha phase, features fraud detection, newsletter support and more.

JadaSite - JadaSite is a bit unusual in that it’s Java based, as well as fully integrated with a content management system.

Magento - Launched in 2008, Magento is one the newest open source shopping carts on the market.

OpenCart - An open source PHP shopping cart. It’s been a while since it has been updated, but everything appears to still be up and running.

osCommerce - One of the best known shopping carts out there, this open source cart enjoys a large community of plugin creators. It has been quite a while since their last major release, v2.2 RC 2a, but they are in active development of version 3.0, which promises some major administration upgrades.

PrestaShop - An extremely new open source shopping cart that already seems fairly full-featured, and promises more to come with an area for expansion modules to be opened in the near future.

Quick.Cart.Lite - Quick.Cart.Lite is the free version of the Quick.Cart software and will allow you to build a simple online store. Offers two more robust levels of the same program with more features.

Satchmo - Built on the Django framework, Satchmo offers highly customizable shop building with a long list of built in features such as Google Analytics incorporation, PDF invoice generation and more.

Ubercart - Ubercart is a full-featured shopping cart that also integrates with a Drupal site so that you can build a community around your store or featured products.

VirtueMart - A shopping cart built specifically for integration with the Joomla! and Mambo content management system.

Zen Cart - Zen Cart is an off branch of osCommerce that comes with several of the most popular modules built into it.

Purchasable Self-Hosted Carts

1ShoppingCart - 1ShoppingCart offers you the ability to add “Buy Now” buttons to your already existing site, while offering you many of the features you expect from complete shopping carts.

Actinic - Actinic offers multiple shopping cart solutions based on your budget. Packages range from $499 to $3499 depending on your needs.

CS-Cart - Gives you full access to the source code so that you can customize your online store as you see fit. Makes heavy use of AJAX to reduce server load as customers change only a portion of a product’s page.

Interspire - Offers three versions of their software, all with numerous addons. However, if your store is of any substantial size (over 500 different items), you have no choice but to go for the ultimate $1800 version.

JShop Server - A UK-focused online shopping cart system with all of the usual bells and whistles.

JustAddCommerce - A “buy button” system that will work with HTML editors such as Dreamweaver and Frontpage to add an online store to any site.

Lite Commerce - A direct competitor to X-Cart, they have a lower initial price, but charge for numerous add-ons for extra functions.

Miva Merchant - One of the oldest purchasable shopping carts seeing as it has existed since 1995. Offers QuickBooks sync, all of the usual bells and whistles, and the company offers unique designs.

ShopSite - ShopSite offers a free starter version, but it is extremely limited. Paid versions range from $495 to $1295, and they also offer hosting if needed.

VP-ASP - VP-ASP offers three levels of their shopping cart software, all of which include 12 free months of updates in their purchase price. In addition to US shipping, offers options for Australian and Canadian post shipping.

WebMasterCart - Cart has been around since 1998 and has been continually upgraded. Offers licenses for 1 site for $199 or unlimited domains for $995. Price is a one time licensing fee with 1 year of updates.

X-Cart - X-Cart offers both single merchant installations and versions capable of handling multiple merchants checking out through the same shopping cart. Offers numerous payment and shipping module integrations.

WordPress Shopping Carts

eShop - Gives you the ability to add a PayPal powered store to your site. Allows one item per post or page.

Quick Shop - A shopping cart for your WordPress blog’s sidebar.

WP e-Commerce - A popular shopping cart option for WordPress blogs which makes it easy to sell things like ebooks, mp3s, clothing, crafts and more.

YAK for WordPress - A simple shopping cart for WordPress that turns posts and pages into product codes and the item description.

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Live Search Cashback Increases in Popularity During Economic Downturn

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 22:31:13 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Hitwise has noticed a trend over the last few weeks in the growing popularity of Live Search Cashback. For those unfamiliar with the service, Live Search Cashback helps users get cash back from shopping online. Similar to sites like Eversave, but integrated with the Live Search platform, the cashback program lets you shop anywhere online that participates in the program and collects your cash back savings all in one spot.

According to Hitwise reports, Live Search Cashback was at a 3.75% share of the total traffic to Live.com about eleven weeks ago, but had grown to 6.29% of the total traffic just seven days ago. The statistics delivered by Hitwise also track gender and note that many of these frugal shoppers are female with an income under $100,000 a year.

Live Search Cashback is growing its market share in a tough economic climate, and that alone says a lot about the program, but how does it work? Basically, it requires you to sign up for it, giving it some tracking information so it can follow your shopping and credit your cash back correctly. Once you have the Live Search set up with a Live Search Cashback account, you just remember to do all of your online shopping through the Live Search interface.

As you go about your normal bargain hunting, Cashback via Live Search will list products rated by price and participation in addition to shopping category. As long as you purchase items with the Live Search Cashback indicator logo on them (shown above), your cash back rebates and rewards get credited to your Cashback account. Users of the program can expect to see most rebates and rewards in their account within 60 days, a similar time frame to sites like MyPoints and other points, rewards and cash back programs.

With at least several months of economic crunch ahead of us, if not longer, every penny counts. If you haven’t already signed up for a shopping rewards program, you may want to check out Live Search Cashback and use it to save as many of your hard earned pennies as possible while you buy the items you need. Every penny counts these days, after all.

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Gift Girl Gets a Little Nip Tuck to Help You Find More Perfect Gifts

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 04:41:45 +0000

Source:Mashable!

If you have ever been stuck trying to find the perfect gift for someone you love, or worse, gotten “the look” after giving someone the absolute wrong gift, then Gift Girl might be a service you want to check out. Originally launched in 2007, Gift Girl site is re-launching today after getting a bit of a nip and tuck. Gone is the old user interface. Now we get a better layout that is more intuitive and has a few extra features as the icing on the cake.

If you haven’t used Gift Girl before, they way it works is a bit ingenious. You input a few details about the recipient of your gift, from relationship to basic taste profile information. Gift Girl then tosses out recommendations for you to choose from. I filled out a profile as if I were the recipient of a gift using the new interface, and it pegged me spot on - had you been shopping for me you would have seen gadgets and computer stuff galore, any (or all) of which would have gotten a smile from me.

New features of the revamped and refreshed Gift Girl include unlimited profiles for the man with a full Little Black Book of potential gift recipients, invitations for other gift purchasers to view profiles you create, gift lists and wish lists to share, and preset profiles for the lazy. I even tried one of the preset profiles that seemed closest to tomboy and gadget geek, and even the preset generic profile shot out a list of gifts that would have made me appreciate the thoughtfulness of the giver instead of experiencing quiet frustration about yet another bad gift.

From CEO Jean Vouté Pratt, “Anyone can go online and browse for cool or unique gift ideas, but who has the time to sort through thousands of retail websites? That’s where GiftGirl comes in. Just tell us about the girl and we’ll tell you what to get and where to get it.”

Indeed, for every significant other, daughter or son who has ever lamented the difficulty in picking a gift for their special someone, Gift Girl has attempts to have the answer. Gift Girl CEO Jean Vouté Pratt takes her company - and your happiness - seriously by hand selecting each item that pops up in your search. It’s sort of like having a personal shopper in your pocket keeping you out of trouble on birthdays, holidays and more. Who wouldn’t want a little help at a reasonable price for being a hero on their mum’s birthday with a gift that matches who she is better than a toaster oven?

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Budding Social Shopper TurnTo Wants to Personalize the Web

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:37:53 +0000

Source:Mashable!

People often speak of old and new media as a dichotomy, with stodgy network television channels and traditional newspapers on the one hand, and hip, technologically sophisticated youth on the other. But recently, old media –- in particular, large television outlets -– have been catching on. A recent post on Mashable noted that CNN is using Twitter to interact with viewers. I commented that Fox News Channel is also using Twitter and Facebook. Many traditional newspapers, national and local, are also using Twitter and other social software to various degrees.

Because I use my Comcast Cable DVR to watch shows on delay about 75% of the time, I found myself this morning viewing a national news show and realizing that I couldn’t interact with the hosts via Twitter, because I was an hour too late. Show hosts asking viewers to “Twitter your comments” is clearly the modern version of “calling in with your questions for our guest.” The key question I asked myself was, as more television media master their new media brands, will we find ourselves more likely to tune into their shows in real time?

The financial consequence of not using DVRs, or downloading the shows from a third-party website, or other new options, is that more people watching the real-time version means more viewer share, which in turn means more advertising revenue. People are more likely to engage the show in real time and therefore more likely to see traditional commercials. I don’t know if the gurus at television networks or advertising firms they work with are thinking about it this way yet, but it seems like a truism to me.

So what might be a strategy going forward? As an avid watcher of television, particularly political news, complex dramas, and reality shows, I could imagine many scenarios in which incentives are created to watch shows in real time – viewers pose questions for the guest, guide alternative dramatic scenes, or decide what challenge the players have to perform. How cool would it be to watch Donald Trump, Sr. using Twitter on a BlackBerry in the middle of the live Apprentice finale? And the advertising underbelly is that you are statistically more likely to purchase paper towels, basketball sneakers, or a dream vacation cruise.

With the increasingly “long tail” of niche television channels, magazines, and similar outlets only becoming more prevalent, it might behoove the “blockbuster” organizations like NBC to become the leaders in “old new media” to win some of that viewer share back. This summer, the startup social network and search site Searchles inked a deal with the venerable Washington Post to create social networks among people with common reading interests. Why not similarly network all the people who voted for Clay Aiken, are fans of Gossip Girl, or hate The View?

Mark Drapeau is an Associate Research Fellow at the Center for Technology and National Security Policy in Washington, DC. These views are his own and not the official policy or position of any part of the U.S. Federal Government.

(Image via Flickr/ dailyinvention)

Source:Mashable!

One of many companies launching at DEMO this week is Say Where from DialDirections. Say Where hopes to make its mark by offering voice input locations and directions generated by speaking an address or city into an iPhone 3G. By doing this Say Where brings basic pre-programmed GPS destination functionality to the iPhone 3G.

If you have used any basic GPS system, you know that pre-programmed destinations are par for the course. There is a selection included in any GPS worth its salt of nearby gas stations, movie theaters, restaurants and other points of interest. The drawback to these is that they don’t change dynamically as businesses succeed or fail. They could be outdated at any moment without real time data feedback.

If you have an iPhone, you already have all of the real time Web-based destination information you could want. Coupled with the ability to get directions and mark your place with drop pin and bookmark, iPhone users already have more flexibility than this program appears to offer at first blush. If I had to choose between getting more reliable and up to date information from the iPhone Web interface, or possibly outdated pre-programmed information from Say Where, I’m going to have to choose the Internet until Say Where includes real data.

One of Say Where’s pitch points is voice capability. It’s nice to speak into the iPhone and get results, especially if you have trouble with the touch screen keyboarding. in the end, what good is convenience or cool software if it gives you potentially useless data? This is a good idea, but it needs more.

Perhaps I am judging this application too quickly and should be more excited about having access to data like nearby destinations, points of interest, recommendations and reviews with simple voice commands. Unfortunately, I just can’t seem to get excited about it. If it offered a way to get real time data and merge it with true GPS functionality, I’d be more excited. however, with the availability of the DASH GPS, I’m not seeing a need for Say Where right now, since DASH already does pretty much everything that I want in a real time, Internet connected GPS interface.

However, if the most you can say about your new iPhone App is that it uses voice commands and won’t cost users a phone call when retrieving the data they request, I’d recommend adding more features to really make it noteworthy. As it stands, when I want unbiased data on the iPhone 3G from voice commands I’ll just dial 1-800-GOOG-411 and either get the answer on the phone or have them SMS me. If I want similar functionality I can use programs like Nearby or Infospace. Meanwhile, if Say Where were to introduce real data instead of canned data, it would become ten times more useful.

Source:Mashable!

The objective for TurnTo, a New York-based startup introduced at DEMOfall 08 this week, is to enable your personalized Web browsing experience to supersede website borders. TurnTo’s intention is to spread itself to an ever-expanding set of partner sites. And that’s important to emphasize. Because anything short of something of popular or viral design will sweep TurnTo into irrelevance.

The concept is interesting. It’s been done before in various other forms; social shopping is something that has been around for many months already. Yet, Turnto’s implementation is light. Very light. The widget is quite nondescript. Nothing to install whatsoever. You just sign up, connect with your friends, and start browsing.

That second step, though, is a major one. The biggest hurdle of all. This goes as much for end users as for websites, too. Users need to engage people they know through invitations, which is rarely a fun process to trudge though. (The company lists LinkedIn, AOL Mail, Gmail, MSN/Hotmail, Yahoo Mail/Rocketmail, and .Mac as import options.) Oppositely, TurnTo lists sites such as Angara, Compsource, Teavana, and EarthWatch as participants in the launch. As you will immediately recognize, the starter group is infinitesimally small when sized up against the full spectrum of destinations it might inhabit in widget form. It will have to grow. A lot. (TurnTo tells Mashable that four more are under implementation, including three Internet retail 500 sites.)

Leaving aside the obstacles for adoption for a moment, once you do establish connections, it’s very simple to operate. Say you’re really into tea. Maybe you’re an artisan with herbs and leaves and spices and things. And your friends are, too. In that case, if you were to trek over to Teavana, you could share recommendations or learn from others about things they found appealing. This at once gives you a social element to your shopping experience in a particular spot on the Web. And it allows websites to provide that service without having to expend much effort in shaping their pages to cater to such demand, if it indeed exists amongst friends.

Again, TurnTo has a phenomenal task ahead if it is to make any sort of lasting impact - aside from very particular shoppers who aren’t eager to browse dozens, or even hundreds of websites in a given period of time. There’s no downplaying the significance of the scale of what TurnTo must achieve. Sure, if you’re a fan of Teavana, for instance, there you have it. You’re set. Mission complete. Realistically though, in order that TurnTo make its business a viable one (revenue is dependent on a purchase performance model), its grand dream needs to be substantiated to at least partial degree. It couldn’t sensibly have it all, of course. But it might gather enough steam. It’s a possibility.

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Bargain Hunting: 20+ Tools for Finding Coupons Online

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 17:02:56 +0000

Source:Mashable!

The so-called social Web just became legitimately open, as MySpace has launched the two first implementations of its Data Availability initiative on Flixster and Eventful. Simultaneously, the company is announcing that it will support OpenID, allowing its users to sign into any OpenID-enabled website using their MySpace credentials. The move comes one day before Facebook’s developer conference kicks off, where the rival social network is widely expected to announce the first implementations of its own data portability initiative: Facebook Connect.

The implementations of Data Availability on Flixster and Eventful work much as you might expect. On Flixster, users can register using their MySpace credentials, at which point they can import their profile data and connect with any of their friends who already have accounts on Flixster. On Eventful, users can not only import their profile data, but also receive alerts for events coming to their area, based on the artists that the user has friended on MySpace. Hence, if you’re friends with Augustana on MySpace and they are having a concert in your town, you’ll automatically be alerted to it.

All of this information is synced across the Data Availability supporting sites and MySpace. So, if you update your profile, edit your biography, or remove an artist from your friend’s list on MySpace, this will immediately be reflected on Flixster and Eventful. Certain more sensitive data like religion, sexual orientation, and ethnicity are only cahceable for 24 hours by Data Availability partners, while core profile data like age, location, and profile photo can be stored on the third-party site, though still synced with MySpace.

Asked about the distinction between data that is cached and that which is stored, Jim Benedetto, SVP of Technology at MySpace told me: “It’s very technically challenging to rely on MySpace’s server [for accessing all of the data]. [As a user] if I don’t want all information to be available to Flixster, I can revoke access and cut it off. But a core piece of information such as my age, email, first and last name that is key to the initial registration, Flixster can maintain control over so people can continue to login to Flixster with it.”

As for the OpenID initiative, much like other Web giants including Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo that have announced support for the movement, MySpace is only acting as an identity provider, meaning that while you can use your MySpace credentials to sign into other Web sites, you cannot yet use your credentials from another OpenID provider to sign into MySpace. Nonetheless, announcing support for OpenID is another small victory for MySpace over Facebook, and keeps the pressure on the latter to legitimately open up.

MySpace first announced Data Availability in May, with launch partners Yahoo, eBay, Twitter, and Photobucket. Asked about the status of these higher profile rollouts, Benedetto told me that “All of them are currently working on their implementations. Flixster and Eventful are just smaller companies that were able to move very quickly using our APIs to get them live.”

As for Facebook, they announced Connect with Digg signed on to support the initiative one day after MySpace kicked off Data Availability back in May. Google also has its own hat in the ring in the battle to become your universal profile with its Google Friend Connect offering.

Source:Mashable!

Glam Media, the self-described distributed media network that sits atop the women-centric market of the Web, with either a whole or partial role in over 600 websites and blogs, is expanding its sights yet again this year, just weeks after it introduced a new advertisement marketplace called GlamX Ad Exchange. Today the company unveiled its very own application platform. It is dubbed, simply enough, Glam Application Platform.

Glam is inviting publishers, developers, and advertisers alike to exercise the platform, which it has code-named “Atako” and currently has positioned as a private beta. The company believes the strength of the release resides at its core, where an open-source design has been implemented. (Said to be based on the Google Gadget spec, the platform may also take advantage of OpenSocial and OpenID.)

The Glam Application Platform also arrives with levers to monetize developments easily, with or without advertisements. If application creators wish to go without marketing, developments may be distributed freely, as they would ordinarily, or through direct payments. Any applications borne of the Glam Application Platform will be delivered through a system called the Glam Apps Store.

Whether or not Glam has taken cue from Apple’s own App Store initiative, whose design was first publicly introduced earlier this year, Glam is no doubt employing the concept to further its mission to tap its increasingly valuable content network as broadly and deeply as possible. Since the point at which Glam surpassed iVillage last year as the dominant force in online media space specific to the female demographic, the flash terms “vertical” and “network” have in kind been touted ever more strongly by the company. With the Glam Application Platform there’s no doubt that the company sees its global audience of roughly 77 million monthly users as carrying considerably more value than has so far been realized.

The initial establishment of the Glam App Platform, because it is private beta, may have a limited impact at first, but it likely won’t be long before it does away with developer invitations. In the meantime, the effectiveness of the debut will hinge largely on which designers gain entry to start.

Source:Mashable!

Prices seem to be increasing everywhere on pretty much everything from fuel to groceries, making finding good deals more and more important. So whether you’re an avid bargain hunter or just need to save some cash, we’ve put together a list of over 20 resources to help you find coupons online.

We’ve listed a wide variety of coupon sites ranging from those that let you print coupons to take to the grocery store with you, to sites that provide cheaper prices for online stores, and even social sites where users can vote on the best deals.

Do you use coupon sites? If so, which do you find offer the best deals?

Brick & Mortar Shopping

CoolSavings.com - Tons of printable coupons divided up by style of shopping with listings of free samples you can get.

CouponMom.com - Has coupons you can print, helps you find coupons, gives you strategies on how to use them to make them most effective, and a whole lore more.

Coupons.com - Who needs to wait for the Sunday newspaper circular when you have Coupons.com? Go to the site, find your desired coupon, and print it out to take to the store.

CouponSurfer.com - Mixes up printable coupons for brick & mortar stores with ones for online sites. The heavier emphasis does seem to be on groceries and food.

OnlineCoupons.com - This one works a bit differently than some other sites in that you pay an annual subscription fee and also pay for them to mail you physical coupons for the grocery store. Coupons for restaurants may be printed for free at any time after you join.

Valpak.com - Enter your zip code and get results for coupons in your area as well as some online vendors.

Online Shopping

BensBargains.net - For eight years Ben’s Bargains has been updated daily with new coupon codes for all sorts of online deals. The site mainly focuses on electronics.

CouponCabin.com - Focuses on everyday coupons, but also has coupons that have a clear expiration date.

CouponChief.com - Collects various coupons for numerous online merchants into one handy site which is searchable by store name or product category.

CouponWinner.com - Thousands of coupons for hundreds of different online merchants from free shipping to free products and hefty discounts.

Dealighted.com - Aggregates deals from numerous shopping forums around the Web and puts them into one centralized source for you.

DeaLoco.com - Besides providing you with normal coupon listings, they also assign a “Grief Factor” to each to tell you how much hassle it will be to use it.

DealsOfAmerica.com - Attempts to bring you deals only from the most reliable of sources by focusing on the largest online retailers and traditional brick & mortar chains.

FatWallet.com - Featuring thousands of deals for online stores along with forums for users to discuss the current deals and ones they have found on their own.

FreeShipping.org - As the domain name suggests, this site is completely dedicated to finding you free shipping deals for all of your online shopping needs.

GottaDeal.com - Well known for their annual early release of Black Friday advertisements, GottaDeal is working all year long to bring you the best in online and offline deals.

MyCoupons.com - Has over 4,000 stores you can look up by name. Also has message boards for sharing more codes, rates how well codes have worked, and a whole lot more.

RetailMeNot.com - One of the more clearly labeled coupon sites with clear labeling of what the coupon does, what the code is and when it expires.

Slickdeals.net - Lists new coupons by the date issued and then lets you sort them down by when they expire, vendor, and other methods. Also has active forums for more discussion.

Social Coupon Sites

Dealigg.com - Besides being able to vote up the standard coupons, you also get a nice selection of free sample offers you can vote on.

DealsGlobe.com - You can give deals the thumbs up or down as well as search the coupons by numerous methods, even down to admin and user submitted.

DiscountPatrol.com - Users submit deals they find online and then others vote them up if they consider them a truly great deal.

Mallicious.com - The editors of Mallicious post new deals each day and then the users vote them up or down Digg style. Users are also encouraged to post deals that they find.

RedFlagDeals.com - A site for Canadian deals that allows users to vote up the best ones to the top.

[Image Credit: Sale photo by Tim Parkinson (Creative Commons Attribution)]

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