Download:
black-friday-2009-tech-buying-guide.xlsx (~116 KB)
Download is only a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet. We don’t distribute spyware/malware/adware.

I should also mention that Skatter Tech did not create this list, only modified it. I found it on Gophn.com who updated the FatWallet.com list. I’ve stripped out everything that doesn’t have to relate to gadgets for all you geeks out there! I’ll do my best to add any new information thought the next few days.

Related Links: BlackFriday.info | BFAds.net | FatWallet.com | SlickDeals.net

We were tired of seeing “what’s my ip?” websites which were slow and messy to use so we launched our own service! All you really need is your IP address, so that’s exactly what we’re going to provide you. Nothing else. The page is just under a kilobyte and will load as fast as it possibly could. Skatter Tech IP will provide two pieces of data at this time: your ip address and your domain host. At this point this is all we plan to offer, but we plan to expand our tools in the future. And just like the rest of Skatter Tech, any tracked data is completely kept completely private. We will ONLY use it for statistical purposes. Any specific user information will be not be available for ANYONE to view. Anyways, to find out what your IP address is, just visit http://ip.skattertech.com. Even hit CTRL+D add it to your bookmarks!

If you have any suggestions or ideas to implement into onto this site, just leave us a comment!

Link: ip.skattertech.com

Since we switched over to the WordPress platform about a year and half ago, we’ve have continuously been hit by large numbers of spammers. Luckily with some tweaks, pieces of code, a few services, and some manual labor we’ve been able to catch 100% spam comments on our site. If you were wondering what was our number one tool, one word, Akismet. This innovative spam catching tool, alone, has caught over 100,000 spam comments for Skatter Tech this year. Akismet works by checking checking the data that is posted onto our server with a huge database of items known to be spam. Since the spam database learns by users moderating their own comments, it automatically adapts to new types of spam. According to their website, Akismet has been able to catch 93% of all the spam that would hit a website.

Although this only caught about 60% of the total amount of spam, it took another 3-4 tools, including Bad Behavior, to block another 30%. We still end up having to manually catch and throw out about 10% of what gets onto our sites. We could always implement a captcha system or require registration, however that would only be annoying and would deter everyone from participating in discussions. This tool has been primarily created for WordPress, however it is also compatible with plenty of other systems including Movable Type, Drupal, phpBB, Expression Engine, Joomla and more! We highly recommend giving Akismet a shot if you already haven’t heard about it and are having problems fighting spam.

P.S. We’ll be posting a WordPress tutorial on combating spam very soon!

Links: Akismet.com

We recently launched Skatter Tech Boards a few weeks ago, but soon ran into quite a few issues. We were using phpBB and had quite a difficult time managing content due to large spam surges. We didn’t like the fact that we had to spend more time cleaning out spam than responding to questions. As a result we took it down and decided to try Lussumo Vanilla instead. So far we have been pleased as the forum software looks much cleaner and organized than phpBB was. You may now access Skatter Tech Forums at forums.skattertech.com or through the link at the top.

Also note that registeration is now easier than ever. Just enter an email address and pick a username/password and you are done. Sorry for any inconvience switching over may have caused. We’ll stay put for now.

Link: forums.skattertech.com

After two years running and thousands of requests, Skatter Tech has finally created some message boards. All our readers are more than welcome to participate. Consider this new feature “beta” as there are still a ton of changes that will need to be made. Anyways for now the forum has got a few categories and sections. Feel free to post any questions you have and help others out by answering theirs. If you have any suggestions please let us know.

Also note from this point on, please avoid posting supported-related questions on the comment feature on this portion of the site and direct them to the message boards. We feel that by doing this it will be easier for everyone to communicate with each other using a forum system. The phpBB-based forum unfortunately requires registration unlike the comments on this part of the site. Please take a minute to register and get it over with, you’ll never have to deal with it again, I promise.

Links: Skatter Tech Boards (boards.skattertech.com)

Update: (02/14/07) The NEW NEW Skatter Tech Forums are now up and running! Just visit http://forums.skattertech.com or press “Forums” link.

We recently had some requests to offer a wider version of our theme. Our server statistics showed that over 80% of our readers had screen resolutions greater than 1000 pixels wide. Therefore we decided to integrate a second CSS to our site’s theme and a bit of java to allow switching back and forth instantly. With a click of the “Toggle CSS” button, Skatter Tech’s theme should instantly expand from its original 800 pixel wide format into one 1000 pixels wide. We will also leave a tiny cookie in your browser which will save your preference for future visits.

P.S. We have tested this in MSIE 6.0 and Firefox 1.5+, let us know if you were able to get this to work in your browser or if you experienced any problems. Please reply in the comments.

Links: Skatter Tech | Related: We’re Back!

1) Google Calendar screenshots have been revealed by TechCrunch, a popular Web 2.0 blog. (Yahoo! apparently fed them the info) Anyways “to be launched” service is an online AJAX based calendar service, which is suppose to be called CL2. The service has a gmail-like user interface and will have plenty of colaboration features, including RSS. It should also become intergrated with many of Google’s other services.
Links: Tech Crunch | CL2 Login Screen

2) Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and The Colbert Report have been added to the iTunes Store. The “season pass” will cost only $9.99 and will download the current episode plus the next 16 shows when they become available. Epsiodes can still be purchased individually for $1.99.
Links: Daily Show | Colbert Report
iTunes Links: Daily Show | Colbert Report

3) Microsoft has announced that their code name “Origami” Tablet PC should be available by the end of April. This is a new line of products, influenced by Microsoft, which are ultra-portable machines that are powered by Windows XP. Samsung’s version has a 7″ touch screen display, an extendable keyboard, Bluetooth, and WiFi. They can also run standard apps such as MS Office as wells as support playing videos, listening to music, and viewing photos. (Pricing will be around $600-1000)
Links: Origami Project | Microsoft’s Preview

4) MSN Live (aka. Windows Live) has just gotten a full AJAX makeover. Although still in beta, the service looks simple and clean. It has support for custom RSS feeds, as well as a selection to choose from. (weather, horoscope, email, news, etc.) The interface looks much better than Google IG. One neat feature that other services don’t offer that MSN Live does is Feed Search. For example search for “CNN” and when the results appear, if a feed is available a “add feed” button will be displayed.
Links: Windows Live | LiveCom Offical Blog

Skatter Tech has just created a “Widget” for all our readers. To use this widget you must have Konfabulator installed. Konfabulator is a free tool that allows placing widgets on your desktop on either a Windows or a Mac machine. These widgets can display any type of information such as news, weather, time, stock quotes, and much more. This specific widget will show the latest five stories posted on this site. As soon as a new story is posted the widget will automatically update itself with the newest items. Clicking on the title of any item will directly open the story in your default browser. The arrow mark will take you to our homepage www.skattertech.com. This widget works on both operating systems, but is currently still in BETA. Please install and tryout our widget, it is available in Konfabulator’s Widget Gallery. Note: Konfabulator was recently purchased by Yahoo and their product is now called Yahoo Widgets. The service still offers the exact same features and has not been compromised with ads or anything else.

Link: Get The Skatter Tech Widget | Get Konfabulator
Related: Yahoo Widgets | Widget Gallery
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