Sell Phones

In my ongoing series Rage Against the Machine, I explore my love/hate relationship with technology. In this post I discuss how we made our own "BOGO free" mobile phones deal.

I was way overdue for a new mobile phone. My Google Nexus S Android smartphone was over two and half years old, it had outlived it's update lifespan and was definitely acting its age. I was waiting until my wife's phone plan expired in mid August of this year because we had never been on a plan together, I wanted to save some money being on a shared plain and be on the same phone hardware cycle as her. My wife had a iPhone 4, which is two generations older than the current iPhone. It was time we both upgraded.

black and white Samsung Galaxy S4

My dream phone was the current Google Nexus phone, the Nexus 4. It is sold on the Google Play store unlocked. Unlocked phones are pricey because they aren't tied to any carrier who can subsidize the cost of the phone when you subscribe to one of their plans. I love the Nexus phones because they come with the latest version of the Android OS, are the first phones to get Android updates and because it's sold unlocked directly by Google there is no carrier branding or preloaded apps. But my wife talked me into getting the Samsung Galaxy S4 on T-Mobile from Costco. They sells phones and plans on all the major carriers and were selling the S4 for $100 with a two year contract. The S4 comes with the newest version of Android available to locked phones, 4.2.2, which is only one version older than the newest available, 4.3. We chose T-Mobile because they were the only carrier with unlimited talk, text, and data. Overall we got a good deal. We bought his and hers phones-a black one for me and a white one for her.

Then we had to figure out what to do with our old phones. We could recycle them, let them become toys for our boys or sell them. I figured if they were worth anything we should get some money for them. I was surprised at the value of our old, outdated phones. We sold the iPhone for $75 on Gazelle.com and sold the Nexus 4 on USell.com for $42. Both websites turned out to be legit and no hassle. You tell them what phone you have and rate the condition, then they give you the estimate. If you accept they send you a free shipping kit. After they receive the phone they review its condition. If they accept they send you the payment. Between the two sell transactions we recouped the cost of one S4. Essentially we made our own "buy one get one free" deal. It worked out pretty well.

Happy Raging Against the Machine

In my ongoing series Rage Against the Machine, I explore my love/hate relationship with technology. This installment is in the love category. My wife's Macbook laptop recently died. I've seen how this scenario plays out-and the outcome is usually bad. She took it to the local Mac store for a quick and dirty (and also free) diagnosis. The genius said it needed a new hard drive. We had some Amazon credit and ordered a new HDD for the laptop. Low and behold replacing the hard drive fixed the computer! My wife was back in business. She didn't lose much since our important files are stored on an external hard drive. The OS and applications needed to be re-installed, but that was it. Happy ending.

I'm a Google junkie. I use almost all their cloud apps and I even have some of their Nexus hardware - a Nexus S smartphone. When they released details about their new 7" tablet - the Nexus 7 - I pre-ordered immediately. I actually ordered two. I can't have any gadget without my wife also wanting one. :) Two Nexus 7 tablets cost less than one iPad, so it was a no brainer. It's better than the Kindle Fire in my opinion - Nexus 7 has Bluetooth, Kindle Fire doesn't. It's supposed to ship in mid-July, which is now, but no word yet. The anticipation is killing me.

Google Music vs Amazon Cloud Drive [UPDATED]

UPDATE 6/6/11 @ 11:30am EDT - Google Music is limited to 20,000 songs.

I received my Google Music invitation this morning and immediately signed up. Google Music is a cloud based music service. Once you upload your music files they are accessible from any internet connected computer. There is also a Android app for smartphones and tablets. Amazon also has a cloud music service called Cloud Player. The files are kept in the Cloud Drive. It also has an Android app. I signed up for it when it first became available a couple of months ago. Although the overall concept is awesome - the ability to access your music 24/7 from any web-enabled device without having to access a hard drive and making the storage of music on your iPod or smartphone obsolete - the two services are a bit different.

Amazon Cloud Drive allows for storing all types of files. You get 5GB of free storage, and if you buy an album from the Amazon digital music store, you get an upgrade to 20GB free for one year from date of purchase. You can purchase additional storage at $1 a GB up to 1k. The cloud drive is separate from the cloud player. However, they are linked-your music files stored in your cloud drive are accessible in the cloud player. Amazon wants you to purchase from their digital music store and the incentive is music purchased from it doesn't count against your storage space, which is nice. The cloud player allows for all digital music store purchases to automatically be saved to your cloud drive so you can listen immediately after purchase. One disadvantage is that new music not purchased from the mp3 store is not automatically added to the cloud drive. You have to upload it manually. In order to upload music to the cloud, the free "Amazon MP3 Uploader" app has to be installed on your computer. The cloud drive and player are free. All you need is an Amazon account.

Google Music is currently in beta and invite only, but should be available to all Google users in a few months. It's very similar to the Amazon service but with three key differences. First, Google has free but limited storage of music files. The limit is 20,000 songs. Although there is a limit, it is substantial. I doubt there are many people with a digital music collection containing greater than 20k songs. Second, Google doesn't have a digital music store. Third, Google's service is platform independent and allows for automatic upload of music files from Windows Media Player or iTunes, so whenever you buy new music, it's automatically added to Google Music. It's part of the Google suite of cloud apps so if you have a Google account, you're good to go.

The Winner: Google Music by a narrow margin.

P.S. Apple has a cloud based music service coming out on June 6 called iCloud.

Related articles

• Google Music vs. Amazon Cloud Drive (readwriteweb.com)
• [Deathmatch] Google Music Beta Vs. Amazon Cloud Player (androidpolice.com)

Free Money

Image via WikipediaI know what your thinking - "money ain't free". I not talking about a handout. What I mean by "free money" is unearned money; obtained through means other than my paycheck. I guess you could call it random passive income. I always seem to get some free money here and there, whether it be a rebate, a class action settlement, or selling something on Craigslist. I wanted to know how much free money I received, so I started tracking it in 2010. I created a Google Docs spreadsheet to do so. The total free money amount for this year is a whopping $1337! About half of that came from a contest I won which had an approximate retail value of $598. I won the Redskins "AAA Ultimate Fan Zone Sweepstakes" for the Sunday night game against the Colts back on October 17. The prize included: 2 suite tickets to the game, 2 passes to the AAA Ultimate Fan Zone pre-game hospitality area & 1 FedEx Field purple parking permit. Although technically not cash, I didn't pay for it out of pocket and is in essence free money so I'm counting it. The second biggest amount was $200 in Southwest Airlines credit we got for a long delay coming home from Louisville, KY for Lebowski Fest a couple years back that I used to purchase my flight to the National Beard and Moustache Championships in June. Rounding out the top three is $101.65 in oil royalties. My wife's family owns a small stake in land leased for obtaining oil in Texas. The smallest amount is $.59 which was another oil royalty. We actually cashed a $.59 check. It probably cost more to drive to the ATM. But every little bit counts.

12 Outdated Technology Terms That You Shouldn't Use During An Interview

I ran across this article that I found interesting. If you know any of these words, then you need a refresher course in technology "buzzwords". Don't put any of these words on your resume. I used to commute with my neighbor before my office moved in July. He and I would sit on the subway and make a game of trying to use outdated tech words in our conversations. My favorite is "information superhighway". See #12 in the article. :0) We found it hard to use "searching" instead of "Googling".

Our website gets a makeover

We've given our website, Chronic and Shock dot com, a makeover. It's the one-stop-shop for everything us. It's now powered by Google Sites.

Can You Hear Me Now?

Google rules the information superhighway. What started out as a no-frills search engine has blossomed into a dominate online software company. Their latest tool is Google Voice. Here's how it works:

With Google Voice, you get all your calls through a single number. Just add your other numbers to Google Voice and then make your own rules for how your phones ring. Click the Settings link on the right side of the page and click the Phones tab to change your phone settings and add the numbers you want to forward your calls to.

You can access and make calls from the phone and the Web, block annoying callers at will, and record custom greetings for different callers or groups of callers.

With Google Voice, you'll get all your voicemails in one place, saved for as long as you want. If you don't answer a call to your Google number, your callers will be sent to your Google voicemail. You can check messages by calling your Google number, by signing in to Google Voice, or by opting in to receive notifications.

You'll also get more handy features that work across all your phones:

-ListenIn as callers leave you a message
-Record calls on the fly so you never have to fumble for a pen again
-Switch phones mid-call without your caller knowing

Google bought out GrandCentral over a year and a half ago. I've had a GC phone number for a couple of years now. After the buyout, nobody heard from GrandCentral again. Google wasn't promoting it. GrandCentral users thought that Google had abandoned GC and left it for dead in March 2008, when the GC blog went dark. But a year later, here comes Google Voice. After Google rebranded GrandCentral into Google Voice, the existing GC users were offered to convert to Google Voice and be the first beta testers, before it is offered to other Google users. So far, so good.