GETTING READY FOR BLACK WEEKEND: Why limit yourself to just Black Friday when there’s a whole four-day weekend of shopping adventures to be had? American Express Small Business Saturday is paying out $10 per Amex card, and you can register for that starting on Sunday, November 24. Also, Office Max is offering, among other things, $20 off the purchase of a $200 gift card that weekend. If you want to decide whether it’s worth your while to brave the crowds, here’s a list of all the Black Friday ad scans.
GOOGLE TO END THE GOOGLE VOICE GRAVY TRAIN: I’ve been using an Obi for my home phone for a while now. I like it on account of the fact that (a) it works, and (b) I can get monthly phone service for free. The one catch is that it relies on Google voice for the free phone service, and that gravy train will end next May, alas. Though if you’re a nerd and you have some free time, it’ll still be possible to get free phone calls with Google.
The good news is that this thread has a lot of great information in the wiki about how to get free or cheap voice service. Those of us affected have six months to prepare, so all hope is not lost.
For what it’s worth, I’ve also used an Ooma before, and I was very pleased with that as well. The monthly fees for that are $4 where I am, though they vary from one locality to another.
OCCUPY WALL STREET PUTS ITS MONEY WHERE ITS MOUTH IS: This is kind of interesting:
A group of Occupy Wall Street activists has bought almost $15m of Americans’ personal debt over the last year as part of the Rolling Jubilee project to help people pay off their outstanding credit.
Rolling Jubilee, set up by Occupy’s Strike Debt group following the street protests that swept the world in 2011, launched on 15 November 2012. The group purchases personal debt cheaply from banks before “abolishing” it, freeing individuals from their bills.
By purchasing the debt at knockdown prices the group has managed to free $14,734,569.87 of personal debt, mainly medical debt, spending only $400,000.
It’s certainly a better idea than the Occupy Debit Card.
HOW TO WIN “THE PRICE IS RIGHT”: Somebody at Slate spent a lot of time putting together a game theory guide to winning most of the games on “The Price Is Right”. It’s fairly in-depth, so give it a look if you’re into that sort of thing:
In the Showcase, two contestants are shown two packages of prizes and the one who guesses closest to the value of her showcase (without going over) wins. This requires a contestant to guess a price with no choices or range. Although one contestant bids first, she is not bidding on the same item as her competitor, so there is less benefit in going last compared with Contestants’ Row or the Big Wheel. In a sample of the last 1,000 games, blindly guessing $20,000 would have resulted in a winning percentage of 54 percent, greater than the winning percentage of 45 that contestants actually have. (The winning percentage can be less than 50 because of the possibility of a double overbid, in which case both contestants lose.)
On the off chance you’re booked for the show tomorrow, here’s a cheat sheet.
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