On 11:23 p.m. on Thursday, November 24 (Thanksgiving Night), I stepped into line at an entrance to our local mall. My mission? To visit our Old Navy store located within the mall. Because the store did not have an exterior entrance, I picked an entrance that was close to the store. The entrance I chose was on the rear side of the mall and was equidistant from another entrance. We (the others in line and myself) waited patiently until the mall security guard came to open our door. We quickly discovered that the security guard was going to the entrance…
Author: Robyn
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Black Friday. It’s a term that sends men screaming for the hills and women dashing for the stores. It’s a day that retail stores wait for all year. It’s a day that screams, “COMMERCIALISM!” to the world and expects you to bow down before it. I have been a Black Friday shopper and a Black Friday employee and this is what I think about it. First of all for those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, “Black Friday,” here is a brief lesson for you. Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving dubbed, “the official start to the…
Tonight while browsing the App Store, I stumbled upon Jimi Hendrix: The Complete Experience. Out of curiosity, I decided to take a look at it. What I discovered was a really well-designed, entertaining app. I will admit that while I enjoy Jimi Hendrix’s music and appreciate his contribution to the music world, I am not really a Hendrix “fan”. My dad is the “real” Hendrix fan of our family. Because of my father’s interest in Hendrix, I decided to poke around and see what it was all about. This app is not only a look at Hendrix’s music, but it…
Everyone is familiar with the superstore giant, Walmart. Founded in 1962 and incorporated in 1969, Walmart’s revenue for 2010 was over $419 billion. Consumers across the United States and Canada make weekly visits to the multi-billion dollar industry for their personal hygiene, entertainment, grocery and even medical needs. In the year 2000, walmart.com launched, bringing Walmart customers online. Customers have the option of having products shipped directly to their home or shipped to a local store (ship to store) for pick-up. These easy shopping options for customers are also available on both Walmart’s iPhone and iPad apps. Walmart’s iPhone app…
Over the past few months I have been utilizing Evernote as my primary source of note-taking during meetings. It is easy to use, syncs between systems and catalogues notes into “notebooks” per the user’s definitions. One of the benefits of using Evernote is its ability to record audio and save pictures directly into the note you are writing. I’ve used this function on more than one occasion and it comes in very handy. Evernote keeps notes organized and allows users to find their information quickly. Users can search by keyword, tag or even printed and handwritten text inside images to…
I’m a TV person. I enjoy watching programs and discussing the outcomes of programs with friends, family and coworkers. I recently came across an app called IntoNow from Yahoo!, which combines my love of television conversation and social networking. In this day and age, there are many apps that allow you to share what you are watching with your friends via Facebook and Twitter. How is IntoNow different? Well, it works like Shazam does for music. IntoNow listens to the show you are watching, pulls up the information on the show and allows you to discuss it within the app…
Recently I drove to my local Best Buy to buy an Apple Time Capsule to replace my Airport Extreme I recently sold. The store had plenty in stock, however I purchased one that was on sale for $30 off as an open box item. Once at home and connected to my cable modem and network I started to run the airport utility on my Mac when I noticed the hard drive had someone elses name on it. Upon further investigation – it became apparent that the person that returned the time capsule never had their data wiped off of it.…
Here are some of my favorite mac videos. Let us know what you think and if you have your own videos you like post your link in the comments! Too Late Charlie and the Apple Factory Madtv – Apple I-rack The iPhone 4 Antenna Song Apple spoof of Microsoft leaves audience in stitches Buy a Mac Collection Mac vs PC iPad Fanboys – I’m on a Mac Mac Spoofed: Networking MacHeads – Documentary
I am a list person. I make lists on a daily basis for both my personal and professional life. Generally, I prefer to write ‘to do’ lists on paper so that I can physically cross off items as I do them. I have tried many different iPhone ‘to do’ lists and haven’t found one that accomplishes what I would like it to do. Recently, I found an app called Wunderlist. Wunderlist, created by 6 Wunderkinder, is a free task management app. Wunderlist is broken into three parts: web app, mobile app and desktop app. All apps sync through a free…
Square is an electronic payment service that has apps for iOS and Android devices. Square was co-founded by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey. To get it all you have to do is go to the App Store or Android App Market and search for Square. Once you have the app downloaded, sign up and link it to your bank account. You should get your free square credit card reader within a week or two. Once you verify your bank account you can go ahead and start accepting cards by manually entering them until your reader arrives in the mail.…
I am a Netflix junky. I was an early adopter of the service and have been a loyal customer since 2008. I originally became a subscriber to the movie-by-mail service when I was on a mission to watch hard-to-find movies. Once Netflix began releasing the on-demand tv shows, I cancelled my cable for the MUCH lower cost Instant Viewing service. In fact, my movie store rental days have gone by the wayside as I decided that I could either wait for the movie to be delivered to me, or watch something already available through the instant service. Enter Redbox. Redbox…
Rounding out my series of favorite retail app reviews is Best Buy’s iPhone app. Best Buy is one of the most popular “big box” retailers in the U.S. with more than 1,150 stores worldwide. Best Buy, originally founded as “Sound of Music” in 1966, specializes in consumer electronics sales. Like many other retail apps I have encountered, Best Buy’s iPhone app includes features like weekly ad viewing, search by bar code scan or photo, and even in-app purchasing. Users can also view their Best Buy Reward Zone status within the app. These features seem fairly standard for retail mobile apps…
Since 1901, Walgreens has been serving the public as a drug store. Today, Walgreens is the largest drug store chain in the U.S. operating over 8,100 stores in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Walgreens first launched its iPhone app in Fall of 2009. Since then, Walgreens has made some upgrades to the user features of this app including GPS store locator, weekly ad viewing, and photo lab and pharmacy management. The photo lab management is pretty awesome because you can upload pictures directly from your phone. You can do this by adding picture you have already…
The second retail mobile app I’m going to review is Starbucks. Since 1971, Starbucks has been selling fine coffee drinks to customers from small coffee shops like the original storefront in Seattle. With over 17,000 locations in more than 50 countries, Starbucks continues to lead the specialty drink market. In 2009, Starbucks Corporation launched two iPhone mobile apps: myStarbucks and Starbucks Card Mobile. This app provides consumers with the ability to design their own drink, locate the closest Starbucks store, view nutritional information for drinks and food, and even search for job openings with the company. Inside the MyStarbucks function…
So, the big buzz today among Apple enthusiasts is the Apple World Wide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) 2011 Keynote address. The address was being streamed by many tech blogs and is available to watch here on nccsites.com. During this Keynote, Apple executives, including CEO Steve Jobs, revealed three big developments with Apple software: Lion, iOS 5, and iCloud. So, the big question now is: what new Apple development are you most looking forward to? My answer? The feature of gestures within Apple OSX-Lion. With gestures, you can utilize the multitouch track pad to navigate through the system and its applications much…
Target tops the iOS apps for retail. These days, the retail world is much more than window dressings and early bird specials. It’s cyber. It’s global. It’s mobile. Many retail chains have jumped on the mobile app bandwagon and created elaborate, elegant apps for users to find the products they seek with ease. In the next four reviews, I will be discussing four of my favorite retail apps: Target, Starbucks, Walgreens and Best Buy. Target With $67.4 billion in net sales in 2010, the Target Corporation has a well-established history of being one of the largest retailers in the U.S. In…
Realtor.com app makes searching for a house headache-free. One of my many hobbies is searching for real estate. Naturally, I was excited to find that realtor.com had created its own iPhone App. Realtor.com Real Estate Search (RRES) is currently on version 2.0.0.1434. Similar to the website, RRES starts up with a search screen. Users can search by starting a new search, finding nearby homes for sale, open houses or homes for rent. The app uses the iPhone’s GPS to locate the user and then find homes nearby. This app is easy to use and has the rather nifty function of…
Have you tried it yet? For the past several months I have been using a free service called Dropbox. It gives you 2gb of free online storage. If you refer your friends you can get additional 250 megabytes of storage added to your free 2 gigabytes. How does it work? You sign up for a free account and download the application for Windows, Mac, Linux or mobile. After you install and login dropbox lets you select what folders you would like to sync. I personally have it installed on my Mac Mini Server, Macbook Pro and also my iPhone. I…
About a week ago I had to work on a computer with an hp network printer. I have not dealt with many of these and had to contact hp tech support to troubleshoot. Once I was on their website and entered some information about my problem and a chat support window
So here we are Nick and Kevin of nccsites camping out or more like camping in walmart. We claimed our spot this morning around 9am. In other cities there are pretty big lines starting to build up. Luckily we are the only 2 here as of about noon. Looks like they have about 14 or so in stock. By the time 5 o’clock hit, there were about 4 other people waiting in line behind us. We picked up our iPads and were on our way. Shortly after they sold out everywhere. I even went across the street to best buy…
I recently sold my iPhone 3gs as I plan on buying the new iPhone the day it comes out. The latest news floating around is that as of June 7th (Same day as Apples WWDC and likely the day the new iphone will be announced) AT&T will no longer offer unlimited data plans for $30 a month. The new plans are as follows:$15 DataPlus 200MB per month$25 DataPro 2gb per month$20 Tethering with $25 DataPro planI was not very happy to hear about this but after spending 1/2 and hour on the phone with AT&T there is some hope. Apparently…
If you haven’t already heard, an Apple employee lost a prototype for the 4th generation iphone while drinking at a California bar. Allegedly Gizmodo purchased it from whoever stole the prototype for $5,000. When Apple discovered that Gizmodo editor Jason Chen
1. Save money by finding the cheapest gas nearby with GasBuddy .99 cents in the Appstore. 2. Save from $5-$15 a month by taking texting off your plan and using Textfree! You can send up to 15 per day with the free version and the pay for which is unlimited costs $5.99 to