Top 5 iPhone and Android Apps for Shopping Season Lasting from Black Friday to Christmas

Last year, 212 million shoppers visited stores and websites over Black Friday weekend, up from 195 million in 2009. The average spend went up to $365.34 and total spending reached an estimated $45 billion.

Savvy retailers are banking on smartphones to ring up their sales. And here are some apps designed to help consumers shop smarter, faster and cheaper.

TheFind

TheFind is a free iPhone and Android app, which brings you to shop at TheFind.com, a shopping search engine for tracking best prices on products. With its mobile apps, you can check prices of items sold online and in stores, scan barcodes for detailed product information, gets maps to stores, save product lists, and set price watches so you won't miss deals. Functionality also includes sharing scanned items with friends and synching with your “liked” retailers on Facebook.

Shopkick

Shopkick is an free app on iOS and Android phones. It lets you earn "kicks" reward points two ways. Grab rewards at Best By, Target, Macy's, Sports Authority, and Simon malls, among others just by opening the shopkick app in the entrances area of participating retailers. Scanning barcodes of featured products is another way to collect. Points can be redeemed for iTunes gift cards, restaurant vouchers, retailer gift cards, or can be donated to selected charitable organizations.

Google Shopper

Google Shopper can be free run on iOS and Android platforms. You can find the locate deals and get product and store info. Version 2.0 adds a nifty deal of the day and geolocation for nearby offers in addition to scan barcodes or covers of books and DVDs, voice activated search for products or driving directions.

Buzzillions Reviews

Free for iPhone and Android phones. For those who don’t want to base their buys on retailers’ sales-speak there’s Buzzillions Reviews. The free app delivers 17 million customer product reviews. Search tools narrow results but you’ll see good, bad and ugly for just about anything. Reviewers that work for a retailer or certified owners of products are identified so you won’t be duped.

Milo Local Shopping

Free for iPhone and Android phones. Milo’s Local Shopping app scans the real-time local availability and pricing for over 3 million products so you’ll know exactly what’s in stock faster than you can say, “Attention Target shoppers.” Major retailers in Milo’s stable include JCPenney, Walgreens, Home Depot, Lowes and Toys “R” Us.

Besides, you can find the free Apps only run on iOS platform for this big shopping season.

Your Christmas Gifts Could Also Be Out of the Ordinary

When we were children, we all dreamed that the mythical gift bringer Santa Claus dressed in red brought our long-cherished gifts on Christmas Eve. When we are grown-up, we know that there is no Santa Clause at all, but begin to play the part of the Santa Clause, so exchanging gifts turns to be a must-do thing.

Choosing Christmas gifts is a hard task to do! There are so many different gifts out there and it is always difficult to find the perfect one for each member of your family. In any case, make your Christmas gifts all by yourself is never out of date. For example, we can make some PowerPoint DVDs or videos to give our friends or family members. It is reported that Moyea PPT to DVD Burner Pro will be sold at a super-low price - $19.95 – on December 23 and 24, nearly saving $80.00 for you compared with its usual price.

First of all, let us share some common and popular Xmas present ideas, including but not limited to:

1. Preparing some gift baskets full of fruit are incredible gifts for families to share.

2. Collect some music that the family would be able to play together. Personalized songs are the best!

3. Purchase or weave hats, gloves, mittens and scarves for the entire family.

4. Make some homemade cookies or cakes that the family can share.

5. Daisies, roses, orchids - any type of flower at all would be fantastic for the holiday season.

6. The best way to a girl’s heart is through chocolate. Truffles, boxes, bins, tubs - any form will do!

7. Tickets to comedy show or movies are a great gift for anyone and it is something you both can do together!

8. Fill a movie gift basket with some DVDs the family can enjoy as well as popcorn and candy.

9. Last but not the least, memories are a precious thing; frames pictures make fantastic gifts for families. What’s more, you can also make a PowerPoint slideshow with those pictures. To be better, you can add your greetings, wishes, background music, video, animations, and transitions to your presentations.

If you plan to share it with other friends via Internet, you can convert the PPT files to video, or burn it to DVD and wrap it carefully before sending them to your friends and family far away. It is indeed a cool idea to make a PowerPoint DVD or video for your family and friends.

Now that you have a few tips and tricks for some Christmas gift ideas, why not go ahead and do something right away. Researching your gifts before purchasing them, for some Christmas online sales to save yourself some cash!

Best regards and Merry Christmas!

Put DVDs on iPad, iPhone, iPod for Free

Moyea Software will give away its DVD4Web Converter for a day this week (Dec. 12, 2010 - Dec. 18, 2010 Pacific Time). If you want to get it free, keep an eye on Moyea's Facebook, Twitter or their Christmas Special Offfer Page.

It's the 4th week of Moyea's Thanksgiving & Christmas Special Offer, each week one product will be given away or sold at lowest price for a day at http://www.moyeamedia.com/software-giveaway/ . In the past 3 weeks, they have given away SWF to iPhone Converter for free and sold PPT4Web Converter and SWF to MPEG Converter at only $9.95. In the 4th, Moyea will give away DVD4Web Converter, and in the 5th, PPT to DVD Burner Pro will be sold at only $19.95.


DVD4Web Converter is an easy-to-use tool that can convert DVD to flash video (*.FLV), *.MP4, *.MOV, *.3GP, *.3G2. With its help, you can easy convert your favorite moive DVDs to MP4 for sharing on your iPad, iPhone or iPod, of course, the output video can be also uploaded to video-sharing sites (like YouTube, Metacafe, Dailymotion, etc. ), SNS (as Facebook, Myspace, etc.), your blog or your website. By using it, you can conveniently take your film DVDs along with you or sharing them with your family or friends. It will only be given away for a day and you can save $29.95 if you get it. So, if you don't want to miss it, like Moyea's Facebook Fan Page or follow Moyea on Twitter.


In addition, as far as I know, Moyea will add PowerPoint to Buy-ray DVD to its featured product Moyea PPT to DVD Burner Pro soon, and this PowerPoint to DVD and PowerPoint to video Converter will be sold at only $19.95 next week. So, it's a great opportunity to get the fisrt PowerPoin to Blu-ray DVD converter at such a low price. Get it or not, it's your choice!

Have a good day!

How to Make Nice Christmas Cupcakes?

Chirstmas is coming soon,have you ever prepared your Christmas cupcakes well?Why not charm everyone with these pretty little cupcakes with little Christmas trees sitting atop them? You will be surprised at how easy it is to make them and how fast you can whip up batches to feed a crowd! Whipped cream and one single icing tip is all you need to make these.

What You Will Need:

• Cupcakes, any flavor

• Sweetened Whipped Cream

• Green Food Coloring

• Chopped candied fruit, red

Equipment Need:

• Icing Bag

• Open Star Icing Tip

How To:

1. Whip whipping cream till stiff peaks form.

2. Reserve some plain white icing for the floret border and add a tiny drop of green food color to the rest.

3. Mix the color into the cream very lightly to get a marbled effect.

4. Spread this icing on each cupcake with an icing knife or spatula.

Making the Trees

1. Mix in green food coloring to the remaining icing to make the trees.
2. Fit an icing bag with an open star tip (No. 17 or 18) and fill the bag with the green whipped cream.
3. To start making the trees, pipe out cream in center of the cupcake and bring outwards. For the first few lines, bulge out the icing in the center and then bring out. This will give the base of the tree some height for the other ‘branches’ to stand.

Floret Border:

With the same icing tip and plain white whipping cream, make little florets all around the edge of the cupcake.

Pipe out cream and press slightly on the same place to form a little floret. Make florets close to each other all around the rim.

Decorations:

1. Sort out red colored candied fruit from a mixed pack or use dried red berries.

2. Chop them up and puck into the trees to make tree decorations.

Tips:

Whether preparing for your family or for a party, assembly line is the best way to get these done quick and well. Spread cream icing on all cupcakes first and then make trees on all of them.

Try making the trees and florets on a plate first. Once you get the hang of it, start making them on the cupcakes.

Making such a delicate and yummy cupcake is really a enjoyment,all the happy secnces will be preseved by your camera.You may also want to make a PowerPoint slideshow with such photos, and share it with others.But it's somestimes a little difficult to share the slideshow online unless you convert it to video with Moyea PPT to Video converter,then you can easily share it on video sites(like Youtube,Metacafe etc.),SNS(e.g. Facebook,Myspace etc.) or blogs,even mobile devices (like iPod,iPhone,Nokia,Blackberry etc.).If you want to treasure up the good memories for a long time,you can also convert the slideshow on to DVD with Leawo PowerPoint to DVD,you can also send DVD copies to your friends or family by mail so that they can play it on a DVD-player TV.

May you have a happy Christmas!

Creative Christmas Gift Ideas

If you’re looking for a Hail Mary and you’ve got some spare time, you could try one of these DIY gift ideas. People are usually so impressed that you spent some time on them that they won’t care that you deliberately spent next to nothing on them. WARNING: These projects might require A WHOLE HOUR to complete. For me, if I have to choose between making gifts for family and watching TV, I generally elect to do both. In which case, I generally injure myself and fail to complete the project. In which case, I go further into credit card debt buying a last minute CD Rack. Anyways, here are 4 DIY gift ideas that anyone can do:

1. The Photo Collage. Buy a piece of poster board , print out a bunch of photos (at school or the office or your best friend’s house), cut them up and assemble them on the board. Most people, particularly family members, will be touched by such a thoughtful gift. Also, they’ll be so starstruck by pictures of themselves from 5 years ago (“I used to have hair! Do you see this? Look at this!”, they’ll think it’s the best, most unique gift they’ve ever received.


2. Bead Necklace or Bead Eyeglass Holders. Roll over to your local hippie bead store (you’ve smelled that place before, admit it) and pick up an assortment of beads and a string. Slide them on the string and tie the ends. Whallah! Original gift. CAUTION: It’s a little tedious.


3. The Dreamcatcher. It’s a piece of wood with some feathers hanging off of it. Come on. Provided you’re not trying to watch TV at the same time you’re gluing it together, you probably won’t glue your fingers together. By the way, does anybody know how to unglue your hands?


4. The Family Video. If you can dig up your old family videos and put them together onto a DVD, it makes an amazing family gift. If you don’t have any old family videos, but you do have a video camera, you could start taping your family members at Thanksgiving and editing footage together during your spare time. If you don't even have a video camera, just pick up some daily photos from your phone,your computer or the Internet(I mean SNS,Flicr,blogs etc.).Then you can make a Slideshow with such warm and fragrant moments and burn the Slideshow onto DVD so that it can be played on a DVD-play TV.As far as Christmas gifts go, this one is very time consuming, but ultimately more rewarding than almost any other gift you could give.

Free PowerPoint Templates:Christmas

Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday celebrated on December 25 that commemorates the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. The date of commemoration is not known to be Jesus‘ actual birthday, and may have initially been chosen to correspond with either a historical Roman festival or the winter solstice. Christmas is central to the Christmas and holiday season, and in Christianity marks the beginning of the larger season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days.

Although traditionally a Christian holiday, Christmas is widely celebrated by many non-Christians, and some of its popular celebratory customs have pre-Christian or secular themes and origins. Popular modern customs of the holiday include gift-giving, Christmas carols, an exchange of greeting cards, church celebrations, a special meal, and the display of various decorations; including Christmas trees, lights, and garlands, mistletoe, nativity scenes, and holly. In addition, Father Christmas (known as Santa Claus in North America, Australia and Ireland) is a popular mythological figure in many countries, associated with the bringing of gifts for children.

Because gift-giving and many other aspects of the Christmas festival involve heightened economic activity among both Christians and non-Christians, the holiday has become a significant event and a key sales period for retailers and businesses. The economic impact of Christmas is a factor that has grown steadily over the past few centuries in many regions of the world.

Here are some Christmas PowerPoint Templates for your free download,enjoy!

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  Christmas Template 1
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  Christmas Template 2
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  Christmas Template 3
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  Christmas Template 4
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  Christmas Template 5
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  Christmas Template 6
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  Christmas Template 7
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  Christmas Template 8
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  Christmas Template 9

See also:
Free Holiday PowerPoint Templates:

Valentine & Easter & April Fools’ Day & Father’s Day & Thanksgiving & Halloweeen

Even More:

Education & Training & Business & Technology & Michael Jackson

PowerPoint Tips:Create DVD Photo Album for Christmas

You must take a lot of memorable photographs during Christmas and store them on computer. It's a wise idea for you to organize them in a good way. Make them a DVD photo album is a nice solution. It is quite an easy job as long as you have Microsoft PowerPoint installed on your computer.

PowerPoint versions 2000 to 2007 have the feature to save your photos as an album. Make separate digital photo albums for different sets of pictures. There is no limit to the number of albums, or the number of photos in each album. So you can add all the pictures of the same set into one album. This is a great way to organize your photo life.

Now let's start to create an awesome album using PowerPoint 2007.

Add pictures into the album
On the Insert menu, point to Picture, and then click Photo Album.

Click on the 'File/Disk…' option and locate the pictures on the computer. You can add multiple pictures at one time. It is strongly recommended that you optimize the pictures in Photoshop/gimp before inserting them into the album. Because pictures are used a high but unnecessary resolution, i.e. 3 million, you can downgrade the photo resolution into 800x600, which is 480,000.

Choose an album layout

1. In the Album Layout section at the bottom of the dialog box, choose a layout for the pictures on each slide. You can also reorder the sequence of the pictures using the up and down arrow keys below the listing of the pictures, rotate the pictures, and adjust the brightness and saturation. A layout preview is shown on the right side of the dialog box.
2. And, you are provided with an option to use customized template. Click the Browse button. Locate the template in the 'Choose Design Template box' that allows you to navigate to the folder where we have stored the downloaded templates. Choose any of the three templates.
3. Finally, click on 'Create' button, done. Isn't this easy?

Burn the PowerPoint album to DVD

1. Capture the screen to make a regular video file using Camstudio (http://camstudio.org), it is totally free. It will save your video in AVI format. You just need to burn the video to DVD using Nero/Roxio.
2. You can use PowerPoint to DVD Burner from Moyea Software. It can save PPT files onto DVD and enable you watch it on TV. This mothod is much more convenient.

There are also some good tips for you all:

• Choose different layouts for different pictures. Big landscape pictures deserve a whole slide, while other pictures may share a single slide.
• Beautiful PowerPoint template can make your album shining.
• Add text titles and descriptions for some pictures, photos cannot tell everything.
• Take care of the DVD photo album disc.

Related:

PowerPoint to DVD PowerPoint to Video PowerPoint to FLV

PowerPoint to DVD for Education PowerPoint to Video for Education

PowerPoint for Web PowerPoint to PDF PowerPoint to DVD Burner

Convert PowerPoint to Video PowerPoint to DVD Converter