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Just watched this video. I haven’t checked it out yet. On the surface sounds good but doesn’t it need you to be logged in in order to work? Anyhow, thought I’d pass on this video.

I’ll still take it over nothing. Wonder if it works on AppleTV. Will find out soon. Meanwhile, watch the video to see how it works and how to turn it on.

I love this time of the year because you can usually find a lot of gadgets that you’ve been wanting come down in price. It seems however that the deals aren’t as great as far as gadgets go. That’s just my personal observation. At the same time, we’re all on tighter budgets too. Well, instead of showing you some ‘top’ gifts that are probably way off budget, here’s a list of under $50 gadgets you can consider for any mom or kids.

jWIN Electronics JX-MP224 1.5″ Color Video 4GB MP3 Player/FM Radio

$26.99

What I like: 4GB built in flash memory with expandable memory with miniSD. It even can be a voice recorder and one of the video formats accepted is .AVI. Rechargeable battery.

Sennheiser RS-110 Wireless Headphones
$37.99

This is an awesome price. Sennheiser is reputedly a good brand for headsets and audio equipment. I’ve had this unit on my radar for a long time and it usually averages $100. I eventually settled for a cheaper brand but having a wireless headset is a great mom tool like watching late night TV without waking up the kids. That’s what I use mine for most of the time.

George Foreman Vari-Temp Grill

$29.00

Last week, our family has used our 6 year old George Foreman grill twice and I will probably use it another time in a day or two because the girls asked me for grilled cheese sandwiches and I promised it to them. Easiest way to make them and a ton of other things too. I love this grill for helping me make healthy meals easily. We had a deal on hamburger recently. It was so good I stocked up but they were the 80% lean ones. I normally only buy 93% lean. The fat difference between them was a lot. Especially when I’m not used to it. So when we made hamburgers last week and we used the grill, all the fat dripped out. Yet the burgers still tasted awesome. Definitely a good gift choice especially for the price.

Conair Compact Garment Steamer

$29.93

Which mom wants to spend time ironing? Not me, you can bet your bottom dollar. Ironing ranks all the way at the bottom. Even doing dishes trumps it. But a steamer is so so much easier and faster too. We have a small one and it’s several years old but seen many uses.

HoMedics – Back Revitalizer 5 Motor Massage Cushion

$25.00

I got one for my husband a few years ago, the shiatsu one. It is great. Now they have ones with heat which would probably be a lot more relaxing.

HoMedics SoundSpa Lullaby With Picture Projection

$17.99

This is so cute! When my babies were still babies, we had one of those mobiles that made stars on the ceiling. They so love that. Even now, my youngest at 5 years old still enjoys the stars going around and around.

While not exactly a comprehensive list, I hope we’ve at least given you some ideas if you’ve been stuck what to get and not burn a hole in your wallet – that is important.

Have you shopped your heart out yet? I’ve heard some peeps tell me the great finds and deals they found this morning. It was my first time ever going out to the stores at the break of dawn on Black Friday. It will probably be my last time too. This year, nothing really caught my fancy. The deals are so-so. Maybe because the items I really have my eye on are not deeply discounted. They are cheaper than ever during the year, but they aren’t Black Friday special. Anyhow, I came home and did some more looking around. Honestly, I’m seeing a lot more fab deals online than in stores.

Here are a few awesome deals that made me stop and look. You still have a couple of hours to catch from the comfort of your own home.

E-matic 4GB Video MP3 Player with 2.4″ LCD & Camera – $45. I’m really tempted to get this for the older kids – all-in-one, camera, video and music player. Nice, 2.4″ sized screen. It even can be used as a web-cam and records audio. It has a built-in speaker which is nice for the girls when listening to music together and with their friends. Sounds perfect and the price is not too bad either. Oh yeah and it has a MicroSD slot so you can expand the storage, supports up to 8GB card. Plenty of space.

HP Pink 10.1″ Mini 110-1129NR Netbook with Sleeve Case & Windows XP – $378. I’m not one who likes girly designs or pink but got to admit this looks sooooo sweet and sooooo fun! Very nice for moms. Love that it has a matching Black and pink sleeve case.

Flip Ultra HD – $179. I’ve been waiting for this HD unit to come down past the $199 price all year! This is not the regular Flip Ultra but the HD version that records at higher definition, 120 Minutes, 8GB Hard Drive. You can also get this at Walmart.com for $10 less and if you get it at Walmart. Actually, Walmart is an even better deal because it includes a tripod, case and HDMI cable.

That’s it for now. I’ve been sick and suffering from a horrible migraine all day so I will be missing out on some of these deals hope you catch some for yourself though

I hate staples. Never used to but now I do because the little ones just love to use them up. It is so frustrating to go staple something and find you’re out of staples. Which is why I’m getting one of those staple-less staplers. It works by punching a hole in the sheets of paper and folder the tab over. The only down side is the limited number of sheets you can staple together. Which is not a huge deal since we don’t do that much at the home office anyway.

If I need to hold more sheets of paper together, I would use the paper clipper tool. It’s something I got hooked on from Asia. I couldn’t describe it well enough on text so I made a video to show you

Well, the holiday season is upon us, some of us lucky moms may have a 2nd monitor in the horizon. No better time than now to be ready so that you can get that baby up and running and enjoy on Christmas day. If you’ve never had two monitors before then the big question you’ll inevitably ask is how do you do this?

Two ways. One, if your computer’s graphic cards have two outputs. Many of the latest cards do have two. One for regular VGA and one for DVI. Most monitors include the required cabling. But it never hurts to have one extra. If you are currently using the VGA, then you’ll need to get a DVI cabling and vice versa.

The other method works well if your computer only has one monitor output. It is a multi monitor adapter. Because it is USB, you can get as many adapters as you like and chain it into a USB hub. How sweet is that? One such adapter is the Arkview USB-1612. Check out the image below to get an idea how it works. It’s got pretty good reviews too. Although I already have two monitors, I think this might be the one I’ll look in to when we ever add a third.

While cleaning up my hard drive this week, I ran into a really annoying issue. Somehow, some files became corrupted and I could not delete, open, rename, copy or move the files. The message I get is,

“Cannot delete file: Cannot read from the source file or disk”

Well how in the world am I supposed to get rid of this thing now? Thankfully, I found a solution. It will involve firing up the good old fashioned Command Prompt. If you are not afraid of using that, it works great! Anyhow, Duncan gives pretty clear and concise instructions here even if you aren’t too comfortable with Command Prompt, you can do it.

To start Command Prompt, go to Start >> Accessories >> Command Prompt or Start >> All programs >> Accessories >> Command Prompt on Vista.

Hope this is helpful to someone.

I like working in 15 minute blocks. It works for me and the kids but have had the toughest time finding a real timer – not a computer software one – where you can set more than one countdown time on it. Maybe I’m just not using the search phrases. Don’t know but boy did I jump when I saw the Chef’s Quad Timer on ThinkGeek – 4 timers in one.

If you’re looking for the same thing, ThinkGeek is where you can find it. Click on Home & Office in the menu on your left, then Kitchen Tech. The clock is about 3 quarters down the page on the right most column.

Right now, they are running Free FedEx Home Delivery for orders $40 or more. Use coupon code DEALNEWS.