CantBarsed.com Blog

Author: CantBarsed Blog

  • Cheesed off with Cheeselets – More Like CheeseLESS!

    cheesed off with CheeseletsWe always look forward to cracking open our first tube of the new Cheeselets season and this year United Biscuits have taken the biscuit – literally, about half of them by our reckoning – we’re cheesed off with Cheeselets!

    It’s not all bad, the useless opening pull strip that always breaks off is gone (hurrah) and they’ve changed the flavour again – they taste different, a bit crispier, but still good.
    Our kids pointed out they’re 40% less fat… less salt… less everything because the biscuits are 40% gone!

    And it’s not just one tube, we checked several, and it’s not because they’ve compacted down either, if anything there’s fewer broken biscuits than normal. Frankly we’re cheesed off with Cheeselets!

  • Mac Undercover by Orbicle – Mac Anti-Theft Software

    Mac computer users should take a look at Undercover by Orbicle which effectively renders a stolen mac useless to a thief and there’s even a chance it will help you get your Mac back or see what the thief looks like!

    Once installed if your mac is ever stolen you visit the Undercover website and enter your unique ID number at which point they start looking for your mac.
    As soon the the stolen mac connects to the internet the IP addresses and router address is logged which helps trace the physical location of your mac and, if your mac has an iSight webcam, sends pictures of the thief every few minutes.

    If you still don’t get your mac back at least you have the satisfaction of knowing the thief won’t enjoy using your mac for long. After half an hour Undercover simulates an intermittent hardware failure (even if the mac isn’t online). If the thief decides to sell you mac or take it in for repair Undercover will track this and will shout and display a full-screen message alerting the reseller (or someone who bought the Mac from the thief) that the Mac has been stolen and should be returned along with Undercover’s contact information and reward offer.

    They seem to have thought of everything and the prices are really cheap:
    * Single User license: $49
    * Household license: $59
    * Site license: $249
    * Student license: $39
    * Volume educational license: $8/Mac

    There’s also iAlertU which is a free alternative to Undercover, it doesn’t include the network tracking but is a more in-your-face deterrent. There’s no reason why you couldn’t use both.

    I should mention I have no connection with Undercover by Orbicle apart from being a customer.

  • iPhone – Apple In My Eyes – CantBarsed.com Blog

    I’ve seen an Apple iPhone inspired future and it’s the stuff of science fiction. All the crucial elements are already in play.

    iTunes was the Trojan horse which let Apple loose on Windows giving PC users a glimpse of Mac loveliness as they traded up their mp3 players for iPods and got used to doing things Mac style.

    Making a success of the iTunes Store was the next crucial move which has made it (almost) painless to pay for our music, it’s certainly a lot less hassle than all that peer-to-peer nonsense – and with music becoming available at higher quality and DRM free there’s no excuse to steal music anymore.

    Switching Macs to Intel CPUs has made it easier for programmers to get Windows software running on a Mac which both encouraged long time Mac users to stick with the platform and enticed more people to switch to Macs offering a comfortable transition.

    The recently released Apple TV is a stealth device – it also integrates seamlessly with iTunes and iTunes Store on both PCs and Macs. To the casual observer Apple TV appears over-priced and near-useless BUT it’s being flown in under the radar to provide essential mission support as the iPhone establishes a bridgehead.

    I firmly believe the iPhone will do to the mobile phone market what the iPod did to the mp3 player market and history is going to repeat itself – people are going to start trading up their standalone iPods, mp3 players, mobile phones and PDAs to the iPhone. We’ll hear the same old bravado from other manufacturers about how they’re not worried while they frantically scramble to produce iPhone clones but they’ve missed the big picture and there’s no way back for them now.

    In less than two years all we will need is a TV (‘cos they’re big and fun to watch together), a computer or games platform (to work and play games) and an iPhone (because they’re Star Trek-like, damn sexy and portable). The stealth role for Apple TV reveals itself as the infrastructure to wirelessly manage everything on your iPhone, computer and TV screen using iTunes and Safari.

    The next battle for Apple isn’t with Microsoft or other device manufacturers but with Sky Digital and terrestrial digital TV for control of our eyeballs. Movies and TV shows are already available via the US iTunes Store and these can be streamed wirelessly over the Internet to your iPhone, computer or TV screen. The only question is when Apple TV is renamed Skynet – finally the big picture is clear for all to see.

  • Shields Up! Discount Code Websites Under Attack…

    Discount code websites like our DiscountCodes.tv and cantBarsed.com are now so popular we’re coming under ever closer scrutiny from merchants. Most are happy for us to promote their codes, which they see as a symbiotic relationship, others are ambivalent or turn a blind eye but increasingly we’re being asked to remove valid codes which is definitely bad for YOU and makes our sites less relevant.

    What’s worse is that some of the merchants who have asked us to remove codes still give them away to newsletter subscribers (read our money saving tips about newsletters) and via their other advertising channels which leaves our regular visitors out in the cold.

    If their aim is to get rid of code sites they’re unlikely to succeed – a quick look at the US experience shows code sites are not going to go away so pulling codes is just going to drive the perceived problem underground.

    We’ve always approached merchants to organise exclusive promotional codes for cantBarsed visitors so we’ve ramped up this activity which in the long run will hurt the stores not offering codes as their coverage shrinks at the expense of our exclusive promo code partners.

    The challenge for merchants is to learn to work with discount code websites, not against us, and manage promotional codes intelligently so everyone is a winner.

  • Iny Meany Miny Mo, to the AW Event We Shall Go!

    I’d already accepted my invitation to the Affiliate Window event before I realised it clashes with the A4U get2gether and cruise to Amsterdam. I can’t do both events and keep Deb happy on her birthday. It’s a shame when affiliate events clash but I’ve been meaning to put some names to AW faces and it looks set to be a great evening. I’ll certainly miss my usual round of conversations with the guys from the a4u forum but I hope they’ll be some familiar faces at the AW event too.

  • ASOS Rant – Bedroom Affiliates & CantBarsed.com

    ASOS rant alert! We were the last “ASOS Affiliate of the Year” before ASOS sulked and took their ball home. We’ve been outed by ASOS Pearly King Nick Robinson as one of the “grubby little people in grubby studios growing income at our expense” which seems a tad harsh given ASOS invited me to their London HQ, took me out to lunch and encouraged us to make more sales.

    This all happened back in the days before the ASOS affiliate program evolved into a pointless exercise and, by no co-incidence, shortly after affiliate marketing superhero Jess Luthi escaped her corporate shackles and took the ASOS brain cell with her.

  • Happy Christmas & New Year

    I’d like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and thank everyone who has used CantBarsed.com to save money while shopping online this year, it really is very much appreciated.

    There are still a few stores taking orders right through until Friday and some stores have sales starting this week. Check our Christmas Last Orders & SALEs page for the latest news.

    The lingerie stores are always the last to call time – they must know us men will leave it until the last minute, which reminds me…

    Save

  • Breast Cancer Awareness – CantBarsed.com Blog


    My wife Deb recently had a breast cancer scare, which thankfully turned out to be harmless, but it made us realise how suddenly family life can change and how lucky we are so we’re going to donate £1 to Breast Cancer Care for each Christmas greeting message posted (up to a maximum £500) and you even get the chance to win some instant snow. We’ve left last years 21 greetings online to get you started so why not send your friends and colleagues to our greetings page?…

    Following on from my last update we all enjoyed our day trip to London. The trains ran on time and the Blue Man Group were amazing, almost as good as the Las Vegas performance but the tickets for the London show were MUCH cheaper.
    My tip is to buy Blue Man Group tickets in the front 4 rows, they come with free ponchos but only cost half the price and I haven’t seen anyone get seriously covered in goo – yet!

    Save

    Save

  • Wow! CantBarsed Really Can’t be Arsed!

    Even I’m shocked how CantBarsed can’t be arsed. I’ve only posted a handful of entries to the CantBarsed.com blog this year and it’s almost Christmas again! We’ve skipped right past Halloween – or I would have had it not been for my daughter Natasha’s top pumpkin carving, bought to you in the widescreen format it deserves – go Natasha Tarantino!

    Since my last post I’ve driven an Aston Martin DB9, Lamboghini Gallardo and Ferrari 550 on a track day, courtesy of top experience company Buyagift, which was pretty damn exciting BUT ever since making Airfix models and going to air-shows I’ve always been into planes and over the summer I got to fly a stunt plane through most of the manoeuvres I’ve watched at air-shows dozens of times. It was the best experience ever… ever.

    Things have also been hotting up on the business front. We finally managed to buy the cantBEarsed.com domain from the guy who has owned it since we set up cantBarsed.com and it’s great to have that in our portfolio – although it was a painful expense.
    With all the hype surrounding the launch of the .eu domains we also bought cantbearsed.eu and cantbarsed.eu to avoid going through the same pain barrier again.
    At the moment all the domains end up at cantbarsed.com but if you have any ideas what we could do with the cantbearsed.com domain we’d love to hear them – making email accounts available on the cantbearsed.com domain would be quite cool but they would have to be paid accounts because we can’t find a good free webmail provider to work with (suggestions welcomed) and we still have several thousand cantbarsed.com webmail accounts live.

    I’m taking the kids to see the Blue Man Group in London and having seen them in Las Vegas I know they’re going to love it. Will try to remember to report back.

    In the meantime I hope all your Christmas preparations are going well, remember to use our promotional codes pages to save a few quid while you’re shopping online if you cantBarsed can’t be arsed.

    Save

  • CantBarsed Goes To Las Vegas, Nevada

    I’m just back from Las Vegas courtesy of AstroBingo online bingo. We flew with Virgin Atlantic who did a great job getting me across the pond and back, their staff are always friendly and helpful and they’re definitely my favourite airline.

    I was staying in the Stardust hotel which is due to be “imploded” before Christmas to make way for a new hotel/casino complexes. This seems to be happening all along the “strip” – Americans often complain they have no history but what do they expect when they knock down and rebuild all the time!

    The buildings along the Las Vegas strip are really impressive and the shows second to none. I watched “Le Reve”, which is a Cirque Du Soliel style show, at the Wynn complex in a purpose built 360 degree theatre and it was amazing. Equally impressive was the Blue Man Show at The Venetian which combines mime, paint, drums and plumbing perfectly, it’s a must see show.

    Most impressive of all though was one of mother nature’s best efforts, Death Valley in California. It’s one of the hottest places on earth with 57C recorded in 2001 – that’s salt not water in my holiday picture and it was a bit warm.

    Save