Doug Aamoth…

A big thank you to everybody for filling our tips at crunchgear dot com inbox with wonderful, unique, and newsworthy items. Here are five that we just couldn’t get to this week.

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Subject: Razors and Clippers — Inoformation please

Good Day,

   My firm manages a large network of online business and private clients. With the holiday season fast approaching a number of them are searching for both men’s and women’s electric shavers and razors. Also beard trimmers, epilators, clippers etc.

   Therefore, we are looking to find a quality source to direct our clients to for their Hair trimming needs. We have reviewed your website and it was felt that you might be a good source to work with and to feature for our clients. Please contact me at [phone number redacted] so we may discuss this further.

Regards,

Jon Thomas

CG Responds:

Good day to you, sir! Your letter states that you have reviewed our website. Please advise as to where you might have possibly gotten the idea that we’d be a good source of information for men’s and women’s electric shavers. I would like to know this information for my own personal use.

We’re constantly looking for new avenues of revenue creation here at CrunchGear.com. As such, we’d like to wholeheartedly agree to help you with your clients’ hair trimming needs. I noticed that you capitalized “Hair” and I’d like to tell you that I don’t blame you. Hair is important. I used to have long hair and girls wouldn’t talk to me. Now I have short hair and I’m getting married in a month. To Hair!

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Subject: Advertising Rates?

Hi,

I was wondering how much you would charge to advertise on your fashion and clothing related website. I have clients looking to place small text based ads on sites like yours. If you are interested let me know your price and if you prefer to be paid via PayPal or check? I prefer the ads be placed at the top, middle, or bottom of the main content area of the site. However, I am sure we can work out placement. For more information please email me and checkout www.authoritysites.com our FAQ site which should answer most of your questions. I look forward to selling your advertising space and adding your site to my inventory. Please email me with any questions.

Thanks,

Paul White

CG Responds:

Thank you for your inquiry! You, like Jon Thomas, are clearly seeing things on our site that we’re not. While we welcome Hair enthusiasts and fashion mongers the world over, I think I can speak for the rest of the writers here when I say that our website is one of the last places people would be likely to visit for fashion and clothing tips.

In lieu of accepting payment for fashion-related advertisements on our site, I’d like to offer to tell you what I’m wearing right now; a blue shirt, brown corduroy pants, gray socks, and Crocs sandals. Sandals! In the middle of winter! And with gray sox, no less! You’d be doing your clients what I call a “disservice” by advertising here.

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Subject: BREAKING: Twisted, Alternative Video e-Cards

Hi Doug,

Rattlebox, www.rattlebox.com, is officially launching its edgy, alternative videogram site next week. Below is the press release and it has no embargo. Would you be available next week to speak with CEO Nancy Miller?

If you don’t have the cycles for a story right now, at least take a quick break and see what they’re all about. If your sense of humor is a little off like ours is you’ll love these.

Feel free to contact me via reply email or at [phone number redacted]. I look forward to your rants, raves and reviews. Please let me know if you’d like to cover this exciting launch!

Best,
Jen

CG Reponds:

We’d like to take this opportunity to politely and delicately set some ground rules for PR mailings, mostly concerning the definitions of certain words. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

“BREAKING” is to mean something that’s happening right now, mostly related to news items that affect either part of all of the entire industry. An official videogram website launch happening a week from now likely wouldn’t be considered breaking news.

“Exciting, Edgy, Alternative” are all examples of words that have a tendency to be overused. I personally don’t mind them all that much but some editors set up e-mail filters targeting similar words. I’m more than happy to entertain anything about “Excitebike” though. Also “EDGE” data speeds, provided it has to do with those speeds getting faster.

Finally, I’m not quite sure what “If you don’t have the cycles for a story right now” means but I can almost guarantee that I’m not afraid of anything and I have the biggest cycles you ever did see.

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Subject: Thanks

                         GOOGLE INTERNATIONAL LOTTO AWARD

Dear Winner,

This is Google International Lotto Award, a non religious and non racist organization formed to unite the human race in their religion/belief, as we believe God is one and human beings are one not withstanding your religion, race, education or political background.

Dear, you have been selected as one of our lucky winners in this our inaugural lotto awards which was organized in the spirit of Ramadan and the forth coming Christmas.
The draw was conducted via computer programmed selection system which saw your email address win in the 1st Category with the following information;

Your ticket no: DI-8923412
Serial no: 654213
Insurance no: 57025
Winning no: DI/418906
Winning amount: £1000000.00 Pounds

Be informed that this 2007 lottery award and payments starts on the 15th September and ends on the 31st of December, 2007.

Your are therefore advised as a matter of importance as it concerns time factor: to contact immediately the director of payments informing him of your winning with the winning details

We wish to congratulate you over your winning as we pray that you will contribute in making the world a peaceful place for human race.

Yours truly,
Elizbeth Olk

CG Responds:

YES! I knew it! Pooling our money for  the non-religious, non-racist, Google-sponsored lottery has finally paid off! Wait, how come the payout is in British Pounds? And how come our ticket number and the winning number are different? And how come you spell your name like that, without the A? Did we really win the non-religious, non-racist, Google-sponsored lottery or is this just some ingenious ploy to get at our Social Security holdings?

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Subject: i need a hacker

hello there friend my name is dickson youngers from malaysia i hav little problem conclude my work and will realy need your help , i am a business man buy trade and run my busness arround the world, i will be very glad if you can come to my resqur and you will be very well payed after every deal , and the money is good .
i hope to here from you real soon

CG Responds:

Dickson Youngers? Is that you? THE Dickson Youngers from Fantasy Business Camp, summer of ‘95 in Northfield, Minnesota? Well how the hell have you been, you old son of a sea cook?! Still fighting the urge to use that old shift key to capitalize things, I see. That’s so Dickson.

I can’t believe you’re in Malaysia! How is it there? Hot? I’d love to come to your resqur, what’s on your mind? I’m not a great hacker by any means, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, buwahahahaa!! Get it?! Do you get those commercials there? Dude, they’re off the charts. So funny.

Anyway, good to hear from you. Keep in touch!

Click here to read previous Back Burner posts…

Holy crap. Here’s an OQO for under $1100 after a $780 instant rebate. Hurry!

OQO Model 02 UMPC [TigerDirect.com] via GottaBeMobile.com

So I finally buckled and added NFL Network to my cable package because I had, had, had to see the game last night. I realized two things. First, the Dallas Cowboys can pretty much score at will. They’re fast becoming the New York Yankees of football. I don’t care for Tony Romo’s boyish charm or his ability to see everything in 360 degrees. Secondly, I realized that the only real reason I subscribe to Comcast cable is for watching football games. And it’s really only for football games on ESPN or NFL Network since I can get all the other games over the air. But football, in general, is the only thing I watch on TV that isn’t previously recorded or time shifted in some way. I could download almost anything else I regularly watch over the Internet somehow.

I hopped on Comcast’s website last night about five minutes before the game started and used their supposedly-time-and-money-saving live chat feature. I waited for about ten minutes before I was finally connected with a representative, who was able to grant me immediate access to the NFL Network. So far so good. Before he flipped the switch, though, he told me that there would be a one-time $1.99 service fee for adding new channels to my cable package.

Seriously? Two bucks to click some button somewhere? I gritted my teeth. I typed the word F…I…N…E… one key at a time, smashing each one down harder than the one before it. I queried the rep. If I had called instead of used the chat feature, would the same fee still be charged? “Yes,” he said.

“So basically no matter what, you’re going to charge me a service fee just to add channels to my cable package? I’m adding things that I have to pay more for each month, yet you’re still going to charge me a service fee for the privilege of doing so?” I said.

“We have to charge the service fee to offset the cost of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” was his reply. “This has officially gotten out of hand,” I said.

Consumers are caught between two entities that only care about money. And you know what? I don’t blame the cable companies or the NFL Network. Both of them control something that’s not affected by competition all that much and neither of them give a rat’s ass about you and me. What am I gonna do, stop watching football? I can’t. I’m hooked.

I can, however, stop paying out the nose for cable. If I’m already spending $100 per month on something I only really use to watch live football games, here’s what I propose to the NFL Network.

Once all your TV contracts end and you take all the games away from CBS, NBC, FOX, and ESPN to run them on your own network, I ask that you please develop your own set-top box. Deliver the games — ALL GAMES — wirelessly, through the Internet, IPTV, I don’t care how you do it, and feel free to charge me maybe $50 to $60 per month during the season and maybe $10 to $20 per month during the offseason. I’ll pay. If you don’t want to go through the trouble of developing your own set-top box, at least offer the games over the Internet in high definition and I’ll use my Media Center PC.

For those that won’t pay for it and don’t care about what happens in the offseason, offer the games live online, maybe at a reduced bitrate. Be a pal and make it free since you’ll be making money off the ads you show during the games and the ads you’ll undoubtedly run on your web site.

My point is this. Comcast and the cable companies are more evil. They don’t really want to be able to offer the NFL Network as part of your basic cable package. They want to be able to charge you $8 more per month plus a ridiculous $2 service fee for doing nothing. They love that you pay for it and that when you complain about how much it costs, they can point the finger squarely at the NFL Network. They love ANY excuse to raise rates, charge service fees, or whatever it takes to get into your wallet.

At least the NFL has the decency to make some of their games available via broadcast television. I’m not saying the NFL Network isn’t evil, it’s just my opinion that it’s less evil than the cable companies. Sure, the NFL charges a lot for its product. So much so, that it’s priced itself right out of a lot of cable networks. But for the most part, it’s a good, entertaining, valuable product that people are willing to pay for without causing too much fuss, which is more than I can say for cable.

That’s my stance on it, but what do you think? I’m admittedly a huge football fan so I’m already somewhat biased. Who’s more evil, the NFL Network or the cable companies?

Good afternoon. Hey, what ever happened to riding your bicycle like a normal human being, using it as a method to get you from Point A to Point B and, on the weekends, Point C? I don’t know and I don’t much care. If loading a 20-pound bike up with 200 pounds of stereo equipment brings joy to someone’s life, I say GO FOR IT! If your hundred-some dollar bike has $4000 worth of gear strapped to it, I say YES!!

More information and photos (some of which are truly amazing) at the link below.

Bicycles That Carry Powerful Beats, and Even a Rider or Two [New York Times]

The time has come to say goodbye to Ed Zander, a dear friend of the CrunchGear family. And by “dear friend” I mean a guy we mentioned six times, were you to search for “Zander” on our site.

We’ve had a great ride, huh? Thanks for the memories, Ed. We’ll never forget the RAZR, RAZR2, ROZR, RUZR, RIZR, and all the other great phones whose models names contained the first letter of your soft and gentle last name.

Good luck to you in your next adventure, an adventure that begins on January 1, 2008.  We welcome your company’s chief operating officer Greg Brown with open arms, but we’ll never forget how you touched our lives forever. Goodbye, Moto.

Zander out as CEO at Motorola [Computerworld]

For a group that’s so concerned about the money it loses due to illegal music downloading, the RIAA sure spends a hell of a lot on lawyers. Money that could be better spent on innovation instead of protecting a broken, backward, expensive distribution system.

It’s nice to see the Oregon Attorney General stand up to the RIAA, calling into question the legality of some its data-mining tactics. Some points of contention include how much personal information the RIAA has already gathered on various defendants and, perhaps more importantly, what types of information — user names, passwords, credit card numbers, etc.

The University of Oregon, in particular, has some questions for the RIAA in light of recent subpoenas involving the school. It’s proposing that the RIAA provide specific economic damages including “the date the damaged occurred, the amount, the entity suffering the damage, and how the damage was caused,” according to Ars Technica.

All of this extra work on the RIAA’s behalf is going to cost a pretty penny. It’s gotten to the point where rumors have started that “EMI was considering cutting its funding to the RIAA and IFPI” due to how expensive these legal proceedings have become.

The moral of the story is that you shouldn’t F with Oregon. They are a proud people that have overwhelmingly voted against a state sales tax time and time again. They don’t like being told what to do, especially by outsiders. I should know. I’ve been there 10-15 times. Don’t get them all riled up, trust me.

Oregon Attorney General criticizes RIAA’s conduct in P2P cases [Ars Technica]

Realizing that putting past episodes of TV shows online may actually increase television viewership, MTV Networks has decided to “make every clip from every episode” of South Park available online. I’m not exactly sure why they didn’t just say “every episode” but I hope that’s what they mean.

Anyway, it’s thought that other programs from MTV Networks’ archive might soon be available as well, depending on how well the South Park initiative goes.

While you’re waiting, you can turn yourself into a South Park character, just like I did. Man, I gotta get me one of those shirts in real life. Sweeeeet.

MTV to offer all South Park clips online [Reuters]

The New York Times is reporting that Sprint has said thanks but no thanks to an offer from Providence Equity Partners and South Korea’s SK Telecom which would, in effect, replace Sprint’s management team and infuse $5 billion into the company.

The deal would have also allowed SK Telecom and Sprint to “significantly cut costs by jointly purchasing handsets and examining network infrastructure.”

A letter from Providence Equity Partners said that the investment would “signal to the public that Sprint Nextel represents a compelling opportunity” but made no mention of how replacing the entire management team would look to the public.

Sprint Is Said to Reject Offer by Investors and SK Telecom [New York Times]

These tiny video players are available at ThinkGeek.com for $100 each. One’s got a 2.8-inch display and one has a 2.4-inch display. How do you like that? They’ve each got 2GB of memory and can handle AVI and MPEG videos as well as MP3 audio. They also have a built-in FM tuner, a speaker, text viewer, picture viewer, and games. How’d they do that?! Battery life lasts 3-4 hours for video and 6-8 hours for audio.

Credit Card Size Digital Video Player [ThinkGeek.com]

Amazon.com has the Nintendo Wii version of Call of Duty 3 for just under $30, which includes free shipping.

As a Wii owner and FPS enthusiast, I can tell you that this game is the least disappointing of the first person shooters that I’ve tried and one of the least disappointing games I’ve played on the Wii. It’s a fun, albeit short romp through the battlefields of World War II with pretty good graphics and a pretty solid control scheme.

There’s some talk about Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare being released for the Wii sooner or later so that might have something to do with the price drop, although just about everywhere else is still charging $50 for this game. For $30, though, I’d buy it without any hesitation.

Call Of Duty 3 [Amazon.com] via FatWallet