shopping

How to food-shop well with Shopwell

Shopwell is a free iOS app that helps you maintain a healthy diet and is especially useful if you are allergic to or want to avoid certain foods. The app delivers ratings for a wide variety of food items specific to your profile, helping you find healthier alternatives to foods you like to eat.

Shopwell bills itself as "like having a personal dietitian in the palm of your hands" but it's more like having a monitor dispatched by your personal dietitian or doctor. The app has you set up a profile, where you tell it the types of things you do and don't want in your diet. In order to create a useful lists to shape your diet, it's probably best that you don't wing it but seek professional medical advice.… Read more

How to get the best deal on your purchases with Savvy

There are plenty of ways to watch for the best deal online and in stores, but let's face it, there are just too many places to monitor and often times we end up missing out on the best deals.

Enter Savvy. Savvy is a unique service that will monitor your recent purchases, as well as items you plan on purchasing to ensure you have received the best deal possible.

After you make a purchase, take a picture of the itemized receipt from a supported retailer (the list is long and will continue to grow), and Savvy will add the … Read more

Will Apple's upcoming 'prototype' store serve coffee?

Apple is planning to give its Palo Alto, Calif., retail store a reboot as part of an upcoming construction project that will build a new "prototype" store just a block away.

The San Jose Mercury News reports that construction on an upcoming $3.15 million, 15,030-square-foot store is imminent, and that the new location could serve as a replacement for its nearby predecessor.

"Our Palo Alto store was one of our first retail stores when we opened it nearly a decade ago and it's been incredibly popular," Apple spokeswoman Amy Bessette told the Mercury … Read more

Christmas 2011 online shopping return policies

Hey, it happens. You buy a tech gift for someone (or yourself) over the holidays and it doesn't work out.

Maybe that new tablet is just too complicated for your parents or the new digital camera you bought for yourself takes lousy photos. Product returns are as much a part of the holiday shopping experience as buying them, unfortunately.

Return policies can vary greatly from retailer to retailer. Over the holidays, most retailers have extended return periods. Some retailers with a brick and mortar presence, even allow online purchases to be returned at the physical stores. Check out the … Read more

How to complain about online-purchase problems

It's a booming holiday sales season for online merchants. As CNET contributor Don Reisinger reports, U.S. consumers spent $32 billion online from November 1 to December 18, according to research firm ComScore.

That's 18 percent more than they spent in the same period of 2010. While most online sales go smoothly, there's always a risk of a product you ordered from a Web site not arriving on time, or a product other than the one you purchased being shipped, among other possible problems.

A reader contacted me yesterday about an order he placed on Cyber Monday (… Read more

Christmas 2011 online shopping deadlines

Still haven't finished your Christmas shopping? Hey, we don't judge.

But you are down to the wire if you still hope to get some tech toys delivered before December 25. We've put together this list of shipping deadlines for popular places to pick up tech gifts to show you where and when to get your last-minute tech gifts delivered on time. Expect to pay a premium for procrastination, but these places will get the goods to your giftees just in the nick of time.

Keep in mind that the deadlines apply to the 48 contiguous U.S. … Read more

Get paid Android apps for free on Amazon Appstore

While Amazon Appstore may not exactly qualify as an "app," it is nonetheless, a valuable download. It's an altogether different marketplace from the official Android Market, so it offers different picks, recommendations, and reviews. The home page opens up to Top Paid apps and Top Free apps, so it's easy to see what's hot. Otherwise, you can search by keyword or browse through categories with ease.

What's more, Amazon Appstore gives users one paid app every day, free of charge. So, if you have an Amazon.com account and an Android-powered device, this one … Read more

The Nintendo 3DS finally gets Game Boy Advance games

How to get Game Boy Advance games on your Nintendo 3DS:

Travel back in time to when the Nintendo 3DS was $250. Buy one. Travel back forward in time to December 16, 2011, look in the Nintendo eShop for "settings," click "your downloads," and collect your 10 classic GBA games.

Back when Nintendo first announced a 3DS price drop, early adopters of the Nintendo 3DS were understandably frustrated. However, those early customers became "Ambassadors" entitled to 20 free downloadable games--10 NES, 10 Game Boy Advance--that Nintendo promised would be available before the end of … Read more

Online holiday spending shows continued strength

U.S. consumers continue to turn to the Internet for their holiday shopping, according to new figures released today by market researcher ComScore.

Online sales for the holiday season to date (since November 1 to Friday) totaled $24.6 billion, a 15 percent increase over the $21.4 billion spent during the same period last year, ComScore reported. Last week's spending totaled $5.9 billion, also a 15 percent increase over the corresponding period last year.

"These highlights represent another very positive sign for the holiday shopping season, as the week following 'Cyber Week' often experiences relative softness … Read more