Yesterday I picked up a new Logitech ClearChat Pro USB headset from Best Buy. After doing some homework online and reading all of the reviews, the consensus was that although the sound quality was good, the overall durability was to be questioned.

Many reviewers suggested that the headset was cheaply made and prone to breaking. Specifically, they cited audio dropout problems in either ear piece and microphone breakage.

Undeterred by the negative reviews (and the fact that I wanted to pick up a headset immediately rather than order it online), I checked the price online at Best Buy and discovered it was on sale. Cool. I headed out of the house with my wife and youngest daughter to pick up the headset.

Although I initially had a tough time locating any of the USB headsets at Best Buy, I found the Logitech headset a few minutes later and was ready to checkout. By this time, my 2 year old was already anxious to leave and fussing.

This is when I encountered Mr. Checkout guy on aisle #5. Here is how the conversation went down:

Checkout Guy (CG): Did you find everything okay?
Me: Yes, thanks.
CG: Oh, Logitech huh?
Me: Yeah, I figured I would give it a shot.
CG: Did you know it’s on sale?
Me: Cool.
CG: The sale ends tomorrow and it goes back to it’s regular price.
Me: Uh huh…
CG: I suggest you get our replacement guarantee, good for 2 years, full replacement, blah blah blah…
Me: How much is it?
CG: Only $9.99, and it covers full replacement in case anything breaks such as the ear piece or microphone. Just bring it back in and we’ll replace it at no cost.
Me: Alright. Sounds good.

Now mind you, I rarely ever go for the extended warranties on any of my electronics. However, having read all of the negative reviews online prior to stepping into the store, I still had the same concerns while checking out.

Checkout Guy simply understood the benefits of the replacement warranty as it directly related to my immediate concerns regarding the durability and quality of the product. It was as simple as that.

Sold!

UPDATE: Two days after purchasing the Logitech headset, it broke. Go figure.

As usual, I was tooling around on domize.com and stumbled across a niche domain name that had recently expired. I immediately checked the whois at GoDaddy and verified the domain expired 67 days ago and was currently in a redemption period.

I setup an alert in my phone a few minutes later to remind me to check up on the status of the expiring domain name on a daily basis. A few minutes after that I realized how bad I wanted this particular domain and decided this “hunt and peck” strategy just wasn’t going to cut it.

A quick Google search led me to this 4 year old post that discusses the journey of one man’s frugal attempt to secure a domain name using GoDaddy’s backordering service. Long story short and nearly $400 later, he got the domain name but not through GoDaddy. Although he later sold the site to Microsoft (cha-ching), the initial failed backorder wasn’t very encouraging.

Nevertheless, I perused the 700 or so comments from his original post and read several other reviews of the GoDaddy service elsewhere on the web. The consensus suggest that if the domain name you are trying to snag is currently registered through GoDaddy, using their own backordering service gives you a “one up” on all of the other drop catch services out there. Besides that, it’s also one of the cheapest.

Considering the official domain name drop is just around the corner, I decided to pony up the $19 and give the GoDaddy backordering service a shot. I’ll soon find out whether or not that was a Derek Fisher game 4 shot or rather no shot in hell .

Stay tuned… I’ll keep you posted.

UPDATE #1: I received an email yesterday (7/24) from GoDaddy indicating the status of the domain I’m chasing changed from redemption period to pending delete. According to most sources on the web, the 5 day countdown to the domain drop is on! Fingers crossed.

UPDATE #2: Today (7/30) was the drop. GoDaddy failed. Lesson learned. Backorder domain names using multiple services instead. SnapNames, NameJet, and Pool.com just to name a few.

With the ability to capture voice memos using the new 3.0 iPhone software, I figured there should be an easy way to publish them direct to WordPress considering there is a built-in share feature on the app that allows you to email the memo. As it turns out, it was a little more complicated than I thought for several reasons.

The “post by email” WordPress option does not support email attachments. I somehow missed this disclaimer after having already configured my own “super secret” POP3 email address and wondering why the attachments were not showing up. Secondly, the iPhone voice memos are only available in .m4a format on not the more common and user-friendly MP3 format.

After all was said and done, I ended up with the following “dirty” solution because although the process is still straightforward (record memo, email, and post on the fly), the presentation and execution leaves something to be desired.

Step 1: Head on over to Posterous.com and create a new account if you don’t already have one. Posterous allows us to get around the whole WordPress “post by email” attachment problem. Please note that you will need to cough up your WordPress credentials in order to configure Posterous to work with WordPress.

Step 2: Download and activate the Anarchy Media Player plugin. This media player “automagically” replaces inline .m4a links with a playable widget.

Step 3: Record a voice memo on your iPhone and share it by sending an email to post@posterous.com. Be sure to send it from the same email account you used when you signed up for Posterous.

Step 4: That’s it. The voice memo should now show up on your blog with an inline audio player for instant playback.

Although this isn’t the most elegant solution, it works. I would have preferred more control over the post formatting and I still haven’t figured out how to make the .m4a files podcast friendly even after adding the requested directives to my .htaccess file. However, what you get in return is up to 1GB free hosting from Posterous and ease of use.

If you’re interested in checking out the end result, click here.

  
Download now or listen on posterous

Memo.m4a (106 KB)

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from seldomstatic’s posterous

Yesterday, Shoemoney mentioned open registration for new .me domains starts today. After toying with the idea of registering domains like buy.me, sell.me, try.me, etc., I concluded it was highly unlikely I would score any of them and quickly dismissed the idea. It wasn’t until early this afternoon I heard rampant rumors of .me domain name registrations gone south. Sure enough, the demand for .me domains far exceeded expectations and servers at various registrars got pounded, triggering false confirmations and shattered domainer dreams.

With all of the hype surrounding the .me registrations, I couldn’t help but wonder what good domains, if any, were still available for registering. I started plugging away at the Go Daddy bulk registration tool and realized within the span of a couple minutes that my searching for single word .me domains was futile. Moving on, I brainstormed two-word .me domains using Google and stumbled across a gem (at least that’s what I thought having recently read about the need for an iphone social network on TC).

I immediately registered the two-word domain with Go Daddy half-thinking it was going to get rejected anyways. However, the “Congratulations! Your registration request for the domain name(s) below was successful” email and $40 debit proved otherwise. Looks like I’m the proud new owner of the following domain:

www.peoplenear.me

Soooooo… Anybody interested in starting up an iphone social network?