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Thanksgiving is just 3 weeks away. Black Friday is a very hot topic in many forums. Everyone wants to grasp a hot deal on Black Friday. Some merchants have released the information about the Black Friday deals in advance (probably by some employees). If you have read the ads about Black Friday in advance, you might be able to get what you want without wasting your time.

Following is a comprehesive list of websites that might be helpful to you:

DealNews.com: DealNews.com has a special page about Black Friday Deals. This page is a collect of the deals that have been released and listed by stores. They even have a prediction for this Black Friday! You might want to check out of that prediction.

FatWallet.com Black Friday Forum: FatWallet offers a special forum for talking about Black Friday deals. So far there is not much information about Black Friday deals. But as more members on the forum participate in the Black Friday discussion, it will give you a lot of useful information.

Slickdeals.net Black Friday Forum: It’s same as FatWallet. Slickdeals.net offers a special forum for talking about some possible or known deals on Black Friday. The information here is much better than that at FatWallet.

www.bfads.net: This website will be updated every time they get new information about Black Friday. It provides the latest deals information about Black Friday. But they also mix the Black Friday deals with other hot deals.

www.blackfriday.info: This website gives you exclusive access to all of the black friday circulars weeks in advance so you can plan your holiday shopping and know exactly what will be on sale on Black Friday. The website only focuses on Black Friday deals. So far they have a lot of information about Sears, ACE hardware, Harbor Freight, Walgreens etc.

www.black-friday.net: This website also provides information about Black Friday deals. You can enter your email address to the site and the leaked information will be sent to you.

www.iblackfriday.com: This is a similat website as above mentioned. They give you deals on Black Friday by store-by-store. You can plan out exactly what items you want to buy on black friday.

Of course, there are many other websites talking about Black Friday deals. But I personally think above sites will give you enough information about 2008 Black Friday deals.

PayPal just released the great deals and cash back offers for the coming 2008 holiday shopping season. Customers can get up to 20% cash back for shopping through PayPal and pay with PayPal. The 20% discount will be applied to top online retailers such as OverStock, eToys and BlockBuster. Meanwhile, PayPal will also offer free shipping from some PayPal merchants. Of course, the most attractive part is PayPal will team up with Live Search and eBay to offer huge discount for shopping “Buy it Now” items on eBay.com.

According to Cliff Hopkins, senior director for PayPal, “Under current economic situation, many consumers will shop early and using every tool at their disposal to find the best deals on holiday gifts.” On order to boot sales, online merchants are also working to provide free shipping, cash rebate, and other great deals to their customers.

In details, retailers will offer a number of holiday promotions to help PayPal users find great gift ideas.

NO Shipping Cost

This is a very standard promotion for some online merchants to offer PayPal members. Some merchants also participated in the PayPal holiday promotion last year.

Cash Cash Offers

From December 1, 2008, PayPal will offer a great discount offers for members using PayPal to shop online. The cash back is up to 30%! Participating retailers are Blue Niles, eToys, OverStock etc. The cash back is offered instantly.

Deals from eBay through Live Search

Maybe you are still excited with the 35% cash back from Live Search with eBay and PayPal. I believe eBay and Microsoft will continue to offer huge promotion deals during shopping season. The latest message is: Shoppers who arrive at eBay through Microsoft Live Search (www.live.com) can receive up to 30% cash back on the purchase of any eligible “But it Now” item when using PayPal through the Microsoft Live Search cash back program.

PayPal was offering 10% off coupon together with 25% cash back from Live Search several days ago. Anyone who received the 10% coupon can use it together with live search cash back offer to get up to 35% discount! The coupon code as shown above is CFALLSAVINGS10P.

PayPal just announced that PayPal will cover the original shopping and shipping cost for users using PayPal to pay full price at eBay if the items are not received or significantly not as described. Shopping with PayPal is now even safer.

For more information, you can go to the official PayPal promotion website: www.paypal.com/holiday.

My post on how to get a discount from T-Mobile was very popular in the past month. Simply fill out a form online with some well-known codes is a very easy job but it can save you a lot of money every year. T-Mobile just announced the new smart phone—T-Mobile G1which is supposed to be the direct competitor of the Apple iPhone. The T-Mobile G1 is the world’s first Andriod powered mobile phone in partnership with Google.

The G1 is kind of a combination of T-Mobile SideKick and T-mobile Wing to me. Because it use Google developed Andriod Operation System, you can use a lot of Google stuffs like one-click Google search and easy access to all Google Applications – Quick and easy access to the Internet in one click. One touch access to Google applications: Maps (including satellite, traffic and street views), Gmail, YouTube, Calendar and Google Talk.

Specific feature of this phone: dimension—4.6 x 2.16 x 0.63 inches, has a 3.1-megapixel camera, weighs 5.6 ounces, features a 480 x 320 HVGA display, sports 3G (obviously), GPS, supports up to 8GB of memory. This phone also has touch sreen, 3G/WiFi and full HTML internet capabilities.

I can see an upgrade information in my T-Mobile Account. It shows $179.99 to me and has black and brown color options. You have to choose date plan for this phone. An unlimited data plan will cost $25 per month, while unlimited data and messaging will cost $35 per month. It will be never cheap to use a “smart phone“.

I have been using T-Mobile for two years and never got any discount from them. I searched on the web for a while and found that there are many opportunities out there to help you save a lot at T-Mobile either for keeping your current service or adding a new line. I summarized some of them and hoped that this will be of help to MyCardBlog.Com readers.

10% off of your current T-Mobile Monthly service fees from Freelancersunion.org

This is the one that I’m using and it’s free to anyone because anybody can be a member of Freelancers Union (no membership fee).

Here’s how:

Register an account at Freelancersunion.org and get a member number (free and easy!)

Go to Freelancersunion.org and click “Discounts” at the top of the home page

Go down to “Life” and click “T-Mobile” and you will see “T-mobile offers cellular calling plans, messaging and wireless internet service as well as a wide range of phones, handhelds, PDAs, and accessories to help you stay in touch with friends, family and clients.” Offer: Freelancers Union members are eligible for a 10% discount off their monthly recurring fees, equipment discounts on new activations, and more!

Click on “more information” and login your account and you will be redirected to T-Mobile website to fill in a migration form.

Click on the “Click here for Discounts” link

Scroll down to “Current Customers” and click on the “Complete migration form” link

Enter your information, phone number, T-Mobile account number

After you enter everything they need, click on the “submit” button. You should get a note telling you all is well and you will see your discount in 1 to 2 billing cycles.

The discount will show up after 1 billing cycle. This 10% off is available to both new and old customers and will not affect your current plan. The only thing that will change is the billing cycle since as everyone attached to this organization needs to have the same billing cycle.

12% off your current T-Mobile Monthly service fees from MGM Mirage

This is a similar corporate discount from T-Mobile for MGM Mirage employees. You can do this because T-Mobile doesn’t need any employment verification.

Here’s how:

Go to www.t-mobile.com/mgm and click”Click here for Discounts”

If you are new to T-mobile, you can choose the plan there and activate a new line online.

If you are a current T-Mobile customer, you can click ” Complete migration form” and fill in your current phone number etc.

OR you can call T-Mobile at 866-464-8662 (877-453-8824 for current member) and mention code 999TMOFAV to do the same thing!

The benefit for using the corporate discount is you can easily get activation fee waived and sign up for a one-year contract. At the same time, most of the phones are much cheaper and some are free!

More discounts are available:

JetBlue discount code: 1240. Call T-Mobile at 866-464-8662 and choose option 3 and mention that you are an employee of JetBlue with code 1240. You will get 12% off monthly fees without activation fees.

Phillip Morris discount code: 2609. You will get 8% off your bill. No activation fees. Call T-Mobile at 866-464-8662.

Avon discount code: 5871TMOFAV. Call T-Mobile at 866-464-8662 and choose option 3 and mention that you are an Avon family member or friend of an Avon Sales Representative. You will get 12% off of your monthly service fees, no activation fee, and 1 year contract on most plans. You may also go to www.tmobile.com/avon to get discount!

Starbucks: Call T-Mobile at 866-464-8662 and identifying yourself as a Starbucks employee. You will get 15% off monthly fees and free activation on all orders. You may also go to www.tmobile.com/starbucks to get discount!

Overall:

If you are a current T-Mobile customer, you can get up to 15% off your monthly fees.

If you are new to T-Mobile, you can get up to 15% off your monthly fees without activation fees and huge discount on T-Mobile phones. And some of the plans require only one-year contract! The reason why you can get the discount is they don’t request your emplyment verification! Good luck!

Microsoft just increased their cash back rate today. For most merchants, the cash back has been doubled and you can even earn up to 70% cash back! At the same time, Microsoft live search is still offering 25% cash back for shopping at eBay through live search (up to 35% cash back from eBay via Microsoft live search cash back). With the new promotion, the cash back offered by live search is much higher compared to other popular cash back websites like Chase Rewards Plus, ShopDiscover, Fatwallet, and Ebates.

The promotion is named the “Back-to-School Deal Days”. If you want to save money by shopping online, this is the right time to pull the trigger! Normally, the back-to-school season is the second largest retail season of the year. And Microsoft is still competing with Yahoo for the second place in the search engine market.

According to Microsoft, the reason why they double the cash back rate is recent a survey from Deloitte found that during this back-to-school shopping season, 71 percent of households plan on spending less on back-to-school items than they have in previous years. With consumers feeling financial strain from higher gas and food prices, Live Search cashback is offering back-to-school shoppers extra savings to stretch their dollars further. When you are using the search engine at Live.com, actually, Microsoft can earn a huge amount of money by displaying sponsored advertisements.

Following are some examples of “huge cash back”

• 36% cash back from FootLocker.com
• 38% cash back from ShoeMall.com
• 70% cash back from Magazines.com
• 20% cash back from FinishLine.com
• 10-20% cash back from Lenovo.com
• 10% cash back from HP.com
• 16% cash back from A&E TV

Back-to-school savings start today and will run for a limited time during the month of August.

You can earn cash back every time you use Live Search cashback. For every qualifying purchase, you will be sent an e-mail message confirming the Live Search cashback savings. If you place your order through live search but never received the e-mail confirmation, you can contact Microsoft. The balance show up in your account can be requested via PayPal, check or direct deposit into a bank account.

Another point I want to mention here is: some of the merchants are using the links from JellyFish.com which is another famous social shopping website acquired by Microsoft in last October.

Take the chance to get extra savings with Live Search Cash Back now! Of course, don’t forget to pick up a great cash back credit card to save even more!

I believe the 35% cash back from eBay via Microsoft live search cashback is the most popular topic on the internet yesterday. I think it’s necessary to write up a post about Microsoft live search cashback program and introduce how to get 35% cash back from eBay via live search cash back.

What’s Live Search Cashback?

Live Search cashback is a new cashback program that combines the power of Live Search with a comparison-shopping engine to bring consumers some of the best deals on the Web (to maximum the cashback rewards for online shopping consumers). The program rewards consumers with a cash back rebate for a purchase, and gives merchants/advertisers the opportunity to sell on a cost-per-acquisition (CPA) basis. The motivation behind Microsoft to launch this program is to beat Google in the search engine business.

If you just use Google’s product search feature, you can get a list of stores that sell the product you want but without any information about tax, fees, and cashback for that transaction. However, Microsoft’s Live Search offers: 1). It tells you which stores carry the product and each store’s price, plus any additional charges (shipping cost and taxes). 2). It will offer certain amount of cashback for if you use the link provided by Live Search. (Of course, you have to register an account there.) It even will automatically determine which store offers the best price after cashback. It saves you a lot of time. Another feature Live Search can develop in the near future is to get store ratings together. Sometimes, lowest prices doesn’t mean best service.

In a word, Microsoft Live Search offer search engine and cashback together which make it very competitive for better online shopping experience. The cashback you can get even higher than some other cashback programs like Chase Rewards Plus, ShopDiscover Program or other famous rewards websites. Live Search Cashback is certainly worth checking out first every time you’re looking for something to buy online.

How to get 35% cashback from eBay?

1. Register an account at http://search.live.com/cashback.

2. Use live search to search the items you want to shop. (Usually you can try the items are known to generate 35% off links and redo the search process on ebay. You don’t have to search on the live.com again! That’s why this deal is damn hot!)

3. See whether you can get “You may get 35% off with PayPal if eligible.” from www.ebay.com. (examples will be shown below) If you can’t get it at the first attempt, you can try other words or you can try some accessories of that item. This is the most time consuming process. For example, I want to buy a pentax camera lens. If I use “pentax 50″, I can’t get any links for 35% cash back. However, if I try “pentax 100″, I will get a cashback link to www.ebay.com.

4. If you can get that link from your search results, click that link and try to find out the lowest price available at eBay and finish that transaction ASAP.

5. Wait for the cashback shows up in your account.

Some terms and conditions you should know:

1. You must successfully complete an eligible purchase on www.ebay.com using “Buy-It-Now” within 60 minutes of clicking an eBay link with Lice Search cashback logo. (this is a “Online Session”)

2. Cashback only applied to the first eligible item you commit to buy during an Online Session. No good for additional items.

3. PayPal payment is required!

4. Purchases of vehicles, gift cards, real estate or purchases made at www.express.ebay.com and www.half.ebay.com are not eligible to receive the cashback.

5. Maximum cashback for each Online Session is $250 and you can only get up to $750 totally. (Limit of 3 Online Sessions/transactions per account)

6. you can combine other coupons or other eBay promotions with Live Search cashback rewards.

Note: If you search for wii, you can only get 10% now. But if you use “wii cheap” you can still get 35% off link. If you search “PS3″ you can only get 10% off now, but if you use “PS3 cheap” you can still get 35% off link.

Update: Only 10% off right now. 35% off seems dead.You can only get 25% cashback right now.Simple search “25%” at live.com and you will get the link to get 25% cashback on ebay.com.

With gas prices nearing $4 per gallon, saving money on gas becomes a big concern in our daily life. Hereby I summarize some tips on how to save money on gas.

The top 1 tip is to find out a great gas-rebate credit card for you. Today most of gas-rebate credit cards offer 5% or even more cash back on gasoline purchase. For example, Discover Open Road CardSimplyCash Card offer 5% cash back on gas and auto maintenance purchases; offers 5% cash back on gas, wireless and office supplies purchases; BP visa card offers up to 10% cash back at BP pumps. How to get a great gas-rebate card for you really depends on your credit habit and driving habit. You can check out “Best Gas Card Roundup” and “5 Top Rated Gas Rebate Cards” to get more information.

Find the cheapest gas near you. You can always visit www.gasnearu.com and www.gasbuddy.com to find out which gas station offers the cheapest gas. I’m sure you can save a lot in this way.

Use the recommended gas for your car. Some people may think that higher grade gas might generate better MPG and can save them decent amount of money. Actually, there is no reason to fuel your tank with higher grade gas than what is indicated in the owner’s manual.

Replace a dirty air filter frequently. This is a well-known trick to increase your MPG. According to the Federal Trade Commission, you can always increase your MPG up to 10% by using a new air filter.

Watch out your tires! You should always inflate your tires at a proper psi. And change the tire pressures according to weather changes. Another trick is to make sure your tires are well balanced and rotated.

Use the proper motor oil. I believe that choosing a proper grade of motor oil will help you save gas on the road.

Driving smartly on the road. You should always know that a good driving habit can save you tons of gas in your life! In order to save gas on the road, you should avoid jackrabbit start, properly control your car’s speed, use cruise control on the highway and remove unnecessary weight from your car.

Buy a gas-efficient car. Yes, overall, I think this is the best way to save money on gas only if you need a card. There are many hybrid cars on the market to choose from.

Thousands of victims buried or missing after China’s worst earthquake in three decades, where the death toll soared to more than 12,000 people in the hardest-hit province alone (12,000 is the latest figure released by Chinese government on May 13, 2008.). According to the official Xinhua News Agency, the death toll exceeded 12,000 in Sichuan province alone, and 18,645 were still buried in debris in the city of Mianyang, near the epicenter of Monday’s massive, 7.9-magnitude quake. However, we would expect the numbers of casualties to rise due to the remoteness of the areas affected by the quake and difficulty in finding buried victims.

The Red Cross Society of China is calling for donations for victims of the Sichuan earthquake. As the transportation in the disaster hitting area is not smooth, Red Cross Society of China is mainly collecting monetary donations right now. For those who are looking to contribute to current aid efforts underway, you can now donate money to the Red Cross Society of China which has formed a disaster relief working group to be dispatched to the earthquake-stricken Wenchuan County in Sichuan Province. The Red Cross Society of China has published a public hotline and bank account information to receive worldwide donations.

Account Name: Red Cross Society of China

For those who want to donate in RMB: you can send money to the RMB account at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China branch below: 0200001009014413252

For those who want to donate in foreign currency, you can send money to the foreign currency account at the CITIC Bank branch below: 7112111482600000209

Hotline: (8610)6513999

You can also donate online at the Red Cross Society of China website: www.redcross.org.cn.

More pictures about this earthquake can be found at usatoday.com.