Tuesday, December 14

Print Your Own Unofficial, Value-Free Woot Gift Certificates

by Jason Toon

Gift cards and gift certificates are convenient for indecisive gift-givers and finicky gift-getters alike. But they're also kind of complicated for us to figure out how to implement. And as the media reports every year, they're no picnic for the recipients, either. Wouldn't you love to give a Woot gift certificate that never expired, charged no inactivity fees, and, in the extremely unlikely event that the recipient couldn't find anything good to buy on Woot, was redeemable at any retailer in America?

It's called cash.

No, Woot still does not offer gift certificates. But inspired by the home-made gift certificates made by some Woot fans, and The Consumerist's Anti-Gift Card, we offer these DIY Woot gift certificates in three meaningless denominations. Click it yourself. Print it yourself. Clip some cash to it yourself. And if you're mentally unstable, you can even give it to yourself. We don't judge, especially in situations where we might make some money.

Remember, these are not official Woot gift certificates and have no value beyond the cash you clip to them, and the artistic merit of the design by the great Goopy. If you want to give another denomination, well, that's nothing a Sharpie can't fix. Goopy won't mind.

We hope this makes your gift-giving a little easier. We hope the Woot fiend in your life likes the present. But most of all, we hope he or she spends that cash with us.

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Monday, November 29

Cyber Monday at Deals.Woot: Advanced Searching for Advanced Cheapskates

by Jason Toon

As this week's Wootcast video reminds us, "Cyber Monday" as a concept is pretty contrived. But there's nothing imaginary about the loss-leader deals pinging around the ecommercesphere today. How does the skinflint shopper keep tabs on which Cyber Monday deals are worth chasing down, and which are still rip-offs at half the price?

With Deals.Woot, naturally. Our community deal-sharing site puts the cheapskate expertise of thousands of members at your disposal, as we're sure you know. But only the very best make the front page. How do you zero in on what you're really looking for in the ocean of Deals.Woot posts just below the surface? With Deals.Woot's Advanced Search options.

You can set a minimum and maximum price. You can limit your search to particular stores, or exclude others. If you see that a Deals.Woot member has posted a deal you like, you can search for all of that user's posted deals. And of course, you can search the keywords and tags of every deal, for all, any, or none of the relevant phrases.

But hey: statistically speaking, there's a good chance your particular search has already been done by hundreds of other Deals.Wooters. Check out the Popular Searches and Popular Tags at the right of the search fields and getting your shopping trip started could be as easy as a single click.

With these search options, Deals.Woot tames the wild frontier of Cyber Monday and pulls the golden needles out of the big, bland haystack. And it's all thanks to our tenacious, energetic users. They'll find and post the deals. They'll talk the deals over in the discussion threads. They'll vote for the best ones. And there's no reason you can't be one of the "they" making it all happen. Please, if you find a killer Cyber Monday deal before anybody else, post it there for your fellow bargain fiends. Us pennypinchers gotta stick together, right?

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Friday, October 29

You Can't Spell "Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert" Without Woot

by Scott Lydon

We don't care why you're going or what your opinions are. But if you're going to see Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert at The Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear, our writer's hoping to meet YOU!

 

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That's Woot writer Scott Lydon, and he's going to be on hand, taking notes and possibly stealing Stewart's material. Come Monday, you'll have a chance to see him try and make a blog post so fine that it immediately justifies the thousands of dollars he spent booking a four-star hotel in our nation's capital. So all weekend long, when he's not using the minibar, he'll be taking photos and handing out some monkeys. Want to be a part? Just keep one eye open for Scott in his special Woot.com writer t-shirt. It's black with a yellow exclamation point logo, like this:

 

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If you find Scott wandering around and say hi, he'll give you a little keychain monkey (while supplies last, of course). He'll also listen to what you have to say about why you're there, and maybe even ask your name and take a photo. Think Stewart's doing something important? Think he's a total jerkface destroying our country? Find our writer and let him know! He wants to hear it! Really!

And if you can't be there, check back Monday for Scott's eyewitness report from the frontlines of reasonableness. We were going to use another exclamation point there, but it seems contrary to the spirit of the event.

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Thursday, October 07

Audio Quiz, LEGO Convention, and Dad Panic!: What's Going On At Kids.Woot

by Jason Toon

We know, we know, you probably didn't even know the Kids.Woot blog existed. That's our fault. But lately we've given you a bunch of reasons to visit the Orange District of the Woot Empire. Like so:

Kids.Woot Audio Quiz: we mashed up clips from 15 songs that mention the word "kids" in 28 seconds. How many can you identify? It's been up for half an hour and nobody's guessed right yet. Music geeks, glory is calling. (And for you audio-Wootcast nostalgics, it's like the old Sonic Trivia Quiz lives again!)

Dad Panic!: my new weekly column, wherein a terrified Dad (me) tries to figure out what's really worth being paranoid about.

Brickcon 2010: we visited the Northwest's largest LEGO convention and brought back more awesome pics than you can handle. Or more than our dinky camera could handle, anyway.

Ah, our little Kids.Woot blog is growing up. Come watch it flower into full-fledged bloghood.

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Monday, October 04

It's A Big Day

by Scott Lydon

When we first introduced the Quality Post system, it was designed to help add a new level to the front page. After all, in between all the cat photos and flame wars and detailed explanations of how we suck more now than we ever did before, real information can be easy to lose.

But you know what? It takes a really special person to navigate our forums and still have something to say. Be it linking to outside reviews or posting jokes that are already in the writeup which our Mod staff simply didn't bother to read, quality posts are an award of merit, given only to those who do something special. Some people would be happy with just one! But these people? They stop at nothing!

 

 

The top ten quality posters, ladies and gentlemen! Ten people who have gone above and beyond in their attempt to make our forms worthwhile. We're proud they've chosen to make our site their home, even if we weren't proud enough to actually write the number of posts on our little graph. Hey, shut up, we do a lot around here, we don't always have time for numbers. Anyway, special kudos go out to NightGhost for one thousand quality posts. That's right, one THOUSAND Dude's like the Wilt Chamberlain of our forums.

We love all our posters, of course, but there's something special about making the top ten, so congrats to everybody on that list. And NightGhost, man! Keep it up! Maybe we'll see you back here when you bust 10k?

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Wednesday, September 01

Livetwebletogging Today's Apple Announcement

by Jason Toon

Today at noon Central time - a scant fifty minutes from now - our team of hilarity-peddlers will take to our @WootLive Twitter account to wring a few more drops of mirth from yet another Apple wingding. Maybe we'll offer pithy yet scathing commentary on the nature of consumerism today; maybe we'll just add "in my pants" to everything Jobs says. Either way, satirical brilliance is approximately 65% likely to ensue.

If you're not following @WootLive yet, congratulations on having better things to do with your life than laugh. What a cold, lonely place your world must be.

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Tuesday, August 31

Woot + Longshot Magazine = Exclusive T-Shirt

by Jason Toon

Cool stuff. Tight schedules. Irresistible good looks. Woot and Longshot Magazine have a lot in common. We throw together a gut-bustingly hilarious product description every single day; Longshot throws together a whole magazine (in print, web, and iPad versions) in 48 hours. And we've both received some pretty impressive cease-and-desist letters.

So it's only natural that Longshot take one of their many excellent art submissions and turn it into a t-shirt available only through Shirt.Woot. The design relates to the theme of issue #1, "Comeback", and you can only see it (and buy it) at the link above.

If you're not hip to the Longshot groove, please enjoy some selections from Issue Zero on the theme "Hustle", which was excellent despite the inexplicable rejection of a submission by one of your favorite Woot writers. But hey, under a deadline like that, anybody can make a mistake. We're honored to partner with you, Longshot, and we wish your mag nothing but the best. Long may you shoot!

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Monday, August 30

The Woot Podcast Ought to be in Pictures

by Matthew Norman

This week marks a big change for the Woot Podcast: We’re going to video!

That’s right, starting today, the Woot Podcast transmogrifies into a once-weekly moving picture presentation you can watch every Monday from the comfort of your own home, cubicle, university library, or anywhere the Internet is found!

This week’s episode features Mortimer & Monte, but future installments may include more “Real Actual Field Tests,” video versions of “Happy Snacking!” recipes, and occasionally even an on-screen appearance by a member of the Podcast Team. (That’ll be a courageous achievement, considering they’re all significantly handicapped in the looks department.)

We didn’t make this change capriciously. Shoot, for almost five years we’ve produced an audio-only podcast, convinced online video was a passing fad. Then we saw that Keyboard Cat, though, and the writing was on the wall. It said “Intrenet vidz r here 2 stay LOLOL!!!!!”

We’re excited to explore the possibilities of another medium, and we hope you’ll enjoy the Woot Podcast 2.0 every bit as much as you did the original, audio-only version. Unless you hated the original, audio-only podcast with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns, in which case we hope you’ll enjoy this version slightly better.

We understand change can be painful, so here’s a coping strategy for those seven or eight of you who were sentimentally attached to the way the Woot Podcast used to be: Simply close your eyes during the video and it’ll seem exactly like the old audio version.

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Wednesday, August 25

AVOCADOBUTTgate: Now The Story Can Be Told!

by Jason Toon

Hey, wouldn't it be awesome if we hid a coupon code in a podcast that only worked once, so the first wooter to try it got today's product free? And then wouldn't it be awesome if the whole idea actually worked as planned? Well, we managed to get the first part right in today's Wootcast, "I Sliced an Avocado". If you sat through four-and-a-half of the dopiest, most inane minutes of novelty music this side of Rednex, you heard the coupon code. But if you tried to use it, well, that's where things broke down. Note to coders: the difference between an empty string and a null string is surprisingly significant.

What to do, what to do? Since nobody else has a stronger claim and it'd be a shame to let a perfectly good AVOCADOBUTT go to waste, we're awarding the coupon code (and hence, the free Ecomposter) to a wooter by the name of chris12345 (pictured at left). He was the first Wootcast listener to post a comment on the podcast discussion thread, so if this somewhat arbitrary choice offends your sense of fair play, consider it a reward for participating in the Woot forums.

chris12345 says he's been listening to the Wootcast since early 2009 because "It's usually funny, and Matthew has a nice voice." His favorites are the many Shanties of Bluetooth - but even that kind of experience doesn't prepare one for an onslaught of irritation like "I Sliced an Avocado". How'd you endure it, chris12345? "I was reading through some things on Deals.Woot at the time," he reports. "It may have distracted me just enough that I still got the gist of the podcast without my brain turning to mush." Deals.Woot: protecting brains from Wootcast-induced mushification since 2009.

But remember, chris12345, if you ever do find your brain going mushy, don't just flush it down the toilet like most people would. Put it to good use with your brand-new Ecomposter!

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Wednesday, June 30

Amazon, Woot, and You: But Mostly Woot

by Woot!

To be uncharacteristically serious for half a nanosecond, yes, Woot has signed an agreement to be acquired by Amazon. It shouldn't change anything much for us or you after the deal closes, we just figured you’d like to know a few details. You see, when two companies meet over drinks and some light jazz and decide they'd like to get to know each other better… You know what? Our CEO said it best in his letter to us employees...

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