Win Free Pepsi, Or Corndogs, Or an iPad!!

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of ampm for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

ampm is giving stuff away, good stuff. Just go to facebook.com/ampm and have a look. They are running the "Too Much Good Stuff Giveaway" right now and it is quite neat.The slot machine instant win is really quite cool. You go through the registration and then you get to try and win one of 15,000 free bottles of Pepsi Max, or 10,000 free Corndogs from ampm. After you play the instant win slot machine you are automatically entered in the periodic sweepstakes where you can win an iPod, an iPad, and the grand prize is a trip to Vegas. Too Much Good Stuff

I used to have a friend that worked at an ampm. That was the single best convenience store I have ever been in. It was during the time when they instituted the Thirst Oasis, a giant fountain drink dispensary that was extra cool because this particular store was on Oasis road. My friend told me that it was maid special for there store but soon I went into another ampm and saw the same thing breaking my delusion.

They also had the best snacks. I used to eat their double cheese burgers two or three times a week. I love fresh condiments that I can put on myself, getting what I want instead of what someone else want s to give me.

Be sure to "Like" their page and go through the steps to register to win! It's really fun - you'll be happy you did.

The game is fun. Go play it. Free stuff is good stuff and Pepsi is sweetest free.

Free Automatic Carbonite

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Carbonite for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

I generate a lot of documents. Most are for work, or school, but I write for pleasure as well. All those are stored on my hard drive. I back them up in various ways but I am still worried about what would happen if there was a fire or flood. I could lose some things that have taken me months and even years to complete.

Off site backup is the obvious solution. Carbonite provides just such a service and it is automatic. That’s right it automatically backs up your files with out any hassle. For just $59 per year. The data stored with them can be accessed anywhere you have access to the internet. And with free apps for iPhone, Blackberry, and Android it can be assessed on your Smartphone.

Carbonite takes the worry out of backup by securely and automatically backing up the files on your PC or Mac to one of Carbonite’s highly secure, state-of-the-art data centers. It works continually in the background, automatically backing up your files whenever your computer is connected to the internet.
It is completely automatic, secure, simple, and unlimited.Once your files are backed up by Carbonite, you can access them anytime, anywhere, from virtually any Internet connected device.  computer backup

What‘s more it has a free 15 day trial that doesn’t even require a credit card. online backup

Imagine how you would feel if your hard drive failed tomorrow. All your hard work lost. Carbonite is the answer.

So take a look. And use the code BLOGAD and get two free months with purchase. Keep your data even when life conspires to try and take it away. Carbonite

Take a new look at Net-10

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Net10 for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

I use only pre-paid phones. I don’t like contracts and I don’t like not really owning my phone. I haven’t looked at new ones for a while but I was just looking at Net-10 and they have some cool stuff.

The first thing about Net-10 that I like is nation wide coverage not some local fly-by-night company that only covers the city that you live in. they also only use manufacturers of phones that I have heard of like LG, Motorola, Kyocera, Nokia and Samsung. No Shinzen knockoffs.

It works like any prepaid phone, you buy a phone that you like, put minutes on it and talk and text till they run out. Or buy a monthly plan (no contract just pay for what you get) and talk or text. Their unlimited plan is only $50 and you get unlimited talk and text and data! No contracts, no surprise bills, no credit checks. Tell me the last time AT&T was that low. Never, that’s when.

If your curious you should look at what a real costumer has to say about it. Real NET10 customer

The phones are reasonably priced too. The simplest is only $15 but can still send and receive texts. They have phones with great features like camera, video recorder, blue tooth capability, mobile web and more for under $40.00. They even have full qwerty and touch screens for under $60.00.

National coverage means that anyone inside the United States can be called from your Net-10 phone for the same price. But with the International Neighbors program, currently available to Canada and Mexico, you get a special phone number that your family and friends can use to reach you at your Net-10 number.

To review; With Pay-As-You-Go Plans, your minutes carry over with active service. The Easy Minutes Plus plan is an automatic minutes plan that starts at $15.00 for 200 minutes. Unlimited Minutes, Text and Web for $50.00/month. Switch between plans each month to suit your budget and airtime needs, without penalties or fees. Airtime can be purchased online, at a nearby store, or directly from your phone.

Contracts bad. Pay-as-you-go good. Net-10 is a great way to go. Take a look here. Cute NET10 commercial

Here's what some other people had to say:

OpenSource Textbooks?

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Flat World Knowledge for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

This is one of the coolest things I have seen in a while. If you attend a university or college you know that tuition and textbooks keep getting more expensive. Sometimes this causes instructors to try to pick a cheaper book over a better but more expensive one, or to cut down the number of books for a course because of expense. They are trying to help their students but it is hard not to wonder if they are sacrificing the future for help now. A solution would be a revolution in text book publishing and access.

That solution is Flat World Knowledge. It’s an open license publisher that allows publication of licensed texts to a web server that students can access but that protects the copyright of the author.

Along with it’s open licensing approach Flat World Knowledge has implemented a textbook personalization and rendering tool, change the textbook from a boring object to a living, dynamic learning platform. You get professionally published textbooks published under a Creative Commons open license, transferring legal control to faculty.
Flat World’s breakthrough “Make It Your Own” (MIYO) Platform enables faculty to drag and drop chapters and sections to reorder the book, delete material, edit anything in the book down to the sentence level, and insert new content including audio and video multi-media from sources like YouTube and BlipTV.
Flat World’s open licensing and textbook customization with a radical pricing model gives a formula for disrupting an $8.5bil U.S. textbook market. Books are free online, while offline books cost around $35 for print, and $25 for other formats. For the first time, students can choose the format and price point best for them
I truly believe that this is the future of text books. The expense of books is mostly from the publishers and the giant and expensive printing operations that are required. They have raised over $27mil over the last 2 years in venture capital from investors including Bessemer and BDMI, so I’m not the only one that believes in them. Flat World Knowledge gives the students access inexpensively and gets the profits to the author instead of the publisher. You should get all your instructors to check it out.

Switching OS's Again

Well recently I've switched from Linux to Mac. Gasp. It's actually not too bad, and if you want to do any iPhone or iPad development you have to have so I figured I might as well get used to it. I have to say OS X is probably the nicest OS I've ever used. I find I don't need to customize much, as the default stuff works just like I want it to.
So hopefully I'll be posting a lot more stuff on the following topics:

• iPad programming
• MonoTouch
• MonoMac
• MonoDroid

And maybe some other misc stuff. More updates coming soon.