It's a match made in heaven: the Eye-Fi card and Google's Picasa.

(Credit: Eye-Fi)

About a month ago, Google made some serious price cuts to its Picasa Web photo-storage service. For example, a mere $5 per year now buys you 20GB of online storage.

In other news, Eye-Fi memory cards are really cool. They wirelessly upload photos from your camera to your PC OR online storage service of choice--like, say, Picasa.

Right now, if you sign up for a 200GB Picasa account for $50, you'll get a 4GB Eye-Fi Home card for free.

That card, which works in most digital cameras, normally sells for $69.99, so here's another way to look at the deal: Buy a 4GB Eye-Fi Home for $50, and get 200GB of Picasa storage for free.

Either way, I think it's a smokin' offer. Picasa effectively gives you an online backup of your entire photo library, along with basic slideshow, sharing, and print services.

I'm also an Eye-Fi fan, as manually copying photos from card to PC--and then PC to Web service--is a huge hassle. This is a great gift item, in my opinion.

This is a while-supplies-last offer, and I suspect it'll sell out quickly. So grab it while you can!

Backup deal: If you've been eyeballing "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" (and what avid gamer hasn't?) but unable to stomach the $60 price tag, the Microsoft Store has it for just $41.99 shipped. That's the lowest price I've seen anywhere.

We live in a digital age, so why do business cards refuse to die? They're a hassle to store and an environmental suck to produce. Plus, who among us has time to manually transcribe contact info into a phone, PDA, or PC?

Needless to say, I was geeked to try Business Card Reader, a $5.99 app that turns business cards into iPhone Address Book entries.

Specifically, BCR leverages your iPhone's camera to take a snapshot of a card, then uses built-in optical character recognition (OCR) to convert the image into text and populate the appropriate contact fields.

After snapping a photo, Business Card Reader scans the card and adds the data to a new contact.

That's the theory, anyway. In practice, BCR requires near-perfect lighting conditions and decidedly non-fancy cards to achieve reliable recognition.

Make no mistake: This is a terrific app, one I'd absolutely buy despite its limitations; it's just that handy. But let's not overlook those limitations.

For starters, it requires an iPhone 3GS. Older models lack the autofocus capabilities necessary for sharp close-ups (though you might be able to get by with one of those third-party macro lenses).

Next, while BCR does a decent job identifying names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers, in my tests it rarely got the company name right. Likewise, if a name included a middle initial, it placed that initial in the Last Name field and ignored the actual last name altogether.

It's also a challenge to get sufficient lighting while avoiding glare off the card itself--particularly if it's a glossy card. And what with all the fancy logos, layouts, and color schemes these days, it's no wonder BCR encounters its share of difficulties.

That said, when it works well, it's a thing of beauty, and it's a lot faster and easier to edit a few OCR mistakes than it is to manually enter the information.

I also like the app's option to look up a contact on LinkedIn and/or merge the scanned card data with an existing iPhone contact. Plus, it recognizes not only English, but also French, German, Italian, and Spanish.

Another perk: the Card Holder view, which stores the actual scans in a slick-looking mock-leather "holder."

Business Card Reader may not be perfect, but it's about $150 less than a dedicated bizcard scanner--and it works right on your iPhone.

Have you found another card-scanning app you like better? If so, hit the comments and tell me about it!

Win a $500 shopping spree at Newegg.com!

In my humble opinion, this is one of the best giveaways we've ever done. Why? Well, because thanks to some intrepid work by our reps at Shopper.com, Newegg.com is generously offering up a $500 gift card, which means you get to pick your prize.

In case you don't know what Newegg.com is, it made its name selling computer gear and accessories at really low prices. But now it sells not only computer stuff but tons of electronics, so you're looking at a whole lotta selection.

As for Shopper.com, it powers CNET's price-comparison engine and it's a great site for finding the best prices on products. (See all of Shopper's deals, coupon codes, and rebates).

Normally, a Newegg.com $500 gift card would cost you $500 (duh), but you have the chance to get it gratis.

So, how do you try to win the Newegg.com gift card? Let me enumerate the basic rules. Please read them carefully; there will be a test.

• Register as a CNET user. Go to the top of this page and hit the "Join CNET" link to start the registration process. If you're already registered, there's no need to register again.
• Leave a comment below. You can leave whatever comment you want. If it's funny or insightful it won't help you win, but we're trying to have fun here, so anything entertaining is appreciated.
• Leave only one comment. You may enter this specific giveaway only once. If you enter more than one comment, you will be automatically disqualified.
• The winner will be chosen randomly. The winner will receive (1) $500 newegg.com gift card. Retail value is $500.
• If you are chosen, you will be notified via e-mail. Winners must respond within three days of the end of the contest. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen.
• Entries can be submitted until Thursday, December 3, at 7 a.m. EST.

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. MUST BE LEGAL RESIDENT OF ONE OF THE 50 UNITED STATES OR D.C., 18 YEARS OF AGE OR OLDER AT DATE OF ENTRY INTO SWEEPSTAKES. VOID IN PUERTO RICO, ALL U.S. TERRITORIES AND POSSESSIONS AND WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW. Sweepstakes ends at 7 AM ET on December 3, 2009. See official rules for details.

Good luck.

Come back tomorrow for our next holiday giveaway. Tomorrow's prize will be an Altec Lansing InMotion Classic iPod speaker.

The 404 <3 Katie and Jill.

(Credit: CBS)

The holiday season is upon us and we know most of you are struggling to "find the money" to buy gifts for your friends and family, so we make the long trip across the hallway and invite Jill Schlesinger on the show to help us keep our heads above water. Jill is editor at large for CBS MoneyWatch.com and has plenty of experience with financial planning, so listen up!

As you might already know from past episodes featuring The Financial Decoder, Jill isn't the biggest fan of credit card companies, or "legalized drug dealers," as she calls them, but this time she has her scope pointed at the dangers of using a debit card.

Despite proposed laws that would outlaw overdraft fees, Jill suspects we haven't seen the end of hidden fees and actually recommends budgeting this season with presents that won't leave you with an empty bank account. Your dear old mom doesn't really need that Tiffany's necklace or box of Godiva chocolates! Leave that stuff for Mother's Day, and just go out and have fun together--it's free, and it won't drain your bank account.

Jill also drops knowledge on us (in a Bulgarian accent, no less) about how to develop optimistic (and realistic) financial goals for the year instead of frantically scrambling to plan around the holidays. With Valentine's Day coming up, it's too bad Jeff isn't here! Jill tells us the best way to stop the cycle of "hedonic spending" is to play a game she calls "Find the Money."

Have fun and play games while balancing your spending and saving money at the same time?! Be sure to listen to this episode of The 404 Podcast to get the whole story!

The Moxi HD DVR (left) and the Moxi Mate extender.

(Credit: Arris)

When we last heard from upstart DVR maker Digeo, the company had been bought out by networking and communications company Arris. Thankfully for owners of Digeo's Moxi DVR, though, it appears that the company's new corporate godfather is doubling down on the video recorder product line: It's debuting an updated version of its DVR with a triple tuner and initiating a round of price cuts on existing model (and related bundles).

The full details:

Verizon Wireless on Thursday said it will offer customers who want Internet access on-the-go a prepaid wireless broadband option for their laptops.

The new services will be bundled with the Verizon Wireless USB760. They will operate on laptops running Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. The modem will be sold at Verizon Wireless Communications stores and at Best Buy locations beginning November 16.

Here's a breakdown of the new service plans and what users can expect to do with the limits that Verizon is offering.

The daily plan costs $15 and allows users to access 75 megabytes of data. This would allow users to send or receive about 25,600 e-mails, download 500 Web pages, and send and receive 150 low-resolution digital phones.

The weekly plan costs $30 and allows for 250 MB of data. This plan would allow users to send or receive about 85,300 e-mails, look up 1,700 Web pages, or send or receive about 500 low resolution digital photos.

And finally, the monthly plan costs $50 for 500 MB of data usage. And Verizon claims this is enough capacity to allow users to send or receive 170,000 e-mails, look up 3,400 Web pages, and send or receive 1,000 low-resolution digital photos.

Verizon's contract wireless broadband service costs $60 a month and allows users to transmit up to 5 gigabytes worth of data. It also offers a $40 a month plan that offers 250MB of data per month.

The new Rocket 622 and Rocket 620 SATA 3.0 controller cards from HighPoint.

(Credit: HighPoint)

In September, Seagate made the first 6Gbps SATA hard drive available. The new Seagate Barracuda XT hard drive offers twice the throughput speed of existing popular 3Gbps SATA hard drives. Now you're about to get the chance to take advantage of the new drive's performance with your current PC.

HighPoint, which makes controllers for storage devices, announced Monday the availability of the first SATA 6Gbps (or SATA 3.0) host adapters, the Rocket 600 series, which are based on PCI-Express 2.0 technology.

SATA 3.0 is the next generation of the SATA storage standard. Currently most computers use the second generation of this standard, the 3Gbps SATA (or SATA 2.0). At its full potential, the SATA 3.0 standard could theoretically transfer entire contents of a CD (about 800MB) in just one second. According to HighPoint, its new controller cards, however, offer the sustained speed of up to 500MBps.

HighPoint's new series of controller cards comes in two versions, the Rocket 622 that offers external eSATA connections to 6Gbps hard drives and the Rocket 620 that adds the higher-speed SATA to a computer's internal storage. Both of them, however, require an available PCI-Express slot inside the computer. You need the Rocket 620 if you want to install an operating system on the new and faster SATA 3.0 hard drive.

The two add-in controller cards are fully compliant with the Advanced Host Controller Interface (or AHCI) standard. They can also be installed in PCI-Express 1.0 slots and are backward compatible with previous generations of the SATA standard (the 1.5Gbps SATA 1.0 and the 3Gbps SATA 2.0). This means you can use them with any existing SATA-based hard drives and solid-state drives, other than the new 6Gbps SATA Barracuda XT from Seagate.

The new controllers are available this month. The Rocket 620 is slated to cost $70, while the Rocket 622 costs another $10.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

In the beginning, MP3 players relied heavily on memory-card expansion slots, because built-in memory was painfully scarce. My, how the times have changed. Nowadays, internal flash chips offer up to 64GB of storage, and memory-card expansion slots--which almost exclusively take some form of SD media--are merely offered as an extra feature.

Luckily, there's a decent array of MP3 players currently on the market offering this extra, so if you're keen on the option of adding more space on a whim--or you just want to use memory cards a la MiniDiscs, swapping them in at intervals--you have plenty of worthy choices.

Check out the expandable MP3 players.

The Financial Decoder Jill Schlesinger back on the show today. Yeah, yeah, it's not technology, but we do mention online banking, so we guess that counts. Anyway, we talk about how credit card companies are like drug dealers, and how to break the habit.

Congress recently passed legislation that would prevent some of the bad practices that credit card companies engage in, but Jill reveals to us that for the most part it won't prevent much. Credit card companies will just have to tell you how they are screwing you. Be prepared for your credit cards to have annual fees and higher rates in the interim.

After the break, Jill warns us to stay away from the credit consolidation, negotiation or settlement companies. According to her, you don't have to pay some lawyer to do what you can do already, by calling the credit card companies yourself or writing them a letter. If you are in the endless debt circle, ask them for a break on the interest rate for a year or two. Keep in mind that the companies want something instead of nothing.

Finally, we talk about how the experiences of growing up in Jewish and Chinese households share so much in common. Namely, our love of mahjong. So much so that we all flip out when we see an automated mahjong shuffling table! Send in your feedback as usual to the404 [at] cnet [dot] com. Jill and Wilson might make a weekly date of their financial and economic talk. Let us know if that might interest you. Look out for Jill's recommendations for credit cards and checking accounts later.

UPDATE: Check out Jill's blog post on MoneyWatch about credit card companies. Plus she gives us a little love.