Charitable Gift Giving

I had the pleasure of chatting with Noah at AppSumo today. If you haven’t heard of it, the best way to describe it is it’s like “Groupon for Software”. Each day, they offer a bundle of great software at an incredible price.

Today, they have an extra-special deal. For $19, you not only get $200 of software (and people really do pay that much for this caliber of software every day), 40% of the price also goes to Charity:Water, a fantastic organization which builds wells and provides fresh water to developing areas around the world. In today’s world, people die every day of water-borne diseases and illnesses, so what AppSumo (and you and I) do for them is critical.

Here’s the software you get in this bundle. Hurry, it’s only available for a few more hours, so get yours now!

PlayOn: This is a pretty cool program that lets you watch streaming Internet video on your TV (or even on your iPhone or iPad). Just install the software on a PC connected to the Internet, and you’ll be able to watch shows on your TV via a Wii, Xbox, PS3 which is also  connected to the Internet (or even an iPhone or iPad). I’ll be using it to watch new episodes of Conan on TBS 🙂 It’s a $20 value, which I believe gives you a full year of service.

Plants vs. Zombies: A ridiculously fun game from PopCap games that’s received huge accolades from critics. Retail value $20.

Dial2Do: a cool program for your phone that recognizes your voice and lets you do things like check email, send text messages, and post to Twitter all with your voice. The way it works, you dial a local phone number, say what you want to do, and hang up. Dial2Do will figure out what you want to do and do it! You gotta try it to believe it. Retail value of $25 for one year of service.

BatteryBar Pro: If you’re like me, you’re sick and tired of the Windows battery bar being so danged inaccurate. BatteryBar Pro touts itself as “the most accurate battery meter” giving you much more and much more reliable information about your battery. Retail value $10.

WinXDVD Ripper: This is software that lets you rip the contents of a DVD to video files on your hard drive. Retail value $40.

Defense Grid: The Awakening: A tower defense game that has had rave reviews. Retail value $10.

The Complete Android Guide: This is an “everything you wanted to know about Android” PDF guide. After skimming through it, most of the information is pretty basic. But still, a good read for the Android newbie. Retail value $10.

Boomerang: Here’s an interesting service which they describe as a “Snooze button for Outlook”. It lets you designate messages in your Outlook inbox to be moved out of your box (onto their service) and then “boomeranged” back to you at the right time. Not for everyone, but if your Inbox is filled with hundreds of items, you might want to consider it. Retail value $15.

Panda Cloud Antivirus Pro: If you don’t have virus protection on your PC, you absolutely need this. Much more economical that higher priced companies like McAfee. Retail value $30.

Emsisoft Online Armor Firewall: I consider myself a computer expert, and even MY computer was attacked by spyware last year without me realizing. This software will help you prevent that. Retail value $40.