*Site News Deals, Sales, and News

We've expanded our search page to include more results. Now, in addition to items from our site, we'll run a search on many popular online stores to find additional results. This means you can now search for just about anything and get a result. We're working on the layout of the other results, as they come from a third-party site and aren't as pretty as we'd like. Try it out, and let us know how it works out for you.

For nearly two years, the Blind Bargains Auction Gateway has provided an easy way for people to find blindness-related items on EBay in dozens of categories. Today, we've extended this functionality to three additional EBay sites. The gateway's same useful features are now available for EBay Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. You can use links near the bottom of the page to change your country at any at any time. If you've never used the gateway before, it lets you search for items on EBay in categories ranging from braille printers to talking watches andcalculators.

If you're looking to add something cool to your own website, don't forget about our Blind Bargains latest deals feed. With a simple cut and paste of code, you can add the latest five headlines, or some other number you choose, to any page on your site. Plus, it's totally free. Check the link on this post for details. If you add the code, let us know and we may feature your site in an upcoming post.

If you're going to the CSUN technology conference this March and are interested in helping us cover the proceedings, please send us a note. No prior experience is necessary. Write us for details.

We're posting more and more bargains and news items to our site, so you may have missed something, especially if you haven't stopped by in awhile. Now, look for the page 2 link at the bottom of the deals on the home page. It's right above the "Most Popular" heading. It'll take you to another page with the next 50 news items so you can catch up. Also, don't forget about our RSS feed and Email newsletter, both available under the "Other Features" heading on the home page.

We are still hearing from people who are either having trouble subscribing or receiving our Daily Deals newsletter. If you fall into either of these categories, please send us a note so we can see what's going on.

J.J. and Matt from Blind Bargains were guests on this week's Main Menu Live, which focused on the 2008 ATIA conference in Orlando. Listen to this two hour show to hear replays of some of the audio interviews from the conference, listener questions, and discussions of what we saw at the conference. Main Menu is a weekly technology show heard on ACB Radio Mainstream.

We thought you may be interested in seeing this press release from Applian Technologies, makers of Replay AV, regarding their nomination in the Blind Bargains Access Awards. We're glad to see a mainstream company recognized by blind and visually impaired computer users for their accessibility efforts.

We're now back from ATIA and ready to talk about it. Join J.J. and Matt on this Tuesday's Main Menu as we discuss all things ATIA and replay some of the audio interviews. We'll also answer your questions about the conference, the new technology we saw, or how much nicer the weather was in Orlando. Main Menu first airs from 8-10 PM Eastern, and then repeats every two hours after that. If you miss that, a podcast feed is also available.

As you may have noticed, our entire site was down for all of Thursday. We are now back online, albeit with a few missing deals from earlier this week. If you notice anything else that isn't working, please let us know. We'll be posting back our recent deals soon. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Blind Bargains will be attending the 9th annual Assistive Technology Industry Association conference in Orlando, Florida and providing news and interviews throughout the conference. Check back through the week for product announcements, hands-on impressions, and audio interviews with some of the biggest names in the assistive technology arena. Watch Blind Bargains for much more as the conference nears. If you represent a company and will be attending ATIA, please contact us if you would like to be a part of our podcasts. The ATIA conference runs from January 30 through February 2.

We're always looking for new ways to help you find the best deals and learn about products and services. Now, you can visit and post in our forums to do that and more. Post reviews of your favorite hardware and software, request information on products or deals, or post interesting news. Registration is completely free. Use the link on this post or the forums link on the top of any page. There may be a few kinks, so let us know if you have any problems.

The deadline is fast approaching for nominations for the first ever Blind Bargains Access Awards. You can submit nominations for any or all of the ten categories ranging from best new product or innovation to best website for the blind (Blind Bargains isn't eligible). Nomination submissions are due on January 14 at 5 PM Eastern.

You can now subscribe to our RSS feed directly from Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox. In Firefox, for example, use the subscribe to this page option from the bookmarks menu. Thanks to Wayne Merritt for the tip.

From all of us at Blind Bargains, have a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and a festive holiday season. We'll be celebrating along with you over the holidays, so updates will be a bit less frequent. Thanks for a great year, and we wish you the best for 2008!

We've fixed some validation errors with our RSS feed, which especially affected Internet Explorer 7. If you've been having problems with our feed, please try it again. This exercise also reminded us of Feed Validator, a free RSS and Atom validation tool for webmasters. We've linked to it from this post. Thanks to Michael McCarty of the Fred's Head Companion for the heads up.

As a reminder, you can subscribe for free to our Daily Deals email newsletter. You'll receive a daily message with our latest deals including links to jump directly to the site. We've now moved the list to new software for more stability and improved the format based on user feedback. You can subscribe and unsubscribe at any time. Follow the link on this post to join the list. Of course, if you're reading this in our newsletter, you've got nothing to do except tell your friends.

Thanks for visiting us during our Black Friday coverage. Our site saw a huge spike in traffic on Friday, making it the single most popular day ever for the site. But, it's not over yet. Cyber Monday sales are on now,and we'll be sure to post the latest and greatest online sales as we learn about them. Happy holidays.

We've had some questions from people looking for our Daily Deals newsletter. If you wish to subscribe, we've added the link under the other features list on the home page. Or, just select the link on this post.

We've added a new page with information for advertisers. If you represent a company
or organization and wish to advertise on Blind Bargains, check out the new page for
more information.