Alec Saunders SquawkBox

It’s Friday, and because we’ve been talking DEMO all week, we discussed a few of the top news stories from the past 5 days instead.

Yesterday RIM announced deals with Slacker Music, Ticketmaster, MySpace, TiVo, and Microsoft. These “lifestyle apps” are apparently designed to ward off the threat from Apple. Is it enough?

We also discussed the choice of Yammer as the top prize at TechCrunch 50. Is the idea of “Twitter inside enterprise” a good idea?

It’s been a big week in music players. New iPods announced with colors and music discovery. At the same time, out comes a new Zune from Microsoft, with what by all accounts is a better music discovery system. We ask, did Microsoft get the upper hand?

On the Calliflower Conference Call: Bill Volk, Kevin Restivo, James Body, and Dan Rockwell.

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• RIM announces ‘lifestyle’ apps for BlackBerry
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 Squawk Box September 12 [45:09m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Dipwa.ca is a “deal a day” web shopping site, similar to Woot, but available to Canadians.  Visit the site each day to find out the daily deal, and whether you want to buy it.

Today’s deal is the ASUS R300 GPS system.  This unknown GPS came to market in 2007 at a retail price of $299.  Featuring a touch screen, bluetooth, and a variety of other features, it appears to be feature-comparable to Garmin’s StreetPilot series, with the addition of some nice 3D images.  StreetPilot sells on EBay for prices in the $150/range.  I found just two R300’s on EBay for $107 and $146 respectively.  EBay prices, whether for the ASUS or Garmin units, did not include shipping, which was an additional $25+ from most vendors.

Dipwa is selling the R300 for $120 + $9 shipping.  And, since they’re a Canadian vendor, they will add taxes, bringing the bill to $147.  On this unit, you can probably save $25 over EBay by buying from Dipwa.  The downside?  It appears that the only color offered is … pink.

You may get a better deal on Dipwa, depending on what you’re shopping for.  I suspect, however, that not every Dipwa deal is going to be a price leader and you may end up with some oddball color choices as the Dipwa team buys up odd lots and end runs of products to sell off cheap.

Even so, $119 for a pink NAV system is pretty darn cheap.