Dealmac Sponsoring TidBITS -- Long ago, we published another newsletter called DealBITS. The idea behind DealBITS was that companies would pay a small amount to list deals on their products. The deal was an important aspect - we wanted to help readers by publishing prices below normal. DealBITS was years ahead of its time, but our latest sponsor, the folks at dealmac, have proven how powerful the concept of collecting and negotiating deals can be. Dealmac doesn't sell anything - they only facilitate commerce between others by providing information about deals. Aside from the basic utility of collecting the deals and presenting them in a variety of formats (chronological on a Web page, in email, and in a searchable database), the main value that dealmac adds is making sure every deal is the lowest known price on a product (the only exception is for products from well-known brands, for which people might be interested in paying more). That's not all - when possible, dealmac negotiates even lower prices exclusively for dealmac readers.

Along with dealmac, they also run dealnews, which applies the concept to non-computer products, and dealram, which offers a custom interface to comparing RAM prices. We're going to start dealmac's sponsorship by listing some of the latest RAM prices from dealram in the sponsorship area at the top of every issue; after we work out the automated systems, we hope to include more general Mac-related deals as well. No matter what, it should make checking the sponsorship area all the more worth your while each week, so we couldn't be happier to welcome dealmac to our select group of sponsors. [ACE]

<http://dealmac.com/?ref=tb>
<http://dealnews.com/?ref=tb>
<http://dealram.com/?ref=tb>