Posted 11/27/09 at 02:00:00 PM by David Murphy

Black Friday. It's big. There's a lot of shopping going on. You can acquire goods and services for far below the actual cost of the items. Unless you can catch said deals online, you will likely spend a lot of time fighting your peers for low-priced products. You might start to hate shopping. You might vow to never shop on Black Friday again.

Those are the ground rules. Let's get to the deals. As mentioned, there are a lot of awesome things you can pick up on Black Friday for a cheaper-than-expected cost. I've searched through a number of online sites to find just exactly what it is that's going on come Black Friday. I'll be listing out a number of awesome deals to check out below, as well as a handful of sites that you can check out to further supplement your tech-themed Black Friday purchases. I've really scoured the categories to find some great savings and great products--in the case of the storage category, for example, that's the most inexpensive capacity points you're going to find for those prices!

Anyway, enough reading. Let's get to the spending. Black Friday 2009... begin!

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Posted 11/26/09 at 11:12:38 AM by Paul Lilly

Just last month, Mozilla announced it would keep its Thunderbird 3.0 email client in Alpha form because "calling something a beta is likely to trigger a bunch of extra press attention we're not yet in a position to deal with." Well, Mozilla's now ready and has pushed its email client into Release Candidate status.

The RC is a public preview and intended for developer testing and community feedback, Mozilla says. Mozilla added that it's looking specifically for feedback on the client's new search tools, tabbed email, message archiving, new mail account setup wizard, and improvements for developers.

There are quite a few changes Mozilla made to the new email client, all of which are outlined in the Release Notes here. Be sure to give it a glance before grabbing the download here.

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Posted 11/26/09 at 10:22:56 AM by Paul Lilly

As the netbook explosion has proven, consumers are willing to pay for portability, and while that also includes ultra-thins, Asus has been focusing most of its attention elsewhere. According to Tony Chen, Asus' VP, ultra-thins will only account for 10 percent of the company's total notebook sales by the end of 2009.

That doesn't mean Asus has no intention of embracing slim notebooks. As Intel tweaks its ultra-thin platform and consumers continue to warm to the market segment, Chen said he expects a much larger proportion in 2010.

Chen was also quick to point out that Asus has adopted a handful of exclusive technologies in its UL series ultra-thin laptops, including its Turbo33 technology for improved stability and better performance.

Still, Asus, along with MSI, Acer, and Lenovo, all expected ultra-thins to account for around 20-30 percent of notebook shipments in 2009, and all have adjusted their outlook to around the 10 percent mark.

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Posted 11/26/09 at 10:07:20 AM by Paul Lilly

Here's a holiday treat for you Windows Home Server users. Power Pack is now available for download, and to get it, just head over to the Windows Update section of your Home Server install and mash on Update.

For those of you running any pre-release versions of Windows Home Server Power Packs, a little maintenance will be in order before upgrading. Specifically, you'll need to first run the correct version of Windows Home Server with Power Pack 2, and any beta or release candidate versions of Power Pack must in uninstalled before moving up to the latest update. Full instructions can be found on the official Windows Home Server blog here.

Power Pack 3 brings to the table better support for netbook computers, the ability to backup and restore computers running Windows 7, Windows 7 Libraries integration, enhancements for Windows Media Center, and a handful of other goodies, as outlined here.

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Posted 11/26/09 at 10:00:00 AM by Alex Castle and Norman Chan

Are you planning to do some travelling or Holiday gift shopping this weekend? There's only one way you can do both at the same time, and that's with SkyMall. It's the catalog for products that didn't quite make it into Sharper Image or BrookStone, and are too expensive to sell on infomercials. We picked up the latest issue on a recent flight, and were astounded to find terrible products on every other page. Here, we've picked out the fifty worst items, including horrendously ill-conceived vehicle accessories, impractical grooming devices, and the most terribly advertised gadgets for sale. 

But let's start with the gem of a cover, which apparently breaks the rules of the space-time continuum.

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Posted 11/26/09 at 04:14:33 AM by Nathan Grayson

Today may be Thanksgiving, but over in Steamsville, it’s already Christmas. So, what’s under the tree? Damn near everything. For the next five days, Steam will be discounting different selections of games every 24 hours. So maybe the whole thing’s actually more like Hanukah, but we digress…

These aren’t just dusty old re-gifted games either. They’re fresh off the virtual shelf. For instance, right now, Batman: Arkham Asylum’s going for $25, and a whole mess of THQ games – including Red Faction: Guerrilla, Saints Row 2, and Dawn of War II – have been bundled together for only $49.99! But wait, there’s more! Dragon Age, Champions Online, Grid, Far Cry 2, and a LucasArts bundle have all dropped into impulse purchase territory, and with that kind of Death Star-sized tractor beam tugging at your wallet, how can you refuse?

You can’t – because even shop-lifting rarely produces prices this low. Penny-pinchers, it’s finally time to give your fingers a break. On the menu are your dreams, and it’s Steam’s treat.

Just a warning, though, Gabe Newell. You’re not the first somewhat rotund man to be extremely generous around December. Not that we’re complaining, but you’re stepping into Santa territory, and we hear jolly old Saint Nick has quite the legal team.

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Posted 11/25/09 at 08:38:48 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Windows 7 has got off to a very impressive start. So impressive, in fact, that its initial showing is many times better than Vista's. It added another feather in its cap when its usage surpassed all versions of Mac OS X combined. According to research firm Net Applications, it achieved this latest feat over the past weekend when its usage eased past the 5 percent mark, and with it Mac's usage share.

Interestingly, Windows 7 usage trailed that of OS X by almost a percentage point earlier in the week. "Certainly, the trend line shows Windows 7 will surpass Mac (market) share soon,” believes Vince Vizzaccaro, executive vice president at Net Applications, according to Computerworld.

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Posted 11/25/09 at 08:35:58 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Just in time for the holiday gift giving season, iBuyPower has come out with five new liquid cooled gaming PCs. The PCs are available from NewEgg and can be purchased right now. The low end model, the Gamer Extreme 922 SLC, runs a Core i7 860 and the Nvidia GTX220. Price wise it clocks in at a mere $989. There’s even a box for the AMD fans out there. The 559 Gamer runs the AMD Phenom II X4 965 and will cost $1,549.

If you need more power, the Gamer Supreme 979 SLC may be an option. It comes equipped with the Intel Core i7 975 and two GTX 295s in SLI. The 979 will also have 12GB of DDR3 RAM, a Blu-ray drive, and a 128GB SSD. Indeed a real monster of a rig with a monstrous price of $3,999. Is it worth it? Maybe, but that’s your call.

The remaining rigs fit nicely in-between the extremes. You won’t be able to fit one of these in a stocking, but if your gamer has been extra nice this year, you might be able to cram one under the tree.

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Posted 11/25/09 at 07:29:42 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Analytics services like Alexa or Compete have often been cited as good ways to rank a website’s importance. But these options only measure website traffic. A service called ://URLFAN, however, measures a site’s influence by analyzing blog mentions. In this way, it’s a bit like Technorati but for all websites.

://URLFAN is currently ranking the popularity of 3,783,534 sites by checking 302,607,392 blog posts from 5,962,353 individual feeds. This appears to be updated in real time along with the stats. So what site takes the top honor? That would be en.wikipedia.org. This isn’t terribly unexpected. Wikipedia has a wealth of readily accessible information people might want to link to.

Youtube comes in just behind Wikipedia, and Flickr right after that. In yet another bad sign for old media, there’s only one newspaper site on the list, The New York Times. ://URLFAN probably isn’t a perfect measure of influence, but it does take a unique approach, and is well worth a look. Check out the full top 100 list updated in real time here.

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Posted 11/25/09 at 07:13:26 PM by Ryan Whitwam

After months of silence, Emblaze has decided to show off their upcoming First Else phone. The First Else is running on a custom operating system powered by the Access Linux Platform 3.0. The user interface is, in a word, stunning. It uses a largely blue on black palette, but throws in lots of attractive animations and effects. The main UI was referred to as "the death of main menu". The user is presented with an arch listing various options along its length. By sliding a thumb along it, any menu can be opened without using another finger or changing your grip.

The First Else also uses a “fish eye” system to highlight and slightly magnify selections on the phone. The fish eye is basically a floating context menu in the center of the display. The whole affair just feels very sci-fi.

The hardware is also impressive. The handset will rock the TI OMAP 3430 chip, the same as is in the iPhone 3GS, Palm Pre, and Motorola Droid. The capacitive LCD screen is 3.5 inches with a resolution of 854x480, again the same as the Droid. The notification area resides on a small OLED strip above the main display, which is a nice touch. Finally, a 1450mAh battery keeps the whole affair running at least one hour longer than an iPhone. No one knows if the First Else will come to an American Carrier, but the phone will be HSDPA/EDGE only. Cross your fingers AT&T and T-Mobile fans.

Image via Engadget

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