friday

HDTV doorbuster deals to avoid

Every year, retailers tempt consumers with too-good-to-be-true deals designed to tempt them into the stores and buy...something else.

Chances are, these deals are too good to be true. Before you head out to join the mad rush, here are some so-called "deals" to avoid.… Read more

Look for $99 Kinect, other Xbox deals for Black Friday

The Kinect motion-control camera peripheral for the Xbox 360 will be available for $99 during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday period, according to Microsoft.

The discounted Kinect (it's usually $149) will be available from "participating retailers" from November 24 through November 28. Microsoft pointed us towards a few other deals on Xbox hardware and games as well, which include:

Kinect from $99 (regularly $149) Three-month Xbox Live Gold subscription for $12.99 (regularly $24) Gears of War 3 for $39 (regularly $59) Forza Motorsport 4 for $39 (regularly $59) Dance Central 2 for $29 (regularly $49) Kinect Sports 2 for $29 (regularly $49) Xbox 360 consoles ($199 - $399) discounted by $50 to $100 (from November 24 through November 26 only)… Read more

Prepare for Black Friday with Android

Less than two weeks from now, thousands, if not millions, of us will once again gear up for yet another annual retail scramble.

Black Friday kicks off shopping for the holiday season and is one of the busiest events for most major retailers. We're here to offer some tools to help you take advantage of the many deals across different stores and get the most out of this hectic day. All you'll need is some light planning, caffeine, and an Android phone to run some handy apps.

Behind every successful shopping story lies a well-thought-out master plan. Researching … Read more

Ship or shop? Two good apps for the holiday buying season

I have two useful new mobile apps to recommend for those gearing up for the holiday gift shopping orgy that will soon be upon us.

Shipping tracker First, Slice is releasing a mobile app. Slice is a useful utility that reaches into your Yahoo or Google e-mail inbox and extracts all the receipts that are sent to you. It gives you a list of everything you've bought online. It also collects all your shipping alerts and then tracks packages that are on their way. It will send you a nice alert when a package is out for delivery. If, … Read more

The best sites to track Black Friday deals

Are you ready? Black Friday 2011, the day that U.S. retailers and thrifty consumers have been waiting for all year, is just around the corner.

Whether you're looking for a $2 toaster or a $200 laptop, you're going to need a plan of attack to help you succeed. Here are a few sites that will help you develop and carry out your strategy this year:

FatWallet FatWallet has been around a long time and is a popular destination for deal hunters. It maintains a Black Friday section each year, to help you sort out all the deals. … Read more

Buy it now, for real: eBay to refer sales to nearby stores

SAN JOSE, Calif.--eBay knows that half of all Christmas shoppers miss its December 16 shipping deadline for getting presents under the tree in time, and it wants to help the stragglers.

The e-commerce giant's idea is to make it easy for shoppers to find the item they're looking for--say, a Nintendo Wii--that's for sale and in stock at a store near them and to select and pay for it in advance through a mobile app.

The technology has been rolled into the latest version of eBay's RedLaser mobile app, which allows users to search for … Read more

The truth about Black Friday

Black Friday is coming! Black Friday is coming!

Meh.

This is the time of year when Black Friday ads are leaked weeks in advanced, pre-Black Friday sales emerge on a daily basis, and the media goes hog-wild about Black Friday ads, apps, sales, and people willing to stand in line at 4 a.m.

If you'll pardon the expression, I'm not buying it. Much as I understand the importance of this day to American retail's bottom line, I just can't muster much enthusiasm.

See, as a 365-days-a-year cheapskate, I see killer deals all the time. … Read more

PlayBook dropping to $199 in Staples Black Friday deal?

The discounts keep coming for the BlackBerry PlayBook.

The latest comes from a leaked Staples ad found by TechCrunch. The office-supply retailer appears to be offering the 16GB PlayBook for $199 as part of its Black Friday special. A full listing of Staples' Black Friday specials can be found here.

This marks the steepest price cut yet for the PlayBook, which stumbled out of the gate and hasn't sold particularly well despite a spate of recent discounts. RIM has seeded the developer community with thousands of PlayBook tablets and is pushing heavy promotions to move its inventory. More importantly, it wants more consumers using its next-generation operating system, which will eventually power its high-end smartphones. … Read more

Amazon's early Black Friday bounty the pilgrims' pride

Black Friday is coming more than three weeks early to Amazon this year.

The world's most ginormous online retailer got a head start today on hijacking our national--and my family's personal--heritage. I'm a direct descendant of those poor souls who 400 years ago stepped off the Mayflower, which was definitely not smelling like flowers anymore after a long trans-Atlantic journey, and said, "This has got to be better than England--we'll take it."

So I guess it's in the same spirit that Amazon today offers a bamboo cutting board at 40 percent off--in the hopes that an exhausted and desperate population will say, "That's gotta be better than what we'd normally pay at Crate and Barrel in early November--we'll take it."… Read more