General

Cyber Monday roundup: My favorite deals

TGIM!

After a weak and disappointing Black Friday as far as deals go, we've arrived at Cyber Monday, when stores pony up their online-only deals.

And guess what? The pickins? They're not so slim. Here's a list of some decidedly worthwhile bargains:

Newegg has the Jawbone 2 Bluetooth headset for $79.99, plus 4 bucks or so for shipping. That's at least $20 less than I've seen it elsewhere. Best Buy has an Insignia Internet-connected GPS for $199.99 shipped. A built-in cellular modem lets you tap Google local search and other nifty features. One … Read more

Black Friday roundup: My favorite deals

Wow, what a colossal disappointment this Black Friday has been. I've spent the better part of the morning looking for eye-popping, never-before-seen, gotta-have-it deals, and you know what I've come up with (besides a sentence ending with a preposition)?

This: Amazon has a 16GB iPod Touch (1st-generation) for $199.99 shipped. Whoop-de-do. I mean, that's pretty good, but I just couldn't muster much excitement for anything else. There's Guitar Hero: Aerosmith Edition for $59.99 (Xbox 360 or Wii). Yeah, OK, not bad. But everything else? Meh.

Now, if you were crazy enough to pitch … Read more

Lifestreaming in Obamaland

Barack Obama will be the most shadowed president in history, and it won't be just the Secret Service and press corps surrounding him.

Citizens and paparazzi armed with camera phones and a variety of other multimedia devices will chronicle every movement he makes in public and post it online.

Obama's visit on Friday afternoon to Manny's Cafeteria and Deli in Chicago was treated as a major event. Some footage was recorded by the Associated Press (see below), and in the background you can see employees, as well as a horde of press members, pointing their cameras at … Read more

Rising from the dead: The paid-for online model

Guest post: Frédéric Filloux, editor of Monday Note, which covers media, tech and business models, explains why death reports of paid-for models on the Internet have been greatly exaggerated and how Facebook might need subscription fees to survive in the current economic climate.

Death reports of paid-for models on the Internet have been greatly exaggerated. Granted: the network's genome carries the "free" nucleotide. As in both freedom and free goods and services. Like it or not, its publicly funded origins (universities and the Pentagon) led to the emergence of widely adopted services such … Read more

Obama appoints YouTube (Google) as secretary of video

Updated at 11 a.m. to clarify that the change.gov site with the YouTube video of the Obama's radio address has text links to the same video on AOL, MSN, and Yahoo. YouTube still has premier position as the secretary of video...

It's great that President-elect Barack Obama is delivering his regularly scheduled Saturday address in both audio and video form. After using the Internet to help him get elected and connect with younger voters, it's clear that his team will continue to exploit the media to deliver its messages and stimulate dialog.

Obama has chosen … Read more

Take a sneak peek at Black Friday deals

The rotten economy notwithstanding, Black Friday will undoubtedly produce the usual levels of retail insanity.

If you're intrepid enough to brave long lines and deal-crazed crowds on the day after Thanksgiving, well, I salute you. And I offer you BlackFriday.info, a site that rounds up Black Friday ads well in advance so you can plan your shopping (i.e. figure out where you want to show up at 4 a.m.).

As of Friday, the site has ads for about two dozen stores, including Best Buy, Radio Shack, and Staples.

Truth be told, I'm not seeing any … Read more

Site lets users rank priorities for Obama CTO

While the technology pundits are debating the role of an Obama administration CTO, a few programmers in Seattle yesterday decided to do something more useful. Using an application from UserVoice, they launched ObamaCTO.org, a site, unaffiliated with the Obama machine, that allow citizens to list and vote on what should be the top tech priorities for the new administration.

"User voting is an easy way for people to prioritize ideas," said Matt Lerner of Frontseat.org, which created the site. While the voting on this site is more like on Digg than a scientific sampling, and can … Read more

Guy Kawasaki's Reality Check

Guy Kawasaki, the oracle of technology startups, is publishing a new book, Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition. It's a robust collection (450 pages) of posts from his blog, "How to Change the World." If you are seeking to change the world, especially in this economy, Guy's advice will be very worthwhile and entertaining. Check out the BNET video below with some tips from Guy:

Obama's CTO: Watch out for the turf wars

Google CEO Eric Schmidt is out of the running for the chief technology officer (CTO) position that the Obama administration is planning to create. In an interview with CNBC's Jim Cramer, Schmidt said, "I love working at Google and I'm very happy to stay at Google, so the answer is no." Schmidt will remain a close adviser to President-elect Barack Obama, but his first call to duty is Google.

Based on the job description below, it could be difficult to find a worthy candidate from the private sector willing to take on a task of such … Read more